MarketingSherpa Blog

I used to call it the “X Factor.” No matter how intelligent, talented and hardworking you are, you’ll only get so far in your career without the X Factor.

As a young marketer, I thought of it as brownnosing. You know, the guy who gets the promotion because the boss loves him, even though other people may have worked harder and better. Now, I know it was office politics. He was better at building alliances, negotiating power and presenting himself in a golden light.

Marketers as a race are not particularly adept at office politics. We’re not good at selling ourselves.

Consider how normal it is for companies to have a CFO but not a CMO on the top management team. Consider how few Fortune 500s have a marketing guru on their board of directors. Consider how hard you have to fight for your budget, for your strategy, for new hires, even often for technical support.

I’ve been spending a great deal of time this past month reading transcript after transcript from past MarketingSherpa Summits, trying to determine what the most useful lessons were. Frankly, although we concentrated a great deal of attention on campaign tactical nuts and bolts, what made our Case Study presenters so successful was that extra X Factor.

They had mastered office politics.

“How did you get the CEO to agree to that?” an audience member invariably would ask. “I marketed it internally” would be the answer. “You need to market yourself inside your organization.”

Personally, I used to find office politics nearly incomprehensible. But, now, I realize it’s just another form of marketing.

-> Step #1. Market research

Target the most influential and powerful people in your organization who could help the cause of marketing if they were so moved. (Note: Influencers are not always the same as the official power structure on paper.)

Treat them like any other marketplace — research their pain points, fears, goals and aspirations. And, of course, their taxonomy, precise wording choices can be such powerful marketing tools. Lastly, discover how they like to obtain information: Informal conversations? Formal presentations? Detailed reports? One-page memos with a chart in the middle as eye candy? Which media do they most pay attention to and trust: The Wall Street Journal? The blogosphere? Best-selling business books? Talk radio?

Study to know your CFO or CIO or head of sales so well that you could write up a formal persona profile on him or her. (In fact, why not do it? It would be a good exercise.)

-> Step #2. Create a marketing plan

As with any other campaign, set a measurable goal of some sort. It might range from getting more feedback from the sales force to signing off on the new hire you’re seeking.
And, then, start educating, nurturing and cultivating your marketplace.

You might start an internal email newsletter — marketing factoid of the week, including quotes from media your prospect trusts. Or by adding a mini-marketing report card to the homepage of the company intranet. Or by changing the way you report on your success.

The latter is often the most powerful. Instead of reporting on marketing-centric measurements, tie your data to your target market’s pain points and goals. Rather than talking about click rates, or prospect list size, or even campaign ROI, you might discuss shorter sales cycles or higher purchase per order.

Consider – which would your CEO be most impressed by? The overall open rate of your email newsletter or the percent of top accounts who routinely read articles in it?

-> Step #3. Give your potential allies power

The biggest step in seeking power is to allow others around you to feel powerful and appreciated themselves. Professionals are more stressed out by a lack of control in their working conditions than they are by hard work itself.

You can gain power by giving power to others — by asking for other department’s input and decisions at fairly early stages in the marketing process. Key — only allow brainstorming if you have data in your pocket to fight off a potentially disastrous decision. Best idea: Ask others for what they think problems are … and then return with two or three equally good strategies for them to vote on as solutions.

So, you’re not saying: “What should we do with our marketing budget this year?” Instead you’re saying: “What’s the biggest problem we need to solve with marketing this year?” And then a few weeks later, you’re saying: “I’ve researched your problem and here are the two best possible solutions. Which do you prefer?”

As one top marketing consultant told me privately last month: “Management often doesn’t know good marketing from bad. They’re convinced 50% of their budget is wasted, and they’re not sure who to trust to fix it. Probably not marketing.”

For 2008, your toughest marketing challenge may be internal politics. Now is the time to acknowledge this reality and focus your skills to win.

