48.7% of B2B marketers expect to increase their budgets this year, per findings from a BtoB study. Generally speaking, marketers appear to have a rosier budget outlook this year than last: respondents were 21% more likely this year to say they would increase their budgets (48.7% vs. 40.1%), and 12% less likely to say they would cut them (9.5% vs. 10.8%). Most of that money will be spent on demand generation and customer acquisition, the top goal for 69.3% of respondents. Brand awareness (17.6%) and customer retention (13.1%) are top objectives for far fewer marketers.
Digital marketing will see a particular boost, with 67.2% of respondents projected a spending increase in this area. The chief beneficiary of this spending hike will be website development, followed by email marketing, social media, online video, and search. One-third of the marketers surveyed also said that they are now using mobile marketing, with 35.5% expecting to increase their budgets.
Content marketing, the topic du jour, will be used by roughly 7 in 10 respondents, who will most commonly turn to websites (93%), social media (65.4%), print (47.5%), and mobile (20.9%).
Other Findings:
- Slightly more than half of the respondents will invest in sales enablement platforms (52.3%) and marketing automation systems (50.1%).
- 41.5% will increase their event budgets this year.
About the Data: BtoB’s “2013 Outlook: Marketing Priorities and Plans” is based on an online survey of 366 B2B marketers, conducted between November 12 and November 30, 2012.
