Strategy

Global expansion: How top companies reach beyond their borders

Roundup

AI Stack

Jack Kokko: Creating a copilot for market intelligence teams

Marcelo Bigal: Always putting patients first

Lenskart: A vision for e-commerce success

A vision for e-commerce success

Feature

Trends

Building high-performing teams in the age of AI

Video

Data

CHRO Survey: Despite layoffs, talent is still king

Despite layoffs, talent is still king

Data Analysis

The power of getting it wrong

2022 Milken MEA Summit: Tech Investing Panel

Scaling across borders

Wes Schroll: From startup to category leader in a crowded market

Mapbox: The fastest route to success

SambaNova: Dancing with AI

Venkat Sathyamurthy: A mantra for AI success

Investing in biotechnology in 2025

Podcast

CHRO Survey: Grappling with changing employee expectations

Inside the SoftBank Vision Fund portfolio ecosystem

CFO Survey: Capitalizing on a brighter economic outlook

CHRO Survey: AI is transforming how people leaders build winning teams

Nancy Stagliano: Bringing AI to life

CEO Insights: Thriving in the world of hybrid work

CEO Survey: Prepping for a rebound

Prepping for a rebound

CHRO Survey: Cultures strengthen as flexible work models evolve

Efficient marketing that moves the needle

Deidre Paknad: Redefining success metrics

CEO Survey highlights: Entering 2025 with optimism and caution

Making responsible and ethical AI a priority

Data and machine learning are creating a golden age of drug discovery

Seizing the generative AI moment

CFO Survey: AI takes center stage as economic woes recede

Generative AI takes center stage as economic woes begin to recede

Brand new: How a new identity became a unifying force for LTK

Jason Warner: A bold vision for automating software on the path to AGI

A new C-suite mandate: Maximizing the AI opportunity

How the C-suite is tackling a new mandate: Making the most of AI opportunities

Avi Meir: Why a bet on the power of human connection was key to success

TEST - Module List

Newsletter

The strategy behind the SoftBank Vision Fund

Ken Drazan: Building an LLM that speaks the language of the immune system

Starting at discovery

Genomic discovery on the road less traveled

Variant Bio: Charting a New Path in Genomic Drug Discovery

Be humble and keep learning

IPO Readiness: Lessons from the field

IPO readiness: Lessons from the field

CTO Survey: Generative AI is unlocking ROI in software development

Peter Chapman: Quantum computing’s coming of age

Ensuring human values are central to AI-driven progress

CEOs brace for a new wave of challenges in 2023

Apollo: Seeding a revolution in Kenyan farming

Seeding a revolution in Kenyan farming

Leading a high-growth company through an economic downturn

Doubling down on marketing in an uncertain environment

CTO Survey: Targeting AI, CTOs pursue different approaches

CEO Survey: Diving into AI despite an uncertain regulatory environment

Job&Talent: Hacking global expansion through M&A

Aaron Tan: How AI is driving used car sales in Asia Pacific

Clearing the path for AI adoption

Thirteen countries, one culture

CHRO Survey: Hybrid work statistics say it’s here to stay, and employees are in the driver’s seat