If you’re in a services or B-to-B marketplace — enterprise software, for example — the last thing you’re probably doing is posting your prices on the company website.

Study after study reveals, however, that pricing information is precisely what prospects visiting your site are looking for:

– A June 2007 MarketingSherpa Study in partnership with Enquiro showed that pricing information was the No. 1 thing executives researching IT solutions in price ranges above $50,000 wanted online during every stage of their decision — from early awareness and research on.

– CMP Electronics Group’s Global Media Usage Study in 2006 showed similar results. 61% of surveyed engineers said the top reason they went to company websites was to research pricing. Prices were second only in popularity to downloadable data sheets.

– A 2006 ThomasNet study revealed 74% of prospects researching on their site wanted to see manufacturers pricing information there. However, only 23% of manufacturers made their pricing public online.

I understand why you may not put pricing online. Perhaps your sales reps want as much flexibility as possible in negotiations. Maybe you’re concerned making price wars and/or commoditization. Or, perhaps your product managers are convinced pricing is far too complex even for an online calculator to reflect accurately.

Whatever the reason, you need to keep two human factors in mind:

#1. Your competition already knows your pricing because they have to sell against it. There is no secrecy. Frankly, if they don’t, they are so inept at their jobs that you have nothing to fear from them.

#2. Your prospects will find pricing information even without your help. They’ll ask friends at other companies, post queries to industry email discussion groups and boards, ping analysts or surf the Web researching.

The only problem is, you’ve now lost control of your pricing messaging. You can’t surround the conversation with value and branding. You can’t be sure that the correct information is even getting to prospects.

And they’re making those decisions before they agree (or not) to meet with your sales reps. Because pricing information is now sought much higher up in the sales funnel than most marketers suspect.

The good news is that most of your competitors face the same problem. Revealing your pricing — with all appropriate branding and lead generation flourishes — can become a competitive advantage for you in 2008.

Happy Holidays!

While studying guidebooks about Nepal yesterday, I was appalled to see one of them blithely suggest shopping for cheap, pirated CDs and DVDs here.

I immediately turned on my laptop to dash off an email to the publisher.

I planned to say, “As a company *completely* financially dependent on the sanctity of your copyright, how can you recommend supporting breaking other people’s? Everyone who creates or publishes content — every blogger, writer, video maker, etc. — has an ethical obligation to defend copyright. That means not just your own copyright but the copyright of others.”

Many Americans, in particular, don’t realize the true damage of copyright pirating. What’s the big deal? Hollywood studios and music stars make gazillions anyway, don’t they?

The fact is, routine copyright pirating has devastated the local music and movie industries of many second- and third-world countries, including places such as Madagascar and Morocco where talented and beloved artists can’t make a living because they are ripped off so much.

Copyright pirating also strikes closer to home — hundreds of millions of Google AdSense dollars are at risk in the legitimate blogging community. Nearly every single independent blogger I know who makes significant income from their content has had to fight at least one, more often many, plagiarizers who scrape their content for AdSense profit.

Sherpa has had its share of problems, most notably when one marketer, who shall remain nameless, posted illicit PDF copies of our Guides on a private website that he charged a $1,000 month subscription fee to. In the publishing world, this is not an unusual occurrence.

Anyhow, when I turned on my brand new laptop to register my righteous indignation to the publishers of that travel guide, I noticed something horrible. When the IT department back at the main office set up my new PC for me, they forgot to transition over my music files. My iTunes folder was empty.

I’m supposed to be writing a new 300-page Sherpa Handbook this winter. I can’t write a Handbook without my music playing! And, trust me, there’s no place I’ve found to purchase legit CDs here. Plus, at 128k max speeds, local “broadband” won’t support purchased iTunes downloads.

So I, the great defender of the American copyright, slunk into a local music store to buy some pirated CDs. At first, I pledged to buy only CDs that I already owned copies of. It’s sort of an ethically grayer area than buying content you didn’t already pay for legitimately.

