The IT industry connecting marketplace Spiceworks released a study that discusses the marketing budget trends for B2B brands. Key findings of the study suggest that 37% of all businesses are expecting their budgets to increase, while 42% believe their marketing spending would remain static. Only 8% of businesses anticipate a decline in the marketing budget.
The study also concluded that B2B brands would be banking on account-based marketing (ABM), video marketing, and on-demand content throughout the year, and the biggest challenges they would face are likely to be measuring marketing ROI and driving conversions through content.
“Due to recent revenue and customer growth, many organizations are prepared to keep the momentum going in 2019 by investing more in marketing,” said Jamie Bowler, Director of Global Demand Marketing at Spiceworks. “Although measuring marketing ROI is still a top challenge in the B2B environment, new marketing technologies are enabling B2B marketers to build more accurate attribution models and stay focused on the top channels driving quality leads and engagement. As a result, we can better prove the value of marketing in enabling a more profitable organization.”
The study also shows that small B2B tech companies (with less than 100 employees) are most likely to see their marketing budgets grow and that across all company sizes, the vast majority of B2B marketers said their top priority is to generate leads and acquire new customers in 2019.
These results are based on a survey that was conducted by Spiceworks in October 2018. The survey included 352 B2B marketers in technology companies across North America and Europe. The respondents represent a variety of company sizes such as SMBs and enterprises, and a variety of job titles such as CMOs, brand marketers, content marketers, demand marketers, and more.
