What Would Peter Drucker Say?

Peter Drucker is universally regarded as one of the most influential voices in the field of business management of the past 80 years. During a career that spanned more than seven decades, he authored 39 books and wrote dozens of articles for both academic journals and popular publications.

Shortly after his death in 2005, Businessweek magazine called Drucker "The Man Who Invented Management." Writing for Businessweek, John Byrne observed, ". . . it is frustratingly difficult to cite a significant modern management concept that was not first articulated, if not invented, by Drucker."

Drucker never devoted an entire book to marketing, but he discussed marketing in many of his books and other writings. Philip Kotler once wrote, "Occasionally, I have been carelessly called the father of modern marketing. If that is so, then Peter should be described as the grandfather of modern marketing."

Because of Drucker's profound influence on modern management and marketing thinking, I have often wondered what he might say about the current perception among many marketing academics and practitioners that the influence of the marketing organization has declined in many companies.

Unfortunately, we no longer have the ability to ask Drucker this question, but we can use what he wrote about marketing to make some reasonable predictions.

The Preeminence of Marketing

Peter Drucker strongly believed that marketing (as he described it) is absolutely essential for long-term business success. In his 1954 book, The Practice of Management, Drucker described the importance of marketing in unequivocal terms:

"There is only one valid definition of business purpose:  to create a customer .  . . Therefore, any business enterprise has two - and only two - basic functions:  marketing and innovation."

Drucker doubled down on the importance of this customer/market orientation in his 1973 book, Management:  Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices when he wrote:

"A business . . . is defined by the want the customer satisfies when she buys a product or a service. To satisfy the customer is the purpose of every business. The question:  'what is our business?' can, therefore, be answered only by looking at the business from the outside, from the point of view of the customer and the market . . . And management must make a conscious effort to get answers from the customer herself rather than attempt to read her mind."

In Drucker's view, the primary objective of marketing is to enable company leaders to gain a deep understanding of the customer and the relevant market. With these insights, company leaders can then use innovation to create products and services that will fit customer needs and wants and market conditions.

This point of view explains why marketing and innovation are the key ingredients in Drucker's formula for business success.

Many CMOs will undoubted welcome the ability to cite Peter Drucker when they're arguing that marketing should have greater influence in their company. But, there's another aspect of Drucker's thinking that CMOs must also consider.

Marketing is a Management Responsibility

Peter Drucker viewed marketing as a guiding business philosophy and an essential enterprise-wide capability. Therefore, he saw marketing as a general management responsibility that could not and should not be confined to any single organizational unit.

Drucker made this aspect of this thinking clear in Management:  Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices when he wrote:

"Marketing is so basic that it cannot be considered a separate function . . . it is, first, a central dimension of the entire business .  . . Concern and responsibility for marketing must, therefore, permeate all areas of the enterprise."

David Packard, the co-founder and former Chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, may have been "channeling" Peter Drucker when he said, "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department."

The bottom line for Drucker was that understanding the customer and the market is vital for business success, and therefore such understanding must be the foundation of a company's business strategy. It must be embraced by every function in a company, and it should inform everything the company does.

What Would Drucker Say?

So, what would Peter Drucker say about the perceived loss of influence of the marketing organization?

First, I think he would be highly critical of any company whose leaders don't make understanding customers and markets their top priority.

Second, I think Drucker might say that business strategy decisions - which should be based on a deep understanding of customers and markets (i.e. on the essence of marketing) - should be made by a company's top management team. This increases the likelihood that a customer- and market-driven strategy will, in Drucker's words, "permeate all areas of the enterprise."

And lastly, Drucker might point out that a company's senior marketing executive should be part of the company's top management team and an active participant in the strategy development process. He might also note that the members of a company's marketing organization should be well-suited by education and experience to collect and analyze the necessary "intelligence" about customers and markets.

When these circumstances exist, it's really not accurate to say that the influence of the marketing organization is diminished. 

Image courtesy of Wide World of Work via Flickr (CC). 

