IDC Announces the 2013 Chief Marketing Officer ROI Matrix, Providing Insights Into What Makes the Technology Industry’s Best-in-Class CMOs Successful
I just wish to share the conclusion. You can read the full press release here. As President of the sales lead generation company Find New Customers, it is my mission to keep you abreast of what’s happening in marketing today.
The 2013 Chief Marketing Officer ROI Study
IDC found that there are clear patterns of marketing investment and behavior that distinguish marketing Leaders from those that are marketing Challenged. Taking into account differences that exist between different company sizes, industry segments, and business models, IDC identified three factors that most differentiate marketing Leaders from those that are marketing Challenged.
- Leading companies invest more in marketing. Marketing Leaders first “earn” higher budgets by demonstrating that they are efficient and responsible with existing budgets. IDC sees best-practice CMOs entering the budget process with cost-savings in hand and better positioning to seek additional funding. These proven CMO’s and their companies fund the marketing function at nearly three times the rate of the marketing Challenged companies. Impoverished and inefficient marketing organizations are forced to make critical sacrifices that will be a competitive disadvantage for the entire company.
- Leading CMOs invest in new job roles that bring people together. Fast growing roles such as campaign management, sales enablement, and marketing IT provide critical skills and enable marketing teams to work seamlessly with each other and collaborate with key partners such as sales and IT.
- Leading CMOs innovate around the self-educated customer. Innovation is not just for research and development. As buyer behavior and expectation changes, companies must keep pace. IDC finds that marketing Leaders greatly outpace their Challenged competitors in forward-looking elements such as automation and digital marketing that help them better understand and serve customers.
Here are your take-aways from the Technology Marketing blog:
For some quick and interesting facts from the study look no further, you are in the right spot!
You must have the muscle (ie: budget) to move the needle.
#CMOFact: As a percentage of revenue, Marketing Leaders spend ~3X more on marketing than the Challenged http://bit.ly/CMOROI Tweet This!
It is important to note these properly funded Marketing organizations were not just blessed by their CEO with a strong budget, they first proved their worthiness. The first step to earning your budget is to be efficient and effectivley track the dollars given to your department. Leading companies spent years optimizing (and wisely spending) their budget before earning a larger piece of the pie.
“Marketers, tear down these walls!”
#CMOFact: Marketing leaders staff Campaign Mgt roles at 5.4% of their staff. http://bit.ly/CMOROI Challenged staff at 1.7%… Tweet This!
The quote was once said by Ronald Reagan…ok, maybe he didn’t say that, but we are seeing leading marketing organizations aggressively staffing areas that promote communication and knock down proverbial departmental walls. Leaders staff Campaign Management, Sales Enablement and Marketing IT at a significantly higher rate than the challenged. They also staff MarCom and Executive & Admin positions at much lower rates.
Remember who keeps the lights on and bust your…you know…to make their lives easier.
#CMOFact: Marketing challenged spend 22% of their program budget on digital. http://bit.ly/CMOROI The leaders spend 33%! Tweet This!
Within tech we often think of innovation as tied to R&D and the product; however leading companies are actively innovating their marketing tools and strategy. The buyer has changed and no matter how good your product is, if the value proposition is not delivered in a way that ‘speaks’ your buyer’s language you will risk losing business. Leading companies are pushing boundaries through new and innovative digital strategies and cap spend in areas like Email Marketing and Events.
(Editor’s Note: Clearly the best invest considerably more and invest in areas to move the business needle. And if you look at this chart and draw a line through the center of the data, it goes up a 45 degree angle – meaning on average money and results are closely related, although there is some variation in the data.)
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