Gartner’s State of Marketing Budgets 2021 summary is here. Some of you may already have taken a look, but it’s a valuable set of insights for agencies I thought was worthy of a share.
One of the big ‘watch outs’ is that 29% of agency work shifted to internal teams – perhaps temporary as organisations undertook emergency cost-cutting to preserve jobs, but a worthy reminder agencies need to demonstrate specific expertise that can’t be matched by a few individuals internally.
Gartner revealed the seven key shifts in marketing channel spend as:
- CMOs across industry segments have shifted focus to performance marketing channels, increasing spend on social marketing, digital advertising (such as video and display) and SEO.
- Awareness-based channels such as offline advertising and mobile and event marketing have taken the largest hit when it comes to marketing channel spend.
- B2B marketing leaders have shifted focus to social, mobile and SEO, with 53% increasing investments in social marketing. Meanwhile, 40% have decreased investments in event marketing, and 36% have decreased spend on digital advertising.
- The percentage of B2B marketing budget allocated to digital advertising dropped 2.8 percentage points from 2021, while the portion going to paid search increased 2 percentage points.
- B2C marketing leaders, on the other hand, have increased spend on digital advertising (48%) as well as SEO (47%), but have decreased investments in offline advertising (43%) and mobile (35%).
- B2C CMOs slashed event marketing spend by nearly a full percentage point, reflecting the residual impact of travel limits during the pandemic and a hesitancy to go back to in-person events in 2021. On the other hand, they increased investments in email marketing from 8.8% in 2020 to 10.1% in 2021.
- At B2B/B2C hybrid companies — those with both business and consumer sales — the percentage of marketing budget allocated to digital advertising dropped 4.3 percentage points in 2020 while spend on social rose 2.2 percentage points.