Notwithstanding the record spending on digital marketing logged this year by companies large and small across the global landscape, the numbers we’ve seen in 2014 will easily be topped in 2015.
According to the findings of a new survey of marketing executives by Gartner, Inc., marketing budgets remained healthy in 2014, with, on average, companies spending 10.2 percent of their annual 2014 revenue on overall marketing activities, with 50 percent of companies planning an increase in 2015.
“Digital marketing spending averaged one-quarter of the marketing budget in 2014,” the report summary reads. “The survey found that of the 51 percent of companies who plan to increase their digital marketing budget in 2015, the average increase will be 17 percent.”
These findings are included in Gartner’s Digital Marketing Spending report that is based on a survey of 315 individuals located in the U.S., Canada and the U.K.
“The amount of the marketing expense budget spent on customer experience in 2014 is remarkably consistent across all key survey demographics, averaging 18 percent,” says Jake Sorofman, research director at Gartner. “The survey also found that the highest marketing technology investment in 2014 is for customer experience. Customer experience is also considered by many companies to be the top innovation project, just edging out product innovation.”
Not only are marketing budgets remaining healthy, they are forecast to grow in a big way next year.
“The larger the company, the higher the marketing expense budget as a percentage of revenue — those with revenue of $5 billion or more reported 11 percent, compared with 9.2 percent for those with revenue between $500 million and $1 billion,” Gartner says. “Marketing budgets as a percentage of revenue varied widely, with 46 percent spending less than 9 percent of revenue, 24 percent spending between 9 percent and 13 percent of revenue, and 30 percent spending more than 13 percent of revenue. The 50 percent of companies planning an increase report their average 2015 increase will be 10.4 percent. Of those, the ones that report outperforming competitors said their planned 2015 increase will be 13.6 percent.”