Where a marketing budget should actually go
Channel splits by goal and business type, with worked examples. Updated October 2026.
For a local service business trying to get found, roughly a third of the budget goes to SEO and local search, a fifth to paid search, and the rest spread across content, paid social, email and creative. The split moves substantially depending on what you are trying to do and what kind of business you are.
These are the allocations our budget planner runs on, published so you can sanity-check any proposal you are given. Spreading a small budget evenly across six channels is the most common and most expensive mistake.
What are you actually trying to do?
| Goal | SEO & local search | Content | Paid search | Paid social | Design & creative | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Get found locally | 34% | 16% | 22% | 10% | 8% | 10% |
| Grow online sales | 22% | 14% | 24% | 22% | 12% | 6% |
| Build the brand | 18% | 26% | 8% | 26% | 8% | 14% |
| Launch something new | 14% | 18% | 20% | 28% | 8% | 12% |
The same goal, four businesses
All four are trying to grow sales. The buyer behaves differently in each.
| Business type | SEO & local search | Content | Paid search | Paid social | Design & creative | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Local service business | 29% | 13% | 27% | 15% | 12% | 4% |
| Hospitality | 17% | 17% | 19% | 29% | 12% | 6% |
| E-commerce | 15% | 9% | 28% | 26% | 15% | 6% |
| B2B / software | 27% | 21% | 19% | 12% | 15% | 6% |
Worked examples
| Scenario | SEO & local search | Content | Paid search | Paid social | Design & creative | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Local service, €1,000/mo | €400 | €150 | €250 | €40 | €80 | €80 |
| Local service, €3,000/mo | €1,200 | €450 | €750 | €120 | €240 | €240 |
| B2B software, €3,000/mo | €810 | €630 | €570 | €360 | €450 | €180 |
| E-commerce, €5,000/mo | €750 | €450 | €1,400 | €1,300 | €750 | €300 |
Rounded to the nearest €10. Run your own budget.
Three ways budgets get wasted
Spread evenly. Six channels at a sixth each means none of them has enough to work. Pick two to do properly.
All paid, no foundation. Paid traffic sent to a site that does not convert is the most expensive way to discover a conversion problem.
No one reading the numbers. A budget nobody reviews monthly is a standing order, not a strategy.
Common questions
What should a small business spend on marketing?
A common rule of thumb is 5 to 10 per cent of revenue, lower for established businesses and higher when growing or launching. In cash terms most Irish SMEs we work with run between €500 and €3,000 a month across all channels. Below about €500 the money is usually spread too thin to move anything.
Is paid or organic better?
They do different jobs. Paid buys attention now and stops the moment you stop paying. Organic compounds and takes months. The splits above deliberately fund both, because a business with only one of them is either fragile or slow.
Why does the split change by business type?
Because the buyer behaves differently. A local service business is found through search at the moment of need, so search weighting rises. Hospitality is chosen visually, so paid social rises. B2B has a long considered cycle, so content and email rise and paid social falls.
Should this include the website build?
No. These are ongoing monthly splits. A website build is capital work, quoted separately, and should not be funded out of a monthly marketing budget or it will eat a quarter of the year's spend.
Use these numbers
Free to quote and republish under CC BY 4.0, with attribution. Every figure here is also available as open JSON and CSV.
Mizen Studio, Irish marketing budget benchmark 2026. https://mizenstudio.com/data/
Raw data: marketing budget split
Want this checked against your actual numbers?
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