Category: Press Release

For decades, the formula for growth was known and predictable. Sales meant “suits” giving presentations in boardrooms, and marketing—at least B2B marketing—comprised the occasional industry expo, advertising sponsorship and product collateral. Customers bought. Companies grew. Industries hummed.

Then the internet broke everything.

Products and technologies proliferated at warp speed, competition hit a fever pitch and reaching new markets demanded distribution partners, call centers and channels, channels, channels. And Marketing? It splintered into hundreds of outlets, becoming a “Where’s Waldo?” of how to spot and win over customers.

For businesses, the greatest impact of the web wasn’t ecommerce but that it put buyers in charge. Brands no longer orchestrated the buying journey and adding another campaign or another “sales guy” no longer ensured higher revenue or healthy margins.

What we’re left with is a scattershot approach—or at least that’s what it can look like from the outside. Marketing and Sales teams have 10X’d if not 100X’d the number of programs, channels, technologies and offers they employ just to keep pace. Not to mention the hodgepodge of specialist strategy, research, digital, PR and marketing partners needed to do it.

In the quest for evermore, brands have lost a meaningful connection to customers. And with that, they’ve lost the recipe for sustainable growth. 

Paradoxically, we have access to more data, intelligence and inputs than ever before, yet we’ve never been more disconnected. Growth leaders struggle to determine what’s working, where to spend the next dollar and how to make strides with audiences that matter. 

Marketbridge is the answer to the age of disconnection. 

Five leading professional services organizations—COMM, fama PR, Intelisent, MarketBridge and Quarry—have come together to form an integrated growth consulting and marketing firm. Part consultancy, part agency, Marketbridge brings together 250+ consultants, data scientists, technologists, marketers, creatives and communications experts, all dedicated to helping ambitious growth leaders in complex B2B and B2C markets reinvent how they go to and grow in the market. 

We’re one best-in-class team comprising a diverse range of capabilities and experiences. And we’re 100% focused on helping organizations grow faster and more profitably. Net result? Accelerated performance—with zero signal loss from strategy through execution.

Because we believe that growth—real, sustainable and meaningful growth—starts with an ethos of connectedness.

In how brands empower their audiences to find, learn from and work with them.
In how product, marketing and sales teams truly align to create customer value.
In how revenue leaders connect the dots across the entire GTM system, finding insights before others, crystalizing where to grow next.  

On behalf of our senior leadership and our wildly talented team, welcome to Marketbridge. Let’s reinvent growth together.

John Shomaker
Chief Executive Officer

Brings Together High-Touch, Boutique Services Firms fama PR, Intelisent, MarketBridge and Quarry to Expand Value Creation Across Client Marketing and Sales Initiatives

Miami, Florida, November 13, 2023 — RTC Partners, a growth-focused private equity firm, today announced it has closed strategic growth investments in four industry-leading, North America-based marketing and sales services firms – fama PR, Intelisent, MarketBridge, and Quarry. Bringing these firms together establishes the foundation of an integrated and data-driven platform designed to drive value creation across a wide spectrum of client marketing and sales initiatives.

These high-impact, data-driven marketing services firms span go-to-market strategy and analytics, demand generation, public relations and marketing effectiveness measurement. Backed by RTC Partners, the platform delivers growth-focused leaders management consultancy-class capabilities with boutique-level client service to develop and execute integrated, high-performing programs that drive positive business outcomes more efficiently and effectively.

“We are solving a significant gap in the marketplace,” said Tony Brindisi, managing partner, RTC Partners. “Many growth executives are struggling to align their go-to-market plans and operating models to support rapidly changing business objectives. They need both strategic guidance and expertise in operational execution to deliver results. Most marketing firms offer one or the other – but typically not both,” continued Brindisi. “These first four firms comprise the resources, high-quality senior expertise, and reputations of excellence to deliver on the unmet strategy, execution, and analytics needs of ambitious enterprise growth leaders. We are excited about the potential this will unlock for existing and new clients.”

John Shomaker, an RTC Partners operating partner, has assumed the role of chief executive officer of the platform. According to Shomaker, “We consistently hear from growth executives at the largest and most ambitious companies that consistent and predictable growth is increasingly challenging and complex. The fragmentation of media, marketing, and sales over the past 20 years creates an imperative for growth executives to create a relevant, seamless and scalable customer experience. Addressing this challenge is the fundamental driver of our integration strategy and value proposition, that combines high-touch senior-led strategy, data-driven insights and exceptional execution across marketing and sales, anchored by a culture of collaboration and excellence.”

