Steve Hurley interviews Nina Hargus, VP of Global Services at EMC Corporation on some of the difficulties in enabling the channel to sell solutions
A friend recently had the good fortune not only to take over marketing for a successful B2B firm, but to do so with a mandate to build a new strategy that ensures a much greater impact on the business.
He's a bit like a kid in a candy store. He's got budget to spend, executive support for more ambitious marketing, and a relatively clean slate upon which to draw the new strategy.
Actually, I think Eloqua's new Content Grid is fabulous: it crams a complex story and a lot of information into an easy to understand infographic on a critical topic for B2B and solutions marketing. Nice job, folks!
My small beef is with the definition of "content marketing" that underlies the grid. Don't get me wrong: I'm a huge proponent of companies and marketing organizations getting much more serious about creating and executing integrated content strategies to support marketing and sales. Indeed, I make a decent part of my living these days helping companies make this happen.
IBM's hot-off-the-press 2010 CEO Study confirms again what solutions marketers already know: getting closer to customers is a strategic priority. An overwhelming 88% of large enterprise CEOs told IBM that getting closer to customers is a top business strategy for the next five years, placing it at the top of the list. An even higher number of the best performing CEOs, 95%, stressed the point.
There's little doubt any more that social media can play an important role in marketing B2B solutions. But exactly how that should happen is less clear. Although some solutions firms have engaged with social media for years now, many more are just beginning to take it seriously and explore what might work.
According to a recent ITSMA study of large technology and consulting firms:
Solutions Insights