Tech Marketers' 2012 Investment Plans

Tech marketers are making a big investment in the transition from "art to science" in 2012 as they flow more money into the activities and technologies of marketing operations. Two factors stand out in driving the shift: Marketers intend to take advantage of emerging, highly functional lead-to-revenue management (L2RM) applications and to more closely scrutinize — and seek greater leverage from — social media. Overall, investment in tech marketing continues to rise faster than in B2B industries, driven by shifts in how global buyers engage with vendors, collaborating more deeply with both internal and external channels, and rethinking the role of marketing across the entire customer life cycle. We believe that the bump in marketing operations investment is transitory, catalyzed by the onboarding of new marketing technologies, but that the move to customer-driven engagement, fueled by richer buyer data, is permanent.