Marketing automation firm Eloqua has released a new study in conjunction with Econsultancy entitled “7 Habits of Effective Marketing Organisations.”
The free report is designed to provide an understanding of how marketers are currently thinking about investments in programs, systems, and people.
The study is based on Econsultancy’s data-rich Planning and Budgeting Survey, which analyzed 572 qualified responses.
“Habits” of the most advanced marketers were identified and are highlighted in the report. They include:
• Habit #1 Establish benchmarks and encourage oversight. With more revenue responsibility than ever before, marketers have to attain C-suite buy-in and must also use new technology to help establish measurement standards.
• Habit #2 Retain to acquire. Customer retention metrics are vital for planning processes and marketers must pay attention to retention by increasing the information exchange between retention and acquisition teams and by placing values on retained customers.
• Habit #3 Balance brand & direct. Marketers should strike a balance between direct and brand ads and traditional and digital, and when it comes to the budgeting process, companies should use digital in concert with traditional to enhance response rates.
• Habit #4 Target and publish for budget season. Content marketing is key for companies with longer sales cycles and branding efforts should be timed to coincide with corporate budget season which is August through October for 40% of companies.
• Habit #5 Hire and train for tomorrow. As more organizations are focused on data-driven marketing, the necessary skill sets are expanding and evolving and the three biggest shifts concern the intersection of marketing with data and technology, the increased demand for content creation and management, and the need for improved user experience.
• Habit #6 Be ready for the upturn. With hopes of an economic turnaround, 56% of respondent companies are planning for a larger budget in 2011 compared to 2010.
• Habit #7 Take advantage of technology. Companies adopting the right marketing technologies will have a competitive advantage and newer technologies such as marketing automation and marketing resource management are quickly growing with a number of companies planning implementations or evaluating the technology.
“The Econsultancy Planning and Budgeting Survey was created because as marketers, we were curious to find out what type of investments our fellow marketers were making in different programs or technologies,” said Brian Kardon, CMO, Eloqua. “What came about is this study that provides practical information and analysis for marketers looking to drive more revenue for their companies.”
“It’s exciting to take data and turn it into actionable information for marketers,” said Stefan Tornquist, US research director for Econsultancy. “By identifying common patterns and highlighting what successful organizations are doing, we’re providing marketers with ideas they can really implement.”
To download the free report click here.
