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Marketing Budgets Apparently Barely Moved Since 2025. Nobody Can Say Who Measured This.

A figure doing the rounds claims UK businesses spent 7.8% of revenue on marketing in 2026, only slightly up on 2025 and well down on 2018, though nobody seems able to say who actually did the counting. This includes practices like yours, if you've ever compared your own spend to a number you can't quite trace back to anything.

Page updated: 14 Aug 2026

Whole-practice growth for wellness practices. Rooted in Wiltshire, UK, working worldwide.

Practices that benchmark their own marketing spend against industry averages should know this particular average has no visible working out.

Original Research	A claim that UK marketing budgets sit at 7.8% of revenue in 2026, credited to Gartner but with no report, link, or methodology attached.
Source	https://www.money.co.uk/business/business-statistics/small-business-statistics
Overview	The page rounds up general small business statistics and cites this marketing spend figure in passing, without naming a specific Gartner study or date.
Year	2026 (as stated on the page; not independently verified)
Publisher	Brand, money.co.uk (citing "Gartner" without a traceable source)
Relevance to Wellbeing	The figure describes UK businesses generally, not wellbeing practices specifically, and can't currently be checked against a real report.
Our Verdict	Too early to tell a number worth knowing exists, but not one to build a marketing decision on.
Our Summary	The direction of travel, budgets shrinking since 2018, matches other things written about marketing spend more generally. There's no named report, no sample size, and no way to check whether "Gartner" said any of this. The figure is an average across all UK businesses, which tells you very little about a two-person therapy practice. It's at least a useful prompt to look up what small wellbeing practices actually spend, rather than guessing.
Our Geo View	Presented as a UK-only figure; treat it as UK-specific even before you get to the sourcing problem.

Abstract of wellbeing niches and revenue flow

Recognise how this might impact your practice

Why this might matter to you

Coaching: this matters because coaches often set their own marketing budget by feel, and an unsourced national average won't rescue that guesswork.
Therapy: this matters because therapists tend to under-market on principle, and a shaky statistic isn't the thing to change their mind either way.
Training: this matters because trainers scaling up sometimes benchmark against "industry standard" spend, and this particular standard has no industry attached to it.
Alternative Healing: this matters because healers are often told to "spend what everyone else spends", and this is a case where nobody can say what everyone else actually spends.
Clinical: this matters because clinics making budget decisions on outside figures should know when those figures are unverifiable.
Retreat/Centre: this matters because centres with bigger marketing lines might feel reassured by a falling national average, without knowing if the average is real.

Where this came from

A comparison website's small business statistics page mentions a marketing spend figure and attributes it to Gartner, without linking to a report, naming a study, or giving a date beyond the number itself.

money.co.uk, page currently live, no publish date given for the specific claim. The Gartner attribution is secondary and unconfirmed; no primary report has been located.

Credibility flags: no methodology disclosed, sample size not given, publisher is a commercial comparison brand rather than the named research source.

How we scored this

A relevance score out of 100, built from three things: how well it fits the six practice types, how recent it is, and how solid the methodology behind it is.

40%

Practice fit, 25How new, 100How solid, 0

Marked down heavily on how solid the method is, since there's no attribution to check, though it scores reasonably on how current the claimed figure is; practice fit is modest, as this describes UK businesses broadly rather than wellbeing practices.

It's worth considering changes to your marketing practices

What this means for your marketing

Don't quote this figure to clients or on your website as if it's settled fact.
Say plainly, if it comes up, that industry-wide marketing spend averages are often repeated without a source, and yours is different anyway.
Put your own spend against your own results, not against a number nobody can point to.
Brief your team not to lift "Gartner says" style lines from other sites without checking they lead anywhere.
Keep a note of what you actually spend each year, so you've got your own real figure to talk about instead.

Who this is most useful for

Practice type	Relevance	Recommended action
Coaching	Low	Ignore the figure, track your own spend against bookings instead.
Therapy	Low	Don't let this influence how much you commit to marketing.
Training	Low	Use it only as a prompt to find real sector benchmarks.
Alternative Healing	Low	Treat as background noise, not a planning figure.
Clinical	Medium	Worth flagging internally that "industry average" claims need checking before use in reports.
Retreat/Centre	Medium	If quoting benchmarks to stakeholders, source something verifiable instead.

Best before

Best before: revisit only if a named, linkable Gartner or equivalent report surfaces; until then this stays unverified. See money.co.uk for the current version of the claim.

Something Brought You All The Way Down Here.

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