Marketers are coming off of what they felt like was a pretty successful year last year, which is a good feeling. An even better feeling? Heading into 2025 expecting bigger revenues and bigger marketing budgets — a lot of which marketers will put toward influencer marketing.
That’s what a Digiday+ Research survey of 42 marketer professionals conducted in the fourth quarter of 2024 found.
Digiday’s survey found an overwhelming optimism for 2025 among marketers: 84% of marketer pros told Digiday they agree that they’re optimistic about their companies’ prospects this year. It’s likely that a big reason for that optimism is the fact that most marketers expect to get bigger budgets to work with this year. Fifty-three percent of marketers said they expect their marketing budgets to increase in 2025.
And that increase will be significant. The largest group of marketer pros who told Digiday that they expect their budgets to increase this year said they expect those budgets to go up more than a little. Just shy of a quarter of marketers (24%) said they expect their marketing budgets to increase between 11% and 25% in 2025. Seventeen percent said they expect their budgets to increase between 1% and 10% this year, and 12% said they expect budgets to increase 26% or more — certainly a noteworthy percentage for such a big jump.
Just 9% of marketer pros said they expect their budgets to decrease in 2025.
Digiday’s survey found that, with their bigger 2025 budgets, marketers will put a significant focus on influencers this year. Well over half of marketer pros (57%) told Digiday that their investments in influencer marketing will increase in 2025 compared with 2024, making this the biggest group of marketers who said they’ll increase their investments in specific areas this year.
Comparatively, 43% of marketers said they would increase their investments in physical retail this year, 38% said they would increase investments in TikTok Shop and 24% said they would increase investments in livestream shopping.
It’s worth noting that, while influencer marketing was the only area in which more marketers said they would increase their investments than maintain their investments or decrease investments, marketers will still hold strong in areas outside of influencer marketing. Seventy-four percent of marketer pros said their companies’ investments in livestream shopping would remain the same this year compared with last year, while 60% said their investments in TikTok Shop will stay the same this year and 48% said their investments in physical retail will remain the same.
For context, 10% of marketers said their companies’ investments in physical retail would decrease this year, 5% said their investments in influencers would decrease and 2% said their investments in TikTok Shop and livestream shopping would decrease, respectively.
So what is setting marketers up to have these bigger budgets that they’ll spend on influencer marketing in 2025? Digiday’s survey found that it’s likely the overwhelming percentages of marketer pros who said they expect their sales and revenues to grow this year.
Seventy-nine percent of marketer pros told Digiday that they expect their sales to increase in 2025. More importantly, the largest group of marketers is the 29% who said they expect their sales to increase by 26% or more this year. Twenty-six percent of marketers said they expect their sales to increase between 11% and 25% this year, and 24% said they expect sales to increase 1% to 10%.
An even bigger percentage of marketers told Digiday that they think their companies’ 2025 revenues will increase over 2024. Eight-six percent of marketer pros said they expect their revenues to grow this year.
Fewer marketers said they expect huge revenue increases this year — 17% said they think their companies’ 2025 revenue will increase by 26% or more. But about a third said they expect their revenues to grow between 11% and 25% or between 1% and 10%. To be exact, 38% of marketer pros told Digiday that they think their 2025 revenues will increase between 1% and 10%, and 31% said they expect revenues to be between 11% and 25% higher this year.
Just 6% of marketers said they think their sales will decrease this year, and an even smaller 4% said they expect their 2025 revenues to go down compared with 2024.
https://digiday.com/?p=566427