Cloudbeds: The art of calculated risk

The art of calculated risk

Leveling the financial playing field

COVID-19’s impact on technology

CTO Survey: AI budgets surge

Navigating toward growth

CFO Survey: Navigating toward growth

Remaking the last mile of e-commerce

CFO Survey: How CFOs are navigating a changing market

Paper’s fast learning curve

Competing at the speed of AI

CHRO Survey: Hiring is back on the front burner — selectively

Turning IoT’s promise into reality

Eoin Hinchy: Eliminating “muck work” through workflow automation

Gary Beasley: Finding opportunity in a cooling market

Hugo de Wit: Building futuristic tools to accelerate cellular understanding

Job van der Voort: The future of work is remote

CEO Survey: As economic outlook brightens, global uncertainty casts a shadow

With economies around the world facing continued uncertainty and the markets in retreat, startups are being told to spend wisely and conserve cash. But for high-growth companies, austerity doesn’t mean slamming on the brakes, especially when it comes to marketing. Indeed, downturns are often when companies have the greatest need to market themselves effectively.  In our exclusive survey of 74 portfolio company CMOs fielded in August, most respondents said their 2022 budgets are larger than they were the previous year. And while some companies have trimmed those budgets since the beginning of the year in response to a worsening outlook, 1 in 5 say their planned marketing investments for the year have actually grown since then. (You can explore the full survey results, and filter by region, sector, and stage, with Sōzō Pulse, our <a target="_blank" href="https://visionfund.com/insights/data/cmo-data-viz">interactive data experience</a>.)As one respondent put it succinctly, the most valuable contribution marketing can make in the current climate is to “help solidify our message and position in the market as companies become more risk averse.”  Our survey also offers insights into where companies are placing their <a target="_blank" href="https://visionfund.com/insights/efficient-marketing-that-moves-the-needle">marketing bets</a>, which areas of marketing are proving most effective, how well their organizations work, what skills they need the most, and what they make of the techlash.  <h2>1. Doubling down on marketing</h2>The S&amp;P 500 has fallen sharply since New Year’s Day, higher interest rates have sparked fears of a recession, and the capital going to startups has slowed from a flood to a trickle. Yet more than half of surveyed CMOs said their annual marketing budget grew from 2021 to 2022, and 1 in 3 companies said the year-over-year increase topped 25%. The behavior of these high-growth startups mirrors that of large companies, which increased marketing spend to 9.5% of company revenue in 2022, up from 6.4% in 2021, according to the Gartner 2022 CMO Spend and Strategy Survey.Meanwhile, the downturn, which has deepened since the beginning of the year, appears to have had a mixed impact on those budgets. While just over half of companies decided to rein in their marketing spend for the year since January, more than 1 in 5 (22%) are maintaining spending levels, and 1 in 5 (20%) have decided to spend more than they had originally planned.

Taking a sector view, health tech companies appear to be stepping up their marketing spending most aggressively, with half of companies saying their budgets will grow by 25% or more this year. Additionally, earlier stage companies are upping their marketing spend far more aggressively than older, more mature companies. Forty-three percent of series A or earlier companies and 41% of series B &amp; C companies plan to grow marketing by 25% or more, while only 10% of series D &amp; E and 7% of late-stage private and public companies said so.  These growing budgets are translating into more headcount. Forty-two percent of all respondents said they expect the size of their teams to increase this year. Startups at the beginning of their life cycle appear to be charging ahead at a greater rate than anyone else, with 80% of CMOs of series A or earlier companies forecasting annual growth in their departments.<h2>2. Performance and demand generation rule, followed by brand and product  </h2>One reason marketing budgets are growing is that many companies see marketing as an investment. And the clearest way to earn, and measure, ROI in marketing is through performance/demand generation. What’s more, a wave of innovation has energized the lead generation sector, with new entrants offering better analytics, personalization, and new ways to connect publishing channels with revenue, among other things.   It’s not surprising then, that the majority of companies (54%) said performance/demand generation was their top area of spend. In Latin America, performance/demand generation plays an even bigger role: nearly 9 in 10 companies said it was their top area of spend. Globally, brand marketing was a distant second, which just 19% of companies said was their top area of marketing investment. The top areas of spending matched the top areas of satisfaction. Nearly 1 in 3 CMOs said they were most satisfied with their investments in performance/demand generation, while 24% said they were most satisfied with brand marketing, and 19% with product marketing. While content marketing plays a much smaller role, with just 5% of companies saying it was their top area of spend, 8% of companies said it was the marketing category they were most satisfied with. Similarly, product marketing was the top area of spend for 9% of companies and the top area of satisfaction for 19% of companies.

The survey also pointed to some changes in how companies allocate marketing budgets over time. As companies mature, they tend to decrease their reliance on performance/demand generation and shift more of their budgets toward brand, and to a lesser extent, product marketing. And the companies with the smallest marketing budgets as a percentage of revenue were either very early stage or very late stage/IPO. While 50% of companies spend less than 5% on marketing overall, the number was 57% for series A companies, and 60% for late-stage private/public companies.

