Report: Marketing Budgets are Slim, But CMOs Remain Optimistic

Marketers often need a healthy budget to achieve their top objectives, but new research suggests that 2020 may come with less resources than in previous years.

Gartner recently published “The Annual CMO Spend Survey 2019-2020” report, and statistics showed that marketing budgets accounted for an average of 10.5% of all company budgets in 2019. This is a drop from 11.2% recorded in 2018, and close to the lowest point on record (10.2%), which was seen in 2014.

Despite the statistics of this year, B2B marketers across markets in particular, are expecting to see an increase in their budget in 2020. About 67% of B2B services marketers and 46% of B2B manufacturing marketers predict that their budgets will rise in 2020. In the least, 18% of B2B services marketers and 25% of B2B manufacturing marketers expect that their budgets will stay the same.

Budget Woes Continue to Stifle Marketing Progress

As previous research suggests, a limited budget can often stand in the way between marketers and their top goals.

The CMO Council published the “Reshaping Global Engagement Operations” report, and statistics showed that 43% of marketers were “fairly confident” that they would reach their strategic goals for this year with their company’s existing capabilities. However, most respondents (59%) said that budget limitations are still proving difficult.

This was followed by senior leadership shifting priorities and goals (30 percent) and inconsistent alignment and collaboration across teams (29 percent).