Excerpts

(Excerpt from)Introduction

This e-book tells the marketing stories of a number of highly successful ICT companies originating from Europe. These companies' international business and marketing leadership puts them in a great position to give insights into what really works and how to ensure future success.

Why now? Well, for one thing, markets and marketing are changing fast to adopt new methods and adapt to a difficult world economy. Digital marketing and social media marketing are now a topic for all businesses, especially in ICT. We wanted to know which tools work for these firms and which they are planning to use in the future. The US leads the way in adopting new tools and techniques, but does US-style marketing work everywhere? Should marketing be more localized? This is also something we wanted to hear from companies with a worldwide presence. And finally, we wanted to see how marketers are adjusting in difficult conditions — doing less or changing direction?

We chose companies headquartered in Europe as we know them best, and because in some cases their stories are less universally known. These are not our existing clients: our aim is not to promote the companies, but to share marketing insights. And we'll be offering more to interest you in the coming months as we extend these themes — particularly the adoption of social media marketing — through new interviews and other activities.

Who is the book for?

This book should interest anyone who wants to know how high-tech companies achieve success in their marketing activities. As we would like you to have the clearest sense of how these experts think, and have the sense of a real conversation, we have kept as close as possible to their spoken words — we hope, and think, that will also make them more enjoyable to read.

What we asked

• How high does marketing rank in your organisation?
• How much is marketing involved in product development?
• What would you consider to be the most important marketing tool to reach your target groups?
• How has your marketing changed over the past few years? Are you using different tools?
• Do you use online tools, such as wikis, E-books, webinars?
• What is the ratio of budget given to online marketing to traditional marketing, and is it changing?
• What tools have you found particularly successful in a marketing campaign?
• What hasn't worked so well?
• Do you see differences between American and European, or Asian, marketing styles?
• Is there anything that US and European companies can learn from each other in respect of marketing?
• What advice would you give to other marketing people about marketing in difficult economic circumstances?

(Excerpt from) ARM, Ian Drew, Sr. VP Marketing interview

Extendance: Thinking about the priorities of the company, where does the marketing department stand in relation to other departments?

Ian: I sit on the board, so they must think something of marketing - or me, I don't know which of the two yet! Sales is always very important in any company. We're an engineering-driven company, so engineering is very important here, but marketing I think has an equal voice.

Extendance: So I imagine marketing has an input into new product definition.

Ian: Yes, and we don't just talk to our customers, but our customers' customers as well. So Segment marketing also comes in here. And they are probably involved in 60-70% of all new products we design.

Extendance: What tool (for example website, trade show, brochure, webinar) is most important for ARM to reach its customers?

Ian: It's hard to pick one tool, it's more the combination. The first thing is the set-up of the marketing organisation, push and pull, to try to get our customers to buy our products. The second is the partnership model, and how that manifests itself in various events and shows and other stuff that we do. Using the website, using lots of one-on-one customer meetings, using the separate forums that we set up in each country, using our worldwide forum.

Extendance: Do you have blogs on your site?

Ian: Most of our people have a blog, but they represent themselves, not ARM. We try not to shackle them! We don't do much blogging on our own site, but we have actively participated in other people's blogs. We like to give our people freedom to set up blogs in other communities, and have actively set them up for ARM, and they get very big followings. We'll be adding blogging to our site, but we said to the seven or eight people who wanted to start blogs, "okay, go do it, go see what works, and then we'll put it on our site".

Extendance: What is the split between traditional online marketing activities, and how will this change?

Ian: Probably 20-30% online, the rest offline. It will change to be more online over the next five years. More about communities. We'll make more of the partnership model, and add a lot more contextual interface to the way we do business, add more environmental information - not the green stuff but about the community and how the industry works.

Extendance: Can you talk a bit more about the partnership model, as it's so important? So we really understand what is meant by partnership?

Ian: ARM has a licensing and royalty model for an ID platform. So we have 200-plus licensees, and when our licensees come to market is really when we start making money from the royalties. And so the growth of the royalty business is very important to us. So how we then take their product and help them sell to OEMs further down the chain is important to all of us. So, for us, that partnership is not ended when they sign the licensing deal, in fact it's probably just starting. And then how do we grow the ARM-based communities for all segments we want to play in? It's not just looking at the percentage of the market, but how that market is growing and is there more and more business for everybody there?

“ The answer is, we've never failed, but sometimes we haven't been successful! Some of our early online stuff didn't go very well, because we thought the web was more of a front door to show our products, but really what people wanted from our website was a home with various ways to get in, a very porous place. ”

Extendance: Is there anything you've tried and that has not worked?

Ian: You should never ask a marketing person this question! The answer is, we've never failed, but sometimes we haven't been successful! Some of our early online stuff didn't go very well, because we thought the web was more of a front door to show our products, but really what people wanted from our website was a home with various ways to get in, a very porous place. So we thought everybody would come in through the front door, but in reality people came through the back door, the side doors, the roof. We didn't spot the need for more contextual explanation of what we did, setting up the ideas for people to think about themselves. Of course we have had failures, but we do a lot of post-mortem work on them and then minimise the impact. I think if you don't fail, you don't learn.

Extendance: What would you see is the major differences between the three main market areas of the world, Europe, the US, Asia.

Ian: Well, we don't see Asia as Asia. We market to Korea differently from how we market to Japan or P. R. China or Taiwan. We market to America, east coast and west coast slightly differently. We market not just country by country, but by each region individually, each customer individually - and not just the customer, but also the customer's customer. It's about that overused word ecosystem.

Extendance: What would you say about the difference between the European and US style of approaching customers - is there a different style of doing things?

Ian: I think the European style is a little more humble although I don't like using that word - you could say, more reflective.

Extendance: What advice would you give to others through marketing at this time in difficult market conditions?

Ian: Well, first of all, we're measuring our spend. We're looking for real value, short-, medium-, and long-term. And we're setting ourselves up for success where we believe that success will be. We're also spending less on trade shows and so forth and spending more online. We get more bang for our buck online. But that doesn't mean that we're pulling out of all offline activities.

Other Excerpts:

Excerpt from the interview with Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and Founder of Kaspersky