Quick Answer: The SBA's general rule is 7–8% of revenue for small businesses under $5 million. For a $2 million roofer, that's about $11,700 – $13,300 a month. Spend less if your margins are thin, and more, up to the SBA's 20% ceiling, when you're entering a new market or launching a new service.
Ask ten people how much a roofer should spend on marketing and you'll get ten different numbers. Anyone who gives you one without asking about your revenue and your goals is guessing.
The better question is what makes sense for a company your size, growing at the pace you want. Once you've got a number, you also need to know what it actually buys, so you can look at an agency quote and tell if it's fair.
The SBA's general rule is 7–8% of revenue for small businesses under $5 million, and it assumes you clear 10–12% in net margin. Its full range runs from 2% to 20% of sales, with the high end for gearing up something new.
Here's how that range lines up with what you're trying to do:
Goal | % of revenue | Who it fits |
Low end of the range | 2% | Established companies with strong referrals and little need for new leads |
SBA general rule | 7–8% | Companies under $5M with net margins around 10–12% |
Gearing up something new | Up to 20% | Companies entering a new market or launching a new service |
For a sense of scale, Gartner's 2025 CMO Spend Survey found that big companies spend about 7.7% of revenue on marketing. Most of them were billion-dollar businesses, though, so treat that as a reference point only. Margins matter too. Residential remodelers averaged a 6.3% net profit margin in NAHB's latest cost study, well under the 10–12% the SBA's rule assumes. If your margins look more like that, start below 7% and raise the budget only to fund growth you've planned for.
Percentages are easy to nod along to and hard to budget with, so here's what they look like in dollars each month. We used the SBA's numbers and rounded to the nearest $100.
Annual revenue | Low end (2%) | General rule (7–8%) | Gearing up (20%) |
$1M | $1,700 | $5,800 – $6,700 | $16,700 |
$2M | $3,300 | $11,700 – $13,300 | $33,300 |
$4M | $6,700 | $23,300 – $26,700 | $66,700 |
If you're planning to grow, base it on where you want revenue to be over the next 12 months, not on last year. You're paying now for the leads that produce that revenue.
Most marketing budgets cover three different things. Pull them apart and an agency quote gets a lot easier to read.
Ad spend. This is the money that goes straight to Google, Meta, or whatever platform you're on. The agency doesn't keep any of it. Costs swing a lot by market and season, so your own numbers from the last six to twelve months are the best benchmark you've got.
Management. This is what you pay someone to run the campaigns. Most agencies charge a flat monthly fee or a percentage of ad spend. Either can be fair. What matters is knowing which one you're paying and what it includes.
Content and search engine optimization (SEO). Your website, service pages, blog posts, Google Business Profile, and reviews. Pricing here is all over the place because the work is, so skip the benchmarks and ask for a list of exactly what gets delivered each month.
How to read a quote: Ask for it in those three lines. If all you get is one monthly number and you can't tell how much of it actually reaches Google or Meta, keep asking. Two quotes with the same total can put very different amounts into actual ads.
There's no perfect split, but a few things hold true almost everywhere:
Paid ads, search, and tracking work best when they run as one roofing marketing plan.
Cut the waste, but don't go dark. Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies expects remodeling spending growth to slow to 0.5% by mid-2027. When the market slows, cut the channels that aren't booking jobs and keep the ones that are. The same approach applies to growing when remodeling spending stalls.
Not if it's funding planned growth. The SBA's general rule is 7–8% of revenue, and its range runs up to 20% when a business is gearing up something new. It's too much if you can't point to the jobs it's booking.
Usually, yes, as a share of revenue. A new company doesn't have a referral base yet, so more of the work has to come from marketing. Set the budget off where you want revenue to be next year.
Yes. Ad spend, management, and content all come out of the same pot. Just keep them on separate lines so you can see what each piece costs.
It depends on your average job value and close rate. A full replacement can carry a much higher cost per lead than a small repair. Track your cost per booked job and you'll know what you can afford to pay.
Rizen has worked with more than 100 home service companies, and every roofing campaign our paid ads team runs reports cost per booked job by channel. You'll see exactly which part of your budget is bringing in work.
Book a Strategy Call and get a second set of eyes on your roofing marketing budget.