Tech Marketing Budgets to Increase by 7% in 2006, Outpacing IT Vendor Revenue Growth
Wednesday, 22 March 2006
IDC's CMO Advisory Practice projects that the global marketing budgets of IT vendors will increase by an average of 7% in 2006, the greatest year-on-year increase in spending in five years. The average marketing budget increase for a tech vendor now outpaces the average revenue increase, indicating that every dollar of vendor revenue is becoming more expensive to garner.
“Marketing leaders and their C-level counterparts need to accept the new realities and complexities of the tech marketing function," said Rich Vancil, vice president of the CMO Advisory Practice at IDC. “And they need to recognize that marketing is going to get more complex, and therefore more costly, over the next several years."
"Tech marketing is, in general, an under-funded area," Vancil noted. "The irony is that IDC's research shows that the companies achieving the best gains in revenues and profits are those investing in marketing at a higher than average pace.“
In the new report, 2006 CMO Tech Marketing Barometer: Marketing Leaders' Formula for Success (IDC #35020), IDC analyzes the level and direction of overall tech marketing spending to help guide IDC clients with their marketing investment and allocation decisions. This study includes information collected from surveys and interviews with senior marketing leadership at 47 hardware, software and information technology services vendors, as well as telecommunications service providers.
The study also compares and contrasts results with IDC's CMO Advisory 2005 Technology Marketing Benchmarks Survey. IDC surveyed over 95 of the largest and most influential tech vendors, representing approximately $300 billion in total revenue and over $9 billion in marketing spend.