Is Your Marketing Budget Too High?

Are you budgeting an excessive amount of or too little on advertising? Quite a bit has occurred during the last 12 months, so do you want to make a change? Happily, our 2026 High Growth Study presents a recent reply.

First, let’s discuss what’s modified. There may be, in fact, all of the stuff you examine within the information: on-and-off-again tariffs, socio/geo/political turbulence, and loads of uncertainty about laws and insurance policies that have an effect on a large swath {of professional} providers industries.

Then there’s this:

Progress has fallen to the bottom stage since 2018, shedding 1.7 proportion factors within the final 12 months alone.*

Advertising and marketing Spending Tendencies

How do you suppose leaders responded when it got here to their advertising spend? Actually, throughout the skilled providers, spending (not together with compensation) notched up one proportion level, from 7% in 2024 and 2025 to eight% in 2026.

So if you’re on the lookout for a broad market benchmark, it’s 8%.

However there’s one other bit of information you may need to take into account. In our research, we evaluate a bunch of prime performers that we name high-growth corporations to their no-growth counterparts. Excessive-growth corporations are these whose annual revenues grew 20% or extra yearly for the previous three consecutive years, and no-growth corporations are those who grew not all or contracted over that interval.

What did these two teams on the outer edges of our pattern spend on advertising final 12 months? Right here’s the information:

No-growth corporations not solely spent much less (over a 3rd much less) than {the marketplace} as a complete, they stored their advertising budgets precisely the place they had been the earlier 12 months. Like the bulk corporations, this group’s revenues additionally declined 12 months over 12 months.

What in regards to the high-growth corporations? We pay particular consideration to this group as a result of their monetary efficiency is spectacular even when the going will get powerful. We glance to them as fashions of “learn how to do advertising proper.” And we be aware of any adjustments they make from one 12 months to the subsequent.

This group elevated its advertising spend from 10% within the 2025 report back to 12% this 12 months—an eye-opening 20% bounce.

Why Excessive-Progress Corporations Spend Extra

Why are high-growth corporations outinvesting their slower-growing counterparts by wherever between 50% and 240%? We don’t have laborious knowledge to reply this query, however we’ve got 4 theories primarily based on what we’ve skilled with our shoppers.

First, we all know that some agency leaders consider advertising as a value heart quite than a development engine. This may clarify why no-growth corporations stored their advertising funds on the identical low stage. Then again, many of those underperformers—the median no-growth agency took a 12.2% loss—merely might not have any extra cash to allocate to advertising.

Second, high-growth organizations might acknowledge a chance after they see it. When the market is down is when development potential is the best. In order that they poured extra into advertising realizing that others had been being extra cautious. They had been rewarded with a 39.9% median development charge, 4.7 instances larger than common!

Third, loads of high-growth corporations are investing closely in synthetic intelligence, together with AI-powered advertising tech. This doesn’t come low-cost, and since the know-how is new, some corporations are experimenting with a number of competing platforms to find out the perfect match.

Fourth, advertising is the neatest path to ascertain and maintain visibility. Just lately, I coated the 5 marketing techniques that deliver the biggest impact for top development corporations. These ways are aimed squarely at constructing visibility and credibility. Even these corporations that closely depend on referrals to drive new enterprise perceive that any severe purchaser, regardless of how sturdy the referral is likely to be, will need to validate the advice by reviewing the agency’s web site, LinkedIn profiles, and thought management items. These are all sides of promoting.

With all of this data in thoughts, it might be time to take a recent take a look at your advertising funds. Whereas there are not any one-size matches all solutions to the query, “Am I spending an excessive amount of or too little?” you at the moment are outfitted with the context to make a greater resolution.

*Dates seek advice from the 12 months the information was revealed, not when it was collected. Annually’s knowledge was captured within the prior 12 months. For example, knowledge labeled 2025 displays {the marketplace} in 2024.