Report: Marketers Still Lack Control Over Their Budget and Strategy

Even though marketers are expected to deliver on a number of objectives across their organization, new research suggests that many still lack control over their own strategy and budget.

SJT Marketing and YourMarketer recently teamed up to publish the results of the “2022 State of Marketers Survey,” and statistics indicated that even though most marketers (60%) claim they have a written marketing strategy, only 24% confirm that their marketing budget is directly tied to their strategy. The majority of respondents (52%) stated that their budget is not tied to their strategy.

Approximately 75% of marketers claim they can make some type of budget decisions in their role, but not all. Similarly, 90% of marketers state that they can make some strategy decisions, but do not have input over all of them.

“If they work to compile the budget and build a strategy but are unable to execute the strategy due to leadership questioning individual budget expenses as they come up, the marketing leader will have a difficult time achieving stated goals,” wrote the authors of the report.

Investing in Digital Marketing Initiatives

Previous research suggests that marketers are commonly faced with a limited budget to achieve their key initiatives. However, this has not stopped them from pushing ahead with digital objectives.

Data from the 28th edition of The CMO Survey indicated that at most organizations, the marketing budget only accounts for 11.8% of the overall budget. However, most marketers expect their digital marketing budget to increase by 16.2% within the next year.

Overall, marketing spending is expected to jump 13.6% over the next 12 months as marketers continue to invest in digital initiatives.