Photographer David Ortez captured Lance Armstrong in a 2008 charity race in Austin. Published under a Creative Commons license.
When IBM announced its purchase of Unica last year for $480 million, the company’s press release said that the enterprise marketing management software market was worth $2.5 billion and doubling in size on an annual basis.
Why is the market for distributed marketing platforms growing so rapidly as overall marketing budgets are still recovering from the recession? Because technology helps marketers win the race to provide sales with the tools they need to win business. It’s really that simple.
Just one in three large companies (with revenue over $5 billion) reported in an IDC survey that they had completed their marketing automation initiative. Most are actively deploying or researching point solutions or complete distributed marketing solutions.
Consider these statistics about the growing market for distributed marketing technology.
- Marketing automation accounts for 17% of new budgeted spending in organizations planning an automation deployment in 2011-2012.
- Marketers believe that they are in the early stages of automating and streamlining their marketing operations, although most believe they have made significant progress.
- Technology optimizes marketing’s efficiency and effectiveness.
- Source: September, 2010 Webinar by IDC Executive Advisory Group research analysts Rich Vancil and Michael Gerard, Sales and Marketing 2010-2011: Building a Plan That Wins and Wows!
Whether you work in a large, mid-size, or rapidly growing small business with multiple communications channels and both indirect and direct sales forces, chances are that you, too, are asking what marketing automation technology can do for your company.
It’s the right question to ask, according to IDC’s Michael Gerard. In a webinar last year, Gerard posed the question: What can you do to influence purchasing behavior in an environment where you must do more with fewer people?
The answer, he said, is to find technology solutions that help you maintain a pervasive and continuously refreshing digital presence, increase the frequency of your messaging, outreach, reporting and analysis. Here are the four best practices tips from Gerard’s Q3 2010 webinar:
- Prioritize processes that intersect Marketing and Sales.
- Have Sales and Marketing Organizations invest proportional budgets and resources.
- Work out common definitions and metrics of success.
- Learn from the Best Practices (and errors) of peers.
What is your marketing organization doing to leverage technology to drive sales? How easy is it for your field sales teams to find, access, and use your marketing assets? Are there costly gaps in your processes that slow down your sales enablement goals?
Tell us, and we’ll share your success stories — or cautionary tales — here. That way, we can learn from each other and harness the power of distributed marketing technology to grow and “win and wow”.