But then Jack Johnson’s ‘In Between Dreams’ CD was playing on one of the shop’s sidewalk speakers … and it sounded so good. I had meant to buy it in the past — the real thing, I mean. I couldn’t help myself. I stepped up to the counter and said, ‘Give me that one” and, $5 later, owned it illegally.

Then I went straight to my local cybercafe and logged onto to my account at Amazon.com (one-click ordering is a godsend when you’re dealing with slow Internet speed) to buy a legit copy of Jack’s album. It’s en route to my home in the US right now, then my step-son will forward it to me here. I’ll throw out this copy as soon as I get the real thing in my hands. So, Jack and New Age Records, you have my money.

And, now, you have my apology as well.

Approximately 27 million Americans traveled over this past Thanksgiving holiday; and, all that time everyone spent standing in various lines (check-in, security, coffee, baggage claim) was pretty much a wasted marketing opportunity.

Aside from airline magazines and airport wall posters, very little marketing targets this captive audience, many of whom would be more than happy to seek a momentary mental escape. Here are my top three ideas based on my recent trip via India to Nepal, where I’m now living for the winter:

#1. Wi-Fi — Although TradeinIndia.com sponsors all the baggage carts in the New Delhi airport and The Times of India’s email opt-in offers are promoted on huge billboards in the departure lounge, frustratingly, there’s no Wi-Fi, sponsored or otherwise, at that airport.

This may change soon. When Delhi officials invited potential sponsors to submit proposals to sponsor free Wi-Fi in several downtown locations, they were stunned at the deluge of more than two dozen would-be advertisers.

#2. Video monitors — I didn’t mind long visa lines when we landed at Kathmandu’s International Airport because the gorgeous ads that played on oversized Samsung LCD monitors positioned around the room were a delight to watch … and even hear. The ads, presented on a continuous five-minute loop, featured tasteful local background music and glowing shots of regional crafts, scenery, restaurants and retailers. It was all put together by a local advertising entrepreneur.

#3. DVDs — Two of the airlines I took en route to Nepal offered free newspapers as you boarded the plane. Frankly, after sitting in waiting rooms for several hours beforehand, the last thing I wanted was yet another newspaper to read. But I would have been thrilled to get a free DVD.

Are you already sponsoring or creating compelling video content or an interactive game as a brand-building exercise? (For example: Grey Goose vodka’s ‘Iconoclasts’ TV series or Lunesta’s ‘The Art of the Story’ events.) Why not offer free DVDs to airline movie-weary travelers with PCs?

The point for all three of these ideas is not to bombard travelers with ads but, rather, to build a warmer relationship during a time when they are likely bored and a little exhausted. If you’ve already invested in entertaining content for your website, microsite, viral game or online video, why not repurpose this to make people’s trips a little more pleasant?

Like many women my age with a job and a family, I’m too busy in my regular life to pay attention to most sponsored websites or even regular TV shows. But when I’m traveling, I’m a captive and grateful audience. Reach me — I’ll thank you for it.

Please raise your right hand and repeat after me, “I will hunt down and erase any ‘Reset’ or ‘Clear Form’ buttons on every online form for my brand.”

My golly — there’s just NO EXCUSE.

The ‘Reset Button’ is an archaic bit of submit button design from the early 1990s, back when forms were used by internal company data entry … not prospective customers. Somehow as public Web forms developed, designers unthinkingly copied the buttons, using and re-using them on form after form.

According to new data in MarketingSherpa’s updated Landing Page Handbook, 22% of marketers say their company sites still use these old-style buttons.

Can you say, “response killer”?

Imagine, you spent a great deal of time, energy and budget creating a campaign to drive qualified prospects to your landing page. Your campaign’s entire success rests on getting lots of these visitors to fill out a registration form. Luckily, some of them do, typing in their name, address and maybe even answering a few questions for you. Then they move their mouse down to click on the gray ‘Submit’ button …

… but mistakenly click on the ‘Reset’ button right next to it.

