Are marketers overwhelmed in 2025?

Earlier this year, one UK report showed what we already knew—marketers are overworked, overwhelmed… and underpaid.

This coincides with another report we covered last year, saying that half of marketers are fearing burnout, especially in the 24-35 age range.

Add layoffs, financial pressure, combined with the rise of new tech like Gen AI—and you get an amalgam of uncertainty.

Plus, there is a strain on mental health as a consequence of non-work factors. With that, you also get a pretty unstable, near-burnout environment.

This research will dig into more data that looks at whether marketers are truly feeling overwhelmed, as well as try to suggest some solutions.

More than half of marketers are feeling overwhelmed and exhausted

We start with the key finding:

Are you feeling it, too? It’s okay. You’d be among the majority.

According to stats, 58% of marketers are feeling overwhelmed. Around the same are feeling undervalued, while half of the marketers are emotionally exhausted. Ouch.

Besides that, there seems to be a lack of enjoyment (48.2%) and feeling of detachment around almost half the people in the industry. 

And if you’re among them…well, you see that you’re not alone.

The Crew’s opinion: This is a signal that the current pace and expectations in marketing might be misaligned with what people can realistically sustain. 

The payment vs work gap is widening

What causes this feeling? Many things, but we can name the key stuff:

• Marketers have to work more and wear many hats.
• The tech is evolving quickly and getting more complex.
• The amount of time and effort isn’t reflected in the compensation. 

We’ll start breaking down the state of the salaries—and how it affects marketers’ well-being.

Some marketers might work more hours than they should

Are marketers working overtime? Are they adequately compensated? 

A report we found about UK marketers can answer that:

Around half of all marketers claim they work equally to what they’re contracted to. 

However, 33% say that they’re working somewhat more, while 10% work much more. Compared to that, only 2% say they’re working less.  

There might be some bias here, of course—everybody feels they’re earning at least as much as they should, right?

But the overall feeling does seem to indicate that there’s more work expected for the same pay.

If you’re a decision maker in your marketing team, and your team is putting up more hours than they should… You might want to audit your workflows.

Are you creating too much content without clear goals? Are approvals and rewrites dragging people into late nights? Sometimes the issue isn’t bandwidth, but misalignment. 

Ask yourself what you can stop doing without losing impact, and look for where you can reclaim the time without losing any quality.

Marketers believe salaries don’t reflect their work, nor are they aligned with the rising costs of living

Why don’t marketers feel like going to work? 

Probably because their quality of life deteriorates with every passing day. 

At least that’s what we can extract from the same report:

60% of UK marketers think salaries haven’t increased with the costs of living. And they are probably right. What’s it like at your place? Probably the same. 

Other top reasons include poor pay across the industry (38%), doing more than their role requires (37%), and being unable to save for long-term goals (36%). All familiar issues.

With the environment in a volatile state, there’s not a lot you can do to improve it. No matter if you’re an employer or an employee.

Remote options, time-off, or career growth paths can compensate when the time is tough. So consider asking for it, or offering it—depending on your role. 

Also, use market benchmarks to negotiate fairly.

Working more for less? Yes.

When the budget flow gets cut, marketing departments are first on the chopping block.

And if you’re in the industry, you’ve probably felt a lot of turbulence as a consequence of a tough economy and disruptive factors such as the emergence of generative AI. 

The cuts and layoffs usually leave those who “survive” with an even bigger task on their hands—split the work among the remnants.

But this leads to stats like these:

Nearly half of all marketers are forced to take on more work for the same pay. And it cuts across all seniority levels.

And remember—some marketers got tons of extra work and a minor uptick in pay. The situation might be worse. 

The most affected respondents are C-suite executives and management. Which makes sense, given that they’re usually well-equipped and skillful to take over operations. 

And when there’s a lack of personnel, you need to take a step down and put out fires.

The Crew’s opinion: Teams are leaner, workloads heavier, and expectations keep rising. What used to be a two-person job is often quietly handed off to one person. And if you’re not careful, it becomes the new normal.

Worse still? This kind of “invisible promotion” often flies under the radar.

What you can do if you’re feeling it: First, document everything. Keep a clear record of added responsibilities, outcomes, and time spent. When performance reviews roll around, you’ll have proof of impact.

Second, be proactive about renegotiating scope. If you’re doing more, set up a conversation to ask if it’s temporary or permanent. 

A simple question like “What should I deprioritize to make space for this?” can force clarity.

And finally, if pay isn’t on the table right now, see if other values can be. Flexible time? Leaner schedule? Compensation doesn’t always have to be cash.

Still, it should always feel fair. 

The channel and tool proliferation is real

How many martech tools do you know?

Think about your own stack:

A CMS, an ad platform, email automation, a CRM, maybe AI for content, something for SEO, a place to design posts…

That’s already a mini ecosystem.

Now zoom out. In 2011, there were just 150 official martech tools. Officially. 

What do you think the number is today, 14 years later?

Here’s the overview:

Yes, this is real. Today, there are over 15K MarTech tools that you can use. 

Now, even if most of these tools are solving similar problems, just the thought of having to choose between them makes for a good case of choice fatigue.

Plus, think about managing all the different tools. More apps. More logins. More dashboards… and more complexity. That overhead adds to the burnout.

What can you do: Do a quarterly “tool audit.”

List every tool your team uses. Remove overlaps, ditch what’s unused, and consolidate where possible. Sometimes, doing less tech is the productivity hack you need!

The trouble of managing multiple channels

As online marketing grew, it diversified and segmented. 

