Marketing a high priority – but budgets still a battle
pharmafile | October 26, 2005 | News story | Sales and Marketing |Â Â Â
A survey of marketers across industry sectors has underlined the importance of their role but shows many have to battle for their budgets.
The recent MORI survey for The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) reveals most UK marketers say marketing is a priority in their company's business strategy, with two-thirds (63%) saying it was a high priority while only 8% say that it is a low priority.
The poll also suggested that marketing is taken more seriously in larger companies – 49% of respondents from firms with a turnover of over 100 million said marketing was a high priority compared to 88% in businesses with turnovers of up to 1 million . But smaller companies appear to have marketers in senior management positions, 77% having a marketer on the board, compared to just 37% in companies with a turnover of between 51 million and 100 million, rising slightly to 51% in companies with revenues above 100 million.
Belief in the central importance of marketing is backed up by investment, especially among the smaller firms. Companies with a turnover of under 1 million spend just over 10% of their turnover on marketing – above the national average figure of 7.2%.
But some find securing marketing funding a problem. While just a third (32%) of marketers in small companies claim it is difficult to secure funding for marketing activities, as many as two-thirds (66%) of those in the largest organisations find securing marketing budgets to be a problem.
A total of 760 of the UK's CIM members completed the online questionnaire, which was hosted by MORI in September 2005. The CIM has around 18,000 UK members from a broad cross section of organisations by sector, turnover and geographic location.
Related feature:
Large pharma companies are increasingly turning to licensing products and 'alliance management' to meet revenue and growth expectations says John Hosken.
