Forrester: B2B marketers to boost budgets this year

B2B marketers are pretty bullish this year—so much so that 51 percent are boosting their marketing budgets by, on average, 6 percent, according to a new report from Forrester Research.

The study, "Direct Your 2015 B2B Budget Gains Toward Creating Exceptional Customer Experiences," which surveyed 132 B2B marketers in the fourth quarter, found that just 8 percent of B2B marketers plan to decrease spending.

These numbers indicate B2B marketers are expecting good days ahead. To give a sense of how their outlook compares to 2014, just 32 percent said they expected an increase last year, while 22 percent said they planned to cut their budgets.

For those respondents who indicated they will be boosting spending this year, 12 percent said they will increase it by 10 percent or more; 15 percent will boost it between 5 percent and 9 percent; and 24 percent will raise it less than 5 percent.

The main beneficiary of that largesse will be in-person events, which will consume 14 percent of spending. Yet, Forrester said B2B event strategies still lack "maturity."

"[T]wo-thirds of B2B marketers admit that they budget for certain events because sales teams expect it and 48 percent choose to attend others just to keep up with the competition," the report said. "While half of marketers integrate digital into the experience, only 33 percent use event-specific technology to enhance the digital component and just 7 percent say they do this to maximize event value. These results show that B2B marketing leaders treat events as a necessary evil rather than as a strategic part of the marketing mix."

Next in line in terms of budget allocation is digital marketing (10 percent) and content marketing (9 percent).

The report also indicated that digital continues to steal dollars from traditional channels with 48 percent of respondents saying they will spend more on digital advertising and marketing this year. Within that digital budget, B2B marketers said they will allocate the most for email (22 percent), followed by search (19 percent), display (14 percent), social (12 percent) and video (12 percent). However, shockingly, 45 percent of B2B marketers said they are still in the experimentation stage when it comes to digital and a mere 5 percent plan to boost mobile marketing spending.

B2B marketers are also planning to spend big bucks on content with 45 percent indicating that they will increase their content marketing budget. Sixty-eight percent of B2B marketers also said that content marketing was their top digital marketing priority.

Finally, Forrester's report found B2B marketers struggle to connect their spending to overall business goals. Attributing spend to revenue results (45 percent) is B2B marketers' biggest budget challenge, followed by securing incremental budget for experimentation/innovation (38 percent); justifying proposed marketing budgets to senior management (34 percent); connecting marketing goals with business objectives (34 percent); and protecting budget from senior management cuts (33 percent).

For more:
-See this Forrester report

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