2008-08-01 Ezine AddIn
Ask ITSMA: Does More Staff Mean Better Results?By Julie Schwartz, Senior Vice President and Chief Research Officer, ITSMA Each month, ITSMA receives a number of queries through Ask ITSMA, a resource designed to give members a quick and easy way to get insight on important services and solutions marketing questions they face. In this column, we will publish some of our favorite questions along with excerpts from our replies. Is there a correlation between the number of marketing staff of a company and its business results? In all the benchmarking that ITSMA has conducted since 1995, we have found little to no correlation between the size of the services marketing staff or size of the services marketing budget and business results. Long ago we came to the conclusion that the magnitude of marketing resources is not as important as the quality of marketing resources. Hiring a large staff and paying lots of money for them to produce glossy brochures will not necessarily improve business performance. However, well-placed PR supported by groundbreaking thought leadership and follow-up seminars just might. More important than number of marketing resources is what your marketing resources are doing. Keep in mind that building a quality thought leadership program and a comprehensive PR program that features face-to-face small-format seminars with targeted prospects might require you to increase your marketing staff. Build the case for more staff from the bottom up.
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Recent ITSMA Thought LeadershipThe First Task of a New Marketing Leader: Assess the Business and the Market Marketers need to know the business as well as or better than anyone else in the organization—and be ready to discuss its possibilities from multiple perspectives. This knowledge will not only enable more effective marketing strategy and planning; it will also help position marketers as peers at the management table. In this ITSMA Tool, Bob Baginski, ITSMA’s senior vice president, lays out a five-step framework to help marketers acquire broad and deep knowledge of the state of the business and market. Close the Loop: How to Build an Effective Lead-Nurturing Process For years, the process of lead generation in B2B has been like making cream: Skim the best from the top and forget about the rest. In this ITSMA Viewpoint, Paul Dunay, global director of integrated marketing for consulting company BearingPoint, outlines a process for retaining the people who aren’t hot sales leads and nurturing them until they heat up. The Steps to Vertical Market Leadership: ITSMA’s Vertical Maturity Model ITSMA has created a Vertical Market Maturity Model to help gauge progress toward vertical market mastery. In this Update we examine the model and outline the steps necessary to transform a company and its marketing group into vertical market experts. The View from the Other Side: B2B Marketing Practices from Other Industries If you want to break through and be unique, you need to look at how other industries market. It’s not that they are more creative, it’s simply that they might face different competitive pressures, industry norms, and corporate cultures. In this Online Briefing, we examine consumer packaged goods and professional services and look at ways to organize marketing more effectively to deliver breakthrough demand-generation programs. Elevating the Focus on Customers: ABM at Unisys Europe Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is an ambitious strategy that views each of a company’s most important customers as a market of one. Though the concept is simple, the follow-through is not. As Unisys Europe discovered, ABM implementation brings significant challenges, including organizational change, shifting marketing competencies, close coordination with sales, and a need to raise marketing to new heights, both inside the organization and with customers. Unisys has already learned some valuable lessons that we discuss in this ITSMA Case Study. |
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Most Popular ListensCheck out these ITSMA Online Briefings that drew the largest audiences and were rated highest by ITSMA members:Account-Based Marketing: Best Practices and Critical Success Factors ITSMA’s Jeff Sands, IBM’s Naomi Wilsey, and Xerox’s Liz Vega co-present this Briefing on best practices and critical success factors for Account-Based Marketing (ABM), a hot new approach that helps companies deepen relationships and increase revenue with key accounts. Thought Leadership Marketing for Professional Services: Getting Attention in aCompetitive Marketplace Today’s crowded market for professional services puts a tremendous premium on thought leadership. Even though professional services firms tend to have a stronger track record with thought leadership than product firms, in many companies, marketing isn’t seen as a player in content development. This needs to change. During this Briefing, ITSMA’s Steve Hurley, The Bloom Group’s Bob Buday, and Accenture’s Terry Corby tell you how. |
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News & NotesUpcoming ITSMA EventsTo view all events, please go to http://www.itsma.com/aspfiles/events/calendar.asp Are Spreadsheets and CRM Sufficient? Marketing Automation in the 21st Century Web Briefing The incentives for marketing to automate its operations for more efficiency and effectiveness have never been greater. Yet the technology options are complex and confusing. In this online briefing, we will untangle the complexity of marketing automation and offer valuable advice—including results from ITSMA’s exclusive survey of best practices, challenges, and ROI from top marketing decision makers’ use of marketing automation technologies. The Lasting Legacy of Sustainability: Marketing for the Future Roundtable Corporate Social Responsibility is regarded as the only responsible way to conduct business within the 21st century. No longer is it acceptable for organisations to operate with little or no regard for the greater ecosystem within which it exists. The purpose of this ITSMA Roundtable is to stimulate an open discussion around this broad and important topic. We will hear from organisations which have developed strong CSR and sustainability-related programs. Sharpening Marketing’s Edge: New Tools and Approaches Breakfast and Lunch Briefings September 16, 2008 (12:00 – 2:00 p.m. ET) September 18, 2008 (7:30 – 9:30 a.m. ET) September 24, 2008 (12:00 – 2:00 p.m. PT) October 1, 2008 (7:30 – 9:30 a.m. ET) The incentives for marketing to automate its operations for more efficiency and effectiveness have never been greater. Yet the technology options are complex and confusing. In this briefing, we will untangle the complexity of marketing automation and offer valuable advice—including results from ITSMA’s exclusive survey of best practices, challenges, and ROI from top marketing decision makers’ use of marketing automation technologies. Making Marketing “Atomically Global”: How the “Flat World” Is Changing the Way Marketing Is Organized and Managed Executive Roundtable During a recession, marketing budgets are among the first to be slashed. Marketing’s resilience can be traced directly to a history of outsourcing to outside agencies. Today, offshore outsourcing provides access to marketing staff in other countries where salaries and other expenses are comparatively lower and perhaps the talent is comparatively higher. At this Executive Roundtable, ITSMA’s Dave Munn and Ajit Maira will share the results of ITSMA’s latest research on marketing operations and management and facilitate discussion with a group of your peers. Marketing 3.0: Challenging the Paradigm and Embracing Change Annual European Marketing Forum, October 8 and 9 ITSMA’s European Forum brings together the region’s top marketing practicioners and thought leaders every year to discuss where the profession is and where it is going. This year’s event is focused on change, and how leading organizations are shifting their behavior and adopting new approaches. You’ll hear from marketing leaders from BT, Google, HP, and IBM, along with Professor Malcolm McDonald from the Cranfield School of Management, Richard Lewis from Richard Lewis Communications, Des Lee from Executive Change, and ITSMA’s own Richard Seymour and David Munn, among others. Maximizing Marketing’s Influence: The New Marketing Rules 15th Annual Marketing Conference, November 4 and 5 No more excuses: It’s time for marketing to step up to the plate and lead. We’ve dealt with shrinking budgets and staff, mastered complex CRM systems, learned to get great work done within a matrixed organization, and stood our ground with the Board. Now more than ever we need to maximize our influence and create bold new marketing rules. Join usas we hear insights and success stories from marketing leaders on a wide variety of vital topics—each with a window into what they did, how they led, and the results they achieved. An essential combination of both pragmatic and strategic will be highlighted through presentations, panel discussions, and interactive breakout sessions. |
