Despite ongoing economic uncertainty, marketing departments are ready to throw down and invest in brand-building initiatives. That’s according to the just-released Gartner 2022 CMO Spend and Strategy Survey.

With more money at their disposal, where are today’s CMOs allocating their marketing dollars to stay ahead of the competition? What areas can really benefit from a bigger marketing budget?

And the survey says…
While it largely depends on your industry, here are some avenues where CMOs should consider investing:

Upgrading your martech stack. The Gartner survey showed that 22% of marketers identified their technology as a top strategic capability gap. It’s clear that companies that invest in marketing technology and integration are more productive and efficient — let’s just hope they’re not your competitors.

Conducting an SEO audit. How well are your core web pages performing? An SEO audit can boost the user experience and help improve your search visibility. If you haven’t tweaked your keywords lately, it’s probably time to see how they’re performing and what new terms you can add to your strategy.

Scrutinizing your customer experience. When’s the last time you visited your own website? Completed the sales process for a product? Called your main business line to hear how customers are being greeted? Every touchpoint is a critical reflection of your brand, so make certain you’re easy to do business with and consistent across all marketing channels.

Beefing up your customer intel. In a cookie-less world, accurate first-party data is more vital than ever. How are you monitoring customer behavior and what are you doing with the knowledge acquired — curating relevant content? Upselling? Creating tailored offers? Yes, yes and yes. 

Broadening your social strategy. How are similar brands succeeding with channels you’ve previously dismissed? Seventy percent of Millennials use Facebook daily, but are they looking at reels or something else? Could TikTok actually be viable for B2B? There’s only one way to find out — competitive reconnaissance and testing.

Sharpening your content strategy. Did you know that publicly traded companies spend an average of 26% of their total marketing budget on content marketing? But the most successful spend closer to 40%. By implementing carefully planned and relevant articles, webinars, videos, social posts and more, you can get more qualified eyeballs engaging with your content. (Don’t know where to start? If you’re among the 58% of companies that told Gartner they lacked in-house resources, we’re here to help!)

Curious about the rest of the Gartner 2022 CMO Spend and Strategy Survey results? Watch the on-demand webinar here.

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