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New Gartner survey says UK marketers still optimistic – martech remains a muddle

UK marketers remain surprisingly optimistic about the prospect of leaving the European Union – Brexit – with 78 per cent believing their ability to reach goals will improve if and when it happens and 57 per cent expecting a budget increase in 2020.

This is despite marketing budgets falling to a five year low in 2019 – 9.3 per cent of company revenue, falling behind the US, Germany and Canada. In 2016 the figure was 11.6 per cent. The findings come from Gartner’s 2019 – 2020 CMO Spend Survey.

Other findings are:

Digital ad spend Is down, but search ad budgets are up

UK CMOs are cooling off when it comes to digital ads, reducing investment from 11.8 per cent of the marketing budget in 2018 to 8.0 per cent in 2019. However, this excludes investment in search advertising, a channel that saw growth in the UK year over year, from 5.1 per cent of the total budget in 2018 to 6.3 per cent in 2019.

Martech spend falls by almost xix per cent

Technology budgets took a hit in 2019, falling from 31.7 per cent of overall marketing expense budgets in 2018 to 25.8 per cent in 2019. However 71 per cent of UK CMOs expect marketing technology (martech) budgets to increase in 2020 with almost a quarter (24 per cent) anticipating the increase to be significant.

Gartner says: “This confidence is rooted in the fact that UK CMOs still see marketing technology as a vehicle for driving differentiation and competitiveness. However, investment in technology doesn’t always deliver desired results.”

Gartner’s Marketing Technology Survey found that, overall, marketing leaders in the UK and North America report using only 58 per cent of their martech stack’s full capabilities, stating that their martech was ineffective.

“Marketers’ affinity for martech will likely be challenged in the future, unless they can prove that sizable investments are delivering transformative capabilities and experiences, and, most importantly, producing bottom-line value to the organisation,” says Gartner.

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