Marketing leaders are entering 2027 with renewed budget confidence but Forrester's latest research suggests that simply spending more won't translate into better results.
Marketers must deal with AI reshaping how customers discover brands, how teams execute campaigns and how marketing creates value.
Increased investment alone won't be enough without new operating models, skills, and priorities, according to Forrester's 2027 Budget Planning Guides.
Sharyn Leaver, chief research officer at Forrester, said business leaders were no longer planning for a return to stability.
"The organisations that outperform in 2027 won't be those that spend the most on AI,” she said.
“They'll be the ones that invest in the foundations that make AI effective: trusted data, strong governance, organisational readiness, and the ability to continuously adapt as technology and customer behaviour evolve.”
More than 80% of business and technology leaders expect their budgets to increase over the next 12 months, with as many as one quarter anticipating growth of 10% or more.
Forrester's guides, based on a global survey of more than 2,600 decision-makers, show optimism is widespread across functions: 82% of technology decision-makers and 91% of marketers expect budget increases, while more than half of customer experience leaders anticipate spending growth of 5% or more, up from 39% a year ago.
However, Forrester warns that increasing investment without modernising operating models, strengthening data foundations and improving AI readiness will only accelerate fragmented data, duplicated work and technical debt.
Key recommendations from the guides include increasing investment in enterprise context that AI agents can act on, and in answer engine optimisation to improve brand visibility in AI-generated results.
Areas for budget reduction include tech debt that slows AI productivity and AI pilots that scale activity without organisational readiness.
Recommended areas for experimentation include synthetic data to accelerate insights generation and AI agents for marketing operations and customer-facing experiences.
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