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Marketing Excellence Awards

Submission Guidelines

ITSMA's Marketing Excellence Awards are designed to honor special achievement in marketing technology, telecom, or professional services and solutions. Use these guidelines to structure your submission.

2009 Award Categories:
ITSMA will accept submissions in six categories.

Account-Based Marketing

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) continues to grow each year along with its estimated share of the overall marketing budget. Why? Because it can broaden and deepen relationships with key individuals, increase awareness and demand for services and solutions, and help to gain superior financial results—one important client at a time. ABM is a structured approach to developing and implementing highly customized marketing campaigns for single accounts, prospects, or partnerships. However, the principles of ABM can also be applied to a 1-1, 1-few or 1-many model. Key judging criteria include a description of your Account-Based Marketing program including collaboration with the delivery and selling teams, approach, and research conducted. In addition, you will need to provide an example showcasing campaign relevance and innovation, and real business results for you and for your client.

Enabling Sales

Dramatic shifts in today’s economy and market dynamics mean that marketing and sales must collaborate even more closely than previously. It also means that marketing has to be in lock-step with sales at each phase of the client’s acquisition processes, from creating awareness to generating demand to generating sales-qualified leads. Marketing needs to take the lead in developing systems and processes to ensure that sales receives the right content and programs at the right time for the right situation. Marketing should also play a role in helping sales identify more and better opportunities for their account plans. Key judging criteria include improving collaboration between marketing and sales, developing integrated sales and marketing programs that generate increased results, and providing new tools and new approaches that improve sales productivity. Submissions that include sales engagement initiatives with alliance or channel partners are also encouraged.

Targeted Demand Generation

Targeted marketing and sales programs are extremely effective in generating demand for new and existing products, services, and solutions. Successful demand generation campaigns are typically designed, launched, and managed around offerings and messaging that will speak to audiences in specific segments, vertical markets, and even individual accounts. Key judging criteria include identifying new opportunities; designing innovative and focused marketing campaigns (often for 10s of new and existing accounts rather than 100s or 1,000s); using multiple demand generation tactics in an integrated fashion; and achieving substantial results.

Leveraging Digital Marketing

Today's customers want conversations and real-time interaction—with their peers, with influencers, and with solution providers. Digital tools and channels such as blogs, RSS, online communities, and podcasts are making online conversations easier than ever before, and yet raising substantial new challenges for marketers, who are at risk of losing control of messages and customer dialogue. The new channels and techniques offer important new opportunities for gaining insight into customer and market issues, but must also integrate with the more traditional approaches to connecting with customers and other constituencies. Key judging criteria include using the new digital channels to obtain customer and market insight and disseminate company thought leadership, engaging with customers and market influencers, generating demand, and tracking and measuring business impact.

Thought Leadership Marketing

Thought leadership plays a critical role in attracting customers and prospects early in the buying process and moving them through the sales cycle faster. But rarely does it achieve the goal of getting the reader to want to learn more or to take action. The best thought leadership combines solid, relevant content with a strong (and sometime controversial) perspective that is backed by real examples or credible research. Companies that excel at thought leadership are able to find and nurture ideas inside their organizations and present them in compelling ways to their target audiences. Key judging criteria include a description of your thought leadership development process and an example of a successful thought leadership marketing program: from inception through results measurement.

Marketing Measurement and Accountability

Marketing is being held more accountable to show impact on the business (e.g., opportunities, pipeline contributions, closed deals), not just marketing effectiveness. Establishing the link between marketing and the top and bottom lines requires good systems and processes. However, beyond just having the right tools, it’s also important that the right people contribute accurately and consistently, and that the right information is collected and analyzed to support effective investment decisions. Only then can marketing demonstrate its true impact on pipeline growth and revenue impact. Key judging criteria include a description of your systems and approaches (such as dashboards, CRM), key measurements, explanation of how the data is used and communicated, and the results of measurement on marketing’s value to the business.

