Title: VP-corporate marketing

Company: Sybase Inc.

Years in current job: 3

Quote: “Be willing to try the new tactics, but be very frugal about how you approach marketing. Focus on the measurement, and make sure the ROI is completely aligned with what sales is doing.”

Mark Wilson, VP-corporate marketing at data management and software giant Sybase Inc., is a big fan of blogs. Yet he's rather selective when it comes to using blogs as a marketing vehicle.

“I like blogs, but I don't particularly like vendor blogs,” said Wilson, who stressed that he prefers bloggers with an editorial background. “They know how to write blogs that will catch your attention. You'll read them and get engaged by them.”

In April, Wilson hired Eric Lai—who most recently covered enterprise software for Computerworld—to launch the Sybase-sponsored blog UberMobile. The blog, which runs on ZDNet.com and Sybase's main website, features news and information on enterprise mobility markets and includes ads for Sybase's “Mobile Management for Dummies” guide.

It also offers several links to white papers and webinars focusing on Sybase's products and services. The blog includes a disclaimer that the content is based on Lai's views and does not necessarily represent those of Sybase.

“We've been pretty wowed by it,” Wilson said. “It has far exceeded the [expected] results in terms of the amount of people reading the blog and the amount of people clicking on offers and becoming leads.” UberMobile on ZDNet.com brings Sybase 10 times more page views than the blog posting on Sybase.com, according to Wilson.

The blog is one way that Wilson has built on Sybase's “Enterprise Mobility” campaign, introduced in 2009. He said he's been able to leverage both the “Enterprise Mobility” effort and Sybase's “Capital Markets” campaign, which debuted in 2008, through conferences on thought leadership. In May, the company hosted an executive summit at the New York Stock Exchange that focused on managing risk and mobile commerce. It is hosting a similar event in London in November.

Wilson has also built on both campaigns through the Sybase Classic Match Play Championship, an LPGA event telecast on the Golf Channel. This year's tournament, which took place in New Jersey, was accompanied by several events in New York that catered to customers and prospects for both Sybase's enterprise mobility and capital markets platforms.

Attendees were also able to check out some of the latest technologies from Sybase's partners, such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and Intel Corp. The programs are “less about what's happening with a Sybase product per se, but "here's what you need to know about the industry to do your job better,' ” Wilson said.

He added: “We're pretty good about being open to trying things, but I'm also amazingly frugal. The way you get a high ROI out of these things is you monitor the "I' and you get higher ROI. We'll try new things, but we're not going to waste a lot of money doing it.”

—Matthew Schwartz