marketing strategist 2009 top10
DESCRIPTION
ITSMA clients voted for these ideas with their computer mice. These are the ideas contained within ITSMA research documents that were downloaded most often in 2009, in order of popularity. We’ve created a special report with excerpts from these most popular research documents that you can download for free.TRANSCRIPT
09TOP10
ITSMA’s Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010ABBREVIATED SUMMARY
Special Edition | January 4, 2010
Chris Koch
Download the full Special Edition of
ITSMA’s Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010.
Special Edition | January 4, 2010 | 09TOP10 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 2Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010
Introduction
We had many new ideas to
help marketers in 2009.
(You can see them all in
ITSMA’s Online Library.)
But here we’ve summarized
the ones that you voted for
with your feet. These are
ideas within the documents
that were downloaded most
often in 2009, in order of
popularity. Enjoy!
Download the full Special Edition of
ITSMA’s Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010.
Special Edition | January 4, 2010 | 09TOP10 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 3Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010
1. Help customers and prospects spark epiphanies
We have identified three steps to becoming a master of the epiphany stage:
Refocus your thought leadership strategy.
Align the sales and marketing processes with the customer’s buying process.
Change sales’ emphasis from transactional to consultative selling.
Stage 5.
LOYALTY
Post-Purchase
Evaluation
Evaluate
satisfaction
Measure value
delivered
Stage 4.
CONFIDENCE
Selection and
Purchase
Select the
provider
Negotiate the
contract
Ultimate sign-off
Stage 3.
INTEREST
Alternative
Evaluation
Solicit proposals
Evaluate
alternatives
Stage 2.
AWARENESS
Search
Clarify objectives
and solution
specifications
Identify
alternatives
(short list)
Stage 1.
EPIPHANY
Need
Recognition
Explore the
possibilities
Identify a need
or opportunity
Buying
Processes
Relationship
Stages
ITSMA’s Relationship Model
Source: ITSMA, 2009
To understand the epiphany stage and how it can help, read our report,
The Epiphany Stage: The Missing Link in the Buying Process.
Special Edition | January 4, 2010 | 09TOP10 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 4Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010
2. Match value propositions to the different stages of the buying cycle
According to ITSMA’s definition, a value proposition is:
A clear and simple statement that reflects the essence of the unique
value a business will provide to a client or target market through a
combination of benefits and price.
ITSMA’s Six-Step Process for Articulating Value Propositions
For more information, read our report Where’s the Beef? Creating Value Propositions That
Matter, which explains our six-step process for developing effective value propositions and
offers a proven template for creating value propositions that deliver results.
Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6
Understand
the market
and clients
Determine
your true
differentiators
Articulate
unique value
based on
customer need
Quantify
value
Elicit internal
and external
feedback and
revise
Collaborate with
sales to
communicate
value
propositionsSource: ITSMA, 2009
Special Edition | January 4, 2010 | 09TOP10 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 5Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010
3. Reduce the cost per order dollar through marketingCost per order dollar is the key to
demonstrating the power of
marketing to improve the
efficiency of sales. It helps senior
management understand that
spending money on marketing has
the potential to both improve
revenue generation and reduce
the cost of sales as a percentage
of revenue.
For more information, read
Why (and How) You Should Spend More on Marketing in a Downturn.
Special Edition | January 4, 2010 | 09TOP10 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 6Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010
4. Create a clear process for developing and selling complex solutions
In 2005, HP began an ambitious
effort to create an all-encompassing
solution for customers to revamp
their data centers.
Developing a quantitative analysis of the
potential market was important not just
for market planning but also for making
the case for the solution internally. HP
wanted the solution to be something that
the business units would be actively
involved in and supportive of. That made
quantitative market research essential.
Other essential steps in HP’s solution
development process include:
1. Size the potential market.
2. Research customer needs.
3. Market the solution internally.
4. Create an appropriate level of
detail in the solution.
5. Develop a list of differentiators.
6. Create a go-to-market plan.
7. Raise the tolerance for ambiguity
inside the organization.
8. Create a composite portrait of ROI.
To learn more about these specific steps, read
How to Develop a Complex Solution: HP’s Data Center Transformation.
Special Edition | January 4, 2010 | 09TOP10 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 7Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010
5. Close deals faster with collaborative account planning
Collaboration between marketing and
sales in the account planning process
can speed up the sales process.
Ideally, sales and marketing should
collaborate on both selecting accounts
and digging up the market and
customer intelligence to support the
plan. Salespeople are good at
understanding the “now” inside
accounts—the current opportunities —
while marketing develops the larger
picture of market trends and new
opportunities.
Want to learn more about collaborative account planning?
Read Accelerate the Buying Process with Collaborative Account Planning.
There are six steps to
collaborative account planning:
1. Pick the target accounts.
2. Conduct research and map to
customers’ strategic planning
processes.
3. Validate with customers and
analysts.
4. Link the initiatives to the
responsible individuals.
5. Develop targeted offerings.
6. Create tailored value
propositions.
