IDC survey: Tech marketing budgets are bouncing back! But there's a twist.

The results from a new survey of senior IT marketers by IDC's CMO Advisory Service team show some encouraging signs. After a bleak couple of years with Tech marketing budgets and head count being slashed, investment is increasing. But the allocation of these precious funds have been influenced by the lean years. There is a strong switch to online spending and inbound marketing.

Getting your company found online, in the social mediasphere and by the search engines and then converting those leads to nurtured sales ready leads and being able to measure the effectiveness and ROI of these investments, are the key challenges. Check out this complementary whitepaper on the inbound marketing revolution if you would like to read more. 

The press release by IDC of their report follows, it makes for an interesting read. 

"IDC's CMO Advisory Service recently concluded its annual Tech Marketing Barometer study.  The results of this survey are intended to "Take the Pulse" of senior marketing executives across the tech vendor community, and provide guidance for future marketing budgets and investments.  Information was collected from 45 hardware, software, and service providers, whose combined revenue totals roughly $340 billion.  

IDC's CMO Advisory Service forecasts that in 2011 Global IT Marketing Investment will grow by 8%, which exceeds IDC's expected Global IT Revenue Growth of 6.8%.  The past few years have been damaging to marketing department budgets: in 2009 marketing budgets declined twice as fast as revenues, and although revenue growth recovered in 2010, marketing budgets lagged the expected 'snap back'. 

In 2011, however, marketing budgets are finally recovering with strength.  We talk a lot about marketing budget ratios in the CMO Advisory Group, which is marketing spend over revenue.  On average, marketing budget ratios declined in 2009 and 2010 because marketing investment growth was slower than revenue growth.  In general, we caution against this trend because marketing investment should at least track revenue growth-if it doesn't, marketing departments are cinched tighter and tighter over time. Since marketing investment growth is actually outpacing revenue growth this year, we expect to see marketing budget ratios rise again.   

Respondents to IDC's 2011 Tech Marketing Barometer Survey reported that 60% of these new funds will be spent on marketing programs and 40% on people (internal staff).  During 2011, most program spend categories that IDC audits will be increasing spend, with a focus on digital marketing (display ads, search ads, email marketing, digital events, company websites, search engine optimization, and social networks).  This finding is evidence of further acceleration of the rapid move to digital and social marketing techniques. Some other key findings of the study are as follows:
 

• Respondents identified the top digital and social media execution challenge as 'measurement and ROI'.
   
• Companies are increasing their digital and social media execution by shifting budgets from 'old' to 'new' media, hiring dedicated staff, and investing in new technologies.
   
• Company web sites, search engine optimization, and email were named the top three digital marketing priorities for 2011 by respondents.
   
• Respondents reported that campaign management, social marketing, and content management are the three marketing automation categories most commonly increasing.
   
• 38% of respondents stated that Marketing Operations and Sales Operations report into the same function, up from last year's 26%.  
   

Given these findings, in conjunction with other research and our recent interactions with tech marketing professionals, IDC offers the following guidance:
 

• During the recession marketers were forced to do more with less, and for some companies, a positive byproduct emerged: greater efficiency.  As budgets increase, be careful not to lose sight of newly create efficiencies!
   
• Don't fall behind the curve in digital marketing and social media-invest in the Social Business Transformation.  Companies adopting the 'wait and see' mentality may find themselves at a disadvantage in the near future.
   
• Work on database management and data management issues.  This key trend has been identified by marketing operations, market intelligence, and sales as the critical operations issue for 2011.  Hire a data management Czar who can help with standardization, governance, and usage.  (The CMO Advisory Service will soon be entering the field with a new study on data management, please contact us to participate!)
   
• Continue to define, broaden and deepen the marketing operations role.  Hire marketing operations talent with the technical skillsets to tackle data management issues.