Feature Articles

The good news is marketing organizations have doubled technology spending in the last two years, according to new research presented at last month’s 2011 SiriusDecisions Summit. However, while investment has increased rapidly, BtoB companies continue to struggle with implementation and adoption.

Because successful utilization of these new technologies often depends on changes in organizational structure and processes, many organizations are stuck at the starting gate and unable to reap the full benefits of technologies driving the demand generation approach.

The sales and marketing funnel had three days in the spotlight during the inaugural DemandCon event, May 18-20 in San Francisco. Bringing together more than 60 industry speakers and approximately 300 attendees, the event featured blueprints of successful rollouts of integrated demand generation programs, and challenged the conventional thinking on the structure of the funnel.

In the opening keynote address, Jeff Ernst, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, serving CMO and Marketing Leadership Professionals, took a somewhat controversial stand by encouraging sales and marketing executives to “bury the funnel.” Ernst said it was a myth that the funnel represents buyer behavior and suggested that rather than aligning marketing and sales, organizations must focus on alignment with the buyer.