Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 24, 2010

I heard a great definition from my former ITSMA colleague Jeff Sands the other day: Sales enablement is helping salespeople be more credible with customers. What do I mean by sales enablement? We all know how sales enablement got started in B2B. Sales enablement used to mean brochures. I’d really like to know what you think. Tweet This Post.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Wiki Marketing Management Internet Marketing 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

B2B marketing lays the path to a sales discussion and supports relationships with existing customers. Social media is another channel—one of many—for making the connection and building the relationship with customers. Social media is no silver bullet. Why B2B marketers hate social media (christopherakoch.com). Tweet This Post.

Social Media 100

Social Media Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

For these marketers, the pool of customers and prospects is small and many of them do not want to engage publicly in social media or are simply ignoring it altogether. Listen for conversation about your company or about relevant issues for you and your customers. And there’s good reason to be terrified.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

For these marketers, the pool of customers and prospects is small and many of them do not want to engage publicly in social media or are simply ignoring it altogether. Listen for conversation about your company or about relevant issues for you and your customers. And there’s good reason to be terrified.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 22, 2010

Old beliefs about the relative value of earned media vs. advertising are all over the map—and probably need to be revised in the age of social media. So if you buy that leap of logic, let’s say that blogs are another channel, like PR, in a marketing mix designed to familiarize customers and prospects with our companies and us.

Social Media 100

Social Media ROI Lead Ranking RSS 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 30, 2010

Our customers and prospects—especially the younger ones—will be looking at smartphones as one of their primary computing platforms—if not the primary platform. I’m sure that there will be opportunities and reasons for B2B to advertise on these things eventually, but that’s the easy part. How do we compete? Continuity. Timeliness.

Mobile Marketing 100

Mobile Marketing Mobile Advertising Paid Search Agency Wiki 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 5, 2009

Geoff Dodds, Julie Schwartz and I brainstormed the different responses customers can have to a crisis and the steps you can take to address the problems. When a crisis hits, customers make a decision about whether the promise of a brand has been broken and whether the relationship can be repaired. Breaking the promise.

Paid Search Agency 100

Paid Search Agency Companies Work Management Ethics 100

Chris Koch

MAY 21, 2010

Have you ever noticed that your Facebook profile page looks like one of those horrible qualification forms that we make our customers fill out? For Facebook, it’s personal information that advertisers can use to target us. Customers are less willing to give up information. The expectation on Twitter is that 99.9%

Privacy 100

Privacy B2B Marketing Lead Ranking B2B 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 6, 2009

When I was at CIO, we despised the calendar process because it was the primary instrument that our salespeople used to demonstrate relevance with potential advertisers (and our competitors could see it). Marketers need the same feedback from customers and from salespeople. Every good publication has an editorial calendar.

Planning 100

Planning B2B Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 6, 2009

When I was at CIO, we despised the calendar process because it was the primary instrument that our salespeople used to demonstrate relevance with potential advertisers (and our competitors could see it). Marketers need the same feedback from customers and from salespeople. Every good publication has an editorial calendar.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Planning Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 19, 2010

Take an active role in social media by engaging with customers and influencers in the various forums where conversations are taking place. Monitoring can be used to discover customers and prospects that are most relevant for your offerings by observing the patterns and topics of their conversations. Here they are: Monitor.

Social Media 100

Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer Media 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 18, 2009

For marketers trying to build relationships with influencers and customers, this is a fundamental roadblock, because the permission model tries to replicate the way we form relationships in real life: Trust needs to be established before we enter into a relationship. How can we establish trust with influencers if we can’t get to them?

Social Media 100

Social Media Viral Marketing Tools Media 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 18, 2009

For marketers trying to build relationships with influencers and customers, this is a fundamental roadblock, because the permission model tries to replicate the way we form relationships in real life: Trust needs to be established before we enter into a relationship. How can we establish trust with influencers if we can’t get to them?

Social Media 100

Social Media Viral Marketing Tools Media 100

Chris Koch

MAY 15, 2012

Every B2B company has subject matter experts (SMEs) who are working with customers to solve problems and have deep backgrounds in customers’ processes, industries, and functions. How do I get these ideas in a form I can use with customers? Great, so you want me to dump a bunch of whitepapers on my customers?

FAQ 100

FAQ Custom Publishing B2B Sales Work Management 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

Taglines are the last bastions of a classic, one-way marketing messaging strategy, preserving marketing’s perceived right to tell customers what to think. In B2B marketing, we’ve never been given the right to tell customers what to think, much less the budgets to pound a tagline into their minds. Image via Wikipedia.

Social Marketing 100

Social Marketing Tactics B2B Thought Leadership Enterprise Management 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

Taglines are the last bastions of a classic, one-way marketing messaging strategy, preserving marketing’s perceived right to tell customers what to think. In B2B marketing, we’ve never been given the right to tell customers what to think, much less the budgets to pound a tagline into their minds. Image via Wikipedia.

Social Marketing 100

Social Marketing Tactics B2B Thought Leadership Enterprise Management 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 1, 2010

Ideas that educate customers and prospects about important business and technology issues and help them solve those issues—without selling. Companies and customers and prospects will have a more continuous relationship than they do today. So they are all here for your enjoyment.) Please add your thoughts! More integrated.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 20, 2009

Two main threads underpin the logic behind these urgings: Your customers are becoming more active in social media, so you’d better get with it. Customer factors. Customers (the younger ones, anyway) are adopting social media. Trade magazines are imploding as marketers continue to pull out of print advertising.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Work Management 100