small business marketing budget nz: what to actually spend

Search for a small business marketing budget in NZ and you will be handed a percentage within about four seconds. Five to ten per cent of revenue. Seven to twelve. Twelve to fifteen if you are newer. The ranges contradict each other, and almost none of them say where the number came from.

So I checked what New Zealand itself publishes. Nothing, and the reason why is more useful than any percentage. I make video and static images for a living, so weight my opinion accordingly. Every figure below comes from Stats NZ, Inland Revenue, business.govt.nz or the publisher's own page.

there is no official small business marketing budget in NZ

Start with the government's own guidance. Under the heading "Set a budget that prioritises marketing", business.govt.nz lists "four of the most popular ways to set your marketing budget": spend to achieve objectives, a sales-based budget, match competitors, or stick to what feels affordable. The second is described in full as "Dedicate a percentage of current or forecast sales income to marketing."

The percentage is left blank. Not qualified, not ranged. Blank. And this is not an abandoned corner of the site: the footer records it as last reviewed in June 2025 and last edited on 20 August 2026. The government names the lever and declines to set it.

Now try the statistics. Stats NZ runs a business performance benchmarker built with Inland Revenue, the nearest thing New Zealand has to a financial benchmark and flagged by Stats NZ as experimental. It holds financial data on 483 industries and eight ratios for 228 of them: gross profit, stock turnover, salaries and wages to turnover, two return measures, two liquidity ratios and liability structure.

Marketing is not one of them, and the reason is the interesting part. Stats NZ states that "Benchmark ratios data is sourced from Inland Revenue tax data", and the financial dataset beside it reports six measures: total income, expenditure, profit, assets, business count and employee count. One undifferentiated expenditure line. Marketing is not broken out of it, so no marketing ratio can be derived from what New Zealand publishes. Inland Revenue's industry benchmarks page simply hands you to the Stats NZ tool.

Canada's government-owned development bank, by contrast, calls 2 to 5% of revenue "a common rule of thumb" for B2B companies, and 5 to 10% for B2C, which is why the Canadian version of this question has a tidier answer. Stated precisely, so you can check it: as of September 2026, no recommended marketing spend for a small business appears on the public guidance pages of business.govt.nz, Stats NZ or Inland Revenue.

where the percentages actually come from

The numbers in circulation came from somewhere, and mostly they trace to one survey. Gartner's CMO Spend Survey reports that "Marketing budgets remain effectively flat, rising only slightly to 7.8% of company revenue in 2026 from 7.7% in 2025".

Read the methodology in the same release and it describes a survey "conducted January through March 2026 among 401 CMOs and other marketing leaders in North America, the United Kingdom and Europe across different industries, company sizes and revenue, with the vast majority of respondents reporting annual revenue of over $1 billion."

Four hundred and one marketing chiefs. Northern hemisphere. Mostly billion-dollar companies. No Asia-Pacific cut exists in that sample frame, so no New Zealand figure can be pulled out of it at all. What gets republished locally as a New Zealand benchmark is a large-enterprise northern average with the flag changed. The local pages repeating it do not agree with each other, and not one names a New Zealand source. That is not a benchmark. It is a guess with a decimal point on it.

the number those percentages are a percentage of

The method falls over here for a reason that has nothing to do with marketing. It is the size of the businesses. The Annual Enterprise Survey is, in Stats NZ's words, "New Zealand's most comprehensive source of financial statistics covering more than 500,000 businesses." Its provisional 2025 results report that "49 percent of businesses in the 2025 AES population earned a total income between $100,000 and $1 million". Then the detail that should end the percentage conversation, from the same release: "Nearly 129,000 businesses had sales between $100,000 and $250,000 in 2025. Of these businesses, 22 percent had an operating profit before tax of between $0 and $10,000, while a further 19 percent had an operating profit of between $10,000 and $50,000." Add those two published figures together, which is my arithmetic and not a number Stats NZ states, and about 41% of that cohort cleared under $50,000 of operating profit before tax.

