CMO Advisory Best Practices Series: The Rise of the Campaign Manager Role

This IDC CMO Advisory Practice study provides an industry definition of the emerging role of campaign management, along with best and emerging practices of campaign management processes. Based upon interviews with campaign managers at leading technology firms and insight from IDC's recent Marketing Operations Leadership Board meeting, the IDC CMO Advisory Practice provides insight into how this function is organized and how campaign managers engage with other marketing groups and sales to optimize alignment and market effectiveness and presents a view into the campaign management processes and tactics in use at leading technology firms. Specific case studies are provided for IBM, Quest Software, Symantec, and VeriSign.

"Even the most successful technology firms continue to struggle with consistent and effective execution of their campaigns and related go-to-market strategies, unable to improve their alignment with marketing or the organization as a whole," said Michael Gerard, vice president of research, IDC's CMO Advisory Practice. "The campaign management function provides the opportunity to solve the foremost problem of tech marketing today: that of the declining return on marketing investment that results from executing marketing mix elements in separate and disintegrated streams."