Rule — Output tiers, NOT a hard percentage-of-revenue, for digital-minus-ads spend

Rule: The widget outputs a TIER (Under-invested / Baseline / Competitive / Aggressive) derived from vertical, maturity, and competitive intensity — never a single "you should spend X% on your website" number.

Why: (a) No published SMB-representative benchmark for "digital minus advertising" exists (Why no SMB benchmark exists — "website/SEO/content/tools" cuts across native reporting categories); (b) the derived ~0.5%-2% range is enterprise-skewed and Directional-Speculative (Derived "owned digital" share of revenue — ~0.5%-2% (Directional-Speculative)); (c) survivorship bias means the median SMB spends far less than averages suggest (UpFlip — 66.3% of small business owners spend under $1,000/yr on marketing (the survivorship correction)); (d) showing a hard % creates false precision that becomes a liability (see precision-credibility tradeoff in sister brief Research brief: SMB widget presentation layer — tiered results without overclaiming (June 2026)).

How to apply: Total marketing tier anchors — B2B 6-9%, B2C 9-12% of revenue (raise for startups / competitive metros). Of that, ~55-61% digital. Of digital, expect ~70% to flow to ads by default; the widget's value-add is FLAGGING when the owned/SEO/website/content slice is starved (the most common SMB failure mode).