ITSMA Launches 11th Annual Marketing Excellence Awards Program

LEXINGTON, Massachusetts—February 4, 2008—ITSMA, the leading marketing association for technology, communications, and professional services providers, is pleased to announce the launch of its 2008 Marketing Excellence Awards program.

The awards program, now in its eleventh year, honors the marketing strategies, programs, and campaigns that have achieved excellence at technology, telecom, communications, and professional services firms worldwide. The awards put special emphasis on marketing innovation, program execution, and business results.

Categories for 2008

Entries for the 2008 Marketing Excellence Awards program may be submitted in the following six categories:

• Sharpening Brand and Competitive Differentiation: Analyzing position and differentiation vis-à-vis major competitors, developing differentiated offerings and messaging for specific markets, implementing integrated campaigns, improving the customer experience, and measuring results.
• Leveraging Digital Marketing: Using digital channels to obtain customer and market insight, engaging with customers and market influencers, disseminating thought leadership, generating demand, and tracking and measuring business impact.
• Strengthening Customer Relationships: Developing innovative relationship-building programs, integrating customer-facing activities across the organization, building customer communities, and demonstrating measurable results.
• Launching New Solutions: Identifying customers’ business needs, working across the organization and/or with partners to develop innovative new offerings, getting to market quickly, and delivering measurable business value to customers.
• Enabling Sales: Improving collaboration between marketing and sales, developing integrated sales and marketing programs that generate increased results, and providing new tools and new approaches that improve sales productivity and results.
• Generating Demand: Identifying new opportunities, designing innovative and focused marketing campaigns, using multiple demand generation tactics in an integrated fashion, and achieving substantial results.

Deadline for Submissions

The deadline for submissions is Friday, June 13, 2008. The winners will be announced at a special awards dinner at ITSMA’s Annual Marketing Conference on November 4, 2008.

Last year’s winners included Accenture, Autotask Corporation, Avaya, BearingPoint, Infosys Technologies, Iron Mountain, Microsoft Services (two awards), SAP, and Satyam.

2008 Submissions Guidelines

The awards are open to all companies worldwide that market and sell services and solutions. Visit ITSMA’s Website for detailed submission guidelines and the application form.

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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 Avaya, BT, Cisco, Deloitte, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, 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.