The page blinks, and all their careful typing vanishes in an instant. The form is blank again.

How many of your prospects do you think will bother to type all those answers again? And how many will just give up and leave your site in disgust?

Nearly one out of every four marketers still drives traffic to pages with a clickable Reset button. I just can’t comprehend why you would want to shoot your conversion rates in the foot like that.

If you are one of these marketers, please do whatever it takes to yank the Reset button. Send pizza to the Web department for lunch, or, heck, why not promise a bottle of champagne to enjoy together in celebration of a successful search-and-destroy mission?

Related link:

New – MarketingSherpa’s Landing Page Handbook 2nd edition is revised and expanded with 267 pages of useful stats, how-to instructions and real-life examples. Copies are available with 24-hour shipping at:
http://www.sherpastore.com/RevisedLandingPageHB.html

When I founded MarketingSherpa nearly eight years ago, I never dreamed the day would come when I would actually be in Nepal meeting real live sherpas.

So far, they are all being awfully nice about our company name. One might be offended by some random American co-opting your family and tribe name just because she admires you. However, all the sherpas I’ve met have been terribly pleasant people who don’t seem to mind.

Thank goodness.

Here’s how the whole thing came about and why we’re named in honor of the sherpas of Nepal:

Back in 1999 when researching possible company names prior to launch, I noticed that most marketing advisory newsletters were by named gurus or guru-wannabes.

But the fact is, every experienced marketer has test results and hard-won lessons that might prove practical to others. Why should I preach my own best practice sermons from on high? Instead, it’s far more useful (not to mention interesting) to go into the field and interview thousands of real-life marketers for their own stories and data.

What you’ll learn is that great marketing is far, far harder than civilians suspect. (Some professionals, including many of your co-workers, think of marketing as the basket weaving course in college — how hard could a gut course be? Answer: awesomely tough.)

In fact, after a 20-year marketing career, I felt as if achieving and sustaining great results was much like climbing Mount Everest. The elements are against you, and you would do better with an expert guide by your side.

My mind naturally turned to the sherpas of Nepal, the ethnic group from whom all the best Mount Everest guides have come.

The funny thing about sherpas is that despite the fact that Sir Edmund Hilary and hundreds of others could not have climbed Everest without their sherpas … these guides are far less famous than they deserve to be. The limelight does not tend to fall on the sherpa but rather on the climber they assisted.

That’s why I seized on that idea for the company name. We were not seeking fame as gurus who told marketers what to do. Instead, we were gathering and disseminating practical info from the field that enabled you, the reader, to climb your own marketing career mountain.

When I named the company MarketingSherpa, the peak of my outdoor activity was ordering drinks at a trendy sidewalk café in the city. Preferably in heels and, perhaps, a flippy little skirt. I never expected to own hiking boots, let alone see the actual Mount Everest up close and personal.

Then, as fate would have it, I met my future husband, who is as outdoorsy as they come.

Now that my job allows me to work virtually via the Internet from nearly anywhere in the world, I gave him the choice of where we would live. As you may know from my past blogs, for the summer he chose his native country, Serbia. And for this winter, he chose Nepal.

So, here I am brand new hiking boots and all. A sherpa come home to rest in the land of sherpas. Life does turn unexpected corners, doesn’t it?

By the way, if you would like to learn more about sherpas in America, here’s a great Web site:

United Sherpa Association in New York (packed with info):
http://www.sherpakyidug.org/

And, if you would like to contact the editorial and research offices of MarketingSherpa to be interviewed about your own marketing activities, the best contact is Editorial Director Tad Clarke at TadC(at)MarketingSherpa.com.

First, the good news: 46% of the 4,203 MarketingSherpa readers who answered our survey this September say their landing page conversions are up. Another 14% say conversions are holding steady, despite increased Web clutter and competition. (See link below for more study information.)