Special Edition | January 4, 2010 | 09TOP10 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 8Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010
6. Differentiate by knowing buyers’ business needsNo single marketing tactic
stands out as being more
effective than others to buyers
today. Yet thought leadership-
based tactics such as
e-newsletters, Webinars, and
in-person seminars all cluster
near the top, whereas more
traditional marketing tactics
such as brochures,
telemarketing, and hospitality
events all occupy the bottom of
the list.
Learn more about what buyers want by reading How Customers Choose Solution
Providers, 2009: The Importance of Personalization, Epiphanies, and Social Media.
Special Edition | January 4, 2010 | 09TOP10 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 9Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010
7. Stop reporting and start predicting through analytics According to our survey, Marketing
Analytics, marketers who want to make
the transition to analytics need to do
three things:
1. Collaborate with finance. Work with
finance to gather the enterprise-level
data necessary to get a view of
marketing’s overall business impact.
2. Shift to a fact-based culture. That
means a culture that is comfortable
waiting a little longer before taking
action—a culture that wants answers
before plunging ahead with action.
3. Experiment. Develop experimentation
methods to predict the performance of
marketing programs and campaigns.
Want to get the facts about analytics? Download our survey, Marketing Analytics.
Source: ITSMA research
Use marketing data to glean insights
and make important marketing decisions
Cultivate a fact-based decision-making
culture
Manage marketing data at an enterprise level
Gather sufficient data to document
marketing’s performance
Analyze marketing data in conjunction with
data from finance and operations to create a
holistic view of marketing’s impact on the
business
Demonstrate a link between marketing
performance and business profitability and
customer loyalty/retention rates
ITSMA’s Analytics Best Practice Model
Special Edition | January 4, 2010 | 09TOP10 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 10Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010
8. Integrate Marketing into the Portfolio Management ProcessBuilding a successful portfolio
management process is difficult enough,
but building support for and participation
in the process in a company as large
and diverse as CSC takes years.
As CSC has discovered, fthe portfolio
management function must establish the
senior executive relationships necessary
to gain entry into the process, get
funding for finding and investing in new
ideas, and become change management
experts to get skeptical businesspeople
to support it.
Learn more about how CSC created its portfolio management process by reading
CSC: How to Integrate Marketing into the Portfolio Management Process.
Key Takeaways Portfolio management, business
development, and marketing groups
should all be involved in the
selection of the products and
services that they will be asked to
market and sell.
Delivering complex solutions
globally requires a tightly managed
portfolio process.
The effectiveness of strategic
marketing activity inside the
organization grows as it becomes
more involved in the portfolio
process.
Building acceptance is the biggest
challenge in portfolio management.
Special Edition | January 4, 2010 | 09TOP10 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 11Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010
9. Make marketing more efficient rather than slashing and burning
Marketing staffs were already lean
coming into this recession. We were
shocked at how deep some companies
cut marketing. Some will not recover
from it. Meanwhile, many of those same
companies are holding sales expenses
steady or even increasing the number of
sales resources.
To learn more ways that marketers
responded to the downturn,
listen to our online briefing
ITSMA’s 2009 State of the Marketing
Profession Address: Making the Right
Choices in Uncertain Times.
But we also saw some companies
making some intelligent choices. They’ve
tried to make marketing more efficient by
taking these steps:
Move from broad to narrow.
Shift from offline to online.
Use the urge for continuity to cut
costs.
Go offshore for productivity, not
just cost.
Special Edition | January 4, 2010 | 09TOP10 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 12Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010
10. Refine the demand generation and lead management processesMarketers need to move from
lead generation to lead
nurturing. We do this by
developing programs that
generate awareness,
stimulate interest, and
educate. We also identify
needs, pain points, and
purchase ability. But most
important, we engage in
dialogue and build a
relationship and credibility.
Learn more about how to manage your demand generation and lead management
processes by downloading Generating Revenue in Tough Times: Better Thinking,
Better Tactics.
© 2009 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 26ITSMA Web Briefing | OLB090225 Generating Revenue in Tough Times
The role and value of information in the IT buying process
Source: KnowledgeStorm, Connecting through Content, March 2006;
IDC, An Inconvenient Truth: The Role and Value of Information in the IT Buying Process, January 2008
Technology
Buyers Information Usage
Look for different kinds of information at various
points in the buying cycle61%
85%
Need to see information about a new technology
or solution at least three times
85%
Rated educational content as ‘very’ or ‘extremely’
important to them
72%Contacted a vendor after reading a white paper
Almost
allSpend ~5 hours per week with third-party information
Special Edition | January 4, 2010 | 09TOP10 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 13Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010
As a membership
organization,
ITSMA brings together
the world’s leading
technology and
professional services
firms to advance the
state of the art in
marketing and selling
services and solutions.
About ITSMA
Special Edition | January 4, 2010 | 09TOP10 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 14Top Ten Marketing Ideas for 2010
For More Information
Follow us…Online Library
Chris KochDirector, Thought Leadership and Research
ITSMA
+1-781-862-8500, Ext. 115