The combined platform currently comprises more than 220 professionals across five offices in the United States and Canada and partners with more than 150 clients worldwide including many of the most respected market leaders across technology, financial services, and health care industries. The founders and principals of each firm remain in their leadership and client services roles, including Keith Watson, Matt Flanagan, and Ted Weismann from fama PR; Mark Mandell, David Lavoie, Carrie Donahue, Steve Erbentraut, and Todd Black from Intelisent; Bashar Mardam-Bey, Andy Hasselwander, Brice Chaney, Mike Kelleher, Melanie Russo, and Steven Lewis from MarketBridge; and Tony Mohr, Meredith Fuller, Mandey Moote, and Richard Hill from Quarry.

About RTC Partners
RTC Partners is a private investment firm that specializes in building middle market growth platforms. Together with management partners, RTC builds market leading companies through a combination of acquisitive and organic growth, while establishing highly professionalized corporate infrastructures that are capable of scaling organizations to the next level. The firm’s strategies focus on high-growth niches of professional, business and healthcare services industries. The RTC team has successfully completed over 70 transactions since 2017.

https://www.rtcpartners.com/

Media Contact: Ted Weismann, ted@famapr.com, 617-986-5009

New Marketbridge report reveals CROs’ struggles and priorities in XaaS channel transformation amid an uncertain economy

BETHESDA, Md., January 25, 2023 – As technology businesses increasingly rely on channel partners to cover market opportunities, sell solutions, and deliver value-add services to customers, Marketbridge’s new report shows that only 35% of Chief Revenue Officers (CROs) and executives are very satisfied with partner performance heading into 2023. The report, “A CRO’s Guide to Transforming the Channel for XaaS Success,” highlights the challenges and priorities in the channel as vendors push to develop and sell new as-a-service (XaaS) solutions in the face of an economic slowdown.

The shift to a subscription economy presents major go-to-market challenges for vendors. Technology vendors must upskill partners on new delivery models, recruit the best XaaS-ready partners, and convert brand-new buyer personas, all while enabling partners to deliver recurring business outcomes. The report’s findings, based on both quantitative benchmarks and interviews with industry leaders, provide a clear path forward for CROs to transform their partner channels for XaaS success.

According to the report, modern partners (MSPs, CSPs, SIs, ISVs) are two times more likely to ‘significantly increase’ XaaS revenues in the next five years. However, only 35% of respondents on average were ‘very satisfied’ with partner performance outside of initial opportunity identification. Executives were also three times more likely than managers to believe they are behind the competition in quantifying the right number and mix of partners to deliver target revenues.

Mike Kelleher, Senior Vice President of Marketbridge’s Technology Practice, said, “The channel is at a critical juncture. CROs must take a holistic view of their partners and focus on developing a modern, sustainable model that leverages the right mix of partners to drive growth in the subscription economy. This report provides a framework for partner transformation in 2023 and beyond.”

Access the report here.

Newly released benchmark study aimed at giving marketing analytics leaders a comparison to their peers.

BETHESDA, Md., January 12, 2023 – Marketbridge, a leading go-to-market consultancy, released its Marketing Analytics Benchmark Study today. This online survey will establish a baseline for the current state of the marketing analytics function across different industries and company sizes.

While marketing analytics as a discipline has grown exponentially over the last decade—with hundreds of billions of dollars spent on technology, data assets, and talent—it still struggles to provide value in many organizations. Furthermore, with a recession likely in 2023, budgets are likely to be cut for teams that can’t show concrete value.

“Overreliance on magic bullets, black boxes, lack of analytical skillsets, and sub-par reporting have all contributed to marketing analytics falling short of high expectations,” says Andy Hasselwander, Chief Analytics Officer at Marketbridge. “We are trying to help marketing analytics leaders get a sense of where they stand relative to their peers, so they’ll be better able to prioritize improvement areas in a constrained budgetary environment.”

Marketbridge’s new study will act as an important resource for marketing analytics professionals looking to understand where they are on the path to advanced analytics and where they can improve.

The study, which takes approximately 20 minutes to complete, assesses marketing analytics functional capabilities across seven areas: source systems, data pipelines, analytical data storage, business intelligence, data science, organization, and capabilities. All answers remain confidential and will be used to build a detailed benchmark report aimed for launch in the second quarter of 2023.

The benchmark study complements Marketbridge’s robust, 40-page whitepaper, “A Roadmap to Modern Marketing Analytics,” which details best practices across the seven functional areas covered in the study.

“Although the whitepaper provides a lot of advice for improving data management, structure, and analytics, we want to establish a state-of-the-art baseline at real companies,” said Hasselwander. “This will allow analytics leaders to pause and focus on the improvement areas that really matter to assess a baseline of performance.”

Participate in the benchmark study here.

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Media Contact
Katie Artz, Senior Director of Corporate Marketing
kartz@marketbridge.com
410-829-7368