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A marketing plan by budget for a small business: what to do at $0, $100, $500, $1,000 and $5,000 a month
How to split a small marketing budget at five levels, from nothing to $5,000 a month, what to skip at each level, and where to find a plan written for your type of business.
By Dapols ·
The short answer: spend in this order. At $0 a month, do the free basics that put you in front of people already searching: a complete Google Business Profile, a few clear pages on your site, asking for reviews, and showing up where your customers already talk. At $100, put half into tools that save you hours and the rest into your first small test of paid ads or content. By $500 and above, paid advertising becomes the biggest line, and the discipline is measuring each channel before adding the next. At $5,000, most of the money goes into advertising you have already proven.
The five monthly levels and the splits below are the ones used on Dapols' marketing plan pages. They are our recommended starting points, not industry averages, and we state no results because they depend heavily on your market. Facts about external tools are linked where used.
Why a fixed number matters
"How much should I spend on marketing?" has no single answer. You will see percent-of-revenue rules, but we could not confirm the often-quoted figure on an official source, so we do not use it. A fixed monthly number is easier to plan with, and it forces the useful question: what is the best use of exactly this much?
The five levels
| Monthly budget | Tools | Paid advertising | Creative and content | Reserve |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $0 | none | none | your own time | none |
| $100 | 50% | 30% | 20% | none |
| $500 | 20% | 50% | 20% | 10% |
| $1,000 | 15% | 55% | 20% | 10% |
| $5,000 | 8% | 62% | 20% | 10% |
$0 a month: organic only
You are buying time, not reach. The jobs that matter:
- Claim and complete your Google Business Profile so you can appear when people search for what you do nearby. You need a Google Account and must verify the business (Google).
- Make your website answer the questions a buyer asks in plain text: what you do, where, for whom, what it costs.
- Ask every happy customer for a review, and reply to each one.
- Pick one social platform where your customers already are and post something useful two or three times a week. Skip the other four.
- Check you can be found by AI assistants. It costs nothing; see AI visibility for small business.
What to skip: paid ads, new tools, anything with a contract.
$100 a month: tools first
Half the budget on tools that give time back (a writing assistant, a scheduler, a simple email platform), about a third on a small paid test, and the rest on creative such as photos or a few designed templates. The paid test is for learning, not scale: one campaign, one audience, one message, run long enough to see whether anyone responds.
What to skip: several ad platforms at once. Split $30 across three platforms and you learn nothing from any of them.
$500 a month: paid becomes the biggest line
Half goes to advertising on the one channel that has already shown signs of life, a fifth to tools, a fifth to creative and a tenth held in reserve for the month something works and you want to double down. Review weekly: spend, enquiries, cost per enquiry.
What to skip: adding a second paid channel before the first one has a number you trust.
$1,000 a month: build the routine
More than half to ads, with a regular rhythm: weekly creative refresh, monthly review, a short list of keywords or audiences you cut each time. This is the first level where it makes sense to pay for a simple call tracking or analytics tool so you know which ad produced which customer.
What to skip: big brand campaigns. At this size, direct-response beats awareness.
$5,000 a month: run it like a small department
Most of the budget is proven advertising, with the tools line small because you are paying for media, not software. The skill now is controlling waste: a cap per channel, a rule for pausing losers, and someone, in-house or an agency, who owns the numbers.
What to skip: spreading across every channel. Add one channel at a time and give it a test budget first.
Match the plan to your business
A salon, a law firm and an online shop should not spend the same way, because their customers find them in different places. Pick your type on the marketing plan page to see all five levels written for it, for example restaurants and cafes, salons and spas, local service businesses or ecommerce stores.
For the tool side, see how to build a business AI stack under $100 a month and the AI stack checker.
Sources: Google Business Profile help, Dapols marketing plans