Forrester’s message to marketers planning their 2027 budgets is that the extra money is the least important part of it. The firm published its 2027 Budget Planning Guides on 15 July, drawn from a global survey of more than 2,600 business and technology decision-makers. In it, 89% of B2B marketing decision-makers expect marketing investment to rise over the next 12 months.

What Forrester wants marketers to do with that money is redirect it. The guides name answer engine optimisation as an area to increase spending in 2027, and name AI pilots without governance, ownership or a path to scale as an area to cut. That framing follows a year of Forrester warning about the same gap. Its 2026 technology and security predictions, published on 28 October 2025, found fewer than a third of decision-makers could tie the value of AI to their organisation’s financial growth, and predicted enterprises would defer a quarter of planned AI spend into 2027.

What does Forrester tell marketers to increase in 2027?

Forrester puts answer engine optimisation at the front of its increase list for marketers, on the grounds that AI-powered answer engines now shape how buyers decide. Its own buyer research supports the point. The State Of Business Buying, 2026, published on 21 January, surveyed nearly 18,000 global business buyers and found 94% used AI during their buying process, up from 89% a year earlier. Generative AI and conversational search ranked as a more meaningful source of purchase information than vendor websites, product experts or sales.

The practical instruction follows from that finding. Rather than optimising only for search rankings, marketers are told to make content legible to AI systems and to build authority through third-party sources buyers already trust: customers, partners and industry experts. Forrester’s B2C guide extends the same logic to PR, influencer marketing and customer reviews, on the basis that AI-generated answers lean on earned sources more than owned ones.

Everything else on the increase list is less quotable and, for a working marketing team, harder. It runs to AI readiness, market intelligence, commerce media, AI-enabled planning and execution, and marketing-specific AI capabilities including AI architects, governance specialists and continuous training. Forrester also recommends experimenting with agents for campaign execution, audience generation and content production, and with synthetic data for customer research and concept testing, provided governance is in place first.

What does Forrester tell marketers to stop funding?

Forrester’s decrease list starts with AI pilots that scale activity without organisational readiness — initiatives that lack governance, clear ownership, success criteria or a defined path to scale. Technical debt is the second cut, though the guidance is narrower than the phrase suggests. Rather than trimming data-cleanup work across the board, Forrester recommends targeted fixes to data quality, data accessibility and developer or agent productivity.

A bigger budget is not, in Forrester’s framing, a reason to buy more technology. Its B2B guide tells marketers to direct spending towards platforms that clearly support business objectives, while reducing duplicate tools, integration complexity and unnecessary technical debt. Programme spend gets the same treatment. Allocations should follow buyer behaviour and market conditions rather than repeat last year’s split: reputation work funded ahead of demand generation where awareness is the constraint, retention and renewal marketing funded where purchase intent is slowing.

Forrester also warns against treating AI as a headcount exercise. Organisations are advised to redesign workflows and automate individual tasks before reducing staff in anticipation of productivity gains. Sharyn Leaver, Forrester’s chief research officer, said the organisations that outperform in 2027 “won’t be those that spend the most on AI”, pointing instead to trusted data, strong governance, organisational readiness and the ability to keep adapting.

How much bigger are 2027 marketing budgets getting?

Forrester’s survey found more than 80% of business and technology leaders expect budgets to rise over the next 12 months, with as many as a quarter anticipating growth of 10% or more. Marketers are the most confident function in the sample. Forrester’s release puts 91% of marketers and 82% of technology decision-makers among those expecting increases. Marketing-Interactive, reporting on the marketing guides on 20 July, splits that into 89% of B2B marketing decision-makers and 91% of B2C marketers. Customer experience leaders are further back, with 55% expecting growth of 5% or more, against 39% a year earlier.

Within B2B marketing, technology is set for the biggest boost. Some 80% plan to increase that line, followed by personnel and programmes at 76% each. Programmes still account for the largest share of the B2B marketing budget at 37%, with personnel and technology at 32% apiece. That distribution is what makes the guidance awkward in practice: the line most marketers plan to grow is the one Forrester is most sceptical about growing.

The mood is a reversal of last year. Forrester’s 2026 guides, published in July 2025, described leaders growing more cautious as economic uncertainty persisted, and put data literacy and employee AI readiness programmes at the top of the increase list. The 2027 guides treat volatility as permanent and move the question from whether to fund AI to where.

The detailed guides are client-only. Forrester’s public materials do not break out how much of a 2027 marketing budget it expects to go to answer engine optimisation, and the B2B report, Budget Planning Guide 2027: B2B Marketing Executives Should Drive Resilience, is available only through a Forrester subscription.