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Tech Marketing Investment Projected to Increase by 7.5% in 2006

By Priya George

The IDC CMO Advisory Service projects that IT vendor marketing budgets will increase by 7.5% for the full year 2006, the fastest rate of increase over the past five years. Along with overall increased investment, technology marketing productivity and efficiency indicators are also improving by several measures. IDC's Marketing Staff Throughput Index measures program execution per marketing employee and has increased by about 10% over the past year to USD 301,400. The average tech vendor is also getting more leverage from its marketing staff as indicated by the IDC Program-to-People Ratio, which has expanded to 65:35 for 2006.

Richard Vancil, vice president of IDC’s CMO Advisory Practice noted some key trends in the tech marketing community. “Many senior marketers are making significant progress within the corporate pillar of marketing. IDC sees improvement in marketing’s contribution to the strategic planning processes, and in marketing’s ability to measure performance. However, there are still many challenge areas for the senior marketing team. This includes the need to improve alignment between corporate marketing and the product and field marketing disciplines. Also, our essential guidance to clients includes establishment of an overall marketing skill set inventory and improvement program; and an increased investment– up to 5% of marketing budget that should be earmarked for IT and infrastructure for the marketing function.

The new insights and analysis are from IDC's CMO Advisory Service, the tech industry’s most comprehensive benchmarking and advisory offering for tech marketing leadership. IDC's fourth annual Technology Marketing Benchmarks Survey provides insight into the management techniques and investment strategies based on IDC's unique access to the world's largest and most influential technology marketing leaders.

In the study, 'Marketing Investment Planner 2007: Benchmarks and Key Performance Indicators', IDC provides a comprehensive analysis of qualitative and quantitative marketing investment priorities, marketing-mix decisions, and operational and organisation information for many of the world's leading and most influential technology vendors. This study is based on 95 interviews conducted with senior marketing executives of the leading IT hardware, software, and services vendors, including Adobe, Cisco, HP, Intel, SAP, and Symantec, representing over USD 360 billion in IT revenues and over USD 12 billion in marketing spending


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