Introduction: With the economic landscape shifting as inflation cools and geopolitical factors evolve, it is important to understand how marketers are planning to allocate their 2025 budgets. A survey conducted by NP Digital and Neil Patel surveyed 11,093 marketers to understand how they’re planning to allocate their 2025 budgets. The focus was on why they’re making these investment decisions across various marketing channels.
Earned Media Strategies:
Let’s take a look at what they found for each relevant marketing channel.
SEO: 44% of marketers are boosting their SEO spend, even amidst the rise of AI. 39% were found to be maintaining their budgets, with “proven results” as the key factor. And 17% of respondents confirmed they were decreasing SEO budgets, citing concerns about algorithm volatility and the uncertain future of AI-driven search results.
Organic Social: While 25% of respondents plan to increase their organic social budgets (citing brand awareness benefits), a significant number of them (58%) are actually decreasing their budgets. The main reason mentioned was diminishing organic reach regardless of their marketing tactics. However, those respondents maintaining their budgets (17%) acknowledged social media’s necessity for brand presence and customer communication.
Content Marketing: A strong 63% of respondents are increasing their content budgets, largely to accommodate diverse content formats across multiple platforms. They tend to prefer high-performing human-created content over AI-generated alternatives, and at the same time they are investing in growing podcasting channels. 33% of respondents are maintaining budgets due to the efficiency of content repurposing (reusing content), while only 4% are decreasing their budgets, primarily banking on AI’s potential to streamline content creation.
AI SEO: A near-unanimous 97% of respondents are planning to invest in SEO for AI platforms like ChatGPT and SearchGPT, recognising these as emerging channels with substantial potential. Only a tiny fraction (1%) are decreasing investment, citing a lack of demonstrable ROI from these platforms.
Email Marketing: 28% of respondents are increasing their email marketing budgets due to growing customer signup list sizes and the renewed importance of email capture in the face of platform algorithm changes. 59% of respondents are maintaining budgets, acknowledging email’s proven effectiveness and direct impact on sales, while 13% are decreasing their budgets, primarily focusing on vendor consolidation and subscriber list hygiene/maintenance for cost savings.
CRO & UX: 59% of respondents are increasing CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) and UX budgets to combat rising ad costs, leveraging UX for SEO benefits, and maximising ROI in a challenging economy. 21% of respondents are maintaining their budgets, recognising the long-term value of these investments. Interestingly, 20% of respondents are decreasing CRO and UX spending, believing they’ve already optimised conversions and reached a plateau.
Community Building: A substantial 81% of respondents are increasing community building budgets, emphasising the need for human connection in the age of AI, along with the proliferation of customer touchpoints, and the resurgence of in-person events. Only 16% are decreasing their budgets, primarily due to economic constraints and the difficulty of directly measuring community ROI.
Paid Advertising Strategies
Although there are a lot of various paid advertising channels, the research/survey focussed on the main paid advertising methods.
Paid Search: 52% of respondents plan to increase Google Ads spend and 64% plan to increase Bing Ads spend, citing rising costs and proven ROI. Those maintaining budgets often cited successful performance, while 38% of respondents are decreasing Google Ads spend and 7% decreasing Bing Ads spend. These latter two groups highlighted profitability challenges and a shift towards more cost-effective platforms.
Social Ads: Social ad spending plans are highly variable. X (formerly Twitter) saw the largest planned increase (55%), attributed to affordability and perceived shifts in public opinion, while other platforms saw increases driven by performance and scaling goals. Budget maintenance was common on Facebook, Instagram (the main preference for influencer marketing) and TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Snap, and LinkedIn. Any decreases in budgets across social platforms were largely driven by rising ad costs and a preference for influencer marketing.
Traditional Ads: The perceived increased spending on traditional advertising found in this research was attributed to potential opportunities in a digitally saturated landscape. Budget maintenance was justified by brand differentiation and targeted demographic reach (especially elderly audiences). However, any noted decreases in budgets were driven by a shift towards digital channels, such as online news sites and CTV (Connected TV).
Other Ad Channels: Podcasting, influencer marketing, and CTV all saw increased investment due to audience attention shifts. Remarketing budgets also rose significantly (89%), as marketers aim to warm up low traffic levels in response to rising ad costs. Decreases in these areas were mainly due to economic pressures or lower ROI. Influencer marketing budget decreases were also attributed to the logistical challenges and costs of managing influencer relationships.
Overall Outlook:
The majority of marketers (both B2B and B2C) plan to maintain or increase their overall marketing budgets in 2025. Only 17% of B2C and 15% of B2B companies anticipate budget cuts, primarily due to economic conditions, funding limitations, or loan accessibility. It seems that the prevailing sentiment is optimistic, driven by decreasing inflation and interest rates. It will be interesting to see what happens over the coming year and what trends will be seen going beyond 2025.
