B2B Marketing Zone

The last of the anti-social marketing tactics

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

In truth, customers have never listened, except in a few cases of companies with the budget muscle to pound the tagline into customers’ heads over and over again though mass marketing and TV. 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.

Social Marketing

Social Marketing Tactics B2B Thought Leadership Enterprise Management

The last of the anti-social marketing tactics

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

In truth, customers have never listened, except in a few cases of companies with the budget muscle to pound the tagline into customers’ heads over and over again though mass marketing and TV. 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.

Social Marketing

Social Marketing Tactics B2B Thought Leadership Enterprise Management

The five stages of social media grief—have you passed through them yet?

Chris Koch

JUNE 15, 2011

Social media (along with skimpy marketing budgets) are causing a transformation in marketing to a degree that we haven’t seen for a lifetime. Another marketing channel on top of my existing workload, with no extra budget or headcount? Image via Wikipedia. Think of me as your grief counselor for good ol’ message-based marketing.

Social Media

Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Media Wikipedia

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Social media isn’t enough. We need a marketing transformation.

Chris Koch

JANUARY 15, 2010

And today we’re seeing marketing budgets as a percentage of revenue dipping to their lowest levels ever—at or below 1%. Businesses are asking if you’re not doing all these things you used to do anymore, why should I give you more budget? And if I do, what am I paying for? The model needs transforming.

Social Media

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services

Social media strategy for B2B: what’s required and what’s optional

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

Larger companies can shift budget from dying categories like advertising and trade shows into social media without affecting other programs, but many smaller companies never had much budget in those areas to begin with. And there’s good reason to be terrified. As effort increases, resource allocation and ROI become issues.

Social Media

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy

Social media strategy for B2B: what’s required and what’s optional

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

Larger companies can shift budget from dying categories like advertising and trade shows into social media without affecting other programs, but many smaller companies never had much budget in those areas to begin with. And there’s good reason to be terrified. As effort increases, resource allocation and ROI become issues.

Social Media

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy

We need an app for that

Chris Koch

JULY 24, 2009

That lets them be more productive in marketing, by focusing effort and budget on the good stuff, and it lets them reduce the time to a sale by giving salespeople better tools to work with. I’ve said before that this isn’t just a problem with the issues that come back to us in the surveys: lack of budget, clean data, and unified IT systems.

Top of Funnel

Top of Funnel Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Marketing Automation Services

We need an app for that

Chris Koch

JULY 24, 2009

That lets them be more productive in marketing, by focusing effort and budget on the good stuff, and it lets them reduce the time to a sale by giving salespeople better tools to work with. I’ve said before that this isn’t just a problem with the issues that come back to us in the surveys: lack of budget, clean data, and unified IT systems.

Lead Qualification

Lead Qualification Marketing Automation Services Lead Scoring Lead Ranking

Why you need to turn your customers into stalkers

Chris Koch

JANUARY 21, 2011

It’s where we introduce some of the top findings from our annual budget survey of marketers. At ITSMA , we’ve been busy preparing for our annual State of the Marketing Profession briefing next Tuesday. But we don’t like to just parrot the numbers from the survey.

Social Media

Social Media Budget Programs Paper Stats

How to build emotional engagement in B2B marketing

Chris Koch

APRIL 2, 2010

It’s why our latest ITSMA marketing budget survey shows (free summary available)that thought leadership has risen to a higher priority level than in any recent year. It’s the same in B2B. Ideas can create an emotional connection. Okay, so it’s not big emotion, but it hits some buttons: Gratitude.

B2B Thought Leadership

B2B Thought Leadership B2B Marketing Marketing Budget Thought Leadership

Is “social media campaign” an oxymoron?

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Indeed, HDS initially started publicizing its contest across Twitter, LinkedIn , Google AdWords , and with media partners as well as Facebook, but soon shifted most of the budget to Facebook because response was so much better there. Contests, giveaways, and sweepstakes do really well on Facebook. HDS also did something cool.

Social Media

Social Media Campaigns B2B Thought Leadership Media

Is “social media campaign” an oxymoron?

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Indeed, HDS initially started publicizing its contest across Twitter, LinkedIn , Google AdWords , and with media partners as well as Facebook, but soon shifted most of the budget to Facebook because response was so much better there. Contests, giveaways, and sweepstakes do really well on Facebook. HDS also did something cool.

Social Media

Social Media Campaigns B2B Thought Leadership Media

Why your marketing to CIOs may be irrelevant—and what to do about it

Chris Koch

AUGUST 7, 2009

For example, we’ve long thought that CIOs in smaller organizations are hamstrung by a lack of discretionary budget to work with, small staffs, and a lack of access to the CEO in the business. So one year when I ran the State of the CIO survey we decided to take a deeper look at this data. We came up with some interesting insights.

Planning

Planning Segmentation Work Management Gartner

Why your marketing to CIOs may be irrelevant—and what to do about it

Chris Koch

AUGUST 7, 2009

For example, we’ve long thought that CIOs in smaller organizations are hamstrung by a lack of discretionary budget to work with, small staffs, and a lack of access to the CEO in the business. So one year when I ran the State of the CIO survey we decided to take a deeper look at this data. We came up with some interesting insights.

Planning

Planning Segmentation Work Management Gartner

Why B2B marketers hate social media

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 18, 2009

It’s also about addressing the very real concern that in a time of stretched budgets and lean staffs, social media becomes yet another channel to manage. The case for social media isn’t just about showing how buyers are flocking to social media. What’s really different with social media? The End of Control.

Social Media

Social Media Peer-to-peer Social Marketing B2B Marketing

Six ways that marketing needs to lead the organization in social media

Chris Koch

MAY 14, 2010

With marketing budgets as percent of revenue being an all-time low — less than 1% — social media can’t just be another add-on to everything else that marketing is already doing. —a little portentous, I know, but we really believe it and the data really shows it).

Organic Leads

Organic Leads Social Media Social Marketing Organization

Have you created a waking dream for your customers?

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2010

Since not all of us have the budget or ability to do that, however, let’s come up with ways that we can create waking dreams for our customers through our marketing. Can you imagine that putting some of your customer peers through a well-managed event over the course of a week could give them that kind of space? How to create the dream.

B2B Thought Leadership

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer Wikipedia

Want to understand your customers’ business needs? Give them an award.

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 6, 2009

Budget is the overriding limiter, but it’s important to quantify as many constraints as possible because the limiters help define the ambition of the project. Marketing programs should help the business stand apart from competitors in the segment. The best signal of success is when competitors feel compelled to respond.

B2B Thought Leadership

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Budget Programs Business

How old-school data capture is poisoning marketing and what to do about it

Chris Koch

JULY 10, 2009

Budget (with the complexity of the stuff we’re selling, this data would be crap anyway). Company (so we’re a client/not a client; what does that have to do with anything at this stage of the buying process?). Level of interest (we’re here because we’re interested in learning about business issues, not your products).

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 B2B Thought Leadership Ideal Customer Profiles Thought Leadership

Six factors driving B2B social media marketing adoption

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 20, 2009

Digital marketing has reached the budget tipping point—with help from the recession. B2B marketers have been shifting dollars away from offline programs (mostly trade shows, print advertising, and print collateral) to digital marketing in eight of the last nine years, according to ITSMA’s Annual Budget and Trends survey.

Social Media

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Work Management