Blog · 10 Jul 2026
How Much Should a Kitchen or Bathroom Company Spend on Marketing in 2026
Most kitchen and bathroom companies should budget between 5 and 10 percent of revenue on marketing, higher if you're actively growing or opening a new showroom, lower once referrals and repeat business start carrying more of the load. The right number depends less on a fixed rule and more on how much of your current pipeline you can actually trace back to a channel you control.
That answer is the short version. Here's how to actually apply it.
Why kitchen and bathroom marketing budgets don't follow generic small business rules
Generic advice says spend 7 to 8 percent of revenue on marketing and move on. That rule was built for businesses with short sales cycles and low-ticket purchases. A kitchen or bathroom project doesn't work that way. The average customer researches for weeks, compares two or three companies, visits a showroom, and makes a decision worth thousands of pounds. That changes what the budget needs to do.
Your marketing spend isn't just buying clicks. It's buying:
- Enough visibility to be one of the two or three companies a homeowner actually considers
- Enough proof (case studies, reviews, a strong portfolio) to survive that comparison
- A system that doesn't lose the lead between the first enquiry and the showroom visit
Underspend and you're invisible during the research phase. Overspend on the wrong channel and you're paying for clicks from people who were never going to book a consultation.
What percentage of revenue should a kitchen or bathroom company spend on marketing
| Annual revenue | Recommended marketing spend | Monthly budget range |
|---|---|---|
| Under £500k | 8 to 10 percent | £3,300 to £4,200 |
| £500k to £1.5m | 6 to 8 percent | £2,500 to £10,000 |
| £1.5m to £3m | 5 to 7 percent | £6,250 to £17,500 |
| Over £3m | 4 to 6 percent | £10,000+ |
The percentage goes down as revenue grows because a larger, more established business already has referrals, repeat clients, and brand recognition doing some of the work marketing would otherwise have to do alone. A newer or smaller business has to spend more, proportionally, just to get in front of enough people.
Where that budget should actually go
A common mistake is putting the entire budget into paid ads and nothing into the systems that make those ads worth running. A more realistic split, for most kitchen and bathroom companies:
| Channel | Share of budget | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 35% - 40% | Captures people actively searching, highest intent, fastest to show results |
| Meta ads | 15% - 20% | Builds awareness and retargets people who visited but didn't enquire |
| SEO and content | 20% - 25% | Compounds over time, reduces reliance on paid spend, supports AI search visibility |
| CRM, lead tracking, and follow-up systems | 10% - 15% | Makes sure paid leads don't get lost, the highest-ROI line item most companies skip |
| Case studies, photography, and reviews | 10% | The proof that turns a comparison into a booked consultation |
That CRM and lead tracking line is the one businesses cut first and shouldn't. A lead that isn't followed up within the first hour is dramatically less likely to convert, no matter how good the ad that generated it was. Spending on acquisition without spending on follow-up is the single most common way kitchen and bathroom companies waste a marketing budget.
What changes the number
A few things push the recommended percentage up or down from the baseline:
- Opening a new showroom or entering a new area. Budget higher for the first 6 to 12 months, since you're building visibility from zero in that location.
- Strong existing referral flow. If a meaningful share of leads already comes from past clients or trade partners, the paid marketing budget can sit at the lower end of its range.
- Highly competitive local market. More competitors bidding on the same Google Ads terms means a higher cost per click, which pushes the effective budget up even if the percentage of revenue stays the same.
- New brand with no case studies or reviews yet. Spend proportionally more on proof (photography, first client case studies) before scaling paid ad spend, since ads without proof convert poorly regardless of budget.
A realistic example
Take a kitchen company doing roughly £1.2m in annual revenue with a decent but underused Google Business Profile and no formal lead tracking. A sensible starting budget sits around 7 percent of revenue, roughly £7,000 a month. Early allocation might lean slightly heavier into SEO and CRM setup than the model above, since neither exists yet, then shift toward the standard split once the foundation is in place and Google Ads has enough data to optimise properly. This is illustrative, not a fixed formula. The right split for your business depends on what's already working and what's missing entirely.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
A single-showroom kitchen company under £500k in annual revenue should typically budget £3,000 to £4,500 a month, split primarily between Google Ads, basic SEO, and a proper lead tracking system. Below that, spend is usually too thin to compete for visibility against larger local competitors.
Google Ads for immediate leads, SEO for anything longer than six months. Most kitchen and bathroom companies get the best result running both together from the start: Google Ads generates leads and buys time while SEO builds toward the point where organic search starts reducing how much you need to spend on ads.
Once marketing needs to run across more than one or two channels consistently, or once the business owner is the one managing ads and social media alongside running the company. At that point, an in house hire or specialist consultant almost always outperforms a part time, split attention approach, simply because consistency matters more than any single tactic.
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