www.kickstartall.com

Press Release

KickStart Alliance's Methodologies Help Clients Win Industry Accolades

Symantec Recognized by IDC for Marketing Best Practice

Los Altos, CA -- September 30, 2008 -- KickStart Alliance, a sales and marketing leadership and consulting team, announced today that Symantec achieved recognition from IDC for its best practice: Global Alignment for Campaign Planning and Execution, as noted in IDC's recent report entitled: "CMO Advisory Best Practices Series: The Rise of the Campaign Manager Role" dated July 2008, IDC #213234, Volume 1. Mike Gospe, marketing operations leader and author, worked with Symantec to focus and fine-tune their campaign development processes, resulting in this high recognition.

"Mike Gospe worked with us closely on the original development of the campaign process and our templates," said Laurie Probst, senior director of global marketing campaigns at Symantec. "Over the past two years we have streamlined the process and have relied on Mike for his guidance and expertise. He provided the leadership, templates, and process that helped us to roll out a world-class marketing process, globally."

Symantec is not alone in the challenge to tune-up their marketing engine. Today's tough economy has resulted in the need to tighten marketing budgets, while the expectation for increasing the volume of higher quality leads continues to rise. The good news is that success is achievable, but it requires some changes in behavior and expectations.

"The single, basic truth about world-class campaign development and management is that it is easy to say, but hard to do," says Mike Gospe, author of the book, Marketing Campaign Development and KickStart Alliance co-founder and principal. "It is hard to do because we like to take short-cuts, and this leads to wasteful marketing."

For business-to-business companies, successful marketing is being redefined because there is more at stake. "Today, the companies who get the best marketing ROI are the ones who market like they are playing a good game of chess -- they are thinking two or three steps ahead." Mike continues, "They follow a marketing blueprint -- a framework that literally maps out a company's engagement dialog linking activities and offers together in a meaningful way. Because prospects don’t experience the world one marketing vehicle at a time, we need to take responsibility for producing a new type of integrated plan. This is what Symantec has done so well."

Marketing Campaign Development is a practical and pragmatic "how to" book for any business-to-business marketer struggling to determine the optimum marcom mix and how to navigate internal politics to make the campaign come alive. It is quickly becoming a resource and reference book for business-to-business marketers of Fortune 500 companies as well as many start-ups and small businesses. The book was published in March, 2008 and is available on Amazon.com.

###

KickStart Alliance is a sales and marketing consulting team specializing in positioning, lead generation, and sales readiness services. To learn more about how KickStart's services can help strengthen your customer relationships, please contact Mike Gospe at 650.947.8974. You can also visit us on the Web at www.kickstartall.com.

      

September 2008