ITSMA Announces 2011 Marketing Excellence Award Categories

March 8, 2011 - PRLog -- ITSMA, the leading marketing association for technology, communications, and professional services providers, is making some changes in its 2011 Marketing Excellence Awards program to keep pace with marketing’s expanding role.

The awards program, now in its fourteenth year, honors the marketing strategies, programs, and campaigns that have achieved excellence at technology, telecom, communications, consulting, and professional services firms worldwide. The awards put special emphasis on marketing innovation, program execution, and measurable business results. Submission deadline is June 3, 2011.

“This year, our categories show how B2B marketing is maturing,” said Dave Munn, President and CEO. “Each of the categories allows applicants not only to showcase their great marketing strategies and tactics, but also to emphasize how integral marketing is to overall business success.”

Categories for 2011
Entries for the 2011 Marketing Excellence Awards program may be submitted in the following six categories:

• Building Client Loyalty and Trust: Marketing programs designed to deepen the relationship with existing clients, to foster loyalty, and to build a partnership based on mutual trust.
• Developing New Markets: Expanding into new verticals, new categories, or emerging markets, building a presence, and balancing global/corporate and local/field strategies and tactics.
• Driving Business with Thought Leadership: Creating and disseminating high quality thought leadership utilizing new and traditional vehicles to more effectively drive business.
• Enabling Sales Channels: Improving sales effectiveness by enabling sales channels (including field sales, telesales, channel partner sales, and alliance partner sales) to drive business results.
• Generating and Nurturing Leads: Marketing initiatives that create awareness, generate demand, identify leads, and nurture prospective customers at all stages of the buying process.
• Marketing with Social Media: Integrating social media into individual marketing programs, the overall marketing strategy, as well as the business.

Criteria for Judging
Entries for the 2011 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

Deadline for Submissions
The deadline for submissions is Friday, June 3, 2011. The winners will be announced at a special awards dinner at ITSMA’s Annual Marketing Conference in October.

Last year’s winners included: Avaya, BT, Capgemini, Cisco, GE Healthcare, Hewlett-Packard Corporation, IBM, Microsoft, and TELUS.

Submission Guidelines
The awards are open to all companies worldwide that market and sell services and solutions. Visit ITSMA’s Website at http://www.itsma.com/news/mea/ for detailed submission guidelines and the application form.

General inquiries
Contact us at +1-781-862-8500, or info@itsma.com.

ABOUT ITSMA
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^SM, 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 http://www.itsma.com.

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ITSMA provides research, consulting, and training to the world’s leading technology, communications, and professional services providers.