Plan to Win an Award

Are you asking the right questions about a potential new marketing program or campaign before you roll up your sleeves? Perhaps the best one to ask is this: Would my peers think my idea was good enough to win an award? The award metaphor is useful because it fires the competitive spirit—a good muse for any successful effort. Here are some questions to ask yourself the next time you’re planning something new, based on the guidelines we’ve been honing over the 11-year lifespan of the Marketing Excellence Awards:

1. What is the story? We humans are wired for stories. What is the narrative that explains what you are trying to accomplish with this program? Creating the narrative helps project members focus their efforts and will help sell the effort to others inside the business and with customers.
2. What are the motivating factors? Successful marketing programs always have a compelling call to action. But marketing programs are themselves calls to action. There should be an important business justification that causes marketing to create the program. That justification can come from inside, such as wanting to enter a new market or shore up sagging sales, or outside, such as a new competitor entering the market.
3. What is the customer need? The depth and creativity of your research can be the deciding factor in whether the program rises above the noise in the marketplace. Research provides the supporting evidence for a new insight into customer or market needs. For example, segmentation could reveal a market that you never knew existed. Role-based research can help personalize your message to the needs of the specific buyers and influencers involved in the purchasing decision.
4. How do you quantify the need? Research also provides the quantification of the need and the benefits of your solution that are most worth highlighting for customers, such as:
   • Improve efficiency
   • Increase customer satisfaction
   • Increase profitable revenue
5. Where is the innovation? To be sure, one of marketing’s primary roles is to support sales. But marketing should also be helping drive the business strategy and execution of the company. One of the ways to do this is through programs that challenge the current ways of doing things, both internally and with customers. Marketing programs should help the business stand apart from competitors in the segment. The best signal of success is when competitors feel compelled to respond.
6. What are the constraints? Of course, all marketing programs come with constraints. Budget is the overriding limiter, but it’s important to quantify as many constraints as possible because the limiters help define the ambition of the project.
7. What went wrong? The post-mortem of any project includes challenges and lessons learned. Try compiling that list before the project begins. Optimism at the beginning of a project can cause you to overlook obstacles that seem obvious in hindsight. Specifically, imagine the challenges in the following areas:
   • Coordination with partners
   • Inability to reprioritize when conditions change
   • Resistance to change
8. How do you measure success? Establishing clear metrics before you start provides guard rails for the project and makes it easier to provide progress reports. Of course, knowing the metrics before you start also makes the data gathering process much easier.

How do you make your projects award winners?

You can use this checklist for your next project, or you can go ahead and apply for an ITSMA 2009 Marketing Excellence Award today.

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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.