Download Key Points from the ITSMA Marketing Leadership Forum

By Jeanne Brown, ITSMA

So you couldn’t make it to ITSMA’s Marketing Leadership Forum this month. We forgive you…this time. ; -) We had presentations from Forrester’s Josh Bernoff, as well as presentations by marketing leaders from Avaya, Deloitte, EMC, Enthiosys, Geehan Group, HCL, and Infosys, not to mention highly interactive Q&A sessions, great networking, and a lovely backdrop in Napa, CA. To give you a few of the best practices and lessons learned by those who attended, we’ve created a presentation in SlideShare that you can download. Enjoy—and we’ll see you at next year’s event, right?

Download highlights from the 2010 ITSMA Marketing Leadership Forum

Ask ITSMA: What Do Services Customers Look for in a Newsletter?

By Dave Munn, President and CEO, 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.

Q: What are the things to keep in mind when an IT services company prepares an external newsletter for customers? And what type of content creates interest?

A: Your newsletter should not focus on selling your products or even communicating your value propositions but rather on educating your audience—through news, tips, and big ideas that relate to the target audience’s individual business and industry needs. That means doing research to find out who your audience is and what kinds of topics they find interesting.

The goal of the newsletter should be to create a relationship. You do that by providing the kind of information that trade magazines have traditionally provided: case studies, expert advice, opinions, surveys, trend stories, and examinations of big ideas that have relevance for your readership. This is how you stay out of the recycle bin and the spam folder.

Let your Website and your salespeople do the selling. IT services are too complex to be sold in a newsletter anyway. Your newsletter should be for attracting people to have a relationship with your company. If you reliably offer valuable education, they will follow you and they will hold your brand in esteem. The rest will flow naturally from that. Think McKinsey Quarterly. There are no pitches for services, just great data and advice—so good, in fact, that McKinsey can charge for its marketing!

	Do you have a sales or marketing question? Visit Ask ITSMA to access our experience, insight, and research results.

Services Marketing News

EMC and CA get cloudy, SAP goes mobile, and the eight things your prospects wish you knew.

• Social media case study: Kinaxis’ social media strategy
• SAP proclaims its love for mobile—but it means the company must make major changes
• IBM gets into social media analytics
• Joe Tucci says EMC is riding the digital technology wave to success with cloud computing
• Eight things your prospects wish you knew
• CA goes double down on cloud computing

For up-to-the-minute services marketing news, follow ITSMA on Twitter: @itsma_b2b.

Upcoming ITSMA Events

Marketing Organization Model, Structure, and Competencies of the Future
Web Briefing
June 29, 2010
8:00 am Pacific – 11:00 am Eastern – 16:00 London

The marketing organisation model, structure and competencies that we know today are set to change. In this ITSMA web briefing, Peter O’Neill of Forrester will discuss the changes in marketing organisation models and their impact on the balance between global and local marketing, and David Edelman of McKinsey & Company will explain the impact of digital marketing on the needs of the wider marketing organisation.

Sign up for Marketing Organization Model, Structure, and Competencies of the Future

To view all events, please go here.

ITSMA Featured Research

ITSMA Online Survey: Integrating Social Media into the Marketing Mix and the Business
Social media have value on their own, but they should also be used to complement other marketing channels, such as events, whitepapers, and Websites. In this report, ITSMA examines how B2B marketers are leveraging social media channels in their marketing strategies.
Read the ITSMA social media survey

Services Marketing Budgets and Benchmarks: 2010 Budget Allocations and Trends
This report delivers a detailed look at the state of the services marketing profession as it exists in early 2010. It provides data on services marketing budgets, budget allocations, and marketing priorities from a range of companies across the technology and consulting industries.
Read the ITSMA Services Marketing Budgets and Benchmarks report

Recent ITSMA Thought Leadership

Why Marketing Must Be the Catalyst for Social Media
In ITSMA’s recent social media survey, we found that in most organizations, marketing is the catalyst for social media being used by others in the company. In this online briefing, ITSMA’s Chris Koch and Katie Espinola will examine marketing’s role as the catalyst and offer case studies from top B2B technology companies.
View Why Marketing Must Be the Catalyst for Social Media

Globalizing Marketing: How to Sync Headquarters and Field Marketing
Globalization is making it more important to maintain an effective localized touch with field marketing. Marketers must differentiate between the marketing processes and content that can and should be centralized, and what must remain under local management. In this Viewpoint, Peter O’Neill, VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester, explains how marketers can localize while they globalize.
Read How to Sync Headquarters and Field Marketing

CSC’s WikonnecT: How to Build a Thriving Social Media Community
Private online communities are the holy grail of social media in B2B. ITSMA research shows that B2B buyers’ most valuable sources of information are their peers—nothing else comes close. Providers that can facilitate that peer connection have an unparalleled opportunity to build trust and loyalty with prospects and clients. In this ITSMA Case Study, we discover how CSC successfully navigated the challenges of social media with WikonnecT, a B2B online community for the insurance industry.
Read CSC’s WikonnecT: How to Build a Thriving Social Media Community

Xerox Global Services’ Competipedia: Using Social Media to Enable the Sales Force
Social media tools expand the possibilities of competitive intelligence by driving collaboration. In this ITSMA Case Study, we show how XGS used social media tools and principles to develop Competipedia, a wiki-based tool that salespeople can use to find and share competitive intelligence on a secure, easy-to-use Website.
Read Xerox Global Services’ Competipedia

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 at 2:24 PM and is filed under Ezine AddIns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.