<h2>3. Organized for success despite some skills gaps</h2>Looking inward at the cultural and organizational criteria required for success, marketers are a pretty happy bunch, with 96% of CMOs saying they felt they had the support necessary from their CEO. Relationships across the executive suite were generally strong too. CMOs highlighted the head of sales, CBO, and head of product as their most important relationships, in that order, on the executive team. When it came to the strength of those relationships, CBOs and head of product tied for the strongest relationship over head of sales.

As they look to grow their teams, CMOs are consistently focused on two skills that are in highest demand: product marketing and experience with data and analytics. Not surprisingly, recruiting overall continues to be a major worry. Some CMOs pointed to the challenges of adapting to changing working conditions from the pandemic. One noted that the “remote-first expectation for most staff creates the need for interactions within the company outside of digital ones.” Another key difficulty is identifying viable candidates. A respondent said they hoped to implement “better recruiting support to hire open reqs for functions we are completely missing, like product marketing and marketing operations.” The uncertain <a target="_blank" href="https://visionfund.com/insights/how-cfos-are-navigating-a-changing-job-market">economic environment</a> also loomed large, with one respondent saying the biggest challenge was “keeping people motivated and driving retention during the downturn and low stock price.”<h2>4. Techlash: Real or imagined?</h2>There was a time when the tech industry walked on water. Polls consistently showed that the tech companies with some of the highest favorable ratings of any company were widely admired and seen as some of the most desirable places to work. But that trust has been eroded by a series of forces, from tech’s growing power to more awareness about the negative effects of social media, privacy violations, and the failures of many tech platforms to moderate content. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer trust in the technology sector has fallen from 78% in 2012 to 72% in 2022, though the industry remains more trustworthy than any other. The CMO survey confirms these findings. Just 43% of respondents said the media has a positive view of the tech sector. Companies in the health tech sector were somewhat more upbeat, with 63% saying the media had a positive view of tech. And interestingly, the older and bigger the company, the more likely it was to see media perceptions of tech as negative. For example, 43% of series A or earlier companies and 56% of series B &amp; C companies said the media viewed tech in a positive light, compared to just 20% of companies that were public or late-stage private. When it came to the media’s perception of their own companies, a much larger percentage of CMOs saw it as positive, though again, as companies grew in size and age, the numbers dropped.

While good relationships with the press, hopefully translating to favorable media coverage, is clearly important to CMOs, many noted that developing those relationships or even getting attention in the press has grown increasingly difficult. As one CMO said, “Having a positive media sentiment becomes a key enabler, increasing trust to acquire new users and generate transactions.” Three other responses pointed to the challenges: “With some of the more traditional industry reporters, there’s a heavy dose of skepticism—‘hype vs. reality’ is a persistent theme.” “It’s still very difficult to get reporters interested in writing about our company since the space isn’t viewed as particularly interesting.” “B2B is not sexy to the media.”

CMOs weigh top priorities, larger budgets

CMOs - Q3 2022

Terms

Privacy

Regulatory

Portfolio

Team

Insights

Work With Us

Portfolio Careers

Sustainability

Presentations

Company

Contact

We use necessary cookies to make our site work. We would also like to set optional analytics cookies to help us improve our site by anonymously collecting and reporting information on how you use it. For more information on how these cookies work, please see our <a target="_blank" href="https://visionfund.com/terms#1&amp;cookie-policy">Cookie policy</a>.

Doubling down on marketing in an uncertain environment

Performance marketing leads the way as high-growth startups face hiring challenges and grapple with the techlash.

Change in marketing budget in 2022 compared to 2021

Change in marketing budget since the beginning of the year

Highest priority based on marketing budget allocation

Area of investment CMOs are most satisfied with

Size of marketing budget as a percentage of revenue

Percentage of budget that goes to outside agencies

Marketing lead’s most important working relationship in the executive suite

Marketing lead’s strongest working relationship in the executive suite

Media sentiment

CMOs weigh top priorities, larger budgets

Thirteen countries, one culture

The strength of 450+ leading tech companies—direct to your inbox