In my four years at Forrester, I’ve crossed paths with a lot of three-letter technologies: CDP, DMP, OTT, ITP, and ETP . . . the list goes on. But MRM, or marketing resource management, has a unique challenge amid this alphabet soup: Marketers rarely call it by its name.

Instead, when we speak to marketers, they tell us their frustrations — such as difficulty tracking content production workflows or managing marketing spend in a holistic and flexible way — and then ask us what solutions can help them. This is a welcomed change compared to my experience researching customer data platforms; every client knows the acronym, but we start nearly every conversation with marketers by asking, “What are you trying to solve with a CDP?”

Marketers, we’re here to help. I’m pleased to share that our Now Tech on MRM is live today. The report gives B2C marketers a high-level overview of major vendors in the space and segments the market based on the pain points marketers are trying to solve. Do you need:

  • A powerful billing and spend management system? Look at vendors in the money segment, many of which have capabilities enabling flexible budget reallocations and marketing performance management.
  • Collaboration tools to connect internal and external partners? Check vendors in the people segment, which provide marketing calendar capabilities, visual marketing planning boards, and integrations with enterprise email and calendar tools.
  • A means of optimizing content production and usage workflows? Build a shortlist with vendors that offer content workflows. These content vendors help marketers and their agencies ideate, create, store, and reuse existing content.
  • Tools to support distributed marketing teams? Focus on the vendors in the brand management segment, which offer sophisticated templates and central repositories for distributed marketing teams to localize content and pull in brand assets on the fly.

Stay tuned for more on MRM — we just kicked off the Forrester Wave™ evaluation of MRM vendors. In the meantime, feel free to set up an inquiry.

Thanks to my colleague, Rusty Warner, for coauthoring this research!