When resources are tight, it’s natural to curtail spending. But in some cases – like lead generation – marketing might need to spend a little to save more in the long run.

Marketers need to turn their companies into idea-based organizations. It’s the only way that our subject matter experts will have anything worth talking about in social media over the long haul. We’ll be talking about how to do it at our online briefing, Fulfilling the Promise of Integrated Marketing with Social Media, later this month. In the meantime, here’s a primer.

How do you go from being a technology provider to being a trusted advisor? Get to know the customer better than he knows himself.

To focus on the unique aspects of services and solutions marketing, ITSMA and CIM partnered on a professional diploma course, and we’ve just issued a mid-year progress report.

If you’re asking yourself how much you should be spending on social media, you’re asking the wrong question. Here’s why.

Today’s marketers have the good fortune of being surrounded by data, but luck alone won’t help them turn that data into knowledge they can use with buyers. What they can do, though, is learn from companies that are using data to make marketing and business decisions.

Changes in buyer behavior and the availability of technology to automate marketing and collect data are driving CMOs to become data-driven decision makers. In this interview, Scott Brinker explains why CMOs need chief marketing technologists working for them.

With the rise of social media and analytics, marketing must become an organization that works across silos rather than within one. That demands two kinds of marketers: those with deep expertise and those capable of working with almost anyone.

Marketers say they’re using metrics and analytics to drive their marketing strategy, but are they really?

These two tactics aren’t everything you need to be successful with B2B lead generation, but they’re a pretty good start.

Social media monitoring helps marketers mine the social media rivers for the gold that is difficult to discover through a generic Google search. Here’s what you have to gain from doing it.

To remain relevant, virtual service providers need ways to remind customers of what they are getting for their money – and the role the service plays in helping customers’ businesses.

Marketers say they are using metrics and analytics to drive their marketing strategy, but are they really?

Two trends are emerging that play key roles in proving the link between thought leadership and sales.

Social media are changing the branding game, and subject matter experts are building their personal brands. This is scary for companies that have spent millions on their corporate brand. But rather than trying to control the message, marketers need to embrace and encourage the rise of personal brands.

Many marketers think that because content is shifting from print to online, they can do away with the editorial calendar. But research shows that now, more than ever, formal processes are critical to successful thought leadership programs.

We prefer to report on trends after we’ve done our research and verified the data. Every once in a while, though, we like to get out of our comfort zone and talk about what we think is going to happen in the future.

One of the key aspects of sales enablement is making salespeople more credible in front of customers. Marketers need to know what to do – and what not to do – to help salespeople have better conversations with customers.

Now that budgets are rebounding – albeit not to the level that they were before the recession – will marketing revert to its before-the-recession ways?

ITSMA’s tenth annual Brand Tracking Study: Professional Services and Solutions shows that for companies other than the big three (IBM, HP, and Accenture) the race is wide open for marketers to build strong awareness of their brands.

What do GE Healthcare and the Grateful Dead have in common? They figured out what their customers needed.

Traditional PR outreach isn’t working anymore. Here’s a model for making PR more relevant.

Now that budgets are rebounding – albeit not to the level that they were before the recession – will marketing revert to its before-the-recession ways?

In this Special Report, based on ITSMA research and full of supporting case studies, ITSMA’s Chris Koch outlines the five steps B2B marketers must take to successfully integrate social media into their larger marketing strategies.

In the second part of our summary of lessons from our ITSMA annual conference, we learn how Xerox elevated marketing’s role in the organization by focusing on three key metrics.