Marketing budgets will increase next year, prioritizing social media and martech

About 89% of CMOs and senior marketing executives are planning to increase their marketing budgets in 2023, according to a recent survey by Matter Communications.

Here are the top five areas of investment:

Public relations and social media

  • It makes sense that this would be at the top of the list, as 69% of marketers said this was one of the areas that saw the greatest ROI over the past year.
  • We estimate social network ad spending will hit nearly $80 billion by 2024.
  • This number will likely keep growing as Meta and TikTok continue to enhance their ad offerings and social commerce abilities.

Marketing operations/analytics/martech

  • According to the survey, measuring marketing performance will be one of the biggest challenges for marketers next year.
  • Though we estimate B2C investment in marketing technology is slowing post-pandemic, spending will continue at a robust level to equal nearly $15 billion this year.
  • B2B martech spend growth will see a similar pattern as stacks evolve and mature. Still, the growth rate will stay in the double digits through 2024.

Content marketing

  • At this point, having some kind of content marketing strategy is table stakes. The question is what type of content resonates best and through what medium.
  • We estimate that 85.6% of companies will use digital content marketing this year.
  • Influencer marketing spend continues to grow, becoming an almost $5 billion market this year, though growth is dropping steeply after a boom last year.

Video marketing

  • According to our forecast, US consumers will spend 161 minutes a day with digital video this year, which will grow to 173 minutes in the next two years.
  • We predict that video ad spending will grow by 8.3% this year, but shrink by 3.1% in 2023. Next year, national ad-supported video-on-demand, OTT/connected TV will see the most growth (32.7%), while local TV spend will decrease by 22.1%.

Brand building

  • As inflation challenged spending habits this year, it has become increasingly important for brands to make their value known to consumers.
  • Over a quarter (26.8%) of US CMOs said that inflationary pressures have caused them to make stronger brand-building investments, per a survey conducted by Deloitte and the American Marketing Association (AMA).

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