The CMO Council recently released its findings from a survey it had conducted after gathering insight from over 550 marketing executives as to their plans for 2013.  Many of the findings were inline with expectations but a few were surprising.  One thing is clear, a multi-channel distributed marketing platform with permission management capabilities appears to align nicely with marketers needs in 2013.

A summary of those findings are below:

• Marketers feel there is still misalignment and somewhat of an adversarial relationship between marketing and sales but that improvement was made last year. However, marketers feel that the relationship between marketing and IT has emerged as a bigger problem. The rising tension between marketing and IT should come as no surprise as marketers are becoming more technologically savvy, reliant and demanding as to their marketing technology needs.

• One in two marketers are planning to conduct a complete digital marketing makeover in the year to come. The report suggests that marketers are justified in their reasoning and desire but lack the budgets and skill sets to accomplish this objective.

• Marketing budgets are expected to rise as 54% of respondents cite increases going into 2013.

• Digital spend overtakes traditional spend with digital channels like social, mobile and search being 27% compared to 23% being set aside for traditional channels like television, radio and print.

• Big spending increases are expected in SEO with 39% of respondents planning to increase spending by up to 5%.

• Marketing teams are expected to grow next year with an emphasis being placed on personnel specializing in the areas of data, analytics and advanced digital media skills.

• Improvements in customer segmentation and targeting will be a big focus in 2013 with SoLoMo (social-local-mobile) becoming a key ingredient. In fact, 39% of marketers intend to increase localization strategies and content to increase relevance and resonance with local markets.

• 48% of marketers cite a goal and mandate to improve alignment and integration with sales and channel groups with 21% looking to expand field marketing operations and sales support roles.

• 79% of marketers are looking to implement social media marketing platforms

• E-mail marketing continues to be deemed a critical marketing channel as 41% of marketers are looking to invest in new e-mail marketing platforms.