Are you budgeting an excessive amount of or too little on advertising and marketing? Quite a bit has occurred over the past 12 months, so do that you must make a change? Fortuitously, our 2026 Excessive Development Examine affords a contemporary reply.
First, let’s discuss what’s modified. There’s, in fact, all of the stuff you examine within the information: on-and-off-again tariffs, socio/geo/political turbulence, and loads of uncertainty about laws and insurance policies that have an effect on a large swath {of professional} providers industries.
Then there may be this:
Development has fallen to the bottom stage since 2018, shedding 1.7 share factors within the final 12 months alone.*
Advertising and marketing Spending Tendencies
How do you assume leaders responded when it got here to their advertising and marketing spend? In truth, throughout the skilled providers, spending (not together with compensation) notched up one share level, from 7% in 2024 and 2025 to eight% in 2026.
So in case you are in search of a broad market benchmark, it’s 8%.
However there’s one other bit of knowledge you may wish to contemplate. In our examine, we evaluate a bunch of high performers that we name high-growth corporations to their no-growth counterparts. Excessive-growth corporations are these whose annual revenues grew 20% or extra yearly for the previous three consecutive years, and no-growth corporations are those who grew not all or contracted over that interval.
What did these two teams on the outer edges of our pattern spend on advertising and marketing final 12 months? Right here’s the info:
No-growth corporations not solely spent much less (over a 3rd much less) than {the marketplace} as an entire, they stored their advertising and marketing budgets precisely the place they have been the earlier 12 months. Like the bulk corporations, this group’s revenues additionally declined 12 months over 12 months.
What in regards to the high-growth corporations? We pay particular consideration to this group as a result of their monetary efficiency is spectacular even when the going will get robust. We glance to them as fashions of “ do advertising and marketing proper.” And we be aware of any adjustments they make from one 12 months to the subsequent.
This group elevated its advertising and marketing spend from 10% within the 2025 report back to 12% this 12 months—an eye-opening 20% leap.
Why Excessive-Development Corporations Spend Extra
Why are high-growth corporations outinvesting their slower-growing counterparts by wherever between 50% and 240%? We don’t have onerous knowledge to reply this query, however we now have 4 theories primarily based on what we’ve skilled with our shoppers.
First, we all know that some agency leaders consider advertising and marketing as a price heart relatively than a development engine. This may clarify why no-growth corporations stored their advertising and marketing price range on the identical low stage. Then again, many of those underperformers—the median no-growth agency took a 12.2% loss—merely could not have any extra cash to allocate to advertising and marketing.
Second, high-growth organizations could acknowledge a possibility once they see it. When the market is down is when development potential is the best. So that they poured extra into advertising and marketing realizing that others have been being extra cautious. They have been rewarded with a 39.9% median development price, 4.7 instances increased than common!
Third, loads of high-growth corporations are investing closely in synthetic intelligence, together with AI-powered advertising and marketing tech. This doesn’t come low cost, and since the know-how is new, some corporations are experimenting with a number of competing platforms to find out the very best match.
Fourth, advertising and marketing is the neatest path to determine and maintain visibility. Just lately, I lined the 5 advertising and marketing methods that ship the largest influence for prime development corporations. These ways are aimed squarely at constructing visibility and credibility. Even these corporations that closely depend on referrals to drive new enterprise perceive that any severe purchaser, irrespective of how robust the referral may be, will wish to validate the advice by reviewing the agency’s web site, LinkedIn profiles, and thought management items. These are all aspects of selling.
With all of this data in thoughts, it could be time to take a contemporary take a look at your advertising and marketing price range. Whereas there are not any one-size matches all solutions to the query, “Am I spending an excessive amount of or too little?” you at the moment are outfitted with the context to make a greater determination.
*Dates check with the 12 months the info was revealed, not when it was collected. Every year’s knowledge was captured within the prior 12 months. For example, knowledge labeled 2025 displays {the marketplace} in 2024.