Nowadays, you can name 10 to 15 online marketing channels on the top of your head, while there’s certainly a lot more that you could “test out.”

And while diversification is great on paper, the actual investment of time, money, effort—and the expectation that follows—can take a heavy toll on marketers. 

If you nodded your head to that, you’re not alone:

There are some major concerns when it comes to the proliferation of marketing channels:

• Syncing channels becomes more and more complex:  Marketing teams need to connect the dots between various channels, including data tracking, attribution, and budget justifications.
• Each channel requires its own separate budget. Let’s say you want to run Google Ads on top of Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, and also do SEO and email marketing… yikes.
• The need for specialists for each channel increases. But unless you’re a huge company, you’ll likely either hire, or be that jack-of-all-trades, who neither has the skills, nor the time to acquire them as it juggles between strategy and operations.

In total, 59% of marketer respondents feel that the need for specialists makes online marketing challenging, while 55% feel overwhelmed by the channels they have to manage.

Knowing that, we can assume that half of our marketing colleagues are under stress and close to burnout just due to the number of channels. 

And that’s not counting job uncertainty and decreasing budgets, for example.

Marketing is becoming ever more complex

Let’s circle back to 2020 or 2021. 

If you were in the industry then, what would you say—will marketing become more complex? The answer was probably a resounding yes. 

But here’s a twist. It became even more complex than most of us thought:

According to reports, an average marketing team managed 7 marketing channels in 2021 and were expecting to manage 8.5 today. But today, it’s actually closer to 10.

And the average number of marketing channels per business is expected to rise to 15 soon.

At the same time, marketers had around 5 tools in their tech stack on average. They expected to add one or two more in the next couple of years. 

Today, the average is 11 and expected to be 16 in two years.

Finally, marketers worked with 4 marketing product or service providers in 2021 and now that’s close to 6. It is expected to rise to 7.5.

Piling on the pressure: Amid the complexity rising, the same report concludes that teams must do more with less as budgets are not keeping pace with expectations.

Bottom line: Many faces of ROI concerns

Marketers are concerned about their returns.

But the biggest reason why they’re concerned is telling:

More than half of all social media marketers see the sheer existence of so many platforms as a big challenge. 

If you’re only doing organic social media marketing—and you have tools that help you post on multiple platforms and schedule—you still have to develop content for those platforms.

You have to maintain interactions, track data, test different content, and experiment, since content on LinkedIn and content on Instagram are two different worlds.

Now add social media ads on top. 

There’s also uncertainty about attribution, tracking, or failing to connect the KPIs with business objectives. 

Consequently, this leads to marketers being uncertain of their strategy, as 31% of respondents clearly say in the chart above.

Do marketers experience imposter syndrome?

Yes, a lot of them do. 

Even the C-suite executives:

According to this chart, imposter syndrome is a near-universal experience across gender and seniority.

Women report the highest rate: 84.9% say they’ve felt like imposters at work. Men show a slightly lower rate at 72.2%.

It’s not just a junior problem either:

• 82% of Senior Managers have experienced it.
• Even CMOs and VPs, those who’ve “made it”, aren’t immune: 77.8% admit they’ve felt like they don’t belong.
• Among Junior Managers and Assistants, the rate is 78.7%.

The bad news? The imposter syndrome among marketers doesn’t diminish with progress. 

And that is closely related to the immense pressure of being a marketer. That constant feeling of having to validate your work gets more important as you rise through the ranks.

Even if you’re doing well, there’s always a chance for a wave of layoffs that would take you with it, or that another department might take credit. You’re first to take criticism too.

And there’s also the expectation to know plenty about different channels, KPIs, to know how to handle a bunch of martech tools. 

This all leads to the feeling of not doing enough, even when you’re doing plenty. 

What can you do: For starters, normalize the feeling. If 4 out of 5 people are quietly doubting themselves, silence reinforces this illusion that “it’s just you.” 

If you’re a leader, talk about it openly and form a psychological safety for others. Support others by giving them trust and autonomy. 

How to ease the burnout?

How to Ease the Burnout?

Finally, let’s discuss what you can do to minimize this feeling. 

If it exists within you. If you want to do something individually, setting boundaries, taking breaks, and finding ways to disconnect from work-related tasks during personal time​ can work. 

However, if you want to combat it in the workplace, there are a few things to try:

Stay on top of trends: It’s not easy to keep up with all the trends and channels. Luckily, this is something you and your team can do for free. And you’re already at the right place by reading this report.

Focus on channels that work, don’t give in to FOMO. It’s not always possible to be omnipresent. If a channel doesn’t work, don’t force it for the sake of being present, especially if it will stretch your budget and your team. 

Double down on one or two channels that work. Improve communication between marketing and other departments. When the going gets tough, communication is key. 

Make sure departments are on the same page and can benefit from each other, instead of pointing fingers and setting unrealistic expectations. 

Invest in education: If you have a small team and need someone to take over a channel, at least try to give them a foundation for success—which is education. Don’t just throw them at the deep end, as it will cause stress, frustration, and eventually burnout. 

Keep the flame lit

It’s not easy. 

With the economy not getting better, the emergence of AI, and the proliferation of marketing channels, many marketers are feeling overwhelmed and close to burnout.

They are often expected to manage more channels and tools with fewer resources, often without additional compensation—made worse by the need to meet high expectations from other departments.

But you can still combat burnout. 

Set boundaries, focus on effective channels, improve interdepartmental communication, and keep reading Stacked Marketer. That’s a great start.