How much should an accounting firm spend on marketing?
The honest answer is a percentage of fee income, adjusted for what you are trying to do with that spend. This post sets out the benchmark ranges we work to, what belongs inside the budget, and why underspending fails more often than overspending.
When a partner asks how much an accounting firm should spend on marketing, they usually want a single number. There isn't one, but there is a workable framework: express the budget as a share of annual fee income, then set the percentage according to whether you are holding position, growing steadily, or trying to move into a new niche or territory.
Our position is that the percentage matters less than consistency and completeness. Most firms we look at are not spending recklessly. They are spending a small amount, irregularly, across two or three disconnected activities, then concluding that marketing does not work for accountants. It works. It just needs enough budget and enough continuity to produce data you can act on.
Below we set out the ranges, what counts as marketing spend, and how to judge whether your current number is defensible.
Benchmark ranges by growth stage
Treat these as planning starting points rather than prescriptions. They are percentages of annual fee income, inclusive of everything described in the next section.
| Objective | Share of fee income | What it typically funds |
|---|---|---|
| Hold current visibility | 1% to 3% | Website upkeep, basic SEO, CRM and tracking, occasional content |
| Measured growth | 3% to 6% | The above plus consistent content, paid search, landing page development |
| Niche entry or market expansion | 6% to 10% | The above plus a rebuilt site architecture, sustained paid acquisition, outbound |
A firm at roughly half a million in fee income holding position sits near the bottom of that first band. The same firm deciding to own a specific niche in its region belongs in the third. The number moves with ambition.
Two adjustments are worth making. If your website is more than four years old, or your conversion tracking is broken or absent, your first year needs a capital element on top of the running percentage. And if your average client value is high, a higher percentage is easier to justify, because a single retained client can cover several months of spend.
What actually belongs in the budget
Firms routinely understate their marketing spend because they only count the obvious line items. A defensible budget has three components.
External expenditure. Agency or contractor fees, Google and Meta ad spend, website and landing page development, SEO work, content production, design, video, sponsorships and events.
Internal expenditure. Any salary cost attached to marketing, partner time spent on business development, content written in-house, and sales support. Partner time is the line most often ignored. If a director spends four hours a week on enquiries, follow-ups and proposals, that is a real cost and it belongs in the calculation.
Infrastructure. CRM, email platform, call tracking, analytics, appointment booking, conversion tracking, reporting and website hosting. This is the layer that determines whether the rest of the spend can be measured at all.
Once you total all three, most firms discover their real marketing spend is higher than they thought, and that a disproportionate share sits in unmeasured partner time rather than in anything that compounds. That is worth correcting before you increase the headline number.
A smaller monthly figure sustained for twelve months will almost always outperform the same annual total spent in two concentrated bursts, because search and paid acquisition both reward continuity.
Why underspend is the usual failure
Overspending is visible and gets corrected quickly. Underspending is invisible and persists for years.
A budget that is too small produces a predictable set of symptoms. Paid campaigns never accumulate enough conversion data for the platform to optimise, so cost per enquiry stays high and the firm concludes paid search does not work. Content appears in bursts and then stops, so search rankings never establish. Landing pages get built once and never tested. Tracking is partial, so nobody can say which channel produced the three clients that did arrive.
The result is a firm with twelve months of activity and no evidence. It then cuts the budget further, which makes the evidence problem worse.
Inconsistency compounds the same problem. Three months on, two months off, then a burst before year end teaches you very little. Search and paid acquisition both reward continuity. A smaller monthly figure sustained for twelve months will almost always outperform the same annual total spent in two concentrated bursts.
If your budget cannot fund one channel properly for a full year, fund one channel properly rather than three channels badly.
Judging spend by outcome, not percentage
The percentage is a planning device. Once you are running, judge the budget against two numbers.
The first is cost per acquired client. Take total marketing spend over a period and divide it by clients won through marketing, excluding referrals. The second is the ratio of that figure to first-year fee value from a new client. If a new client is worth several thousand in year one and your acquisition cost is a fraction of that, and clients stay for years, the spend is sound and probably too low.
Most firms we work with find their acquisition cost is comfortably covered within the first year of a client relationship. When that is true, the constraint on growth is not budget. It is capacity to onboard and service the clients that arrive, which is why we treat onboarding automation as part of the same system rather than a separate project.
One caution on bought leads. Marketplace lead platforms are a common line item and a common source of waste, because the same enquiry is sold to several firms and the buying intent is often thin. Track them separately from channels you own, and be willing to stop.
Setting a number you can defend
A practical sequence for the coming year:
- Calculate your true current spend across external, internal and infrastructure costs, including partner time.
- Set your objective honestly. Holding position, measured growth, or niche entry.
- Apply the corresponding percentage of fee income to get a working annual figure.
- Add a first-year capital element if the website, tracking or CRM needs rebuilding before anything else can be measured.
- Divide by twelve and commit to that monthly figure for a full year rather than reacting quarter by quarter.
- Set the two measurements now, cost per acquired client and payback period, so the following year's decision is based on evidence.
With Making Tax Digital for Income Tax arriving in April 2026 and sustained growth cited as the leading priority for most UK firms, the competitive floor is rising. A basic website and occasional posting no longer produces enquiries on its own. That does not mean spending more for its own sake. It means the spend you do commit needs to sit inside a structure that captures demand and converts it.
Where we stand
How much an accounting firm should spend on marketing depends on what you want the spend to achieve, but the workable range sits between 1% and 10% of fee income, with most growth-minded firms of 2 to 20 staff belonging somewhere in the middle. The exact percentage matters less than three things: counting the full cost including partner time, funding fewer channels properly instead of several thinly, and holding the spend steady long enough to produce evidence.
If you are reviewing your budget for the coming year and want a view on whether the number is defensible and where it should be directed, that is the sort of assessment we run with firms regularly.
Common questions
Should partner time be included in the marketing budget?
Yes. If a director spends several hours a week on enquiry handling, follow-up and proposals, that time carries a real cost and it is part of your client acquisition expenditure. Excluding it makes the budget look smaller than it is and hides the fact that a large share of your spend sits in the least scalable place available.
What percentage of revenue is right for a firm just starting to market?
A firm building visibility from a weak starting position usually needs a higher figure in year one than in subsequent years, because the website, tracking and CRM often need rebuilding before anything can be measured. Treat that as a capital element on top of your running percentage rather than folding it into the ongoing monthly number.
Is it better to spread budget across several channels or focus on one?
Focus, in almost every case at the budget levels most small firms work with. Splitting a modest budget across search, paid, social and outbound means none of them accumulates enough data or continuity to perform. Fund one channel properly for twelve months, measure it, then add the second once the first is producing a predictable cost per enquiry.
How long before a marketing budget produces measurable results?
Paid acquisition can produce enquiries within weeks, though the cost per enquiry usually improves over the first two to three months as conversion data accumulates. Search-driven visibility takes longer, typically several months before rankings and traffic move meaningfully. Budget on the assumption that the first quarter buys data and the following quarters buy clients.
Are bought leads a sensible use of marketing budget?
They can fill a gap while owned channels develop, but track them as a separate line with their own cost per acquired client. Marketplace platforms sell the same enquiry to several firms, so conversion rates are often poor and the fee expectation is set by price comparison. If the numbers do not hold up after a fair test, stop and redirect the spend.