Marketing can’t spend another year of trying to do more with less. Most marketing budgets were cut last year—some to the bone—and are under where they need to be. Marketing doesn’t have much more to cut.

But here is what really concerns us at ITSMA. Services marketing budgets are at all time low. Funding has dropped to the point where we are concerned about marketing’s health, relevance, and impact. What is the perception of marketing in the organization today? Even if marketing is not yet marginal, it will be soon if funding continues this way. Something has to change.

However, we cannot afford to continue adding new programs and campaigns on top of old. We need to commit to a new way of doing things if marketing is to avoid becoming marginalized. We believe that 2010 will be a year of transformation for marketing.

We see three major areas where transformation is necessary for marketers:

• Marketers must create a new content development and dissemination engine.
• That engine should be supported by an automated, integrated closed-loop lead management process.
• Marketers must create a fact-based decision culture supported by analytics.

In this ITSMA Update, we will outline in detail the changes necessary for marketing to transform
itself and reverse its decline in relevance.