These Companies Have Begun the Marketing Transformation. Have You?

In the wake of ITSMA’s annual budget survey earlier this year, we realized that B2B marketing has reached a turning point. Services’ marketing budgets are at all-time low: an average of 0.8% of revenue in 2009 and 0.9% of revenue forecasted for 2010.

Realizing that marketers could not afford to add more to their already full plates (like a huge helping of social media, for example) while continuing to do more with less, we decided that transformation should be the theme of our 2010 Annual Marketing Conference on November 2. During the year, we’ve begun to see some healthy signs of transformation that we’re looking forward to telling you about in November.

We will have some great transformation stories from our annual ITSMA Marketing Excellence Awards, where we invite services and solutions marketers to show us their best work. This year we added new categories, including Marketing with Social Media, and Developing and Launching New Offerings, to reflect the way that marketing is changing and becoming even more critical to an organization’s overall success.

We had many qualified applicants this year, from which we selected 25 finalists to send on to our panel of judges. This year’s finalists provide concrete examples of what marketers need to start doing to contribute more to the bottom line.

Our panel of judges is in the process of selecting diamond and gold winners in each category, and the winners will be announced at a special awards ceremony during the annual conference. This year’s categories and finalists include:

• Developing and Launching New Offerings: Capgemini, Cisco (two programs), CSC, IBM
• Enabling Sales: Avaya, Cisco, HP, Microsoft, SAP
• Lead Generation, Management, and Measurement: BT, Cognizant, HP, IBM, TriZetto
• Marketing with Social Media: Accenture, IBM (two programs), TELUS, Zocalo/Schawk
• Thought Leadership Marketing: Avanade, GE Healthcare, IAG Consulting, IBM, Wipro

We hope that you will join us at the conference, where we will hear case studies from the winners about how they are transforming marketing. We will also have many other top services and solutions marketers among our conference speakers, who will help you lead the transformation in your own company.

For more information about the Marketing Excellence Awards and ITSMA’s 2010 Annual Marketing Conference, visit http://www.itsma.com/events/2010-conference/.

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ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. We work with the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA annual program clients include business leaders such as AT&T, Cisco, Deloitte, EMC, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Tata Consultancy Services, among others. Our comprehensive research, consulting, and training on topics including ITSMA Account-Based Marketing℠, Brand Positioning, and Solutions Development provide the insight and experience companies need to improve business results. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.