Are you Ready for Marketing's 2010 Annual Planning Process?

Have you started planning for your 2010 fiscal year yet? Our best practices study in planning � people, process and technology indicates that the average marketing planning cycle begins about 6 months before the fiscal year end. (for CMO Advisory Service clients, refer to "Marketing�s Planning � People, Process and Technology, IDC Doc. #216134) If you're one of the more mature organizations, planning will be part of the fabric of your weekly, monthly and quarterly team meetings.

Regardless, a significant part of this annual process is assessment of your current "operational" metrics and development of next year's projected investment strategy. I define "operational" metrics as those metrics that track your marketing investment strategy, including:

1. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) � such as Marketing Budget Ratio (marketing spend as a % of revenue), Program to People KPI, Revenue per Staff, Staff Throughput (program spend per marketing staff), Centralization KPI (% of marketing investment that is centralized vs. decentralized), Awareness-Demand KPI, etc.
2. Staff Mix (fixed spend) � such as advertising, product marketing, marketing operations, etc.
3. Program Mix (discretionary spend) � such as advertising (print, broadcast, corporate sponsorship), digital marketing, event marketing, etc.

IDC has published a complete taxonomy of these KPIs and staff and program mix areas to help marketing operations and marketing finance executives best manage their investment. (for CMO Advisory Service clients, refer to IDC�s Worldwide Sales and Marketing Taxonomy, 2008: A Blueprint for Cost Control, IDC Doc. #211900)

Tracking and evaluating these KPIs, program and staff mix levels across the organization, over time and versus other companies will best prepare you for your upcoming planning sessions; for management of your resources as well as for increasing marketing's credibility with other parts of the organization.
IDC's CMO Advisory Practice is in its 7th year of its Tech Marketing Benchmarks study. If you would like to participate in this research, including receiving a copy of the above Taxonomy, an overview of the results of the study and an invite to our annual marketing benchmarks telebriefing in August, please contact Seth Fishbein at sfishbein@idc.com. You will be joining the 100+ global companies that work with us year after year as part of this industry study.