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.
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.