B2B Marketers Expect Budgets to Rise within the Next 12 Months

As B2B marketers look into new tactics to reel in prospects and customers, new research suggests that they are expanding their marketing budgets accordingly.

The CMO Survey conducted in February 2019 recently discovered that the budgets of B2B product marketers are expected to increase 8.5 percent within the next 12 months, and the budgets of B2B services marketers are predicted to rise 10.3 percent within the same period.

Brand spending is expected to rise 9.3 percent overall among marketers, while new service introduction spending is predicted to rise 6.6 percent. New product introduction spending will rise 7.7 percent. The only category that was predicted to fall was CRM spend – marketers saw a 9.5 percent rise in August 2018, but this was expected to drop to 9.2 percent in February 2019.

Data is Helping More Marketers Secure their Budgets

Marketers are always on the hunt for ways to secure the budget they need to achieve their top objectives, and previous research indicates that they are now using data to do so more frequently.

Freeman recently published the “Data Benchmark Study” and found that 98 percent of marketers utilize data to secure their budget. Additionally, 89 percent of marketers use data and analytics to make strategic decisions, and 76 percent use it for their corporate database/CRM efforts.

“The powerful impact of data is seen in the finding that 67 percent of top companies that have previously invested in data and measurement maintain a separate budget for this area; and are increasing their spend for marketing data, measurement and analytics,” wrote the authors of the report. “The additional third of the industry expects to maintain their investment level going forward.”