How to Win With Buyers Before They Become Buyers

In my last post, I introduced the concept of opportunistic learning. I wrote that information has become so abundant and easily accessible that business people are routinely consuming information about business issues long before they become involved in an active buying process.

As a result, most business buyers don't begin a buying process with a "clean slate." In fact, most buyers bring strong opinions about vendors to the process.

Several recent research studies have shown that most business buyers have a small number of potential vendors in mind when they begin a buying process and that they almost always buy from one of the vendors on their "Day One" shortlist.

These research findings demonstrate that reaching opportunistic learners is critical because the opinions they form while engaged in opportunistic learning have a major impact on buying decisions.

To accomplish this goal, B2B marketers need to understand the mindset of opportunistic learners and then use marketing tactics and content that are specifically designed for these potential future buyers.

The Opportunistic Learning Mindset

When business people engage in opportunistic learning, they have different objectives and a different mindset than when they are seeking information relating to an ongoing buying process.

Opportunistic learners are not performing focused research, and they aren't looking for information about a particular topic.

They are scanning trusted sources of information for ideas that are relevant to their business or job or beneficial for their career development. When they encounter content that appears to fit this description, they will pause to read, watch, or listen to it.

Antonia Wade, the Global Chief Marketing Officer of PwC, provided a compelling perspective on the mindset of opportunistic learners in her recent book, Transforming the B2B Buyer Journey.

In her book, Ms. Wade proposed a new B2B buyer journey framework that has five phases - Horizon Scanner, Explorer, Hunter, Active Buyer, and Client. Her names for these phases symbolize the buyer's needs and thought processes that are important during each phase of the buying journey.

Ms. Wade's Horizon Scanner phase is similar to my concept of opportunistic learning. She wrote that Horizon Scanners are people in strategic roles who are always assessing how big market trends and/or innovations will impact their business. Horizon Scanners, Wade wrote, ". . . aren't looking for answers and they're certainly not looking for  a sales message: they're looking for ideas."

In the Wade framework, Horizon Scanners are usually senior-level executives. However, people at all business levels engage in opportunistic learning in some form.

Connecting with opportunistic learners is important because the impressions they form about companies or brands during opportunistic learning remain influential when they become active buyers. Therefore, if marketers can nurture positive impressions in the minds of opportunistic learners, they will have a competitive head start when those opportunistic learners become true buyers.

The Overall Goal Is Mental Availability

So, what kinds of marketing tactics can B2B marketers use to connect with opportunistic learners?

In marketing terms, your primary goal with opportunistic learners is to create and then enhance your company's mental availability.

The mental availability concept was popularized by Byron Sharp and his colleagues at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. In How Brands Grow, Sharp provided a simple definition of mental availability:  "Mental availability/brand salience is the propensity for a brand to be noticed or thought of in buying situations."

Marketing content must meet three basic requirements to create mental availability with opportunistic learners.

Address Appealing Topics

As simplistic as it sounds, the first requirement is that your content must be about topics that opportunistic learners will find appealing. It's vital to remember that opportunistic learners are not looking for information relating to an active buying process. They are seeking ideas that will help them improve their business or perform their job better or easier.

This means most content intended for opportunistic learners should focus on business or job-related problems, challenges, or opportunities for improvement.

Be Memorable

Marketing content must also be memorable to create mental availability with opportunistic learners.

By definition, opportunistic learners are not engaged in an active buying process. You make content available to opportunistic learners at a given point in time, and you hope they consume the content. But equally important, you hope they will remember your content and your company at a future point in time when they are ready to begin a buying process.

There are several techniques you can use to make your content more memorable to opportunistic learners. To learn more about these techniques, I recommend that you read Impossible to Ignore by Dr. Carmen Simon.

Be Easy to Consume

The third basic requirement for content that will effectively create mental availability with opportunistic learners is that it must be easy to consume. By "easy to consume," I mean content that doesn't require the people in your audience to expend a lot of cognitive energy.

As I've indicated, opportunistic learners are not engaged in an active buying process and therefore won't be inclined to expend much effort consuming content that (at the moment) isn't a high priority.

