UK Marketing Budget Takes a Nose Dive to 9.3%, Says Study

    Marketing Budget

    The marketing budgets in the UK have recorded a decrease as compared to its US counterparts.

    Marketing budgets in the UK have seen a decrease to 9.3% of overall company revenue in 2019, down from 11% in 2018, as per Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey 2019-2020. The research firm prepared the report by surveying over 430 CMOs in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, and the U.K. It offers insights about the critical areas marketers are investing in from people, programs, and technologies. The report stated that the UK marketing budgets in 2019 have fallen to a lower level than at any point over the past five years.

    Ewan McIntyre, the VP analyst in Gartner’s Marketing, stated in the report that the reason for the nose dive in the marketing budget could be attributed to the Brexit uncertainty. At the same time, U.K. budgets are more volatile than compared to the ones in North America. The report revealed that CMOs in the U.K. are taking a step back in the case of digital ads and decreasing investment to 8% of the marketing budget in 2019, from 11.8% in 2018. Meanwhile, in the case of search advertising, there was a year-over-year (YoY) growth to 6.3% in 2019 from 5.1% in 2018. Ewan added that last year, 68% of CMOs from the U.K. aimed to soar digital advertising spend in 2019. This year, around 81% of CMOs have planned to increase the spend further.

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    The marketing technology budget recorded a decrease to 25.8% in 2019 from 31.7% of overall marketing budgets in 2018. Seventy-one percent of the U.K. CMOs expect martech budgets to rise in 2020. Digital paid media contributed to the most significant portion of media spending at 16% of marketing budgets, while analytics also accounted for 16%. Around 25% of CMOs expect the increase to be significant, the report found. CMOs in the U.K. see martech as a vehicle for driving differentiation and competitiveness. The overall, marketing leaders in the U.K. and North America use only 58% of their martech stack’s full capabilities, stating that their martech was ineffective.

    McIntyre concluded, saying that CMOs affinity for martech will be challenged in the upcoming years. They need to prove that sizable investments in martech are delivering transformative capabilities and experiences as well as bringing value addition to companies.

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