Marketing Excellence Awards: Submission Guidelines

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Submission Guidelines

ITSMA’s Marketing Excellence Awards are designed to honor special achievement in marketing technology, telecom, or professional services and solutions. Use these guidelines to structure your submission.

2010 Award Categories:

ITSMA will accept submissions in six categories.

Developing and Launching New Offerings. Marketers have put launching new offerings among their top priorities in 2010 to help reignite growth, enter new white space or raise the bar against competitors. We’re looking for successful new services, solutions, business models, practice areas, or revamped offerings.  Key judging criteria for this category include the research and analysis used to identify new market and client needs, collaboration across the organization and/or with partners and clients to enhance development, field and channel enablement, speed to market, scaling, and delivering measurable business value to customers. Submissions should highlight the strength of the offering development process along with the key marketing activities involved with the launch.

Enabling Sales. Dramatic shifts in today’s economy and market dynamics mean that marketing and sales must collaborate even more closely than previously. It also means that marketing has to be in lock-step with sales at each phase of the client’s acquisition processes, from creating awareness to generating demand to generating sales-qualified leads. Marketing needs to take the lead in developing systems and processes to ensure that sales receives the right content and programs at the right time for the right situation. Marketing should also play a role in helping sales identify more and better opportunities for their account plans. Key judging criteria include 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. Submissions that include sales engagement initiatives with alliance or channel partners are also encouraged.

Lead Generation, Management, and Measurement. Companies can increase sales efficiency as well as shorten the sales cycle by filling the sales pipeline with higher-quality leads and helping to move leads more quickly from one buying stage to the next. Only marketing can do this, through targeted demand and lead generation, lead nurturing, and proof points that help sales close deals. Key judging criteria includes capturing customer and prospect insight; mapping marketing with sales and buying stages; nurturing prospects with a steady flow of marketing content to move them from one buying stage to the next; creating clear lead definitions, especially for a “sales-ready lead”, agreed upon by sales and  marketing; creating a closed-loop process for managing leads between marketing and sales; and using a tracking and metrics system that demonstrates how leads contribute to the sales pipeline.

Marketing with Social Media. Today’s customers want conversations and real-time interaction—with their peers, with influencers, and with experts. Social media tools such as blogs, online communities, social networks, and Twitter are making online conversations easier than ever before. Yet social media also raise substantial new challenges for marketers, who need to help their organizations monitor, engage, and manage online conversation as well as integrate with the more traditional approaches to connecting with customers. Key judging criteria include using the new social media channels to obtain customer and market insight, develop and disseminate company thought leadership, engaging with customers and market influencers, generating demand, and tracking and measuring business impact.

Senior Client Engagement Programs. Amid greater customer choice and declining loyalty, the ability to create deep and trusted relationships is more important than ever. Trusted relationships with strategic accounts translate into marquee references, positive word-of-mouth, and valuable insight into the most effective new offers. As a result of the economic downturn and heightened scrutiny, companies may be seeing the demise of high-end hospitability programs. Consequently, relationship-building programs for senior executives at key (named, strategic, global, etc.) accounts can no longer be one-off or hospitality activities, but must be part of a portfolio of client engagement designed to progressively develop and nurture long-term relationships. Key judging criteria include developing innovative relationship building programs; integrating customer facing activities across the organization; focusing the programs around relevant and compelling business content, rather than hospitality; building customer communities; working in conjunction with sales to help build the programs; and demonstrating measurable results.

Though Leadership Marketing. Thought leadership plays a critical role in attracting customers and prospects early in the buying process and moving them through the sales cycle faster. But rarely does it achieve the goal of getting the reader to want to learn more or to take action. The best thought leadership combines solid, relevant content with a strong (and sometime controversial) perspective that is backed by real examples or credible research. Companies that excel at thought leadership are able to find and nurture ideas inside their organizations and present them in compelling ways to their target audiences. Key judging criteria include a description of your thought leadership development process and an example of a successful thought leadership marketing program: from inception through results measurement.