Run the rule of thumb on a real one. Sales of $150,000, inside the band those 129,000 businesses sit in. Eight per cent of revenue is $12,000 a year. If that business cleared $40,000 of operating profit before tax, that $12,000 is 30% of its profit for the year. Nobody writing "7 to 8% of revenue" means that, because in the sample the figure came from, 7.8% of revenue is a department with staff in it.

Smaller still than that survey suggests. Of the 612,417 businesses business.govt.nz counts here, 448,233 have zero employees, about 73% by my own division. For a business of one, the scarce resource is not dollars. It is Tuesday night.

Where p.a. fits: the creative side of the third option between hiring a marketer and doing it yourself at 11pm. A monthly slate of video and static images, quoted around what you can carry. You post it, I make it. Weight that as you like, given I sell it.
Ask me for a quote →

what it really costs, after GST and tax

One more thing changes what you actually pay.

Inland Revenue charges GST at a rate of 15%, and you must register once "your turnover was at least $60,000 in the last 12 months, or you expect it will be at least $60,000 in the next 12 months". That threshold is the fork in the road. business.govt.nz puts it plainly: "If you're registered for GST, your income tax return will exclude GST on your income and expenses... If you're not registered for GST, your income tax return will include GST on your expenses only." So a $1,150 invoice including GST costs a registered business $1,000, because the GST comes back, while an unregistered business wears the full $1,150. Same quote, 15% apart. Compare prices GST-exclusive.

The spend itself is deductible: business.govt.nz lists "day-to-day revenue expenses for running your business, like advertising or wages" among what you can claim. But there is a trap inside most marketing plans. Inland Revenue's rule is that "Entertainment expenses will be 50% deductible and not liable for FBT if they are not completely business related", and the categories named include corporate boxes, food and drink at social events, and gifts of food and drink enjoyed privately. So the client lunch, the launch drinks and the wine to a good customer are halved. Media, design, production and a monthly retainer are not. Inland Revenue does treat "entertainment that promotes your business" as fully deductible, "as long as the public has the same access to this as your employees, business contacts or people associated with the business". A public activation survives; a private table does not. Not tax advice, so check anything borderline with your accountant.

And the timing. For most businesses "the accounting year begins on 1 April and ends the following 31 March", the standard balance date. Not 30 June, not 5 April. Twelve industries have recognised alternatives, so confirm yours, but for most the budget conversation belongs in February and March, which is also where the local content calendar starts.

how to work out your own number

The method is already on the government page that refused to give you a percentage. It tells you to know "the cost of gaining each new customer, the profit each time they buy something, and the total profit over their lifetime as a customer." That is the answer, in the right order.

1. What is a customer worth? Gross profit on an average sale, times how often a typical customer buys. Not revenue. Profit.
2. How many more do you want this year? A real number you would recognise if it arrived. Ten. Forty. Two hundred.
3. What does it cost to get one? Never measured it? Start on Monday by asking every new customer how they found you. More accurate than any dashboard.
4. Multiply, then check it against cash. If the answer is bigger than the business can survive, the target was wrong, not the maths.

The percentage then becomes an output you can compare against peers, not an input borrowed from a billion-dollar company in another hemisphere. My guide to knowing whether your marketing is working covers reading those numbers without fooling yourself.

Be honest about the floor. If the number comes out at $250 a month, that buys one thing done properly and held for a year, not five channels. That matters more than it sounds. The business.govt.nz survival table puts the zero-employee row at 84% still trading after one year and 25% after ten. Its headline summary quotes 92% and 44%, but that averages every small business together, not the sole operators you are up against. Most of your competitors' marketing will simply stop. Consistency beats budget, and it is cheaper.

the honest answer on a small business marketing budget in NZ

There is no New Zealand benchmark, and that is not an oversight. The nearest official attempt publishes expenditure as one undivided line with no marketing ratio in it, and the government page that names the lever declines to set it. Every percentage on offer is either imported from companies a thousand times your size, or invented by someone selling something.

What you can work out is your own number, from what a customer is worth and how many you need. Price it GST-exclusive, know which parts are only half deductible, and set it against a 31 March year. A smaller answer than a confident percentage, and the only one that survives contact with your accounts.