If you’ve been following the press about marketing, you’ve seen the stories. A few weeks ago the CMO Council declared 2013 as, “The Year of the Marketer”. Forbes is publishing articles like, “Why 2013 Is The Year Of The Marketer”. And, the CMO Council’s benchmarking report found an amazing 82% of marketers believe they already have what they need to achieve senior management’s top-line revenue growth goals.
Interest on Wall Street has also been heating up. With recent acquisitions of Pardot by ExactTagret, MarketingPilot by Microsoft, and Eloqua by Oracle, B2B marketing platforms are going mainstream with inclusion into the leading Enterprise Software Suites.
I believe all this activity is happening because the role of data in marketing has, not only been recognized, but has also been proven out by the results of the early adopters. Tools and business processes have matured to the point where it is no longer cost prohibitive to track marketing interactions, scientifically test different messaging, and systematically optimize the results.
What does this mean for partner programs and for co-branded marketing efforts? Because there is the extra dimension of coordinating the efforts of the vendor with his channel partner, getting the benefits of big data in marketing through partners takes a bit longer to prove out. That said, there are great solutions (like Zift Solutions) that are pushing the envelope to provide these benefits. With the new momentum behind marketing, it is getting ever easier for these companies to both sign up new clients, and raise additional investment capital to speed delivery of improved channel partner support capabilities.
That is why I would say that 2013 is the year that publicizes the success that early adopters have had with automated, tracked and integrated thru-partner marketing efforts, while it won’t be until 2014 until this type of partner support becomes a “must have” for every credible program.
Predictions are always tricky, but I find them useful even when they don’t pan out. Do you think I’m on track? What do you see on the horizon in marketing trends? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below!
