The Marketing Confidence Monitor, run by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and Bloomberg found that overall confidence has increased by almost 12 points since April, and increased by a factor of five in the last year, standing at +20.36.

However, only 55 per cent of respondents said market and customer insight was being actively used in the early stages of business planning and strategy despite over 70% of marketers reporting senior executive buy-in and support for the discipline.

The survey noted that this raised concerns that businesses were “continuing to ‘miss a trick’ when it comes to leveraging important customer insights from their marketing departments”.

In addition, marketers were feeling more upbeat about the future, with confidence in career and development prospects rising by over 13 points since April this year despite 40% of marketers in larger businesses seeing a high risk to their job security over the next 12 months. 

CIM chief executive Anne Godfrey said: “The increase in business confidence that we have seen over the past year is strong evidence that marketers have weathered the storm and that green shoots are beginning to flower. However for this to be translated into tangible and sustainable growth, businesses must embrace marketing and customer insight as a valuable contribution to their planning and strategy.”