Call For Participation - IDC's CMO Advisory Service's 2014 Tech Marketing Benchmark Survey

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 important research; I would like to offer an invitation to participate in this survey. 

Below are the essential "need to knows" around our survey and further down I'll dive into all the great value of benchmarking your marketing organization:

What are the benefits?

• Complimentary copy of our 2015 Marketing Investment Planner to benchmark your company's marketing data against industry data.
• Receive an invitation to our exclusive client telebriefing held by IDC Analysts.
• Access to IDC's industry standard marketing taxonomy.

What is needed? 

• Email me (smelnick (at) IDC (dot) com) to get our survey instrument and taxonomy.
• A "lead" marketing executive with access to marketing budget and staffing allocations. 
• Complete the survey by August 1st.

What is the Quality of Data and Confidentially?  

• This is the 12th year IDC has fielded the Tech Marketing Benchmark Survey and will include participation from many of the 100 largest tech companies - this depth and expertise is unmatched. 
• All responses are 100%, no questions asked, confidential. We take this part very seriously.  

Bonus to all Participants

• All participants will be eligible for our 2015 Chief Marketing Officer ROI Matrix and will have access to their placement on the Matrix. A great way to easily compare your marketing progress against the rest of the industry's. 

Need More Information: View this excerpt from Kathleen Schaub's excellent post, IDC Tech Marketing Benchmark: Behind the Scenes. It explains all the intricacies (and value of benchmarking).

Why do companies benchmark? A benchmark provides context for decision-making. You spend a million dollars a year on social marketing. So what? If your CEO asks you this question, what will you say? Tech marketers tell us that they like to benchmark for the following reasons:

• Improve the quality of annual planning: Last year’s program budget and gut feelings are no longer sufficient input

• Gain insight into critical trends: Learn what industry leaders and competitors are doing – and how you stack up

• Reallocate costs: Identify areas of overspending and opportunities for better value

• Transform with confidence: Answer questions such as how much to invest in new areas like social marketing or how should I re-organize my department?

• Drive with data: C-level executives increasingly expect marketing leaders to manage their business with the same level of operational excellence as other corporate functions.

• Get an independent view: Benchmark data provides IDC analysts with a wealth of information that make guidance to clients personalized and accurate guidance

Feel free to reach out and let's have a discussion whether it's the right time for your organization to participate!

Email me at: (smelnick (at) IDC (dot) com) or find me on twitter @SamMelnick

Are Ad Agencies Keeping Pace with Marketing's Massive Digital Uptake? (Hint: Maybe Not)

Today, marketing's equivalent to the Brady Bunch's "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" just might be "Digital, Digital, Digital!" This is with good reason. Since 2009, digital marketing spend within large B2B tech companies has grown, and is growing, at an enormous rate. As you might have seen, IDC expects the entire tech industry to pass the 50% mark of digital spend vs non-digital spend by the end of 2016! This is the client side, but what about on the agency side, are these important partners keeping pace with their clients? At the end of April, Ad Age published their most recent "Agency report", it shows the agency industry's digital revenue over the past 5 years. While, agencies' digital revenues are growing and, as a percentage, these revenues are comparable to what their clients are spending on digital - the lack of substantial growth for agencies' digital revenue is notable. 

As seen from the image above, 5 years ago agencies were already generating over 1/4 of their revenue from digital, where as tech companies were spending only 13% of their budgets on digital. Since then, these same digital marketing budgets have grown at a CAGR of approximately 21% - agencies' digital revenue have grown closer to a 6.5% CAGR, a third the rate of tech marketer's digital budgets. This begs the question, are agencies keeping up with digital innovation? Does the agencies' slower digital revenue growth give us a glimpse into the future where in-house marketers are the digital experts?

Below are two comments that I think help parse out this story:

1. Chapter  7 in Scott Brinker's (AKA: @chiefmartec) marketing book, A New Brand of Marketing, "From Agencies to In-House Marketing",  lays out the in-house vs agency shift perfectly. Traditionally agencies' bread and butter is within the advertising campaign - as advertising has moved digitally, ad networks and ad-tech have continued to mature allowing practitioners to work directly with these networks and/or utilizing programmatic ad buying to optimize their spend. In a sense, cutting out the middle man (agencies). This might help explain the large difference in growth between digital revenue growth at agencies and digital spend from the practitioner. While companies are spending more dollars on digital, it is more of a do-it-yourself approach.
2. Anecdotally, through my conversations with clients and marketing executives, on more than one occasion I have heard marketers bringing core agency work internal. The two main reasons for this action are:
•  Scope: For marketing executives who are trying to build a full scale demand engine or attribution models, they are finding it very hard to identify an agency partner who can deliver this vision from start to finish, particularly with expertise across the entire project. (A fair caveat is very few companies can do this internally!) They are still utilizing agencies, but typically for projects around high level strategy or vision and/or very specific tactical portions of their larger campaigns.
•  Speed: To truly compete digitally, marketers have realized that speed is an asset. From content creation, to adjusting advertisements in real-time and to making sure the latest and greatest technologies are being tested and used, speed is a factor. Advanced marketers are often realizing by bringing many of these activities in-house, it is much easier to increase speed - it is also much easier to retain the talent that can execute in the manner necessary to succeed.

The above instances and the overlying data are something for marketers to be aware of and agencies to be concerned about, but, like with most changes this is not a black and white scenario. With agencies, similar to most marketing organizations today, it's about reinvention. My colleague Gerry Murray, outlines some of this reinvention that IDC expects to happen within the agency (or more specifically marketing services) world in his latest blog post, Marketing as a Service (MaaS): The next wave of disruption for marketing tech. Ultimately, the vendors that continue with business as usual, relying on media buys or traditional agency/client relationships, risk stagnant digital revenue growth and an outdated offering.

What success are you seeing within your "in-house marketing team" and how are you continuing to leverage your agency partners? I would love to hear your opinion in the comments below or by reach out to me on twitter @SamMelnick.