Marketing budgets are rising. Confidence isn't

Two numbers from the same quarter, moving in opposite directions.

UK marketing budgets grew by a net 6.9% in Q2 2026, according to the IPA Bellwether. Almost a quarter of firms raised their spend. Over the same three months, the share of those firms expecting better financial prospects at their own business fell from +0.6% to -9.6%.

So companies put more money into marketing while feeling worse about their own year.

That is not as odd as it first sounds, and it matters more to a small budget than a large one.

Spending more into a less certain year

Large organisations can afford to spend through uncertainty. They have enough activity running that a poor quarter on one channel is absorbed elsewhere, and enough data to see it happening.

A small business does not have that cushion. If you have £2,000 a month, one badly aimed campaign is your quarter. The tolerance for a guess is close to zero, which is exactly why the second half of the Bellwether data is the part worth reading.

The line item that got cut

Events led the growth at +11.0%. Video spend hit a seven quarter high.

Market research fell to -4.1%, one of only two lines in the whole table to drop.

Read those together and the picture is firms buying more activity and less evidence about whether the activity works. More output, less checking. In a quarter where their own confidence was falling, they spent more on doing and less on knowing.

For an SME that pattern is expensive. You cannot afford to buy your way out of a bad assumption.

Three questions before the money moves

Before you commit a smaller budget, three questions are usually enough to expose whether there is a plan underneath it.

Who is this for? Not a segment. Name ten of them. If you cannot list ten real businesses or ten real people who should see this, the targeting is a hope rather than a decision.

What do you want them to do next, and how will you know they did it? One action, one measure. A reply, a booked call, a form completed. Impressions will not tell you whether anything landed.

What are you willing to stop, to pay for it? This is the one people skip. A budget that only ever gets added to has never been prioritised. If nothing comes off the list, you have not chosen, you have accumulated.

Three honest answers usually shorten the plan and sharpen what is left of it.

You don't need a commissioned study

Market research sounds like something with a five figure invoice attached. For a small business it is ten conversations.

Ask your last ten customers two things. What nearly stopped them buying, and where they looked before they found you.

A fortnight of those calls will tell you more about what your next campaign should say than any keyword tool, because you get the objection in their words rather than yours. You also usually find at least one route to you that you had no idea existed, which changes where the next budget should go.

That is research. It costs you time and no money. It is also, judging by the Bellwether table, the line most firms decided to cut this quarter.

Budget answers how much

The gap between the two Bellwether numbers is really a gap between two different questions.

A budget answers how much. It cannot answer what for. When confidence is falling and spend is rising at the same time, that second question is the one going unanswered, and it is the one that decides whether the money does anything.

If you are setting a marketing budget for the next quarter and want the thinking done before the money moves, a 90-day plan starts at £2,500. It is deliberately short, because committing to three months you can actually see is more useful than a year you are guessing at.