Budgeting for Marketing in 2015: Following the Buyers Lead

Budgeting for Marketing in 2015 Following the buyers lead

See the key findings from recent Gartner research to assist you in

benchmarking your business’ marketing and help you decide what direction your marketing should take in 2015.

1 Marketing budgets remain steady

Total Company Revenue

Marketing Budgets Other budgets

At 10.2% of total company revenue with

plans to increase in

2015

1 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.

2Marketing tech leading the way

79% of companies assigned part of their

marketing budget to capital expenditure primarily for

digital marketing technology. It was the top innovation technology that

companies invested in.

3 Customer experience, 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.

4 Content marketing 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%.

5 Line between digital and traditional marketing continues to blur

Establishing a more balanced and integrated marketing mix than ever

before.

The buyer is moving toward a self-service buying model leading to a reduction in

sales budgets.

6 From cost to profit

a  

63% of marketers list digital

advertising as a source of P&L

revenue.

7 Connecting with customers is key

a  

43% of marketers say connecting with customers is

their biggest challenge.

Followed by serious competition at 36% and revenue/profit growth at

33%.

8 Mobile marketing will increase the most

a  

2015 will see the highest increase in

mobile marketing and digital advertising followed by social

marketing and analytics.

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.

1 0 More money to spend

a  

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.

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