Jobs related to marketing made several appearances, with SEO/SEM marketing taking the eighth spot, followed by marketing campaign management taking 11th spot which put roles such as online marketing manager, digital marketing specialist, digital marketing manager in the spotlight. Mobile development also took the ninth spot, featuring jobs such as mobile engineer, mobile application developer being in demand.

The report also highlighted the demand of some hard skills relating to data management and analysis making several appearances in the ranking, with roles such as data scientists and data analyst being in demand.

eMarketer estimates that US business-to-business (B2B) advertisers will spend $4.07 billion on digital advertising in 2017. The B2B digital ad market is growing steadily, and in 2018 it will jump 13% to reach $4.60 billion.

The 15% drop in martech spend sounds more surprising, at first, until you consider three things:

Enterprise CMOs are still allocating 22% of their budget to marketing technology, and that is a large investment. 
Some of the cash pulled from martech was reallocated to paid media — but within advertising, it’s notable that 67% of CMOs are increasing their digital spend while 63% are decreasing offline spend. 
The other place where martech cash moved was services, which rose from 22% to 25% as well. Combined with the 27% of the marketing budget allocated towards internal staff, CMOs are spending over half of their budget (52%) on people. This is where budget should be going! 

1. Severely outdated technology 
2. Marketing measurements that are simply not actionable – Our study found that only 6% of marketers feel that their measurements help determine the next best marketing action. That leaves 94% of those in our study without prescriptive guidance on where to spend their limited budget and resources.
3. Misalignment between Marketing and the business 
4. CFO and CMO relationship troubles – The best organizations in our study were 3X more likely to align the functions of Marketing and Finance. However, only 14% of marketing organizations overall saw Finance as a trusted strategic partner, and 28% either have no relationship with finance or speak only when forced to. 
5. Poor investment, budgeting, and planning data quality 
6. Lack of visibility into baseline metrics 
7. Inconsistent use of MarTech

1. The best marketing budgets start with new ideas about what Marketing is

In short, they understand marketing and best-in-class marketing budgets aren't what they used to be. And without the adoption of current ideas about marketing—without a new conceptualization of marketing—your organization will be stuck with an old budget from a different marketing era.

2. The best marketing budgets match your growth stage

The biggest factor determining your best-in-class budget is your business's growth stage: Companies that are stable and looking only to maintain their position in a market should have a budget that's very different from the budgets of those that are looking for very fast growth.

3. The best marketing budgets are flexible

Having a set budget is great, sure, but Marketing is in a constant state of flux. Tools, channels, and trends change every day, and it's hard to keep up if your budget is too rigid. The final key to best-in-class marketing budgets, therefore, is their ability to change with their environment.

Is your marketing making you money or losing it? Columnist Jacob Baadsgaard explains how determining and tracking your contribution margin can help your marketing initiatives remain profitable.

Marketers can expect greater slice of the pie in 2016 The latest data from CMO.com's 2016 survey shows a healthy increase in the percentage of firms revenu. Marketing topic(s):Digital marketing strategy. Advice by Robert Allen.

Finance leaders identified marketing efforts, or expanding relationships with existing customers, as the top strategic factor driving company growth and profitability in 2016, according to the 6th annual CFO Sentiment Study. Nevertheless, marketing budgets are already on the chopping block.

For example, to support Unilever's efficiency expansion drive, its marketers will now have to adopt "zero-based budgeting": They'll have to justify spending on all new activity instead of their budgets' being based on the previous year's spending.

What might be the underlying cause of budget reductions despite CFOs' belief that both top-line and bottom-line growth in 2016 will require sales and marketing? It's likely that despite improvements in technology and processes, as well as an increased focus on measurement, only few marketers can actually prove their value.

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