What a Kelowna small business should actually spend on marketing

Owners ask this constantly and get given a percentage, which is technically the answer and practically useless on its own.

Here is the number, and then the part that actually decides whether it works.

The benchmark

Canadian small businesses generally spend between 5% and 10% of revenue on marketing (Mercury, 2026).

Roughly 5% keeps you where you are. If you want to grow, open a new location or launch a service, it lands closer to 8% to 10%.

On $500,000 of revenue that is $25,000 a year at the low end and $50,000 if you are pushing. Somewhere around $2,000 to $4,000 a month.

That number surprises people in both directions. Some are spending far less and wondering why nothing moves. Some are spending more than that on ads alone and cannot say what came back.

Do not spend it yet

Here is the part most articles skip.

Buying traffic to a site that does not convert is the most reliable way to waste a marketing budget. You pay for the click either way. Whether it turns into anything depends on what happens in the next five seconds, and that part is free to fix.

We audited 267 Kelowna business websites. Half had no enquiry form on the homepage. A quarter had no tappable phone number. Sending paid traffic to those pages is pouring money through a hole you could have patched in an afternoon.

Fix the conversion first. The same budget then buys noticeably more.

How I would split it

Assuming the site works, roughly.

Around half into things that compound. Search, your Google profile, content, email. Slow to start, and it keeps paying after you stop. This is the part most small businesses underfund because it does not show a result in week one.

Around a third into things that switch on and off. Paid ads, sponsorships, seasonal pushes. Fast, measurable, and it stops the moment you stop paying.

The rest into the asset itself. The site, the photography, the booking flow. Not marketing exactly, but it decides the return on everything else.

If you are new and nobody knows your name, weight it towards the paid half at first. If you have been here fifteen years and rely on referrals, weight it the other way, because your name already does work that ads cannot buy.

The Kelowna adjustment

Do not spread it evenly across twelve months.

This is a seasonal town. Kelowna drew 2.2 million visitors in 2025 and a heavy share of that lands in a few months. Spend ahead of your season, not during it.

If July is your month, the work happens in April and May. Advertising in July is bidding against everyone else for people who have already decided.

The quiet months are for the compounding half. Content, email, the site. It is cheaper and you actually have time.

What to measure, and what to ignore

Ignore impressions. Ignore followers. Ignore anything that cannot be traced to somebody contacting you.

Track three things. How many enquiries came in. Where they came from. How many turned into work.

If you cannot answer those, no budget is the right budget, because you have no way of knowing what is working. Most owners here run on feel, and feel systematically overrates whatever happened most recently.

Getting those three numbers on one screen is usually a day of setup, and it changes how every dollar after it gets spent.

Common questions

How much should a small business spend on marketing?

Canadian small businesses generally spend 5% to 10% of revenue. Around 5% maintains your position and 8% to 10% is closer to what growth costs. On $500,000 of revenue that is roughly $2,000 to $4,000 a month.

Should I spend on ads or on my website first?

The website, if it does not convert. You pay for the click either way. Half the Kelowna sites we audited had no enquiry form on the homepage, so paid traffic to those pages leaks straight back out.

How should a seasonal Kelowna business time its marketing spend?

Spend ahead of the season rather than during it. If July is your month, the work happens in April and May. Advertising in July means bidding against everyone else for people who have already decided.

What should I actually measure?

How many enquiries came in, where they came from, and how many became work. Impressions and follower counts do not tell you whether the money is working.