As a practical matter, this means most content intended for opportunistic learners should be relatively brief. In B2B, we have the leeway to use somewhat longer content because opportunistic learners believe acquiring information about industry trends and innovative business practices is important for their career progression.

Two Additional Considerations

In addition to the basic content requirements just discussed, there are two other issues you should keep in mind when marketing to opportunistic learners.

First, when business people engage in opportunistic learning, they usually turn to trusted sources of information. These often include respected general business publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Business Review, and publications focusing on specific industries or business functions.

While some of these publications don't accept content from "outside" contributors, some do, and you should look for opportunities to create content that will appear in those publications.

Second, opportunistic learners tend to pay more attention to content created by journalists and other third parties than to content created by your company or by someone related to your company. Therefore, you should aggressively pursue opportunities to have your company leaders and subject matter experts interviewed for content being developed by professional journalists and other third-party creators.

 Top image courtesy of John Donges via Flickr (CC).

Why B2B Marketers Need to Know About "Opportunistic Learning"

One of the most profound developments in B2B marketing of the last quarter century has been the emergence of empowered and independent business buyers.

The proliferation of readily available online information has been the driving force behind the increased power of business buyers. Easy access to a wealth of information about almost any conceivable topic has enabled business decision-makers to find most of the information they want or need on their terms. And now, artificial intelligence is making it even easier for buyers to access information.

Information abundance has fundamentally changed how business buyers engage with potential vendors and how they make buying decisions. Overall, B2B marketers have done a reasonably good job of adapting their methods and practices to address most of these changes.

However, there is growing evidence of an important change in B2B buyer behavior that marketers have only recently begun to appreciate and focus on.

A Flawed Model of B2B Buyer Behavior

For most of the past twenty-five years, the accepted paradigm  of B2B buying has assumed that a buying process begins when a company's leaders or managers recognize that a need or problem exists and decide to address the issue in some way.

These "buyers" then gather information about the need or problem, evaluate the available options, and may or may not decide to purchase a product or service to address the situation. So, the conventional paradigm of B2B buying behavior holds that most information gathering and buyer "learning" occurs after an intentional buying process has started.

Several recent research studies have shown that this widely-accepted paradigm is not accurate in many instances.

The 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report by 6sense describes one of the most recent studies regarding B2B buyer behavior. This study consisted of two surveys of business buyers that together generated nearly 4,800 responses. The survey respondents were located in North America (46%), Continental Europe (20%), Asia-Pacific (14%), and the UK and Ireland (20%).

The respondents to the 6sense surveys evaluated an average of five vendors per purchase, and they filled four spots on their vendor shortlist at the very start ("Day One") of their buying process. They also said they purchased from one of the four vendors on their Day One shortlist 95% of the time. In addition, 97% of the respondents said they had prior experience with at least one of the vendors on their Day One shortlist.

Earlier studies have produced similar findings. For example, in a 2022 survey of business buyers by Bain & Co. and Google, 80% - 90% of the respondents said they had a set of vendors in mind before they did any research, and 90% of the respondents said they ultimately chose a vendor that was in their initial consideration set.

A 2021 survey of business buyers by WSJ Intelligence and B2B International also illustrated the importance of the vendor preferences that B2B buyers bring into a buying process.

In this study, the survey contained several questions about a recent purchase and asked the participants to reflect on the vendor they ultimately selected (the "winning vendor") and on a vendor they considered but did not select (the "losing vendor").

The researchers divided the purchase journey into three stages and defined the "Pre-Decision stage" as ". . . the time between when they had selected a supplier (for a given product/service category) and when the 'trigger' occurred that prompted them to actively begin searching for and deciding on a new supplier."

The survey findings revealed that the mental impressions of vendors held by buyers during the Pre-Decision stage exerted significant influence on purchase decisions. For example, survey respondents were more then twice as likely to say they were very familiar with the winning vendor versus the losing vendor before their active buying process began. Respondents also said that during the Pre-Decision stage, they had a higher level of pre-existing trust and confidence in the winning vendor than in the losing vendor.

