Strengthening thought leadership marketing: Five steps to excellence

I've just had the privilege of helping judge ITSMA's Marketing Excellence Awards, and was impressed in particular with the submissions in the Thought Leadership Marketing category. 

As recently as five years ago, thought leadership marketing was mainly the province of the top consulting firms. Few other B2B firms took it seriously. Boy, has that changed! The submissions in this year's awards program reflect a substantial increase not only in spending but, more important, in the programmatic discipline that is necessary to make a serious impact with customers and market influencers.

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Marching forward with solutions marketing...at least on the Web

Notwithstanding the endless angst about "solutions" as a meaningful term, it's clear that B2B technology firms continue to march ahead promoting their solutions offerings and capabilities.

Our latest evidence comes from a web-based analysis of 51 of the world's leading B2B technology firms (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Accenture, etc.).

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New Point of View on "Four Steps to Solutions Growth"

I'm pleased to announce the launch our new Point of View series.

Over the next several months, we'll release a series of short, research-based perspectives on how companies can improve performance in their solutions businesses.

Our first Point of View, Adjusting to the New Reality: Four Steps to Solutions Growth, is available now. It outlines four initiatives companies can take to accelerate solutions growth through the rest of 2009 while also repositioning their organizations for longer-term success.

Based on new research with our partner ITSMA, the Point of View highlights findings from a survey with more than 30 B2B solutions providers on four critical initiatives:

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