Bravo, guys! You may consider yourselves the elite.

Now here’s a stark list of the Top 10 Worst Landing Page Stats I never wanted to see in print:

#1. 48% – Can’t do any A/B testing at all
#2. 44% – Can’t measure landing page test results properly
#3. 42% – Ask more questions than needed on registration forms
#4. 40% – Only test landing pages at launch and then leave forever
#5. 35% – Send foreign-language ad clicks to English landing pages
#6. 35% – Use a single landing page for many traffic sources
#7. 25% – Don’t reflect big offline promos on their homepage
#8. 24% – Give affiliates zero landing page content or aid
#9. 21% – Require landing pages to match regular site layout 100%
#10. 16% – Don’t share landing page test results with their agency

Plus, here’s a bonus tremendously bad stat:

18% of surveyed marketers told Sherpa, “No one [in the department] knows our landing page results.”

These marketers are neither nobodies nor newbies. They work for often well-known brands, including B-to-B, ecommerce and consumer advertising. They have significant online budgets. And, typically their brands have seven or more landing pages live for campaigns at any one time.

Nearly all of them –- yes, including that 18% whose entire departments had no idea how their landing pages were doing — invest significantly in pay-per-click search marketing.

I don’t know. I feel like we should call for a moment of silence or something. Let us bow our heads for all that wasted budget, wasted clicks, wasted potential conversions.

I was brought up in New England where you save bits of string too short to be tied. Because waste not, want not … you know?

Squandering hard-won traffic on a non-tested, non-measured, non-optimized landing page seems to me to be almost an immoral thing.

However, I know it’s not your fault. Perhaps you are badly understaffed. Or IT can’t provide the analytics or Web support you need. Or maybe your CEO doesn’t believe in testing.

Whatever the reason, good luck in resolving things. I would dearly love to see all of these bad stats turn into thin little shadows of their former selves.

Related link:
The second edition of MarketingSherpa’s Landing Page Handbook, which contains the stats mentioned above, plus instructions on how to optimize landing pages for up to 40% conversion improvement is now available at:
http://www.sherpastore.com/RevisedLandingPageHB.html

Last month, I was honored to be invited by my alma mater, Connecticut College, to speak on a panel about Internet-related careers.

If you have a young adult in your family or circle, they may find this advice useful, too.

-> Jobs for Math Lovers

Heavens! Internet marketing departments want you, need you, yearn for you. According to new MarketingSherpa data, search marketing campaign analysts are 63% harder to hire than other skilled employees.

Plus, just look at how many jobs are posted on the boards at the Web Analytics Association. Acres of opportunity and for great companies, too. If you enjoy analyzing the reasons behind stats, you’re in clover.

Best link:
http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/jobs/search.asp

-> Jobs for Good Writers

Loads of opportunity here, too. If you enjoy figuring out what makes other people tick (perhaps you studied psychology or acting) and you can write concisely, weighing every word, definitely consider a copywriting career.

MarketingSherpa research indicates copy testing is one of the top three most powerful ways to improve results for email marketing, search marketing and Web-based campaigns. The Internet may be powered by technology, but marketing success is still largely powered by words.

However, if you’re more of a super-intelligent research nut with a little ADD (you like to figure out new things, explain them to other people and then move on to the next topic), you should consider becoming a white paper specialist. Most business technology and many business services companies publish a steady stream of new white papers all year long to educate the marketplace, impress via thought leadership and garner business leads.

A typical white paper is four to seven pages long (no big deal for the right researcher/writer, but daunting for the poor B-to-B marketer who has no time.) You can freelance or work full time.

Lastly, if you dreamed of being a journalist who writes brilliant articles but worries the print magazine and newspaper world is on the wane, never fear. Nearly every company publishes an email newsletter (and often a blog) these days, and they all need writers and editors. Business is booming.

