Get out your wallets, CMOs, because chances are you will be spending more on marketing in the next twelve months. In fact, a recent survey by CMO Survey (that’s right—all these folks do is survey and gather data from CMOs like you) gathered answers from over 300 Chief Marketing Officers and collectively reported an average 8.9 percent projected increase in marketing dollar spend over the next year. That number’s in the double digits if you are in healthcare (13 percent), technology (12.4 percent) or energy (21.4 percent).
Beyond this general indication of needing deeper marketing pockets, there are loads of other interesting points in this year’s results. Let’s take a look.
How Much Is Too Much?
Everything is relative, so let’s talk about ratio. The study let us know that on average, a firm’s marketing budget is 11.1 percent of its overall firm budget. This is up from 8.9 percent in February 2011. Compared to revenue, marketing budget is 7.9 percent proportionally. The big spender here is consumer goods, which reports 21.9 percent of total revenue going to marketing budget alone.