The International Data Corporation (IDC) CMO Advisory Service forecasts that global IT marketing investment will grow by 8% in 2011, exceeding IDC's expected global IT revenue growth of 6.8% for the year.
The past few years have been damaging to marketing department budgets: in 2009 marketing budgets declined twice as fast as revenues and, although revenue growth recovered in 2010, marketing budgets failed to exhibit the expected "snap back". However, marketing budgets are showing strong signs of recovery in 2011.
Joseph Ferrantino, research analyst with IDC's CMO Advisory Service, stated, "During the depths of the recession and throughout 2010, marketing departments were forced to do more with less. While some companies struggled and lost footing in the marketplace, others developed marketing efficiencies and became stronger. With the influx of new funds expected in 2011, we will watch closely to see which vendors make the best use of better times and bigger budgets."
Respondents to IDC's 2011 Tech Marketing Barometer Survey are reporting that 60% of these new funds will be spent on marketing programs and 40% on people (internal staff). During 2011, most of the program spend categories that IDC audits will be increasing spend, with a focus on digital marketing (display ads, search ads, email marketing, digital events, company websites, search engine optimization, and social networks). This finding is evidence of further acceleration in the move to digital and social marketing techniques. For the full year 2010, IDC reported that digital marketing spend had increased from 12.6% of the total program spend mix to 19.3%. "In a lot of ways, the trend towards deeper investment in digital marketing was accelerated by the recession, as marketers worldwide sought more inexpensive platforms for everything from advertisements to events. Going forward, companies are still favoring digital marketing for increased investment over more traditional mediums," added Ferrantino.
The 2011 Tech Marketing Barometer Study was recently completed by IDC's CMO Advisory Service and seeks to capture the pulse of marketing executives in the information technology sector and gauge the direction of marketing resource expenditures and priorities during the next 12 months. The aggregated results of these surveys will be published by IDC in the coming weeks.
source: idc
