The State of Marketing Budget and Strategy 2022

The CMO Spend Survey is an annual survey to understand the marketing organisation’s strategic priorities and budget allocations every year. In 2022, the research was conducted online among 405 respondents, who were required to be involved in decisions pertaining to setting or influencing marketing strategy and planning, as well as to be involved in aligning marketing budget/resources. Seventy-four per cent of the respondents came from organisations with $1 billion or more in annual revenue. The respondents came from a variety of industries: financial services, tech products, manufacturing and consumer products to name a few.

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The annual State of Marketing Budget and Strategy research looks at the top-line marketing budget and highlights:

• data that can help CMOs and marketing leaders like you to benchmark their marketing budget with industry and peers;
• how your marketing channel spending priorities measure up against respondents to this year’s survey;
• the programmes and operational areas that marketing’s budget supports; and
• budget allocations across marketing’s major resources: people, media, agencies, and technology.

The CMO Spend Survey allows you to benchmark your marketing spend to see how you stack up against your peers and competitors. You will see marketing spend trends and gain insight into what your peers are focussing on so you can better benchmark, allocate spend, prioritise and build your marketing strategy, and better prepare for marketing budget planning.

A marketing budget outlines the total money that an organisation needs to spend on its marketing. This can include branding, paid advertising, email marketing, web content, marketing organisation and martech solutions.

The State of Marketing Budgets Survey 2022 reports that budgets have recovered somewhat, with the average across industries increasing from 6.4% of company revenue to 9.5%. While this represents a significant climb-back, budgets still lag behind pre-pandemic levels—the average budget between 2018 and 2020 was 10.9%.  Your marketing budget depends on your industry—with average marketing spending increasing across almost all the industries surveyed, with some significant differences. Check the research for more information.

The latest CMO Spend Survey 2022 highlights that just as Western markets are released from COVID-19 restrictions, a plethora of geopolitical, cultural and fiscal challenges emerge, which is not the new normal that the CMOs were promised. The survey captures the priorities of CMOs as they grapple with a range of macroenvironmental, social and political realities.