Chris Koch

MAY 15, 2012

We all know the increasing importance of ideas in B2B marketing. 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. Besides creating idea networks, B2B companies also have to become publishers.

FAQ 100

FAQ Custom Publishing B2B Sales Work Management 100

Chris Koch

MAY 20, 2011

on the Savvy B2B Marketing Blog entitled How to Gain Real Traction with Thought Leadership, I talk about how marketers need to create an idea network within their organizations to spur their subject matter experts to start thinking. Partnership with trade associations. Knowledge share sessions. Awards programs.

Social Media 100

Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Media Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

One of the reasons that companies used to like to advertise in publications like Fortune and BusinessWeek and in trade magazines like CIO was that they could associate their companies with the smart content that these publications produce. For many B2B companies, idea marketing is a check box on a marketing list. What do you think?

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 22, 2010

We should care more about lead management automation in B2B marketing. And finally, the trade press and general business media are dying. Tags: Lead Management Marketing Automation Automation B2B marketing Forbes Google ITSMA marketing Sales Social Media. No, there’s something bigger going on here. It just won’t scale.

Lead Management 100

Lead Management Marketing Management Automation Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 10, 2009

This led to the explosion of the trade magazine industry during the 1960s-1980s. Even in industries with low information intensity in their products—coin-operation laundry franchises, for example—there was a trade magazine offering information about how to improve business practices.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer Work Management 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 16, 2010

Back then, we could still run lush print ads, design fancy brochures and whitepapers, create monster trade show booths, and wine and dine CIOs at the Super Bowl. But the real successes I’m hearing about in B2B use social media to support and extend more traditional tactics. And to business people, that all represented value.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Social Marketing 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 5, 2010

In B2B, that’s not going to build relationships with customers. The inefficiency and expense of this process for the agencies was tough to justify even in the glory days of trade journalism, conferences, and trade shows. As the media melts away, companies can’t link to or highlight objective sources on the website. Placement PR.

PR 100

PR Press Paid Search Agency Lead Ranking 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 12, 2010

PR tries to influence the placement of subject matter experts, content, and interviews in third-party channels (articles, conference and trade show speaking engagements, etc.). You can’t do what one B2B company did: require that subject matter experts submit tweets to PR for approval two weeks in advance of posting. Visibility.

PR 100

PR Peer-to-peer Press Public Relations 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 15, 2010

At ITSMA, we’ve seen investments in the things that we used to identify as the key contributions of marketing—like advertising, brochures, events, and trade shows—shrink consistently. We couldn’t measure the effectiveness of events and trade shows, but sales people saw the crowds at the booth and the bar and so it didn’t matter.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 6, 2009

I’ve spent the last two days as a guest at Marketing Sherpa’s B2B conference in Boston and the many excellent speakers used publishing metaphors constantly. The publishing model is also relevant because as a business model, it is dying—especially for trade magazines. What’s your publishing process for content? What have I left out?

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Planning Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 6, 2009

I’ve spent the last two days as a guest at Marketing Sherpa’s B2B conference in Boston and the many excellent speakers used publishing metaphors constantly. The publishing model is also relevant because as a business model, it is dying—especially for trade magazines. What’s your publishing process for content? What have I left out?

Planning 100

Planning B2B Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 29, 2010

But it’s less familiar to lower-level buyers, who are only beginning to calculate this piece as the economics of social media open up the privileges of relationship from cheesy tchotckes at trade shows to online social networks. That possibility hit home with me this week as I read Steve Woods’ post about the B2B implications of the iPad.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Lead Scoring B2B Thought Leadership Mobile Advertising 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 29, 2010

But it’s less familiar to lower-level buyers, who are only beginning to calculate this piece as the economics of social media open up the privileges of relationship from cheesy tchotckes at trade shows to online social networks. That possibility hit home with me this week as I read Steve Woods’ post about the B2B implications of the iPad.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Lead Scoring B2B Thought Leadership Mobile Advertising 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 12, 2010

We know that in B2B, customers and prospects respond best to ideas, news, research, and how-to—not sales pitches. I think so because social media is starting to give us a way to scale intimacy. We can do it with content. Social media reduces the incremental cost of content. Magazines have been doing it for years.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Thought Leadership Work Management 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 12, 2009

In tracking B2B marketing through Twitter, I find a ton of great content being shared through blogs whose creators have already swamped the output of trade magazines. The five percent of Twitterers who actively use it are probably the only ones who are going to try to fill this void with something useful.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Paid Search Agency Viral Marketing 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 1, 2010

It’s a warm-up for the great dialogues we’ll be having at MarketingProfs’ SocialTech conference later this month in San Jose, where I’ll be speaking about social media and the B2B buying process. If you’re in B2B marketing, you gotta go to this thing. All the top social media pros will be there and the focus will be all B2B.

Thought Leadership 100

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

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 28, 2010

People who sell your trade secrets on the internet will go to jail. For expensive, complex B2B products and services, social media can improve relationships with customers and increase awareness. Guess what companies, people wasted time at work long before Facebook came along. Social media relationships are shallow and meaningless.

Planning 100

Planning Work Management Paid Search Agency B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 20, 2009

We’re all getting constant advice—hectoring, even—about how we need to make social media a key part of our B2B marketing strategies right now. While I believe that these two threads are accurate, I haven’t seen compelling data to back them up—at least as it relates to B2B. The trade press is dying. Customer factors.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Work Management 100