Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Marketing Consulting Firm Revenue Benchmark

Marketing consulting services, advice rather than media placement.

NAICS 541613, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Marketing Consulting Firm Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts marketing consulting businesses with paid employees and publishes what they received between them. The average below follows from those two numbers.

≈$1,500,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

51,544

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $77.5 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $77.5 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 51,544 employer establishments works out to $1,500,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Marketing Consulting Services (NAICS 541613). Covers marketing consulting services, which is advice rather than advertising placement or agency production. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

The Census category is advice, not execution: agencies that buy media or produce advertising are counted elsewhere, and that boundary explains why this average is well below what an agency of similar headcount would report. What is measured here is fees for counsel and research.

Advertising agencies and media buying services are separate Census categories, so agency revenue is not in this figure. Retainers and one-off projects sit in the same figure, and a practice built on monthly retainers reports steadier revenue than one selling launches, without either being visible here.

Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026

Where these figures come from
Establishment counts and combined receipts are published figures from the official source named in each figure's source line. BusinessNES divides one by the other and rounds to the nearest $10,000; no other adjustment is made. The full chain from published figure to this page is described on the methodology page.

Data Source Notice

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.

Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group

Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services, NAICS 5416, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

47.5%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 75.1 percent at 1 year, 63.7 percent at 2 years, 56.6 percent at 3 years, 51.5 percent at 4 years, 47.5 percent at 5 years. 19,726 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 41.7 to 47.5 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 75.1 percent of the starting count2 years: 63.7 percent of the starting count3 years: 56.6 percent of the starting count4 years: 51.5 percent of the starting count5 years: 47.5 percent of the starting count75.163.756.651.547.5Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years19,726 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 48 establishments aged five for every 100 that first reported paid employment in 2018. Census compares counts by age rather than following the same businesses, so read it as a broad continuation indicator for the industry group, not as a tracked survival rate.

Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 41.7 to 47.5 percent. This benchmark covers Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services, NAICS 5416, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for marketing consulting businesses on their own: they are 51,544 of the 222,321 employer establishments in that group, about 23 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers consultants and analysts, since no media spend passes through this category.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈32%

Payroll share of receipts, Marketing Consulting Services, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 32.0 percent of every revenue dollar in this category goes to annual payroll. As the census defines it, payroll includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses; it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and owner compensation. Treat it as one verified anchor, not a full labor cost breakdown. Payroll share sits below the other consulting practices on this site.

This is not total labor cost or profit margin.

How to read this number
Payroll here is the census annual payroll figure, PAYANN: it includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses paid to employees, and it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and proprietor compensation. BusinessNES divides it by the same category total receipts, RCPTOT, and rounds to a whole percent.

Position Within Its Comparison Group Computed from official data

Where this category sits among 7 consulting practices in the same 2022 Economic Census release. Ranks and the group median are computed on exact values, before the rounding used above.

MeasureThis categoryGroup medianRank
Revenue per employer establishment$1,502,621$2,099,0986 of 7
Payroll share of receipts32.25%35.71%5 of 7
Employer establishments51,54410,6282 of 7

Position among 7 consulting practices, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 6th of 7 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 2nd of 7 by employer establishment count and 5th of 7 by payroll share. Payroll equals 32.25 percent of receipts here, 3.45 percentage points below the group median of 35.71 percent. A higher or lower position is not a measure of profit or of business quality: the census reports receipts and payroll only.

Compared With Similar Business Types Computed from official data

The 4 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.

Census categoryRevenue per establishmentPayroll shareEstablishments
Marketing Consulting Services (this page)$1,502,62132.25%51,544
Other Management Consulting Services$1,213,90739.79%10,628
Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services$2,059,48841.48%106,386
Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services$2,099,09830.15%25,508
Environmental Consulting Services$2,153,06435.71%9,932

Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services, Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services and Environmental Consulting Services, and higher revenue than Other Management Consulting Services. It contains more employer establishments than three of the four categories shown. Every figure in this table comes from the same 2022 Economic Census release and the same employer establishment population, so the columns are directly comparable.

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Sources and Methodology

Every figure on this page is bound to a published source, and each figure's own source line names that source precisely: the 2022 Economic Census for counts, receipts and payroll, and the Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics for the industry continuation benchmark. Where a page shows a sector survival curve instead, that series comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

BusinessNES performs the arithmetic on those published figures and nothing else. Receipts are divided by establishments, and payroll by receipts. The age-five establishment count is divided by the age-zero establishment count for the same four-digit industry group, then repeated across five age-zero cohorts to give a reference and a range. This category's share of its industry group, along with the ranks, medians and nearest peers in the comparison sections, comes from the same published tables. Every one of them is recomputed from the sealed source files at each release and blocks publication if it does not match. Results are rounded and marked approximate. The reference year is 2022 for revenue and payroll; treat every figure as a baseline, not today's market.

Category scope matters: these figures cover Marketing Consulting Services (NAICS 541613), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Advertising agencies are counted separately from marketing consulting.

Full method, sources and limits
The methodology page describes the full chain for every figure on this site: the published source, the sealed snapshot it was read from, the exact calculation if BusinessNES performed one, and the honest limits of scope and vintage. Read the methodology.

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