An Industry-Proven Framework for Managing Marketing's Investment

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) Most importantly here, the digital marketing strategy must be a component of the broader marketing and sales strategy and not a standalone effort.
• Campaign Management. Marketers need to do a better job of integrating the traditional elements of the marketing mix with the newer elements, so as to achieve a unified campaign approach versus "silos" of program execution. (more to come on this topic since we just finished a Marketing Operations Board meeting on campaign management best practices)
• Industry and Solutions Marketing. These staff areas have received further definition and clarification of roles.
• Market Intelligence; Customer Intelligence; and Business Intelligence. These areas are under active re-assessment at many organizations as the importance of the functions continues to rise.
• Sales Enablement. This is a key leverage point for increased sales productivity. Marketing and sales are increasing their sales enablement effectiveness through a combination of people, process, and technology.
• Tele-sales and Inside Sales. These growth areas of the sales department receive further detail in this year’s study.