Sales & Marketing Expenses of Microsoft

Microsoft Sales and Marketing Expenses 2002-2019

The following table shows the sales and marketing expenses of Microsoft from 2002 to 2019.

Amounts are in million dollars.

2019: Microsoft's total spending on sales and marketing grew to $18.2 billion in 2019, 14% yoy growth. Its sales and marketing expenses in 2018 had amounted to $17.5 billion.

2018: Microsoft had spent 12.70 Billion USD on sales and marketing by the third quarter of the fiscal year 2018 (1st 9 months ended March 31, 2018) as compared to 11.17 Billion USD during the same period last year. Overall, the company spent $17.5 billion on sales and marketing in 2018.

The sales and marketing expenses of Microsoft include payroll, employee benefits, stock based compensation expenses and other headcount related expenses associated with sales and marketing personnel as well as the costs of advertising, promotions, trade-shows and other forms of marketing campaigns. In 2017, sales and marketing expenses increased by 6% or 842 Million Dollars. This happened mainly because of the increased Linked In expenses plus increased investment in sales capacity for its commercial cloud business.  These expenses also included 1.3 Billion dollars related to the acquisition of Linked In.

Sources:

Annual Reports of Microsoft