Enterprise CMOs Say They Spread Their Budgets Evenly Across the Customer Journey

September 3, 2015

This article is included in these additional categories:

Business of Marketing | Content Marketing | Marketing Budgets

TheCMOClubIBM-Enterprise-CMO-Budget-Allocations-Customer-Journey-Sept2015CMOs are no longer investing the majority of their budgets to customer acquisition, instead spreading their spending more evenly across the customer journey, says The CMO Club in a recent study [pdf] conducted in collaboration with IBM. The survey of 100 CMOs with annual marketing budgets of at least $1 million found 57% predicting an increase in overall budgets over the next 2-3 years, with spending growth expected across all stages of the customer journey.

Currently, average budget allocations break down as follows:

  • Discover: 20% share;
  • Learn: 16%;
  • Try: 16%;
  • Buy: 21%;
  • Use: 13%; and
  • Advocate: 14%.

The fairly even spread in spending is interesting in light of research contained in a MarketingCharts report suggesting that among B2B marketers (at least those at mid-size companies), there is a greater focus on lead generation and acquisition than on retention and up-sell revenue.

The CMO Club report, which surveyed a mix of B2B and B2C CMOs, reveals that budgets are quite evenly split between traditional (52%) and digital (48%) advertising. This is supported by various pieces of research contained in MarketingCharts’ afore-mentioned report.

Budgets are trending towards digital marketing rather than traditional media advertising, though, per results from The CMO Survey.

Reflecting the rise of content marketing, CMOs responding to this latest survey said that content generation (13%) occupies the largest share of budgets, followed by digital advertising (11%), traditional advertising (11%) and analog, physical activities (11%).

About the Data: The 100 CMOs surveyed for the report came from B2B (54%) and B2C (46%) enterprises. A plurality (41%) have budgets of $1-5M annually, while one-third reported budgets of at least $5M.

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