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In 2010, ITSMA posted nearly 70 pieces of research, articles, and commentaries on our website. Based on clickthroughs and downloads, these ideas were the most popular.
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10TOP10
Reader’s Choice Awards: Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
Special Edition | February 7, 2011
Jeanne Brown
Download the full Special Edition of
ITSMA’s Top Ten Marketing Ideas of 2010.
Special Edition | February 7, 2011 | 10TOP10 © 2011 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 2Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
Introduction
In 2010, we posted nearly 70
pieces of research, articles,
and commentaries on our
website. We thought they were
all gold, but some even went
platinum. Based on the
number of clickthroughs and
downloads, here are the ideas
that were the most popular
with our readers. (You can find
all the research in ITSMA’s
Online Library.) Enjoy!
Download the full Special Edition of
ITSMA’s Top Ten Marketing Ideas of 2010.
Special Edition | February 7, 2011 | 10TOP10 © 2011 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 3Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
1. Marketing’s transformation began in three areas.
We identified three major
requirements for marketing
transformation. Marketing must:
1. Create a formal process for
thought leadership development
and dissemination.
2. Develop an automated,
integrated closed-loop lead
management process.
3. Build a fact-based decision
culture supported by analytics.
Read 2010: The Year of Marketing Transformation, ITSMA Featured Research: The Rise
of Thought Leadership, How to Focus Thought Leadership on Customers’ Needs and
ITSMA Online Survey: Thought Leadership.
Data from ITSMA Key Metrics Survey | B021 © 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 142010 Budgets and Benchmarks
This year’s shifting priorities set the stage for transformation, rather than continued incremental change
Rank
2010 2009 2008 2007
1 1 2 3 Enabling the sales force
2 4 3 7 Generating demand
3 7 5 – Developing new and more targeted thought leadership
4 3 – –Changing your marketing structure to increase efficiencies and
effectiveness
5 2 1 1 Differentiating/repositioning the company, brand, or offerings
6 6 10 10Increasing focused marketing programs for vertical/industry
markets
7 9 11 11 Measuring marketing’s impact on the business
8 12 19 12 Globalizing marketing
9 27 20 15 Reskilling or developing the marketing staff
10 10 – –Improving or enhancing customer reference and referral
programs
Source: ITSMA, Budget Allocations and Trends: Key Metrics Survey, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
Special Edition | February 7, 2011 | 10TOP10 © 2011 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 4Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
2. Marketers must put the same rigor behind their services development processes as they do for launching new products.
Many companies are realizing that ad hoc services built in the field can be
costly and difficult to deploy on a larger scale. However, if they are further
developed or refined centrally, they can also represent a tremendous
opportunity. The benefits of creating a services development process include:
Lowering the risk of failure.
Reducing complexity.
Increasing flexibility.
Read How to Create a Services Development Process.
Inputs to the Model
Type of
Service
Impetus for
New Services
Development
Technology
Requirements
Capacity and
Competency
Requirements
Process and
Infrastructure
Requirements
Outputs from the Model
Speed to
Market
Services Definition
and Business Plan
New Services Product
Research and Testing
Success
Measures
Excerpt: New Service Product Development Decision Model
Source: ITSMA, 2010
Special Edition | February 7, 2011 | 10TOP10 © 2011 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 5Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
3. Marketers must integrate social media into their overall marketing mix.
Marketers must stop thinking of social media in isolation and start thinking of
them as additional channels in their overall marketing mix. One critical
component of an integrated strategy is developing a social media
participation strategy. There are three stages of social media participation:
Read Avoiding the Social Media Silo: How to Integrate Social Media into Your
Marketing Strategy and How to Fit Social Media into your Overall Marketing Strategy
and Make it Stick.
Conversation
Engage
Manage
Monitor
Identify target audience
Identify influencers
Listen to and track
relevant conversations
Actively engage in conversation
with customers and influencers
in existing forums
Develop a social media
participation policy
Support SME participants
Create your own channels
for conversation and
community (e.g., blogs,
online communities)
Passive Active
ITSMA’s Social Media Participation Model
Source: ITSMA, 2010
Community
Special Edition | February 7, 2011 | 10TOP10 © 2011 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 6Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
4. Marketers need to properly segment their target audience and do the research to truly understand it.
In ITSMA’s and RainToday.com’s lead generation benchmarking survey,
our research shows that the high performers are doing a better job at
segmenting and understanding their target markets. They are more
knowledgeable about whom they should be targeting and their target
markets’ industry and business issues compared to the other companies.
Well executed segmentation must be based on deep knowledge of the
target markets, specifically:
The composition of the
target markets.
The business and
company-specific issues
of the target audiences.
Read Lead Generation Benchmark Report: How the Best Firms Fill the Pipeline, 2010
ITSMA and RainToday.com Lead Generation Survey and Segmentation: A Key to
Successful Lead Generation.
Note: Mean rating is based on a 5-point scale, where 1=not at all important and 5=very important.Source: ITSMA and RainToday.com What’s Working in Lead Generation Survey, November 2010
When marketing and selling your services, how important is market
segmentation to your lead generation programs?
% of Respondents1 = Not at all important
2 = Somewhat unimportant
3 = Neither important nor unimportant
4 = Somewhat important
5 = Very important
Special Edition | February 7, 2011 | 10TOP10 © 2011 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 7Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
5. Marketers can use social media as glue for connecting events.
Based on ITSMA’s research with
B2B services marketers, we’re
seeing companies successfully using
social media to drive more
attendance and interaction at
company events. Social media can
become the glue that binds events
together, driving registration and
discussion prior to events and
enabling conference attendees to
continue the dialogue after or
between events.
