A defensible default for a local service business: forty percent into search and AI visibility as the compounding asset, thirty into paid channels for immediate flow, twenty into the content that feeds both, and ten held for experiments, rebalanced quarterly on cost per qualified enquiry.
Budget questions are really sequencing questions. Paid buys this month's enquiries and stops the moment you stop paying. Organic visibility compounds and defends itself. Content feeds both. The split follows from how much runway you have to let compounding work.
The classic SMB failure is all-paid: the business rents every customer forever. The opposite failure is all-organic with no cash flow to survive the compounding period. The blend exists because both failure modes are real.
Rebalance on one metric
Cost per qualified enquiry, by channel, on a rolling quarter. Feed the winners, starve the losers, and resist monthly overreaction on small numbers.
And hold the ten percent experiment line sacred. The channels printing money for early movers this year were last year's experiments.