Founded in August 2008, The CMO Survey is administered twice a year via an Internet survey. Questions repeat to observe trends over time and new questions are added to tap into marketing trends.

The CMO Survey 2019:  Highlights & Insights

1. B2B marketers are the most optimistic as are medium-sized companies ($100-499 million). Percent Internet sales has little impact on differentiating optimism among marketers. Energy and Transportation companies are the most optimistic with Communications/ Media companies on the other end of the spectrum.
2. Optimism drops across economic sectors, with a drastic 80% of B2C Product companies feeling less optimistic. Optimism declined the least for large companies measured by sales revenue ($1-9.9 billion) and companies with 1-10% in Internet sales. companies with no Internet sales are markedly more pessimistic.
3. Marketers expect customers to place a stronger emphasis on price (48% increase) and trusting relationships (44% increase) while pressures for superior product quality have dropped by 32%.
4. Consumer Packaged Good companies expect partner prices to rise. Consequently, B2C Products companies expect partner volume to decrease, with more ambitious forecasts across all other economic sectors. Tech companies expect stronger purchase volumes and purchases of related products and services from partners.
5. Social media spending falls to levels last seen in August 2017, reversing the strong positive growth recorded in the two previous surveys. One reason may be that despite massive financial investments, social media is rated as contributing only moderate value to company performance (3.3 on a seven-point scale where 7=very highly and 1=not at all). Expectations remain strong, however, as social media investment is expected to rise by 73% over the next five years. Despite these weak contribution ratings, the use of social media has increased in critical strategic activities, including building brands, customer acquisition, customer retention, product/service introductions, and customer service. Companies prioritize search engine optimization and other paid digital media over other digital expenditures.
6. Role of outside agencies in social media activities reaches highest point in over 5 years. Consumer packaged goods companies are most reliant on outside agencies (45.0%), while Manufacturing (10.2%) and Education companies are the least reliant (11.7%). In general, large companies ($500m to $10b in revenues) are most reliant on agencies (35.6%).