The new ClickZ and Search Engine Watch Benchmark Survey 2020 released over the weekend brings together responses from an across-industries sample of board members, C-level and Director+ level executives who tended to say they consider their current marketing to be average in terms of achieving marketing goals.

46% of these senior marketers surveyed said their budgets are staying the same during the COVID-19 pandemic, while 28% said their budgets are increasing and 25% said they're decreasing.

45% said their spend on marketing technology is staying the same, while 33% said it will increase and 22% said they will spend less.

On average, these marketers said that 40% of their budget is spent on marketing technology.

Technologies marketers said they most want to evaluate or buy now are:

1. Search and social advertising, cited by 66% of marketers
2. Mobile marketing and Video advertising (TIE) (53% each)
3. Display and programmatic advertising (44%)
4. Native or content advertising (34%)

Technologies in which marketers said they most want to invest were:

1. Mobile and web analytics (58%)
2. Marketing analytics, performance and attribution (53%)
3. Audience/marketing data and data enhancement (45%)
4. Business/customer intelligence and data science (34%)

Top areas of investment in content marketing and user experience cited by marketers were:

1. Web experience building and management (50%)
2. SEO or E-mail marketing (TIE) (47% each)
3. Video marketing or Optimization/personalization/testing (TIE) (40% each)
4. Mobile apps or Marketing automation (TIE) (32% each)

For brand relations and customer sentiment, marketers most favored investing in:

1. Social media marketing and monitoring (62%)
2. Customer experience (46%)
3. CRM or Events, meetings and webinars (TIE) (41% each)
4. Advocacy, loyalty and referrals or Influencers (TIE) (39% each)
5. Community and reviews (33%)
6. Conversational marketing/chat (31%)
7. Call analytics and management (28%)

Comments:

Notice the recurring themes of Search, Social, Mobile and Video. And also the fact that only 25% of these very senior people said they are spending less on marketing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

These are people whose continued employment is conditional on their doing marketing that produces sales and profits for their companies. I believe that makes them pretty good role models for all business owners and marketers. If 3 out of 4 are keeping their marketing spend at pre-COVID-19 levels, or increasing it, chances are you'll benefit by doing the same.