MARKETING
Marketing budgets climb in 2022
Marketing budgets are swelling in 2022, up from the previous year, when high hopes were dashed by a pandemic that wouldn’t quit. In 2021, marketing budgets claimed 6.4% of the average company’s total revenue. This year, it’s up to 9.5%, according to the Gartner 2022 CMO Spend and Strategy Survey.
This brings the spend level, relative to revenue, up to pre-pandemic budgeting, where it held between 10.5% and 11.2% in 2018, 2019 and 2020. (Budgets were already locked in before the pandemic spread globally in 2020).
Over the last two years, organizations have been grasping for any sign of normalcy. The lower percentage in 2021 marks a tentativeness in the timing of the recovery and, in many industries, pent up demand that might not have required big spending. Fast forward to the end of 2021, and supply chain issues and COVID subvariants added new question marks that kept spending lower in the new year.
Read next: 5 tips for building customer trust during a supply chain crisis
Digital-first. The report also looked at the digital-first shift accelerated by the pandemic. Digital channels claim 56% of budgets this year, with social media the top digital channel for spend. Paid search and digital display were a close second and third.
Why we care. Comparing marketing budget to annual revenue attempts to track two moving targets during unstable times. Some industries, not to mention individual companies, were hit unevenly. One surprise is that Tech Products, as a category, dropped all the way down to 5% of revenue in 2021, and came back to 10.1% in 2022. That was even lower than Travel and Hospitality, which dropped to 5.4% in 2021 and has come back up to 8.4% this year.
Holding more steady is Healthcare, which only dropped to 7.4% of revenue in 2021 and is back up to 9.7% Consumer products were at 8.3% of revenue in 2021 and dropped slightly this year to 8%, perhaps because of the lingering supply chain issues. Every CMO has their own reason for waiting and seeing, but that’s the pattern across the marketing world at the moment. The relative rise in spend this year shows a careful optimism as marketing teams wait for a full rebound.
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MARKETING
Trends in Content Localization – Moz
Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.
Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.
Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.
MARKETING
How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy
MARKETING
More promotions and more layoffs
For martech professionals salaries are good and promotions are coming faster, unfortunately, layoffs are coming faster, too. That’s according to the just-released 2024 Martech Salary and Career Survey. Another very unfortunate finding: The median salary of women below the C-suite level is 35% less than what men earn.
The last year saw many different economic trends, some at odds with each other. Although unemployment remained very low overall and the economy grew, some businesses — especially those in technology and media — cut both jobs and spending. Reasons cited for the cuts include during the early years of the pandemic, higher interest rates and corporate greed.
Dig deeper: How to overcome marketing budget cuts and hiring freezes
Be that as it may, for the employed it remains a good time to be a martech professional. Salaries remain lucrative compared to many other professions, with an overall median salary of $128,643.
Here are the median salaries by role:
- Senior management $199,653
- Director $157,776
- Manager $99,510
- Staff $89,126
Senior managers make more than twice what staff make. Directors and up had a $163,395 median salary compared to manager/staff roles, where the median was $94,818.
One-third of those surveyed said they were promoted in the last 12 months, a finding that was nearly equal among director+ (32%) and managers and staff (30%).
Extend the time frame to two years, and nearly three-quarters of director+ respondents say they received a promotion, while the same can be said for two-thirds of manager and staff respondents.
Dig deeper: Skills-based hiring for modern marketing teams
Employee turnover
In 2023, we asked survey respondents if they noticed an increase in employee churn and whether they would classify that churn as a “moderate” or “significant” increase. For 2024, given the attention on cost reductions and layoffs, we asked if the churn they witnessed was “voluntary” (e.g., people leaving for another role) or “involuntary” (e.g., a layoff or dismissal). More than half of the marketing technology professionals said churn increased in the last year. Nearly one-third classified most of the churn as “involuntary.”
Men and Women
This year, instead of using average salary figures, we used the median figures to lessen the impact of outliers in the salary data. As a result, the gap between salaries for men and women is even more glaring than it was previously.
In last year’s report, men earned an average of 24% more than women. This year the median salary of men is 35% more than the median salary of women. That is until you get to the upper echelons. Women at director and up earned 5% more than men.
Methodology
The 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey is a joint project of MarTech.org and chiefmartec.com. We surveyed 305 marketers between December 2023 and February 2024; 297 of those provided salary information. Nearly 63% (191) of respondents live in North America; 16% (50) live in Western Europe. The conclusions in this report are limited to responses from those individuals only. Other regions were excluded due to the limited number of respondents.
Download your copy of the 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey here. No registration is required.
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