mommyjenlin

Even the most successful technology firms continue to struggle with consistent and effective execution of their campaigns and related go-to-market strategies, unable to improve their alignment with marketing or the organization as a whole. The campaign management function provides the opportunity to solve the foremost problem of tech marketing today: that of the declining return on marketing investment that results from executing marketing mix elements in separate and disintegrated streams. Tech marketing departments that have not structured for this role yet should do so. Here is some key guidance and insight based upon my recent interviews with marketing leaders in the technology industry as well as findings from IDC's recent Marketing Operations Board meeting with 33 marketing professionals: Campaign managers provide the missing link between the business units, marketing shared services and regional marketing. At Quest Software, campaign management serves as the liaison between ...

Its been a long time since I posted. Much has been happening in healthcare, but frankly, family has been at the forefront of my life. My daughter plays fast-pitch travel softball, so know you know the rest of the story. Weekend tourney's, lots of practices and games. No national bids this year but it was a lot of fun. Try-outs last weekend for 12U, start again and she's playing fall ball. Left-hander, pitches and plays first base and outfield. Pretty good from Dad's point of view.... Now back to the issues.... P4P, Patient Satisfaction and my read on what you need to do Mr. Hospital CEO...... Attempts at payment system reform to stem rising healthcare costs by controlling access and utilization through various insurance programs and market based reforms- PPOs, HMOs, MSAs and HSAs to name a few, have meet with limited success. With projected healthcare spending to potentially exceed $4.1 trillion by 2016 [1] , Pay-for-Performance (P4P) represents a potential mechanism to r...

Each year IDC completes a rigorous study of technology marketers' efficiency of their marketing organization. This includes over 100 of the leading tech. firms, representing over $400 B in revenue. To help separate the "leaders" from the "laggards", I've developed a Marketing Performance Matrix (2x2 matrix) to stratify marketing leaders and laggards. Each participating company is located on the Matrix as a function of the efficiency of its organizations' operations and the effectiveness of its execution. However, the numbers are only part of the analysis. We also interview the CMOs at several companies within the leadership quadrant. Here's a bit of what we've learned from these market leaders: Gain the trust of your CEO and CFO. Nothing gains the C-level team’s trust of marketing more than demonstrating fiscal management responsibilities and receiving high praise from the sales organization. Nortel’s executive team was extremely impressed with t...

For several years now I've heard the adage that marketers need to "do more with less". That is, during the "Internet boom" technology marketers enjoyed the "excesses of marketing investment", resulting in the luxury of having a sufficient number of people and significant backing for program investment; while today, as a result of significant budget cuts and reorganizations, we feel the need to maintain the same number (or more) of programs and campaigns with fewer people to support them. Well, I think that we need to stop doing "more with less". That is, aim for quality and impact from a fewer number of marketing campaigns, programs and activities. Sun demonstrated this discipline in 2007. Sun's marketing leadership team has been driving the marketing organization to develop fewer but more effective go-to-market campaigns; reducing the number of worldwide campaigns from over 75 in the past ( pre 2007), to no more than six-to-ten campaign...

Over the past five years that I've been speaking with CMOs as part of my work here at IDC, sales alignment continues as one of the top priorities on every CMO’s to-do list. The increasing maturity of the technology sector accompanied by significant consolidation will only increase the importance of marketing and sales working in unison as part of the customer creation process. In a recent study, we asked marketing and sales folks to rate marketing’s effectiveness at optimizing sales’ worldwide efficiency and effectiveness (1 = not effective, 100 = very effective). Marketing executives rated marketing’s contribution to sales higher than the ratings provided by sales executives: 62 versus 57, respectively. The key message here is not that marketing gave itself a higher grade but that, more importantly, both scores remain low relative to the importance of this alignment to the success of the organization; and with an average of 15% of revenue, or more, being invested in sales and mark...

Given the economic backdrop of 2008, there are more good reasons than ever for sales and marketing executives to engage in a deep scrutiny of their costs. Many organizations have made good progress on cost control, but there is much to be done; and our IDC CMO Advisory research continues to identify big pockets of wasteful spending in these functions. To help technology marketers better manage their investments, we have just completed our second edition of the sales, marketing, and market intelligence (MI) taxonomy. (email me at mgerard@idc.com for a free copy of this extensive marketing investment framework) This expanded taxonomy includes several new line items that need greater "illumination" of spending and staffing, so that executives can make decisions about their investments. These areas include: Digital Marketing. Growth in this area continues to outpace other marketing areas, and in many cases takes funds from these other areas. (e.g., more traditional advertising) ...

As the Democratic primaries come to a merciful end, focus will shift to the November general election. The topic that waxes and wanes depending on which voting group the contestants are reaching for is the rekindled discussion on national health insurance. Clearly, as time and time again we are reminded, the healthcare system is in crisis and something must be done. No argument there. The question is fixed by whom and how much is this going to cost? Will the American public be willing to see taxes rise to support a universal health system? Will the insurance companies willingly give up billions of dollars under a one-payer system? Will the healthcare providers see this as a the savior of their way of life? Who has the ability to bring all of the groups together, consumers, doctors, hospitals, nurses, insurance companies, government, employers, states, etc.? Any meaningful reform will need to be accomplished in year two and three of any new administration. Should anyone consider that re...