The story most marketing leaders are told about their budget is that it is being cut, but the data says something more awkward. It is being held.
The latest IPA Bellwether Report found that 59.4% of UK companies left marketing budgets unchanged in Q2 2026. Around 23.8% increased spend against 16.9% who cut it, giving a net balance of +6.9%. Budgets are, in aggregate, holding up.
But confidence is not. Over the same period, the share of firms expecting better prospects for their own business turned negative, and sentiment about the industry as a whole fell to a net balance of -25.1%.
That combination (flat budgets and falling confidence) is the operating condition most marketing leaders are hiring into – and that changes what a good marketing hire looks like.
Flat is not the same as static
Within those unchanged budgets, money is moving. Events remained the strongest category for increased investment, and video was the only main media sub-category to grow, reaching a seven-quarter high. Market research has now seen six consecutive quarters of cuts.
So the job is not to spend less. It is to decide what stops so that something else can start. That is a different skill from the one most marketing job specs describe.
What that means for the hire
The ability to kill things
A flat budget makes every new initiative a trade. The leaders who make progress in these conditions are the ones who can retire an activity that people are attached to and defend the decision commercially. Ask a candidate what they stopped doing, and why, before you ask what they launched.
Commercial fluency, not just channel fluency
When the board is nervous, marketing spend is scrutinised first. A marketing leader who can hold a conversation about margin, pipeline conversion and payback period keeps the budget. One who reports reach and engagement loses it, however good the work is.
Breadth over channel specialism
Smaller teams mean fewer specialists. The most useful hires now tend to be people who can go deep in one or two areas and stay credible across the rest, rather than a single-channel expert who needs a full team around them to function.
A clear view on agency versus in-house
Flat budgets bring this question back every year, and it is rarely answered well. The useful candidates have a considered position rather than a default one, and can explain which capabilities are worth owning permanently, which are better retained, and what the switching cost of moving between the two actually is. The wrong answer is usually the one driven by a previous employer’s structure rather than by this business’s needs.
What not to over-index on
The assumption that a younger, more digitally native hire will deliver more for less has not aged well. Digital capability is now table stakes at every level, and it is not what separates candidates. Judgement about where not to spend is much rarer, and it usually comes with experience of a downturn.
The other trap is hiring for the plan rather than the conditions. A leader recruited to run a growth push will be measured, in practice, on holding performance steady while proving value to a nervous board. Be honest in the brief about which job it is, because candidates who discover the difference after joining tend not to stay.
Three questions that surface the difference
- “What did you stop doing last year, and who was unhappy about it?” You are listening for a decision made against internal pressure.
- “Show me how you argued for budget you did not get.” The reasoning matters more than the outcome.
- “What would you not touch in the first six months?” Restraint is a strong signal in a role where the temptation is to rebuild everything.
Find your next marketing leader
We recruit marketing and commercial leadership across sectors, and we spend a lot of time helping clients work out whether they need a builder, an operator or a steadier before the brief goes out.
