2020 Marketing Excellence Awards—Call for Entries: Honoring the Best in B2B Services and Solutions Marketing

Award categories include Account-Based Marketing, Brand Positioning, Developing Next Gen Talent, Executive Engagement, Marketing Transformation with Data & Analytics, Sales Enablement, and Strategic Growth Marketing; as well as special awards for best SMB organizations. Submission deadline May 8, 2020.

“As B2B marketing continues to transform amid the rise of always-on digital engagement, marketing leaders are rethinking every aspect of their strategies, programs, teams, and ways of working. The most effective organizations are innovating on both the art and science sides of marketing to drive strategic growth, strengthen brand positioning, and deepen the most important client and influencer relationships,” said Dave Munn, President and CEO of ITSMA. “This year’s Marketing Excellence Awards program highlights the seven critical areas where leading B2B marketers are standing out in the connected economy.”

The Awards Program, now in its twenty-third year, recognizes programs that demonstrate deep market insight, innovative marketing approaches, and substantial business impact with high value services and solutions. Last year’s winners included: Acuvate Software, Adobe, Cisco, Cognizant, Conduent, Fujitsu, HCL Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Hexaware Technologies, IBM, Microsoft, PwC, Red Hat, SAP, ServiceNow, Tata Consultancy Services, Unisys, and West Monroe Partners.

The deadline for submissions is May 8, 2020.

• Developing Next Gen Talent. Attracting, developing, and retaining the next wave of marketing leaders and teams to strengthen marketing capabilities, culture, business impact, and organizational transformation. [New in 2020]
• Driving Strategic Growth. Advancing marketing’s strategic role in the business with new and innovative approaches to work with business leadership in identifying, developing, and accelerating new strategies for revenue, brand, customer experience or insight driven growth.
• Enabling Sales to Accelerate Growth. Designing, developing, and innovating enablement programs with new initiatives, tools, training, and support activities that improve sales capabilities and performance, especially for new offerings, markets, and growth opportunities.
• Orchestrating Executive Engagement. Designing, managing, and coordinating integrated, multi-channel engagement programs with content, events, and experiences that broaden and deepen executive-level relationships with clients and prospects for growth and innovation.
• Repositioning the Brand. Creating and improving brand and reputation-focused programs that strengthen awareness, interest, credibility, differentiation, and trust with new buyers, offerings, and markets.
• Scaling and Optimizing Account-Based Marketing. Strengthening ABM programs, COEs, and ecosystems to achieve greater business impact and efficiency and support the growth strategy of the company.
• Transforming Marketing with Data, Analytics, and Insight. Developing and strengthening teams, processes, and approaches, including leveraging AI and machine learning, that advance marketing’s ability to operate as a data-driven, insight-led function that informs business strategy and optimizes performance and results. [New in 2020]

The ITSMA Marketing Excellence Awards program is open to all companies that market and sell technology, telecom, professional services, and/or business services or solutions. Small and medium-sized businesses are especially encouraged to apply.

ITSMA awards two winners in each category:

• Diamond: Best in class for the industry
• Gold: Standout results in marketing impact

In addition to the two winners in each category, ITSMA will award two winners from small and medium-sized businesses. These awards will go to the strongest submissions from two companies with less than $500 million in annual revenue, regardless of category.

ITSMA will announce the winners at a special awards reception during ITSMA’s Annual Marketing Vision Conference on October 27, 2020 in Cambridge, MA.

For more than 25 years, ITSMA has led the way in defining, building, and inspiring B2B marketing excellence. With a dedicated focus on services and solutions for the connected economy, we provide our member community with insight, advice, and hands-on help to strengthen reputation, increase revenue, and deepen customer relationships.