Marketing isn’t a cost you trim. It’s the pipeline.
Every contractor and brand that grows has the same thing in common: a steady flow of the right people asking for a price. Here’s what the research says about paying for that flow, and who should run it.
The benchmark is 7–9% of revenue.
of company revenue is what US companies spend on marketing, the lowest share since 2021.
The CMO Survey, 2026of revenue for large companies, and 59% of CMOs say it isn’t enough to execute their strategy.
Gartner CMO Spend Survey, 2025of the time, marketing is the expense cut when profits fall short, more often than anything else.
The CMO Survey, 2026Going quiet is expensive.
Across three recessions and 4,700 companies, the deepest cutters had a 21% chance of pulling ahead after the downturn. Companies that cut costs selectively while still investing, marketing included, had 37%.
Harvard Business Review, 2010Brands that go dark lose an estimated 2% of long-term revenue every quarter, and take three to five years to win it back.
Nielsen, 2022A whole team for less than one hire.
The median US marketing manager earns $166,790 a year, and benefits add about 30% on top of wages across private employers (BLS). That’s one person, before software, ad tools or a web developer.
- Ten years of digital marketing experience, from enterprise media budgets to local trades.
- Specialists for every piece: web, data, paid media, content and automation.
- Our own project-data pipeline, which no in-house hire brings with them. See the data
- No hand-offs: the people who plan the work do the work.
- Month to month. You keep everything we build.
You wouldn’t be alone: companies hand about a third of their digital marketing to outside partners, and construction firms about half (The CMO Survey, 2026).