Nearly Half Of B2B Marketing Leaders Believe Marketing’s Purpose Is Viewed Incorrectly This graphic compares how 89 B2B marketing leaders and marketing budget decision-makers responding to Forrester’s B2B Marketing Online Community Q2 Marketing Sentiment Survey, April 2026 said they think nonmarketers in their organization view the marketing function and how they think it should be viewed.

We have identified the following use cases as extended: market awareness amplification, marketing and demand program enablement, marketing funds/incentives management, marketing management: to partners, marketing management: with partners, marketing management: for partners, opportunity lifecycle management, and services marketplace (see Figure 4).

Figure 1 B2B Marketers Prioritize Demand Programs Forrester defines six subfunctions for B2B marketing programs: brand and communications, customer experience, demand/frontline marketing, marketing operations, partner ecosystem/channel marketing, and portfolio and product marketing. Not all organizations will have every subfunction.

Base: 621 B2B marketing budget decision-makers. Source: Forrester’s Marketing Survey, 2026. Figure 1 Technology Investment Is Both Fixed And Variable Forrester’s B2B Marketing Online Community Budgets Survey, April 2026 provides further context on marketing technology investment.

Mean marketing investment: global/central marketing budget, 74%; regional marketing budget, 13%; and business unit marketing budget,14%.

The regional portfolio marketing manager acts as a subject matter expert on the needs of the region — often across multiple offerings — and a bridge between global marketing and regional marketing and sales. This role may report to regional leadership with a dotted line to the global portfolio marketing function, or vice versa.

This data snapshot is one of a series based on the Forrester’s Portfolio Marketing And Product Management Survey, 2025 .

Portfolio Marketing Leadership Defines the charter for portfolio marketing, negotiating role clarity across functions, and creating accountability for key dependencies. Defines the structure of portfolio marketing, including the roles and responsibilities that best meet the needs of the organization. Attracts and retains a high-performance portfolio marketing team and fosters a positive, collaborative culture with clear expectations and recognition.

Follow The Money: Top Strategic Initiatives Drive Portfolio Marketing Investment In Insights As part of Forrester’s Portfolio Marketing And Product Management Survey, 2025, we asked 540 portfolio decision-makers who work in portfolio/product marketing about the top strategic imitative that their organization’s portfolio/product marketing team is currently working on.

Marketing Must Align Its Own Teams Before Attempting To Align With Sales The disruptions that frontline marketing teams face risk putting them in a defensive position by reinforcing instead of eroding silos. According to Forrester’s Marketing Survey, 2025, coordinating across siloed marketing functions is one of the most frequently identified challenges with implementing marketing programs and campaigns for B2B marketing decision-makers.