Research from The Financial Brand reveals the top concerns, tough issues and difficult challenges financial marketing executives face as they set their budgets for next year.

Nearly half of all bank and credit union marketers admit they struggle to quantify the results of their efforts, and two-thirds say they need to be doing a better job quantifying marketing ROI.

Those are among the results of a survey fielded by The Financial Brand in early September, 2013. Roughly 80 financial institutions participated in the survey. Banks and credit unions of all asset classes participated in the study: 25% had over $1 billion in assets, 40% had less than $250 million and the rest fell in between.

The average asset size was roughly $1.2 billion, with an average marketing budget of $837,377, which works out to an average % of marketing budget to assets: 0.0702%. The median asset size was $325 million, and the median marketing budget was $350,000.

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