How Much Should a Central Texas Small Business Spend on Marketing? (Real Numbers)
Specific dollar ranges by business type and revenue, real Austin/Waco ad benchmarks, and what you can skip when budget is tight.
Most marketing budget advice for small businesses is useless because it's written as a percentage of revenue with no context. "Spend 7-10% of revenue on marketing" tells a $50k/month restaurant in Waco /locations/waco and a $500k/month restaurant in Austin /locations/austin to do completely different things, but the percentage rule treats them as equivalent.
This guide is real numbers. Specific ranges by business type and revenue level, based on what we actually see working for Central Texas operators in 2026.
- Restaurants under $50k/month should spend almost nothing on paid ads. Organic + GBP first. - $100k-200k/month restaurants are the sweet spot for paid Meta, $1,500-3,000/month. - Home services have higher CPLs but also higher LTV. Different math. - Austin CPMs are 30-50% higher than Waco. Don't copy Austin budgets to Waco campaigns. - The single biggest waste of money we see: agencies charging $3k+/month with no real attribution.