Marketing Investment Remains Proportional With Increasing Revenue, While Sales Expenses Accelerate

As revenue increases, B2B organizations realize efficiencies that allow marketing investment to remain proportionally the same, but this is not the case for sales expenses. Forrester’s B2B Sales Survey, 2024 and Forrester’s Marketing Budgets Survey, 2024, reveal that marketing investment as a percentage of revenue is stable at 7% to 8% regardless of annual revenue, but sales expense as a percentage of revenue grows. Many marketing costs decline with volume, but sales activities involve human effort and are harder to scale, especially in larger firms. Marketing and sales leaders must partner to ensure budgets work together and are large enough to meet growth and sufficiency targets.