Top two links for online writing careers:

Media Bistro – for copywriters and email newsletter writers:
http://www.mediabistro.com

Journalism Jobs – for white paper and online journalism jobs:
http://www.journalismjobs.com

-> Jobs for Marketing Managers

Were you the middle child or, perhaps, an instinctive diplomat between warring parties? Are you highly organized and able to keep a dozen plates spinning in the air at once? Those skills put together can equal the perfect talent for Internet marketing management.

You’ll spend half your time handling internal politics between the marketing department and everyone else (especially IT, sales, legal and the CFO.) The rest of the time you’ll be in a whirlwind of activity, coordinating the countless details to launch campaigns. Everything, of course, on Internet time! (I hope you like to caffeinate.)

Best link for marketing management jobs (online and off):
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/career_jobs.html

… and, finally, two key tips:

Tip #1. Get your Web face in order

As hopefully your college career counselor has warned you, Internet marketing-related employers will expect you to have a Web presence of your own. Perhaps it’s a blog, a MySpace account, an expanded Facebook profile or even some YouTube videos.

The key is that you’ve already acted visibly on your interest in the field.

Be aware, however, that those same employers will absolutely review your Web presence when they make a decision about hiring (or even interviewing) you. If you have wild photos from the last beer blast posted there, or anything else that might be considered improper for a professional, consider deleting that stuff pronto.

Tip #2. Use online networking

The real world is not a perfect meritocracy. Personal connections matter, especially when you are starting your career and don’t have much of a proven track record. If you know someone who knows someone, it gets your foot in the door.

Even if your parents or older siblings may not be in the field of your choice, you never know who their connections may know. Best advice — ask them to join a free professional networking site, such as LinkedIn, as soon as possible and work it for you. That whole Kevin Bacon factor can be incredibly powerful.

Also, search sites like LinkedIn and Facebook using your college name — are there any alumni in the companies where you want to work? For example, Google Vice President Tim Armstrong, who was also on the panel, said he has hired plenty of fellow alums from our college. My company, MarketingSherpa, is also always happy to consider a Conn College alum for our own constantly-growing list of openings.

The funny thing is, very few alumni ever reach out to either of us. It’s an underused network.

So go for it and good luck!

Search pay per click (PPC) URLs are fairly short because of the nature of the beast. You are not given much room to type in a long URL.

So, the hot search PPC testing tactic is specific wording and capitalizations. Example: Should your text ad say www.ClickHere.com, or will you get better response with www.ClickHERE.com, or perhaps www.ClickHereFREE.com?

As all experienced search marketers know, organic search results get the lion’s share of traffic instead of PPC ads.

Naturally, your first concern must be to make sure your site or blog gets high organic rankings for critical keywords in your marketplace. For seven years now, in fact, when marketers debated SEO-tactics, practically all anyone talked about was rankings, rankings, rankings.

But once you get high rankings, what’s next?

Are you even tracking your click rate for those SEO ranks?

And, once you’ve measured your organic click rates, are you running any tests to optimize them? Most marketers aren’t.

I think that’s partly because marketers perceive SEO-driven traffic as “free” so why invest in it? Also, testing SEO listings involves some risk; if you tweak inexpertly, you might damage your ranking. And, lastly, testing SEO listings often means involving your IT and Web departments, which means get in line and take a number.

If you are one of the super-lucky marketers who can measure and run tests to optimize SEO-driven traffic, however, the payoff could be enormous. Just look at how much traffic you get from organic search today and do the math — how much more would you get if your tests raised clicks 50%?

A 50% lift in organic traffic sounds insane, doesn’t it? But it’s based in new lab tests. Here’s how:

MarketingSherpa ran lab tests this year for our newest Search Marketing Benchmark Guide asking real-life business professionals to conduct Google searches. Among other results, we discovered that executives are 250% (yes 250%!) more likely to click on an organic listing if it:

(a) had a fairly short URL and
(b) appeared directly below a listing with a long URL.

