Marketing budgets now just 6.4% of revenue

Rob Clapp

An overview of marketing budgets as a share of total revenue.

Marketing budgets are now just 6.4% of total revenue, according to a survey of marketers in North America and Europe by Gartner. This is down from 11.0% of revenue in 2020 as Gartner says that "a swift return to prepandemic funding levels proved elusive for many marketing organizations".

This has been seen across industries, with no category achieving a double-digit budget in 2021.

Consumer products had the smallest budget decline, with marketing's share of revenue falling from 10.8% to 8.3%.

In comparison, tech products (5.0%), manufacturing (5.8%) and media (5.8%) have more than halved their marketing spend as...

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