How Much Should a South London Trades Business Spend on Marketing in 2026?

Every trades business owner has asked the same question: how much should I be spending on marketing? The answer is not a single number. It depends on your revenue, your margins, your growth ambitions, and how established your customer base already is. But there are clear principles that help you arrive at the right figure for your situation — and clear benchmarks that tell you whether your spend is too low, too high, or misallocated.

This piece is the marketing budget framework we use with our trades and home improvement clients in South London. It covers the percentage of revenue most growing trades businesses should allocate, where that money is best spent, and how to track whether it is working. It is practical, specific, and designed for owners who want clarity, not jargon.

The benchmark: 5% to 10% of revenue

For established trades businesses looking to maintain their current position, 3% to 5% of revenue is typically sufficient. For businesses looking to grow — more enquiries, bigger jobs, expansion into new areas — 7% to 10% is more realistic. Start-ups and businesses entering new markets may need to invest 12% to 15% in their first year to build visibility and a customer base from scratch.

These are percentages of revenue, not profit. A business turning over £400,000 a year and wanting to grow should be allocating £28,000 to £40,000 annually to marketing. That sounds like a lot until you consider that a single additional kitchen renovation or bathroom fitting per month — generated by that marketing — can add £30,000 to £50,000 in annual revenue. Marketing is not a cost. It is a revenue generator when done properly.

Where the money should go: the channel mix

Not all marketing spend is created equal. The trades businesses we see winning in 2026 allocate their budget across a specific mix of channels, prioritising the ones that generate the highest-quality enquiries at the lowest marginal cost.

• Google Business Profile and local SEO — 25% to 30%. This is the foundation. Optimising your profile, building citations, earning reviews, and ranking for 'kitchen fitter near me' queries is the highest-ROI activity for most local trades.
• Website and content — 20% to 25%. A professional, fast, mobile-friendly website with project galleries, testimonials, and service pages that answer the questions homeowners are actually asking.
• Paid search and social — 25% to 30%. Google Ads for high-intent searches ('emergency plumber Croydon') and targeted Meta ads for brand awareness and retargeting.
• Email and customer retention — 10% to 15%. A simple email list of past customers, nurtured with seasonal offers, maintenance reminders, and referral incentives.
• Trade directories and partnerships — 10% to 15%. Selective presence on Checkatrade, Rated People, or local builder partnerships that generate qualified referrals.

The exact split varies by business. A specialist kitchen fitter with strong organic visibility might spend less on paid ads and more on portfolio content. An emergency plumber might invert the ratio, spending heavily on Google Ads because the intent is immediate and the margin per job is high. The principle is to match the channel mix to your customer journey, not to copy what another trade is doing.

How to measure whether your marketing is working

The only metric that ultimately matters is return on investment. For every pound you spend on marketing, how many pounds come back in gross profit? But measuring that requires tracking the right intermediate metrics and attributing enquiries to their source accurately.

At minimum, every trades business should track: enquiries by source (Google, paid ads, directory, referral, repeat customer); quote-to-job conversion rate by source; average job value by source; and customer acquisition cost by source. These four numbers tell you which channels are producing profitable work and which are wasting money.

The only metric that ultimately matters is return on investment. For every pound spent, how many pounds come back in gross profit?

The mistake most trades businesses make

The most common marketing budget mistake is not spending too little. It is spending without a plan. £500 a month on Google Ads with no landing page strategy. £300 a month on a directory listing with no profile optimisation. £200 a month on social media management that posts generic content to an audience of 47 followers. These are not marketing investments. They are marketing wishes.

The fix is simple but requires discipline. Define your target customer precisely. Choose the two or three channels where that customer actually looks for trades like yours. Invest properly in those channels — enough to be visible and competitive. Track results honestly. And cut what does not work without sentiment. A smaller budget spent strategically will always outperform a larger budget spent randomly.

When to increase your marketing spend

There are three clear signals that it is time to increase your marketing investment. First, your current channels are generating a positive return and you have capacity to take on more work — scaling what works is the safest growth strategy. Second, you are entering a new service area or launching a new service line and need to build awareness from scratch. Third, a key competitor has increased their visibility and you are losing share of enquiry.

Conversely, you should hold or reduce spend when: your current enquiry pipeline is already full and you cannot service more work; your tracking shows that one or more channels are producing negative or marginal returns; or your business is in a seasonal quiet period and the marginal value of additional enquiries is low. Marketing spend should be dynamic, not fixed.

If you want a clear, specific marketing budget and channel plan for your trades business — built around your revenue, your margins, your capacity and your growth goals — that is exactly what we design for our clients at OM Marketing.