Tech Marketers and Media: Show Sales the Money
A recent report by IDG Research Services provides insights into tech marketers' media spending plans over the next year. You can read this report at mediapost.com here.
There are some expected trends in the research including a modest increase in media spend with the biggest increase being in digital channels. And, of course, a heavy emphasis on ROI for the spend.
But there was one item that stood out to me: Lead generation, while ranked #1 in importance for marketing promotional opportunities, was listed as critical by only 54% of respondents.
Now, I might be splitting hairs on this issue of lead generation. It was a clear #1 over second-place data targeting at 36%. But still, only a little over half of the marketers listed it as critically important.
Jeesh! No wonder sales people generally think marketers are out of touch with the front line.
When I was in marketing communications for a large, multi-national IT infrastructure company the newly hired CTO stood up in front of the entire company (virtually) and made a simple, profound statement about companies and jobs:
"There are only two jobs in every company: Sales and sales support."
How true! After all, if Sales isn't selling nobody gets a paycheck. That's why it's critically important for Marketing to understand their needs in reaching customers. I spent a lot of time in my career trying to figure out how Marketing should talk to customers and not enough time understanding how Sales needs to talk to their customers.
Content was also highly ranked by Marketers in importance. The report lists the top five opportunities in terms of budget spend:
- Collateral
- Webcasts/virtual events
- Videos
- Research
- Creation/launch of new websites
I wonder how many of these Marketers asked their Sales partners what was important to them in closing the sell. Is collateral really that important? And, if so, what type of collateral? And will customers really attend virtual events?
I guess there's no way for Marketers to know what's important to Sales.
Unless, of course, they ask them.
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