Marketing is an investment! Only today, caution is required on the spending side. According to the recent “CMO Spend and Strategy” survey by Gartner, 75% of marketing managers feel pressured and reduce their technology budget.
On paper, marketing budgets remain stable in 2023, but professionals are playing it safe and more skittish when it comes to spending. Moreover, 71% of marketers surveyed believe that they do not have a budget to match their strategy.
Evolution of marketing budgets. Source: Gartner (May 2023)
With inflation and the lack of talent, it is more difficult to project and plan technological investments. Despite maintaining budgets, analysts note that spending has fallen slightly in recent months.
In fact, three-quarters of marketing managers say they feel pressure from other departments in their companies to cut spending. But nothing is lost since 63% of them plan to resist as best they can and increase their investments. Only 23% expect to have to make budget cuts.
Concretely, this should result in increases in advertising on social networks and search engines, referencing, not to mention outdoor advertising. Professionals will thus have to show and justify the value of their expenses, while focusing on efficiency and quality rather than quantity.
Instead of looking to find new customers on all existing channels, experts look for relevance and talk about “catalytic marketing”. The idea: stop focusing on the reach of marketing campaigns and focus on their success.