curated-content-banner-300x187-300x187This post was originally written by Tom De Baere on his blog, B2B Marketing Experiences

In most organizations, digital marketing grew up in a silo, separate from the rest of the marketing department. That’s because initially digital touch-points like websites, email and online advertising were not seen as the heart of the business.

But today the world has changed.

Digital channels, content and technology are influencing people’s buying decisions in all markets, at every stage of the customer life-cycle.

In this blog post I want to share you my thinking on how IT and marketing should forge a partnershipto keep up with the challenges of the modern organization, doing business in an evermore digitalizing world.

Top Areas of Investment in 2016

Marketing today has become a digital profession. I hope you agree.

Marketing budgets and investments in technology are also dominantly in the digital space. That’s because consumers and buyers in general are shifting online, and as such the budget also follows that route. So that makes sense.

According to research from Forrester, some 55% of organizations will be increasing both their digital budget along with the overall spend or shifting existing budget to digital, leaving digital with more to play with.cmo-top-areas-of-investment-2016

Source: Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2015-2016

Gartner recently released their CMO Spend Survey 2015-2016, which had a number of interesting observations:

  1. 2/3 marketers expect their budgets continue to grow;
  2. Top 4 objectives of CMO’s are Digital commerce, Innovation in marketing, Converting leads to sales, and Improving Customer Retention;
  3. Marketing technology represents  33%  of the marketing budget.

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Cheryl Treleaven

Cheryl Treleaven

Principal

Engaging your customers is at the heart of successful marketing programs. For more than 20 years, Cheryl has been building and executing content and thought leadership strategies designed to do just that. She is excited to be applying that well-honed skill to a help companies like Microsoft, Cisco, 3M, Intel, Capital One and Barclaycard tap into their stakeholder communities and build sophisticated content strategies.

Her experience base spans a range of industries – from technology and financial services to retail, travel, consumer products and healthcare. Cheryl has served as an integral member of her clients’ marketing teams, providing counsel on marketing and brand strategy, thought leadership, media relations, product introductions, and event management.

Prior to joining ComBlu, Cheryl spent 10 years leading corporate marketing for large, complex organizations.