Expected:

The vast majority of marketing teams are relatively small, with 5 or less people. It’s rare to see a marketing department with 20+ people.

Unexpected:

There are a lot of marketing-team-of-one’s. It’s often the founder, CEO, or first marketing hire pulling all the weight.

Expected:

It's no surprise that many companies work with marketing contractors and freelancers given how many specialized disciplines and skill sets there are. 66% work with at least one!

Unexpected:

16% working with four or more contractors and freelancers is actually a pretty large amount. Essentially, whole marketing teams can be assembled using contractors and freelancers.

Expected:

For the companies that do work with an agency, it's not surprising that they mostly invest in a relationship with a single main service provider to partner with.

Unexpected:

I expected the number of companies working with an agency to be much higher than 19%. At the same time, this would make sense given the popularity of contractors and freelancers who can operate like a micro-agency.

Expected:

Marketing tools add up, and fast. Expect to pay 5 figures annually as a rule of thumb.

Unexpected:

With the rise of freemium plans, it seems a decent portion get away with spending virtually nothing on marketing tools. This is likely skewed towards very early stage startups, but still a higher percentage than I would originally expect.

Expected:

The number of marketing tools closely correlates to the diversity of marketing skill sets and disciplines (which is a lot!).

Unexpected:

Given how large the MarTech Lumascape is, it's surprising to see how many companies get by with just five or fewer dedicated marketing tools. Many features and product functions are being bundled into a single tool.