Studies conducted recently of senior marketing executives in the United States and United Kingdom have concluded that marketing experts are choosing to spend their marketing budgets on technology rather than on people.
This is a huge shift that just keeps shifting more and more. If you are running a business or looking into starting one, keeping track of what is going on in the world of marketing is incredibly important!
If current trends continue for 2018, 29% will be spent on marketing technology. In 2017, it was 22% with marketing staff budget sitting at 24% of total budget. This information was retrieved from Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey 2018-2019 published recently.
Marketing Budget Breakdown
What I found most interesting about the report from Gartner’s is that Chief Marketing Officers are spending their budgets most on: email marketing, digital analytics tech, & online content management. I haven’t found email marketing to be effective in recent years because many consumers don’t open their emails unless it’s from someone they know or a company they absolutely love already. Personally, I feel like email marketing will quickly go the way of the dinosaurs but we shall see about that!
In the future, we will likely see artificial intelligence take over marketing campaigns. I’m actually kind of excited to see how that plays out, honestly! That would be so cool!
Another interesting revelation made by the study was the reduction of marketing being outsourced by big companies from 25% last year to 23% this year & paid marketing via ad space is also down from 25% to 23% this year.
Marketing makes up about 11% of a companies total marketing budget, which is a pretty significant portion. Only 7% of respondents to the survey admitted that they actually measure the return on investment from marketing efforts. Brand awareness is measured by 12% of marketing executives.
Looking at the Numbers
If you were spending time and money on marketing, why wouldn’t you track the results to make sure what you were doing is effective?
I obsess over data and always have! If I spend money on something then I want to know that I am getting my monies worth. When I read that most marketing executives DON’T follow up and make sure their marketing strategy is effective, I got a little sick to my stomach. Why would you just throw money away like that?
My personal philosophy has always been to check the ROI and impact of a marketing campaign at least weekly to ensure we are on the right track.
What forms of marketing do you think are most effective and bring the best results? I would love to hear some opinions!
Thanks for reading,