UpFlip — 66.3% of small business owners spend under $1,000/yr on marketing (the survivorship correction)

Claim: UpFlip's survey of 1,800 businesses found that while the average business spends $14,575/yr on marketing, 66.3% of small business owners spend less than $1,000 on marketing each year — the average is dragged up by a thin top slice (~15-18% of firms). BDC likewise notes most Canadian SMEs have low digital maturity.

Source: UpFlip 2024 (vendor — lead-gen content). Single-source.

Confidence: Single-source / vendor. Directionally consistent with BDC Canada — B2B 2-5%, B2C 5-10% of revenue; avg small business ~$30K/yr (2019) and [[canadian-smb-digital-maturity]].

Why this matters for Candid: This is the survivorship-bias correction. The lived SMB reality is FAR below the benchmark averages — any widget that says "you should spend 9.4% of revenue" will mislead the median user. The tiered output protects against this trap. Reinforces Rule — Output tiers, NOT a hard percentage-of-revenue, for digital-minus-ads spend.