MLC Publishes B2B Marketing Spend Optimization Case Study

The Marketing Leadership Council (MLC) recently published a new case study documenting an approach to B2B marketing spend measurement and optimization that has been developed by Oracle, working with Marketing Decisiion Science. The approach is currently used in Oracle's internal marketing & advertising budgeting process tohelp guide quarterly budget allocation decisions. The case study describes the approach and the significant improvements in sales and marketing ROI that Oracle has achieved using the approach.

MLC's Dan Goldenberg says "We’re proud to present this ground breaking work on optimizing marketing spend allocation in a B2B environment because it has the potential to help a large number of our member companies resolve a major pain point." Although much has been written about marketing accountability in the B2C world, very little has been done in B2B because the problem is considerably more difficult to address. In particular, purchase cycles are longer, more complex and involve multiple marketing decision makers and so many B2B companies have simply not tried to address the problems of marketing accountability and marketing budget optimization due to an inherent belief that the problems are not solvable in B2B. The work done by Oracle with Marketing Decision Science shows however that the problem can be creatively addressed and large gains in marketing spend productivity can be achieved.

According to Oracle's Vice President of Corporate Marketing, "We have fundamentally changed the way we make advertising and marketing budget allocation decisions. We have moved from anecdotal allocation to quantitative fact based analysis and decision making, with huge impact on our sales opportunity pipeline and downstream revenue"

This work and case study represents the thin edge of the wedge in bringing the practice of marketing accountability that has taken root in the consumer products world, into the B2B environment.