Enter Opportunistic Learning

These results clearly demonstrate that most business buyers do not begin a buying process with a "blank slate." In fact, most buyers bring strong opinions about vendors to the process.

These pre-existing opinions develop because information has become so abundant and readily available that business people are routinely consuming information about business issues long before they have formed anything close to "buying intent" or started an intentional buying process.

I call this type of information consumption opportunistic learning, and it occurs because humans are naturally programmed to seek rewards. We all have a mental radar system that is constantly scanning our environment to identify reward opportunities.

In a business setting, our radar system is always scanning our environment to identify information that may help us improve our company's performance and/or advance our career.

Opportunistic learning has important implications for B2B marketing, and some marketers have started to recognize its significance. The research findings discussed above show that reaching opportunistic learners is important because the impressions they form during opportunistic learning remain influential when they become involved in a buying process.

Making an impact on opportunistic learners requires marketers to use a particular approach to marketing messaging, and in my next post, I'll discuss the kind of messaging that's needed to connect with opportunistic learners.

Image courtesy of onewaystock.com via Flckr (CC).

How CMOs Can Cultivate Strategic Influence

Many marketing pundits and practitioners now believe the marketing function in most companies has less influence than it should have.

Marketers often describe this loss of influence in terms of the 4P's of the marketing mix. They frequently observe that in many companies, the marketing department is responsible for running promotional campaigns and programs, but has little influence over product, price, and place.

More broadly, many marketers complain that senior marketing leaders often don't have a meaningful role in the formulation of their company's business strategy.

Recent surveys by Marketing Week and McKinsey & Company have shown that one or both of these situations exist at many companies.

Virtually all marketers agree that rebuilding the strategic influence of the marketing function is important, but it's not always clear how this goal can be achieved.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the ultimate solution is for the CMO* to be seen as a trusted source of the market, customer, and competitor intelligence the company's senior leaders need to formulate a sound business strategy.

However, this level of trust doesn't develop overnight. Therefore, a critical question for the CMO of an organization where the marketing function has little influence on business strategy is:  "How can I begin building this level of trust?"

The short answer is that the CMO should identify the elements of their company's business strategy that are based on inadequate information about markets, customers, or competitors and begin providing that information to other senior company leaders.

To execute this approach, a CMO needs to perform three tasks.

Describe the Strategy

The first step is to describe the major components of their company's business strategy. Every company's competitive situation is unique, so every company's business strategy will also be unique. However, all complete strategies will address a core group of issues that are common to most companies.

For example, a complete strategy will describe how the company segments the market for its products or services and identify the company's target market. The strategy will also describe how the company's products or services will deliver value to customers that is superior to the value provided by competitors.

A complete strategy will also describe how the company will price its products or services and why its current pricing levels are competitive in the relevant market.

The goal of this step is for the CMO to develop an accurate and detailed description of the elements of their company's business strategy that collectively determine competitive success.

Identify Sources of Information

The second task the CMO must perform is to identify the information that was used to make the choices embodied in their company's business strategy.

For example, what information did company leaders rely on to define the company's target market? What data or information did they use to determine what the company's primary customer value propositions should be? How did they determine what new product or service features or capabilities to develop and bring to market?

The goal of this work is to enable the CMO to identify areas where more accurate or comprehensive information about relevant markets, customers, and competitors will enable company leaders to make more informed strategic choices.

Share Strategy-Critical Information

Once CMOs have identified the areas of greatest need for better insights about markets, customers, and/or competitors, they can begin to gather relevant information and share that information with other senior company leaders.

The most effective way to share this information will largely depend on the nature and quality of the CMO's relationships with the other senior company leaders, particularly their CEO.

Most CMOs will probably want to avoid any suggestion that they are criticizing their company's current business strategy. Instead, CMOs should position their work as providing information that may be useful and valuable during the next strategy development cycle.

This low-kay, indirect approach is primarily intended for situations where a company's CMO is not playing a prominent role in the development of the company's business strategy. When they have strong relationships with other C-level executives, CMOs can use a more direct and aggressive approach.