Winners

ITSMA will honor two winners in each category.

Diamond Awards: Best in class for the industry, as measured by innovation, execution, and results.

Gold Awards: Standout performance in improving marketing performance, as measured by innovation, execution, and results.

Submission Format

All submissions must include an Application Form and follow the guidelines listed below to present a compelling story of what was done, how it was done, and the business results. Include detail for each of the required sections. Judges will look especially for initiatives that represent true innovation for the industry, highly effective execution, and dramatic business results.

Submission Outline

1. Initiative Summary

Provide a brief overview of the marketing initiative and the results realized. What is the essence of the story? (Limit: ½ page)

2. Situation Overview

Describe the business problem and/or opportunity that inspired the initiative. What challenges was the business facing? What changes had occurred that called for a new initiative? What was the competitive situation? What constraints were overcome?

This section should provide an understanding of the business conditions and environment that your organization faced while developing your initiative and implementation plan. (Limit: ½ page)

3. Understanding of Customer/Market Need

Define the customer or market need that the initiative addressed. How rigorous was the approach taken to understand the need? To what extent did you quantify the need or opportunity (e.g., costs, potential savings, benefits, and/or market size)? Was the initiative based on a new insight into customer or market needs? Was this an effort to define a new segment? How would the target customers define the business issue that you were trying to solve?

This section should provide an understanding of your insight into the customer/market need and how you described and quantified that need. (Limit: 1 page)

4. Innovation

Describe the innovation involved in addressing the customer/market need. To what extent did this initiative represent a new way of doing business within your organization? To what extent did you break new ground within your segment or the larger industry in marketing services or solutions? Have you seen a competitive response to your initiative?

This section should provide an understanding of how different and innovative the submission is relative to your peers and competitors as well as previous practice within your own organization. (Limit: ½ page)

5. Execution

Detail the full scope of the initiative and the specific steps taken to bring it to fruition. What were the key elements of the initiative? What resources were required to execute the plan? How was the initiative managed? To what extent did the initiative require new types of collaboration across the organization? Were partners involved? What were the most difficult challenges you faced in executing the plan successfully? What changes were made along the way as new challenges emerged? What were the most important factors contributing to the initiative’s success?

This section should provide a clear and detailed understanding of what was involved in the initiative, how efficiently and effectively it was carried out, and what elements of the program contributed most to its success. (Limit: 3 pages)

6. Business Results

Describe the “scorecard” and metrics that are/were being used to measure what has been accomplished to date. What measures of success (marketing and business metrics) are included in the scorecard? What quantifiable results have you been able to document? What results do you expect to accomplish with this initiative over the next year (e.g., revenue impact, profit impact, order pipeline impact, referrals, win rate, etc.)? How important are these results to the company or division as a whole?

This section should provide concrete data that documents the success of the initiative, as well as demonstrating the appropriateness of the scorecard. (Limit: 1 page)

7. Closing Statement

Summarize the most important reasons why your initiative deserves special recognition by ITSMA. (Limit: ½ page)

Submission Fee

ITSMA must receive payment of $395 for each submission to cover expenses associated with the administration of the program. Payment in US dollars via authorized purchase order, check, or credit card must be received by June 11, 2010 (see application form for details).

Nondisclosure

ITSMA will keep all information included in award submissions strictly confidential, and will not disclose any information from the submissions without formal authorization from the applicant.

Submission Deadline

ITSMA must receive all submissions by email by June 11, 2010. Send the submission to porourke@itsma.com.

Applicants may also submit additional materials to support the submission by email or in hard copy, although the judges will look primarily at the main submission.

Send additional materials to porourke@itsma.com or to:

ITSMA
420 Bedford Street, Suite 110
Lexington, MA 02420 USA

Please note: ITSMA will not return any of the submission materials.

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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.