Marketing Excellence Awards: Submission Guidelines

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Submission Guidelines

ITSMA’s Marketing Excellence Awards are designed to honor the marketing strategies, programs, and campaigns that have achieved excellence at technology, telecom, communications, consulting, and professional services firms worldwide. Use these guidelines to structure your submission.

2013 Award Categories:

ITSMA will accept submissions in six categories:

Driving Business with Thought Leadership. Creating and disseminating high quality thought leadership content, and leveraging new and traditional marketing vehicles to more effectively drive business.

Enabling Sales Channels. Improving sales effectiveness by successfully enabling sales channels (including field sales, client partners, channel representatives, and alliance partners) and directly affecting business results.

Generating and Nurturing Leads. Implementing marketing initiatives that create awareness, generate demand, identify leads, and nurture prospective customers at all stages of the buying process.

Marketing with Social and Digital Media. Integrating social and digital media into marketing programs, the overall marketing strategy, and the business.

Strengthening Client Relationships and Building Loyalty. Executing marketing programs designed to deepen the relationships with existing clients, foster loyalty, and build partnerships based on mutual trust.

Measuring and Communicating Marketing Performance. Selecting, tracking, managing, and communicating the right metrics to show marketing’s impact on business outcomes and results.

Judging Criteria

Entries for the 2013 Marketing Excellence Awards program are judged on the following criteria:

• Quality of the research and analysis that was done to understand the problem or opportunity
• Level of innovation
• Effectiveness of implementation
• Appropriate metrics
• Measurable impact on the business

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 $495 for each submission to cover expenses associated with the administration of the program. For awards shipped outside of the US, all associated shipping fees will be the responsibility of the award winner.

Payment in US dollars via authorized purchase order, check, or credit card must be received by June 14, 2013 (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 14, 2013. Send the submission to aturcotte@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 aturcotte@itsma.com or to:

ITSMA
91 Hartwell Avenue, First Floor
Lexington, MA 02421-3137

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 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, Mumbai, and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.