The approach described in this post will require a fair amount of work, and it won't always produce immediate visible results. But, the long-term payoff more than justifies the effort.

When a company's CEO and other senior leaders view the CMO as a trusted source of the market, customer, and competitor insights that will help them formulate better business strategy, they will place greater value on, and give greater weight to, the CMO's views and perspectives.

*****

*In this post, I've used the term "CMO" to mean the senior marketing leader in a company regardless of the specific title that individual holds.

Image courtesy of SMcD22 via Flickr (CC).

NetLine's Latest Data Reveals How Business Professionals Actually Consume Content

Source:  NetLine Corporation

NetLine Corporation recently published its "2026 State of B2B Content Consumption & Demand Report." NetLine has been conducting this research for ten years, and its annual reports have consistently provided a wealth of real-world insights about how business professionals actually consume marketing content. 

NetLine operates a content syndication platform, and the 2026 report is based on data from 7.2 million content registrations on the platform in 2025. The NetLine research is particularly valuable for two reasons.

First, it captures the real-world content consumption behaviors of business professionals. The data used for the NetLine report was not derived from surveys or interviews, but rather from actual engagements with B2B marketing content.

And second, the report is based on first-party data. The business professionals who use the NetLine platform voluntarily share information about themselves and the organizations they work for in exchange for access to the content resources available on the platform.

For these reasons, the NetLine report provides detailed information about the business professionals who are consuming B2B marketing content and the actual consumption behaviors of those professionals. I encourage you to review the full 35-page report.

Content Consumption Declined in 2025

Overall B2B content consumption fell 8.6% in 2025 compared to 2024, as measured by registrations on the NetLine platform. However, NetLine's data shows that total demand for B2B gated marketing content has grown 57.6% since 2021.

Content consumption by C-level executives increased in 2025, up 4% year-over-year. In 2025, C-level executives accounted for 14.5% of the total demand on the NetLine platform.

Demand for content about artificial intelligence continued its dramatic growth in 2025. The explosive growth began in 2023 when demand for AI-related content increased 6.6x compared to 2022. In 2025, demand for such content grew 28.5% year-over-year.

Most Popular Content Formats

The ten most requested content formats in 2025 were:

1. eBooks
2. Cheat Sheets
3. Guides
4. White Papers
5. Research Reports
6. Articles
7. Tips and Tricks Guides
8. On-Demand Webinars
9. Live Webinars
10. Playbooks

NetLine noted in its report that six of the ten most popular content formats saw year-over-year declines in registration volume in 2025. Registrations for eBooks, the most popular format, fell 16.7% last year, but they still accounted for nearly half (48.8%) of all 2025 content registrations.

Among the ten most popular formats, on-demand webinars had the largest increase in demand in 2025, with the number of registrations growing by 46.2%

The Consumption Gap Widens

One of the most useful insights provided by the NetLine report relates to the consumption gap, which is defined as the time between the moment a content resource is requested and the moment it's opened for consumption. This data point is important because it provides a guide for timing follow-up contact with potential buyers.

In 2025, the average consumption gap was 47.7 hours, up from 38.5 hours in 2024. The consumption gap has varied over the years. Before 2024, the largest gap recorded by NetLine was 33.3 hours in 2021, and the smallest was 27.1 hours in 2018. The lesson here is that you should wait at least two days before you try to follow up with people who have requested your content via NetLine. 

Purchase Timing

Overall, the B2B professionals using the Netline platform in 2025 were 17.7% more likely to indicate they would probably make a purchase within the next 12 months, compared to 2024. The purchase time frame that saw the largest year-over-year increase was 6 - 12 months, which grew 78.6% in 2025.

Content Consumption and Buyer Purchase Intent

For the past few years, NetLine's research has revealed correlations between the content format a potential buyer chooses to consume and purchase timing. In the 2025 report, NetLine identified five content formats that are more likely to be associated with a buying decision within the next 12 months - trend reports, playbooks, case studies, newsletters, and infographics.

