Chris Koch

JANUARY 8, 2010

Companies that made commodity products would tell me with straight faces that even their financial processes were unique—GAAP be damned—and that they needed to customize their software to fit “our ways of doing things.” And learning is integral to buying—especially in B2B. Every buyer wants to learn at all stages of the buying process.

Social Media 100

Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 26, 2010

The number of B2B buyers who are ready to buy as soon as they engage with our marketing is small—and social media will make it even smaller. We have to come to terms with the fact that there is a stage of the buying process that comes before the buyers we are pursuing are ready to become leads. We call it the epiphany stage.

Social Media 100

Social Media Lead Generation B2B Thought Leadership Generation 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 4, 2011

But unlike the old print subscription models, where publishers qualified their audiences by setting minimum requirements for things like role in the organization and buying power (which allowed them to justify high prices for advertising), online traffic is essentially random. Existing customers are also looking for new ideas.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 12, 2010

Cloud creates a new buying decision pattern. They buy the hardware and services for the data centers. With speeds and feeds no longer relevant, marketers must get the attention of customers through ideas about how to improve business services rather than technology comparisons. Relationships will matter more after the sale.

Marketing Management 100

Marketing Management B2B Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Survey internal sales and marketing staff, customers, target markets, and influencers to determine what they are looking for. Here are some questions to ask: Do customers view of you as a thought leader; if not, can they envision you moving into that role? What are customers’ areas of interest?

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing Paper 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Survey internal sales and marketing staff, customers, target markets, and influencers to determine what they are looking for. Here are some questions to ask: Do customers view of you as a thought leader; if not, can they envision you moving into that role? What are customers’ areas of interest?

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing B2B Sales 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 29, 2010

Those lower down on the corporate ladder are more willing to “spend” their information because they realize that it has less value than those higher up, whose buying power gives them more information riches combined with less willingness to spend it (kind of like rich people in the real economy). Relationship. The price will change.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Lead Scoring B2B Thought Leadership Mobile Advertising 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 29, 2010

Those lower down on the corporate ladder are more willing to “spend” their information because they realize that it has less value than those higher up, whose buying power gives them more information riches combined with less willingness to spend it (kind of like rich people in the real economy). Relationship. The price will change.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Lead Scoring B2B Thought Leadership Mobile Advertising 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 7, 2011

You have to tweet ideas for solving customers’ problems. When we asked buyers how important good ideas are to the buying decision, 58% of executive-level buyers (people buying more than $500,000 worth of IT services at a pop) say that it is important or critical for making it onto the short list of providers. 30% said yes.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 7, 2011

You have to tweet ideas for solving customers’ problems. When we asked buyers how important good ideas are to the buying decision, 58% of executive-level buyers (people buying more than $500,000 worth of IT services at a pop) say that it is important or critical for making it onto the short list of providers. 30% said yes.

Social Media 100

Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Media Peer-to-peer 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? That price is personal information, company information, and buying intent. Customers are less willing to give up information. The expectation on Twitter is that 99.9% What do you think?

Privacy 100

Privacy B2B Marketing Lead Ranking B2B 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 30, 2009

That means that the people buying those services—or at least playing a key role in the decision—tend to be high up on the corporate food chain—the C-suite or just below. Specifically, frustration over how to use social media to reach the C-suite. In fact, it’s hard for most of us to imagine these people using social media at all.

Social Media 100

Social Media Peer-to-peer Enterprise Management Media 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 10, 2009

Marketers began using thought leadership when they recognized that customers and prospects were growing weary of salespeople trying to sell them products without knowing about the business issues that customers and prospects faced. Why did companies start focusing on it?

Thought Leadership 100

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

Chris Koch

JULY 10, 2009

In the epiphany stage of the buying process, we should be offering people great information, not turning them off by trying to sleaze information out of them when they’re nowhere near being ready to buy. Sync your content to the stages of the buying process. Stop collecting this data. Phone (c’mon—it’s a new century).

Web 2.0 100

Web 2.0 B2B Thought Leadership Ideal Customer Profiles Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 18, 2011

They want more strategic answers, such as whether marketing is increasing the velocity of contacts through the buying process and reducing the time and effort that salespeople need to expend in making a sale. Marketers tell me that if they can get salespeople to even send the thing to prospects and customers they’re happy.

Work Management 100

Work Management Thought Leadership Marketing Management Paper 100

Chris Koch

JULY 24, 2009

using data to determine and predict customer buying patterns. At its foundation, it is a system that sees that the lead process is a loop, not a linear progression—especially considering the length and complexity of the B2B buying process—and is capable of tracking every interaction with a lead over the course of this torturous route.

Top of Funnel 100

Top of Funnel Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

JULY 24, 2009

using data to determine and predict customer buying patterns. At its foundation, it is a system that sees that the lead process is a loop, not a linear progression—especially considering the length and complexity of the B2B buying process—and is capable of tracking every interaction with a lead over the course of this torturous route.

