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Companies investing in marketing technology will continue to raise their budgets, with global vendor revenue forecasted to touch $32.2 billion by 2018.
The projections, part of an IDC webinar on the marketing software revolution, reveal a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.4% and total spend of $130 billion across the five-year stretch between 2014 and 2015.
Customer relationship management software is a sizable growth sector of marketing, with projections from IDC’s software tracker predicting CRM application revenue will reach $31.7 billion by 2018, a CAGR of 6.9%.
A MaaS revival
Most marketing solutions are available in the cloud, but some large businesses are acquiring these point solutions, investing in them and then turning them into a marketing as a service platform.
The MaaS, an industry segment bundling a tech platform, creative services and the IT services to run it, is making a comeback after economic uncertainty stunted investment in this area for so many years.
IDC’s view on marketing as a service platforms is that it will blend global media and marketing tech expenditure. There may have been little or no budget being attributed to this type of product in 2014, but IDC has forecasted increases in the run up to 2018.
Getting the investment in early can set a company up for a similar or larger return later down the road, a fact demonstrated by IDC that puts spend from digital marketing leaders at $14 million while achievers and contenders set aside $4.2 million and $3.1 million respectively.
Product bundles
Marketing technology is becoming increasingly complex too – you just have to look at some of the recent graphics that show the sheer volume of companies now investing in the industry, hoping to carve out their own niche.
IDC has released a map categorising the potential technologies that marketers might use, dividing it into content, interaction, management and admin and data analytics categories.
Only the largest of enterprise businesses will use all these different tools, with mid-sized businesses potentially having access to two thirds of this diagram and small companies only using nine of the technologies.
