Forrester: Majority of B2B Marketers Expect Budget Increases for 2015

A new report published by Forrester Research shows that approximately 51 percent of B2B marketers expect budget increases in 2015, far outweighing the 8 percent of respondents who said that they expect to see their budgets decrease.

Additionally, the data shows that approximately 48 percent of respondents believe more money will be spent on digital marketing this year, while 45 percent believe they will increase spending on content marketing. About the same amount of money is projected for marketing events as it was last year.

In-person trade shows, conferences and events are slated to take up most of B2B marketers’ budgets (14 percent), while digital advertising and marketing come follow closely behind (10 percent).

However, B2B marketers are also looking to invest more money in social media in the coming years.

A Rising Interest in B2B Social Media

The CMO Survey released in August 2014 showed that CMOs at B2B companies plan on allotting more of their budget toward social media marketing in the future.

Specifically, CMOs at B2B companies that offer a product said that an average of 19.9 percent of their budget will go toward social media within the next five years. CMOs at B2B companies that provide a service claimed that 22.2 percent of their budget will go into social media.

As of 2014, survey respondents said that they put 9.4 percent of their budget into social networking. Approximately 45 percent of CMOs said that they have not been able to see how social media impacts their business as of yet. Nearly 40 percent claimed that they have a good qualitative sense of the impact, but not a quantitative sense.