IDC's Worldwide Marketing Technology 2014-2018 Forecast: $20 Billion and Growing Fast

Organizations worldwide will spend approximately $20.2 billion on software solutions for marketing in 2014. The marketing software market is expected to grow to more than $32.3 billion in 2018. It will be one of the fastest-growing areas in high tech, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.4%. Over the five years from 2014 to 2018, organizations cumulatively will spend $130 billion on software for marketing departments. This forecast includes a wide range of solutions in four broad categories: interaction management, content production and management, data and analytics, and marketing management and administration. (For more information see Worldwide Marketing Software Forecast 2014-2018: $20 Billion and Growing Fast, IDC # DOC #251902, October 2014.)

Worldwide Marketing Technology Spending by Category, 2014–2018

                                                                          Source: IDC 2014

The emergence of Marketing as a Service (MaaS)

While innovation continues, the era of consolidation has begun. Many acquisitions have been made by software industry majors to bring together key pieces of the marketing and advertising software landscape. This activity has been coincident with the transformation of the larger IT industry to what IDC calls the 3rd Platform where technology and maintenance services are offered "as a service." This model is a game changer for marketers and marketing software suppliers. Even though almost all current marketing solutions are cloud based, they are just beginning to be integrated enough to provide seamless operations and reporting across the diverse activities of a large marketing organization. Furthermore, newer platform solutions can be leveraged by third parties such as agencies and marketing BPOs to provide value-added services in a bundled offering, which IDC calls "marketing as a service." (For more information on MaaS, see Marketing as a Service (MaaS): A New Route to Market, IDC #247587, March 2014)

5 Action Items for CMOs

1. Construct a technology road map based on business drivers to guide investment
2. Consolidate applications into a platform with data and process level integration to improve efficiency and effectiveness
3. Work to integrate marketing technology with the enterprise infrastructure to reveal deeper insights into customers, partners, and market opportunities
4. Establish inter-disciplinary teams and processes to combat the silos point solutions can create
5. Learn to leverage corporate IT to improve vendor management, due diligence, and governance practices

For more information, please contact me at gmurray(at)idc(dot)com. 

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#CMOFact: IDC 2013 Marketing Investment Planner

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) benchmarking study. To anyone familiar with the industry, you are probably used to hearing that Marketing is transforming. What is so exciting about our Marketing Planner is we are able to provide specific guidance on changes, challenges, and successes within the industry through incredibly accurate industry data and qualitative information provided by you, the senior marketers. Marketers in turn are able to use this information to successfully plan for the upcoming year.

I’ve taken the liberty of pulling out some key facts below from our report that are particularly interesting or useful. Feel free to share them and remember to follow me on twitteror check out the CMOFact hashtag - we will continue to share some marketing goodness there.

#CMOFact Number 1:  In 2012 the average large B2B Marketing organization is in receipt of a 1.7% budget increase. This is 50% LESS than the 2011 rate.

#CMOFact Number 2:  The Marketing Budget Ratio for B2B tech companies has declined each year from 2009 through 2012. Marketing Investment is not keeping up with revenue growth.

#CMOFact Number 3: B2B Tech CMOs are spending approximately 30% of their budget on digital marketing programs. This is up from 12% in 2009. 

#CMOFact Number 4: For Large Tech Companies, only those in Software (vs Services & Hardware) are receiving increased budgets!

#CMOFact Number 5: The marketing automation train is picking up speed, and fast. Jump on now or prepare to be left behind. This is a new category in our survey and is already at 3.1% of programs budget and 1.6% of staff allocations.

These are just 5 nuggets from the 2013 Marketing Planner. The full version includes a complete overview of the current state of the B2B Tech Marketing it includes; program spend, staffing breakdowns, up and coming technology, and forward looking advice. For your own copy, reach out to Wendy Pemberton at wpemberton@idc.comor find it here. 

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2012 Tech Marketing Budgets, Trends

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 see as many false-starts as we do successes. And so there are renewed and bigger efforts underway to Transform.  The best evidence of this is in recent, aggressive marketing budget overhauls and  larger, more sweeping re-organizations of the marketing function. 

The good news is that top marketing  execs and C-Level execs DO understand that "future" Marketing can and should be the game-changer function, and so they are going to keep at the Transformation efforts until they see results. 

Here are three major outcomes to watch for and benchmark, on your own Transformation journey: Shorter purchase cycles; reduced overall cost of (combined) Marketing + Sales; and vastly improved customer analytics as a result of integrated marketing plus sales automation efforts.


2) Budgets remain under pressure: we see the average large Tech Vendor getting a 1.7% budget increase this year. That is 1/2 the increase of last year...and we were even "closer" to the 2008-2009 recession at that point.  The main culprit is the economy: management teams not willing to spend until better signs of demand pick up. The second factor is media shift: going-to-market with digital ve traditional media.

3) Tech vendors still spend 3-5 times as much on selling as they do on marketing. Heavy salesmanship has deep deep roots in IT vending. My belief is that the future holds a more even application of monies and activities between selling and marketing.

Rich Vancil

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