2009 Award Winners

ITSMA will honor two winners in each category.

Diamond Awards: Best in class for the industry, as measured by innovation, execution, and results.

Gold Awards: Standout performance in improving marketing performance, as measured by innovation, execution, and results.

Submission Format

All submissions must include an Application Form and follow the guidelines listed below to present a compelling story of what was done, how it was done, and the business results. Include detail for each of the required sections. Judges will look especially for initiatives that represent true innovation for the industry, highly effective execution, and dramatic business results.

Submission Outline

1. Initiative Summary

Provide a brief overview of the marketing initiative and the results realized. What is the essence of the story? (Limit: ½ page)

2. Situation Overview

Describe the business problem and/or opportunity that inspired the initiative. What challenges was the business facing? What changes had occurred that called for a new initiative? What was the competitive situation? What constraints were overcome?

This section should provide an understanding of the business conditions and environment that your organization faced while developing your initiative and implementation plan. (Limit: ½ page)

3. Understanding of Customer/Market Need

Define the customer or market need that the initiative addressed. How rigorous was the approach taken to understand the need? To what extent did you quantify the need or opportunity (e.g., costs, potential savings, benefits, and/or market size)? Was the initiative based on a new insight into customer or market needs? Was this an effort to define a new segment? How would the target customers define the business issue that you were trying to solve?

This section should provide an understanding of your insight into the customer/market need and how you described and quantified that need. (Limit: 1 page)

4. Innovation

Describe the innovation involved in addressing the customer/market need. To what extent did this initiative represent a new way of doing business within your organization? To what extent did you break new ground within your segment or the larger industry in marketing services or solutions? Have you seen a competitive response to your initiative?

This section should provide an understanding of how different and innovative the submission is relative to your peers and competitors as well as previous practice within your own organization. (Limit: ½ page)

5. Execution

Detail the full scope of the initiative and the specific steps taken to bring it to fruition. What were the key elements of the initiative? What resources were required to execute the plan? How was the initiative managed? To what extent did the initiative require new types of collaboration across the organization? Were partners involved? What were the most difficult challenges you faced in executing the plan successfully? What changes were made along the way as new challenges emerged? What were the most important factors contributing to the initiative's success?

This section should provide a clear and detailed understanding of what was involved in the initiative, how efficiently and effectively it was carried out, and what elements of the program contributed most to its success. (Limit: 3 pages)

6. Business Results

Describe the "scorecard" and metrics that are/were being used to measure what has been accomplished to date. What measures of success (marketing and business metrics) are included in the scorecard? What quantifiable results have you been able to document? What results do you expect to accomplish with this initiative over the next year (e.g., revenue impact, profit impact, order pipeline impact, referrals, win rate, etc.)? How important are these results to the company or division as a whole?

This section should provide concrete data that documents the success of the initiative, as well as demonstrating the appropriateness of the scorecard. (Limit: 1 page)

7. Closing Statement

Summarize the most important reasons why your initiative deserves special recognition by ITSMA. (Limit: ½ page)

Submission Fee

ITSMA must receive payment of $375 for each submission to cover expenses associated with the administration of the program. Payment in US dollars via authorized purchase order, check, or credit card must be received by June 12, 2009 (see application form for details).

Nondisclosure

ITSMA will keep all information included in award submissions strictly confidential, and will not disclose any information from the submissions without formal authorization from the applicant.

Submission Deadline

ITSMA must receive all submissions by email by June 12, 2009. Send the submission to porourke@itsma.com.

Applicants may also submit additional materials to support the submission by email or in hard copy, although the judges will look primarily at the main submission.

Send additional materials to porourke@itsma.com or to:

ITSMA
420 Bedford Street, Suite 110
Lexington, MA 02420 USA

Please note: ITSMA will not return any of the submission materials.

ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. We provide research, consulting, and training to the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services companies to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.