When you are talking about marketing, you can’t go very far without someone mentioning how important it is to have a USP, or Unique Selling Point for your product or service. But when you are selling complex technology, business-to-business, is it worth spending time and effort creating and promoting a USP? And if not, what should you do instead?

If you want to know where best to allocate your marketing budget, or whether it makes sense to spend any more on marketing, you need to properly measure your  return on investment. Measuring marketing results can get very complex, but for most businesses it’s best to keep it simple so you get clear answers to help make decisions. There are just a couple of basics that you need to understand before you get started

When you’re selling to a technical audience, you need a certain amount of jargon to explain quickly and clearly what you’re offering. But if you don’t use the same phrases and acronyms as everyone else, then you’ll sound like a real outsider.

This is a summary of an article originally published in the journal of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. The main thrust of the article is that successful businesses don’t allow marketing to ‘run free’, they take specific steps to set marketing goals that are closely linked to sales and business strategies.

Have you noticed how some companies seem to have a real flair for marketing, how they instinctively pick the right activities, events and online techniques to – almost effortlessly – create great publicity and sales contacts for themselves?