Read Avoiding the Social Media Silo: How to Integrate Social Media into Your
Marketing Strategy, ITSMA Online Survey: Integrating Social Media into the Marketing
Mix and the Business, and How to Fit Social Media into your Overall Marketing
Strategy and Make it Stick.
IBM Saves Money by Encouraging Participants to Record Their Experiences
Special Edition | February 7, 2011 | 10TOP10 © 2011 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 8Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
6. Cloud computing is changing what and how we market, as well as the actual sale.
Cloud computing is not a new
disruptive technology, but
rather, it is a new disruptive
technology delivery model.
This means that services and
solutions take center stage.
Because of this, marketers
have to change what they
market and how they market,
and companies will have to
look at how they sell.
What we market.
How we market.
Read How Cloud Computing will Change Marketing and Featured Research: Marketers
Need to Make Cloud a Priority.
© 2010 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 3ITSMA Web Briefing | E100510 How Cloud Computing will Change Marketing
What is cloud computing?
Source: NIST (National institute of Standards and Technology)
Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network
access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks,
servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned
and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential
characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.
Five
Essential Characteristics
Three
Service Models
Four
Deployment Models
On-demand self-service
Broad network access
Resource pooling
Rapid elasticity
Measured Service
Software as a Service
(SaaS)
Platform as a Service
(PaaS)
Infrastructure as a Service
(IaaS)
Private cloud
Community cloud
Public cloud
Hybrid cloud
Special Edition | February 7, 2011 | 10TOP10 © 2011 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 9Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
7. Marketers can use social media to improve intelligence gathering.
Social media tools expand the
possibilities of competitive
intelligence by driving collaboration.
Xerox Global Services used social
media tools and principles to create
Competipedia, a wiki-based tool
where salespeople can go to find
and share competitive intelligence.
But Competipedia doesn’t just
gather and spit out information—it
interprets it. By entering a few key
bits of information into the tool,
salespeople receive dynamic sales
guidance to help them win specific
deals.
Read How Xerox Global Services Used Social Media to Enable Sales and Xerox Global
Services’ Competipedia: Using Social Media to Enable the Sales Force.
Competipedia Offers Specific Deal Guidance—
Not Just Information
Special Edition | February 7, 2011 | 10TOP10 © 2011 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 10Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
8. Marketing should use targeted issues, not offerings, to converse with their audiences.
Customers and influencers are not
interested in product and service
pitches—especially in the conversational
realm of social media. That’s why Kronos
started a blog, Workforce Institute, which
focuses on business issues in Kronos’
core market, workforce management,
rather than on Kronos’ offerings. To help
ensure success, marketers need to take
a number of other steps including:
Develop a persona of your target
audience and discover what it wants.
Audit existing sources of information to
find an area of differentiation.
Create an advisory board to establish
credibility and generate ideas.
Monitor the internet for topical issues
relevant to your target audience and
create posts that speak to them
directly.
Create a layer of separation between
the company and the blog to establish
credibility.
Develop an internal engine for ideas
and content
Read How to Use Blogging to Reach an Executive-Level Audience and the Case Study.
The Workforce Institute Focuses on Issues Rather Than Offerings
Special Edition | February 7, 2011 | 10TOP10 © 2011 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 11Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
9. Online communities are changing the conversation.
When online communities were outlets for techies and users to build a better
mousetrap, business leaders and marketers yawned. But CSC showed that
communities—when linked to events and process development—could attract
a C-Level audience and should be part of the marketing strategy. Additionally,
ITSMA’s How Customers Choose Solution Providers shows that B2B buyers’
most valuable sources of information are their peers.
Read How CSC Built the Holy Grail of B2B Social Media and
CSC’s WikonnecT: How to Build a Thriving Social Media Community.
WikonnecT Lets Participants Choose the Ways That They Want
to Connect with Each Other
When building its online community, IT
services and consulting giant CSC had a
tremendous advantage to draw on. Since
the ’70s, CSC has built the software
platforms that run more than 1,200 financial
services companies around the world. It
used the relationships it had built over
time offline and transferred them online, to
an online community called WikonnecT.
Special Edition | February 7, 2011 | 10TOP10 © 2011 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 12Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
10. B2B services marketers need more specific training.
As our profession has matured,
the need and desire for agreed
standards and approaches have
increased. But while there are many generic marketing certifications, almost all are
focused on B2C. And when B2B is included, it’s usually from a product rather than a
services perspective.
It was this lack of formal standards that stoked up discussion among ITSMA’s
European Advisory Board members last year and led to the development of the joint
ITSMA/Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Professional Diploma in Marketing for
Business Services and Solutions. Our first group of students began their studies
last fall!
Read Finally, Global Certification for B2B Services Marketing.
For many years, B2B marketing was seen as the poor relation to B2C. No B2B
marketer needs to be convinced of the intricacies of developing meaningful and
lasting relationships with customers, especially when buying decisions are so
dispersed and achingly long.
But the wider marketing world
has not always understood this.
Special Edition | February 7, 2011 | 10TOP10 © 2011 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 13Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
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 | February 7, 2011 | 10TOP10 © 2011 ITSMA. All Rights Reserved. 14Top 10 B2B Marketing Stories
For More Information
Follow us…Online Library
Jeanne BrownSenior Manager
Member Communications & Community
ITSMA
+1-781-862-8500, Ext. 118
