The CMO Council just released its annual outlook for Marketing, based on insights from 825 senior marketers. I'm proud to say that this year's report was sponsored by Marketo as well as Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Download the CMO Council: Marketing Outlook 2008 executive summary.

One of the key findings from the report is that although progress has been made, senior marketers continue to have a razor focus on marketing ROI and marketing accountability:

• Quantifying and measuring the value of marketing programs and investments remains the top challenge in the year ahead, report 53 percent of respondents.
• When asked how they tracked and measured return on marketing spend, nearly 20 percent of marketers said they did not, while 34 percent said they were planning to introduce a formal ROI tracking system this year.

Another insight from respondents at companies with less than $100M in annual revenue is their single biggest source of frustration or aggravation is “having to do more with less.” Given this constant pressure to squeeze more results out of the same teams and marketing budgets, it's no surprise that the CMO Council identified several areas of investment in marketing automation to automate processes, optimize lead generation, and improve measurement. The top six areas of planned investment include:

• Email campaign management
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Marketing performance measurement dashboards
• Customer intelligence and solutions
• Search engine marketing (SEM)
• Sales and marketing integration tools

In addition to the report findings, the executive summary has two contributed commentary articles:

• Marketing 2.0 Hits a Tipping Point, by Jon Miller, VP Marketing, Marketo (myself).
• Execution Matters – Delivering on Commitments, Improving Productivity, By Dave Couture Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Download the CMO Council: Marketing Outlook 2008 executive summary to see all the findings and read our commentary.

Read the CMO Council's press release: Positive Outlook For Marketing Spend Reported By CMO Council.