Marketing services spending in the U.S. 2017-2021, by category

In the United States, marketing services spending devoted to telemarketing amounted to 61.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. Each year, the largest share of marketing services spending is attributed to sales promotion. In total, spending in 2020 reached 244.7 billion U.S. dollars.

Outsourcing of marketing activities

Organizations wanting to promote their products or services are faced with a choice – build a marketing team as part of their company structure or hire external contractors who will handle the marketing activities for them. There is also a third option – to do both. Based on recent data this is the most popular choice, as the majority of B2B companies go for the mix of in-house and outsourced marketing teams.

Marketing outsourcing during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

In the early stages of the pandemic many companies had to make quick financial decisions in order to minimize the potential losses caused by declining business. Contrary to expectations, budget cuts of outsourcing spending were not as high as could have been anticipated. While some CMOs, for example, saw a definite decrease in outsourcing of marketing activities, the majority of marketers said there was no visible change in this regard, indicating that outsourcing was not the top priority saving for industry representatives at that time.