One format that is notably absent from this list is eBooks. Despite being the most frequently requested type of content in 2025, eBooks were not strongly associated with shorter-term purchase intent. This shouldn't be surprising because most eBooks are designed to appeal to potential buyers who are in the earlier stages of their buying journey.

Surveyed CEOs Paint a Mixed Picture of CMO Performance

Source:  Boathouse Group, Inc.

Surveyed CEOs gave their CMO high marks for alignment with CEO and business objectives, effectiveness at building cross-functional relationships, and understanding company financials. But, on the critical business issues of strategy and growth, the reviews were more mixed.

That's the central message of "The Boathouse Fifth Annual CEO Study" by Boathouse Group, Inc., a marketing agency based in Waltham, Massachusetts.

About the Study

Boathouse has been conducting this research since 2021. The fifth edition (2026) of the study is based on a survey of 150 CEOs at U.S. companies. Survey respondents led companies having annual revenue that ranged from $250 million to more than $1 billion.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of the respondents were with companies having more than 1,000 employees. Respondents were affiliated with companies operating in 16 industry verticals, with healthcare being the largest cohort (19% of all respondents).

The survey was conducted January 6 - 26, 2026.

The primary goal of this research was to capture the perspectives of CEOs regarding their CMO and their company's marketing organization. The 2026 survey also included questions about how CEOs shape strategy and about their investment in, adoption of, and objectives for artificial intelligence.

The Boathouse study has two obvious limitations. First, the study is based on a survey with a relatively small number of respondents. And second, Boathouse does not claim that its survey panel is a representative sample of all CEOs. Therefore, the quantitative survey findings cannot be "projected" to all CEOs.

Where CMOs are Performing Well

Most of the CEOs surveyed by Boathouse were positive on several aspects of their CMO's performance. For example:

• 79% of the survey respondents said their CMO shows a strong commitment to the CEO and Board of Directors. That was up slightly from 76% in the 2025 survey.

• 72% said their CMO understands their company's financials, up substantially from 61% in the 2025 survey.

• 85% said their CMO builds trust within their company, down only slightly from 87% in the 2025 survey.

In addition, 59% of the surveyed CEOs said their CMO understands their company's business goals, and 70% said the metrics used by marketing are fully (12%) or mostly (58%) aligned with their company's primary business metrics.

Mixed Reviews on Strategy

 The CEOs participating in the Boathouse survey gave mixed reviews to their CMO when it comes to strategy.

First, the good news. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of the survey respondents said their CMO leads (8%) or actively contributes to (60%) the formulation of their company's strategy. This finding suggests that many CMOs have successfully won a seat at the strategy table.

However, just under 20% of the surveyed CEOs gave their CMO a grade of "A" on strategy. That was down from nearly 35% in the 2025 edition of the survey.

The survey report doesn't provide an explanation for the declining percentage of "A" grades, but it may be due to rising expectations. As more CEOs include their CMO in the strategy development process, some will have high expectations for the quality of the CMO's contribution.

The Good and Not-So-Good News on Driving Growth

The CEOs surveyed by Boathouse also gave mixed reviews to their CMO (and their marketing organization) on driving revenue growth.

The survey findings clearly show that CEOs view growth as a critical business issue. Thirty-two percent (32%) of the survey respondents identified "growth performance" as the area of their business where they feel most personally exposed or vulnerable as CEO. The next highest percentage (21%) was for "competitive threats."

CEOs also see growth as the primary mandate of their marketing organization, with 65% of the survey respondents citing "drive sales growth and/or grow market shares" as marketing's top priority.

The good news is that 59% of the surveyed CEOs indicated they are "confident" in marketing's ability to make a "meaningful" contribution to growth.

The not-so-good news is that only 13% of the survey respondents said they are "very confident" that their marketing organization can demonstrate the incremental lift provided by marketing investments.

While a general feeling of confidence is good, it may not be sufficient to persuade CEOs to prioritize marketing spending when difficult capital allocation decisions must be made. So, CMOs and other marketing leaders must keep working to provide credible proof of the financial impacts of their marketing activities and programs.

