Budgeting for marketing in 2015: Following the buyer's lead

As we’ve said in previous blogs there is no one figure deemed to be the best marketing budget for all businesses. It’s an amount relative to the organisation’s size, age, its resources and its target objectives.

In this slideshare I’d like to illustrate what other businesses are currently doing based on recent Gartner research to assist you, our reader, benchmark against that and help you decide what direction your business should take this year.

Are you sure that your marketing is in step with the rapid evolution to digital or inbound marketing? Download our FREE B2B Marketing Health Check to find out.

Sources
http://www.gartner.com/marketing/digital/research/digital-marketing-spend/
http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=202&mode=2&PageID=5553&ref=webinar-rss&resId=2893425&srcId=1-3147426801&pcp=wb_gml

Key finding 1: Marketing budgets remain steady, at 10.2% of total company revenue with plans to increase in 2015. The marketing budget is a combination of outbound and inbound marketing. 68% of organisations have a separate digital marketing budget which averages on a quarter of the overall marketing budget. 

Key finding 2: Marketing Tech is leading the way with 79% of companies assigning part of their marketing budget to capital expenditure primarily for digital marketing technology. In 2014, it was the top innovation technology that companies invested in.

Key finding 3: Customer experience is the #1 innovation project for 2015. Highest marketing technology investment in 2014 was customer experience at 18% of total marketing budget. Followed by marketing operations and analytics. 

Key finding 4: Content marketing is becoming more integral to digital marketing. Digital advertising was the highest area spent on in the digital marketing budget followed by content marketing at 12% and website development at 12%.

Key finding 5: The line between digital and traditional marketing continues to blur establishing a more balanced and integrated marketing mix than ever before. The buyer is moving towards a self-service buying model leading to a reduction in sales budgets.

Key finding 6: 63% of marketers list digital advertising as a source of P&L revenue.

Key finding 7: Connecting with customers is key. 43% of marketers say connecting with customers is their biggest challenge. Followed by serious competition at 36% and revenue/profit growth at 33%.

Key finding 8: 2015 will see the highest increase in mobile marketing and digital advertising followed by social marketing and analytics.

Key finding 9: 70% of businesses will fund their digital marketing

• By limiting spend and shifting money from their sales budget to digital marketing. As the buyer has changed their purchase journey, digital marketing activities replace some activities previously performed by sales.
• With marketing reinvestment, taking savings and efficiency gains from digital marketing and reinvesting in more digital marketing.
• By justifying incremental investments by increasing it out of profits or otherwise unallocated funds or taking spending from other functions or business units. 

Key finding 10: 4 out of 5 marketers have their own capital budget giving them more power to spend on things like tech and infrastructure to a greater extent than they ever have.