Lead Qualification 100

Lead Qualification Marketing Automation Services Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 100

Chris Koch

MAY 1, 2009

Our research on Account-Based Marketing has revealed a few such tasks: Customer understanding. In B2B, both marketers and salespeople know the value of learning about customers’ business issues and needs. And both know how to gain that understanding. But it makes sense to collaborate. Marketing can help.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Cross-Selling B2B Sales Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 18, 2009

Social media seems better suited to B2C, with its larger scale and simpler buying process. B2B companies have fewer, more complex customer relationships and are often conservative and protective of those relationships. B2B marketing lays the path to a sales discussion and supports relationships with existing customers.

Social Media 100

Social Media Peer-to-peer Social Marketing B2B Marketing 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 17, 2009

Sure, salespeople know the accounts—they know what the customers have spent and what they are most likely to want next. They may also know what the customers’ major business issues are—if they know how to ask. And in big, important customers, it’s worth integrating that ability into the account planning process.

Planning 100

Planning Process Work Management Verticals 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 29, 2009

According to Razorfish, 44% of respondents said they were looking for exclusive deals or offers, while 24% said they followed the brand because they were customers and 23% said they followed in the hopes of getting interesting or entertaining content. What drives consumers to follow brands on Twitter?

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management B2B Marketing B2B Thought Leadership Marketing Management 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 26, 2010

And while marketers can create some social media content, they can (and should) rely on their subject matter experts (SMEs) to create most of the stuff that’s going to build trust and relationships with customers. Get ideas from customers. Set up an RSS feed of key news sources and bloggers and forward the good stuff to your SMEs.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership RSS Enterprise Management Thought Leadership 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.

Social Media 100

Social Media Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 5, 2011

It’s yet another channel for reaching customers and the effort required to set up a Facebook page and create RSS feeds of your content to update it is pretty small. I keep waiting for Facebook to buy LinkedIn or Twitter and just put an end to the business vs. consumer distinction. But let’s put this all in context.

Facebook 100

Facebook B2B Marketing B2B Thought Leadership B2B 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

Most of the marketers I talk to are trying to reach a few top executives in big organizations who make buying decisions about big, complex products and services. 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.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

Most of the marketers I talk to are trying to reach a few top executives in big organizations who make buying decisions about big, complex products and services. 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.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

MAY 7, 2010

The smooth contours and the shimmering black glass bezels make the devices look more like something out of a Swarovski store than a Best Buy. We need to create vibrant communities that customers will value so much that they will want a mobile application so they can keep up with the action anytime from anywhere. Image via Wikipedia.

Mobile Marketing 100

Mobile Marketing Wikipedia Communities B2B Marketing 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 15, 2010

Marketers and salespeople didn’t have to do much coaxing to get CIOs to buy, so why get complicated? Today, more salespeople are able to have business and strategy discussions with customers and take the time to listen to their needs. Back then what marketers had to say was all about their offerings. And why not? Tweet This Post.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

Publishers (the good ones, anyway) gave some of the most prominent pages in their newspapers and magazines to advertisers in return for a lot of cash, access to a targeted group of customers, and editorial independence from advertiser influence. And they’re linking this content to their social media management strategies.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 6, 2009

Marketers need to talk to subject matter experts inside the company, influencers outside the company (analysts, academics, bloggers, journalists), and customers. Marketers need the same feedback from customers and from salespeople. All you need to do is ask questions and the content will flow out of these people. Audit content.

Planning 100

Planning B2B Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 6, 2009

Marketers need to talk to subject matter experts inside the company, influencers outside the company (analysts, academics, bloggers, journalists), and customers. Marketers need the same feedback from customers and from salespeople. All you need to do is ask questions and the content will flow out of these people. Audit content.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Planning Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

Regardless, it’s a twist on an old consultant’s trick: Gain attention and credibility with press, customers, and influencers by creating your own definition, which gives you the ability to insert the “what we call x…” phrase into descriptions of otherwise basic things. What are customers’ areas of interest?

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Gartner Planning 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 28, 2010

The ultimate risk in business is that your customers stop buying from you because they don’t trust you. Preventing employees from speaking to customers because they might make a mistake ignores this much bigger risk—which existed long before social media came along. Filtered conversation reduces risk. Do you call that ROI?

Planning 100

Planning Work Management Paid Search Agency B2B Thought Leadership 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. Ideas that educate customers and prospects about important business and technology issues and help them solve those issues—without selling.

Thought Leadership 100

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

Chris Koch

MARCH 12, 2012

PCs and laptops have always been about the applications they enable rather than an overall experience that they create for users and customers. Users simply want to use the device they like best; they care less about who owns it (indeed, many would be happy to have the company buy it for them).

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Lock-In Marketing Management Paper 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. Search is becoming increasingly dominant in the buying process. Marketing factors.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Work Management 100