[Research Round-Up] Notable Insights from the 2026 Edition of "The CMO Survey"

Source:  "The CMO Survey"

(This month's Research Round-Up focuses exclusively on the 2026 edition of "The CMO Survey." This research has been conducted since 2008, and it consistently provides valuable information about marketing spending, practices, and trends.)

The findings of the 35th edition of "The CMO Survey" were published near the end of last month. "The CMO Survey" is directed by Dr. Christine Moorman and is sponsored by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, Deloitte, and the American Marketing Association.

From 2008 through 2024, the survey was conducted semi-annually. In 2025, the research shifted to an annual survey.

The 2026 survey results are based on responses from 308 marketing leaders as U.S. for-profit companies. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents (65.0%) were affiliated with B2B companies, and 97% were VP-level or above. Respondents worked at companies operating in 15 industry sectors. The 2026 survey was conducted January 7 - January 29, 2026.

In addition to overall response data, "The CMO Survey" provides response data by four economic sectors (B2B product companies, B2B services companies, B2C product companies, and B2C services companies), 15 industry sectors, company size, and percentage of online sales.

The data discussed in this post is based on the responses of all survey participants unless otherwise indicated. The percentages and other numerical values in this post are the mean of applicable survey responses, also unless otherwise indicated.

A Tale of Economic Concern

Concerns about the health of the U.S. economy echo throughout the 2026 edition of "The CMO Survey." In every edition of the survey, the researchers have asked participants to rate their optimism about the U.S. economy on a 100-point scale, with 100 being the most optimistic. The 2026 survey respondents put their level of optimism at 56.8.

To place this optimism rating in context, the rating given by respondents in the June 2020 edition of the survey (at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic) was 50.9. The lowest optimism rating ever given in the 18-year history of "The CMO Survey" was 47.7 in both the February 2009 survey (during the "Great Recession") and the February 2013 survey.

There was little difference in the level of optimism expressed by marketers at B2B companies and those at B2C companies.

Economic concerns seem to have had a substantial impact on marketing budgets. The marketing leaders participating in the 2026 survey reported that marketing budgets represented 9.0% of total company revenue. That was down from 9.4% in the 2025 edition of the survey.

The 2026 survey respondents also reported that marketing spending increased by only 1.7% over the 12 months preceding the survey. That was the slowest growth of marketing spending since 2021.

Economic uncertainty also appears to have prompted changes in some marketing priorities. When participants in the 2026 survey were asked how they are changing their customer targeting strategies in response to recent changes in economic conditions, the most frequently selected change - chosen by 43.7% of survey respondents - was "increase our focus on building loyalty / retention of existing customers."

The percentages of B2B marketers who indicated they were making this change were very similar - 43.3% of marketers in B2B product companies and 42.0% of those in B2B services companies.

It's noteworthy, however, that about one-third of B2B survey respondents said they were making no change in their customer targeting strategies, compared to only 26.5% of all survey respondents.

Other Notable Findings

Here are a few other findings from the 2026 survey that I found notable and interesting.

Importance of Marketing Capabilities and Talent - Survey respondents viewed their marketing capabilities as critical to their company's business success (5.9 on a 7-point scale), and 34.5% of the respondents said that "having the right talent" is the most important factor for driving future revenue growth. But . . .

Spending on Training & Development Is at a 9-Year Low - Survey respondents said they currently devote only 3.8% of their marketing budget to training and development. This is the lowest percentage seen in "The CMO Survey" since the February 2017 edition of the research.

Use of Generative AI - Survey respondents said their company is using generative AI technologies in 22.4% of its marketing activities, up from 15.1% in the 2025 edition of the survey.

*****

"The CMO Survey" does not claim that its survey panel is a representative sample of all marketers. So the survey findings cannot be "projected" to all marketers. Nevertheless, "The CMO Survey" provides valuable insights about the current state of marketing, and I recommend that you read the full survey report.