It’s that time of year again. In about 7 weeks we will be hosting our Online ROI Summit for about 300 marketers in Burlingame, California who want new insights on what’s working and what isn’t online - You can apply at www.TechTargetSummit.com.

However, before I plan the agenda for these conferences I make sure to check in with the marketers themselves about what they want us to cover — what is plaguing them the most when it comes to their online campaigns. And, no surprise, what keeps coming up is their need to know the latest best practices around “tightly” managing lead gen efforts and follow-up.

We all know “scrutiny” and “prove ROI” are the expectations du jour for the technology marketer and as economic times have tightened up focus on these aspects of their job have as well…

In rolling up trial and error stories from our actual technology customers what stands out is something that could appear as a huge contradiction but in reality makes sense, and that is the reality that the smaller the company, most likely, the tighter or “closed” is the process they have to stay on top of the leads they generate. The bigger, and often times more bureaucratic the company, the more complex it becomes. And so what we are left with is to figure out how do it the best regardless of company size. No easy feat but one we and our marketer participants will take on.

Check out the link to our Summit www.TechTargetSummit.com and if you want to hear what we all have to say please join us…  October 27th is only a blink away…

Last week we held our fourth, semi-annual Online ROI Summit, and, judging by the comments from attendees, this was one of our best ones yet. It was obvious to me that the impact of the recession has marketers even more focused on how to accelerate their online marketing activities, especially those related to  lead generation.

Over 245 technology marketers in attendance heard from marketers at HP, Tableau Software and VersionOne on how they track there lead generation efforts, along with the latest research from Google on how search is used during the IT buying process. We also had some great workshops focusing on email conversion Best Practices and measuring the ROI of social media.

And speaking of social media, we’re seeing some great posts out in the blogosphere from some of the attendees. Elizabeth McCann from Intuit recapped her takeaways from the Summit, What I Learned at the TechTarget Summit. Ronnie Ray from MarketPlane also wrote a wrap-up on the event, Notes from the TechTarget Online ROI Summit. John Bennett on BE Strategic recapped the key findings from the Google/TechTarget research presentation, Content is Still King in IT Marketing. Along with blogs, we also say a lot of traffic via Twitter, with more than 30 attendees tweeting, such as cappypopp and InboundMarketer.

Here are some of the highlights that we tweeted during the show www.twitter.com/ITAgenda:

• Welcome IT buyers from ING, BJs Wholesale, American Bible Society to TechTarget Online ROI Summit - event opens 8am tmw #TechTargetSummit

• A look at new Google research on search habits during IT buying process- presented during TechTarget Online ROI Summit tmw #TechTargetSummit

• #TechTargetSummit updates- tech marketing presentations from Google, HP covering IT buyer lead generation, compliance, social media

• Tech buyer is “hyperactive” researcher - 40+ editorial 10+ vendor touches over 6+ months of research - competition is fierce #TTGTSummit

• Publisher’s lead profiling - IT marketers demand more info from media partners - popular article and whitepaper titles #TTGTSummit

• Heard from HP, Tableau Software, VersionOne on ROI tracked from lead generation to revenue #TTGTSummit

• Lead generation is main focus of online advertising, syndication/SEM changed everything and social media is rapidly emerging #TTGTSummit

• There are 4 major recession-proof areas of IT spending - Business Intelligence/BPM, Compliance, Disaster Recovery, Consolidation #TTGTSummit

• Purchase Intentions study - data deduplication and disaster recovery have momentum this year, significant opportunity #TTGTSummit

• SearchCIO.com study - 29% of companies increased IT budgets in 2009 with IT security & compliance receiving largest portion #TTGTSummit

• 49% of IT organizations have 1+ SOA underway and majority are deemed “very important” to the business #TTGTSummit

• Email conversion - level of investment required for your offer will determine email copy length #TTGTSummit

• Social media - measure current conversations - free online tools, then join existing communities of customers and experts #TTGTSummit

• Lead activity - 69% of leads interact with competitive vendor content during a 3 month period #TTGTSummit

• IT buyers search using literal terms “comparison”, “compare” and “review” near the end of purchase process, per Google #TTGTSummit

• 67% of IT buyers willing to click the link of a manufacturer that they are not familiar with when searching, per Google #TTGTsummit

• Online media complexity creates opportunity - examine metrics carefully and see how media plan improves SEM/SEO strategy #TTGTSummit

• Consider the purchase journey and work closely with media partners to understand your prospects better #TTGTSummit

• #TTGTSummit all presentations and reports at www.techtarget.com/formarketers

You can download all the Summit presentations and our latest Google and Media Consumption reports at www.TechTarget.com/ForMarketers. Thanks again to all our speakers and panelists for a wonderful event!