mommyjenlin

Here at IDC's CMO Advisory Service we are in the field with our 11th annual Tech Marketing Benchmarks Study. I would like to offer an invitation to participate to marketing executives across the industry.  Have you ever wondered,  "Is my marketing organization receiving enough budget to compete?" or " Exactly how much  should I be spending on marketing automation?" If so, IDC's CMO Advisory Service's benchmark survey has been helping senior marketers answer questions like these for over 10 years! Below are the essential "need to knows" around our survey and further down I'll dive into all the great value of benchmarking your marketing organization. Let's get started: What are the benefits? Complimentary copy of our 2014 Marketing Investment Planner  to benchmark your company's marketing data against the industry's data. Receive an invitation to our client only telebriefing held by IDC Analysts.  What is needed?  Email me ( sm...

Here at the CMO Advisory Service, we recently closed up our 2013 Barometer Study which includes data from senior level marketers working at some of the largest Tech companies in the world. While there are a lot of great insights from this study, these senior level marketers made it very clear that their highest priority is "Proving Marketing's Value", or in other words, that always elusive marketing ROI. While this quest(ion) is nothing new to marketers, as our industry continues its transformation, marketing ROI is becoming an even more pressing topic. We see this truth in our surveys, we hear it from clients, and it is actively being discussed at industry events. This year we launched our   Chief Marketing Officer ROI Matrix  (see the image to the right) in an effort to give participants a look into their own return on investment from marketing and continue the conversation. There is no easy answer here (otherwise my days would not be quite as busy), but I have 3 steps...

The IDC CMO and Sales advisory services held their most recent client leadership meeting in Santa Clara on June 5th. One of the key topics of the day was sales enablement. The ensuing dialog between the sales and marketing execs in the room was as impassioned as it was ineffective. Many of the usual themes were expressed (in the nicest possible way): "marketing leads are crap", "sales doesn't follow up", etc. etc. Whenever I hear this conversation it always sounds like the two sides are talking past one another. Neither really understands how to express their frustration in a way that has any meaning to the other. What's missing are some basic table stakes: Sales  1. Train marketing on sales process. It is impossible to effectively contribute to, much less consistently improve, an unknown process. No marketing team should be expected to deliver effective collateral or leads to a sales organization until they have been fully trained on sales process and met...

"What is your expected return on investment for the next campaign?" This question is common and easy to ask, but it is also one of the most challenging to answer. Determining financial return on investment (ROI) within the context of a long sales cycle has largely been a failure. Becoming financially accountable is possible – but B2B marketing departments will need more advanced quantitative tools. How should companies measure the financial value of marketing expenditure? For some ordinary company expenses, such as capital equipment, ROI is a common measure of value. Never before have there been more spreadsheets and dashboards available to slice and dice any facet of marketing. With information so available, it has never been more justifiable to treat marketing like an ordinary expense and ask for an ROI similar to the type that applies to the purchase of new equipment. B2B Marketing is Not a Candy Machine Yet attempts to measure meaningful financial ROI in a B2B marketing ...