So, in SEO, keeping your URLs as short as possible can be an enormous competitive advantage.

Why not search for your company or brand online right now by a super-competitive keyword? Look at how long your organic listing URLs are compared to the URLs of your competitors on the page. How does your URL stack up?

If your company is considering a new microsite, blog, Web content management system or revamped site for SEO purposes in 2008, please add to your specs list: “Must make short page URLs.” I bet you it’s a factor your IT department won’t think of. Marketing has to bring this type of knowledge to the meeting.

Want documentation? Here’s a free PDF link to the Search Benchmark Guide’s Executive Summary, which includes color heatmaps of the lab tests I just mentioned:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/exs/Search08Excerpt.pdf

A single theme emerged from last week’s MarketingSherpa B-to-B Summit in Boston — marketing rather desperately needs their own dedicated IT personnel.

Few people actually said it out loud. But, having heard the biggest marketing challenge of 29 speakers and 233 delegates, I can tell you it nearly all boiled down to adequate IT support.

I am NOT knocking your IT department as it stands now.

IT are very intelligent. They work very hard and could probably use more budget and staff of their own just to get their main jobs done. We all support IT, because where would we be without them?

Marketing used to be more creatively focused — strategizing a big campaign, approving graphic design, coming up with snappy headlines, selecting media buys. …

That’s changed profoundly in the past decade, especially for lead generation and other direct response marketers.

Now, we manage campaigns across far more channels — offline plus search, email, social media, etc. We are expected to measure each channel’s performance with far more detailed data than ever before or risk losing our jobs. And, we are expected to nurture, educate and quantify prospects until they’re on the cusp of conversion (a job that sales used to do).

All of that requires loads more technology: campaign management software, prospect database, CRM and SFA software, email service provider technology, blogging and podcasting tech, content management software, search marketing software, telemarketing management software, PURL systems … plus, of course, integration systems to tie it all together.

Who knew a marketing Summit could turn into a software convention?

The fact is, many marketers are more technology-managers than anything else. But they don’t themselves have the time or ability to manage all these complex software systems. Nor should they. Marketing and IT tend to have very different brains.

Unfortunately at most companies, marketing has to “get in line” with every other department and wait their turn for IT help. Without a dedicated IT staffer to serve marketing needs first and foremost, the entire marketing department can quite easily become hamstrung. (For many reasons, this is often especially true in technology companies; which is a bit ironic.)

I started asking folks at the Summit how they handled the IT problem. Most shook their heads. One, however, told me he had heard of a company where an IT staffer had been permanently assigned to report to marketing.

Marketers gasped all around us. Really? Wow. It sounded an awful lot like Camelot.

When you think about it, it’s not an impossible thing. If you can get your CTO on board by agreeing to pay for that salary out of marketing’s budget and also giving IT final approval on major new tech decisions, why not hire your own IT staffer?

Of course, that way lays anarchy — because if marketing gets their own IT person, then you know every other department will be demanding their own one next. (Shhh, don’t tell anyone.)

By the way, if you would like to join the discussion, we’ll be holding the exact same B-to-B Summit next week in San Francisco. I think there are 11 tickets left. (Sorry, after we, inevitably, sell out, tickets are not available at the door.)

I will be there, along with MarketingSherpa Research Director Stefan Tornquist, as well as leaders from our editorial team, including B-to-B Senior Reporter Sean Donahue and Editorial Director Tad Clarke.

Please introduce yourself and let us know what you’d like us to be researching and writing for you in 2008. Do you want more Case Studies on marketing … or perhaps advice on marketing-related technology? We’re all ears.

See you in San Francisco!

Useful links related to this article

MarketingSherpa’s Boston Summit Wrap-Up Report: B-to-B Marketers Reveal Strategies on How to Lift Lead Generation + New Data, Viral & Web 2.0:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30171