Marketing Operations

It is that time of the year – IDC’s CMO Advisory Service is in the field with our Marketing Benchmarks Study. This is our 12th year conducting this study that is used by leading marketing organizations to benchmark their marketing spend and organizational structures. Now it’s your chance to join in this …

Companies simply cannot excel at modern marketing without strong Marketing Operations.  These professionals reinforce high performance by strengthening processes, technology, metrics, and best practices.  A recent study by IDC CMO Advisory Service, in conjunction with MOCCA, found that the Marketing Operations function is flourishing and expanding beyond its original charter. …

With 2012 coming to an end, for many businesses planning for 2013 will bleed into the New Year. Marketers are no exception; in anticipation of the planning cycle each year, the CMO Advisory Service publishes our annual Marketing Planner in August/September, developing the B2B tech industry’s leading marketing (and sales) …

We are now publishing the results of our major annual Tech Marketing Benchmarks survey. Our tenth year of doing so! My thoughts today: 1) Most importantly: The Marketing Transformation effort is accelerating. Many vendors have been at this for a few years but as we now do some accounting for  results,  we …

This week the IDC CMO Advisory Service will start revealing results from the 2012 Tech Marketing Benchmark. In this 10th annual study we found some surprises – as you might expect in this era of marketing transformation. In anticipation of the results, I thought I would share a bit of …

Marketing has become technology, process, and data driven. On average, marketing operations teams at the large high-tech companies in this survey manage over a dozen major systems in an ecosystem that is rapidly evolving. The purpose of this survey was to assess the technology load on marketing organizations in terms …

Lead scoring is a well established technique for marketers to translate digital responses into levels of qualification for next stage outreach. For companies with no direct sales or sales cycles of 30 days or less lead scoring methodologies can be rapidly optimized around purchase behavior. For long cycle B2B sales …

Of all the lead management best practices a company can invest in, the one that stands out as most important is defining standards.  Recently, IDC interviewed technology marketing executives to learn what’s working and what’s not in 21st Century lead management. When asked for a description of their greatest success, …

IT leaders making enterprise-level technology purchases report that their buying cycle has increased by more than 20% in the last three years, according to IDC’s 2012 Buyer Experience study. They are not happy about this fact and were not shy about telling IDC about how vendors can speed things up. …

What’s the most commonly heard word in marketing organizations today? It is “Transformation.” Dramatic transformational change is sweeping through marketing functions in most industries. And the main “change agent” is the customer. Or what we at the IDC Executive Advisory like to call the “New Buyer” . Our customers and …