Chris Koch

OCTOBER 30, 2009

Most of ITSMA’s clients are B2B marketers from big technology companies that sell big, complex products, services, and solutions. 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.

Social Media 100

Social Media Peer-to-peer Enterprise Management Media 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. The vbook also contained a Level 3 Network Map embedded as a PDF.

Web 2.0 100

Web 2.0 B2B Thought Leadership Ideal Customer Profiles Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 10, 2009

This depends on whether the products and services themselves are knowledge intensive. In industries where the product or service is very information intensive, such as research, management consulting, technology, aerospace, etc., Especially in B2B, products and services are becoming more complex and sales cycles are getting longer.

Thought Leadership 100

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

Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Recently, I was asked by a former ITSMA client to help put together a plan for a thought leadership program for a B2B technology company that sells both products and services. How can thought leadership influence their buying behavior? Align thought leadership vehicles to the buying process. What do you think?

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing Paper 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Recently, I was asked by a former ITSMA client to help put together a plan for a thought leadership program for a B2B technology company that sells both products and services. How can thought leadership influence their buying behavior? Align thought leadership vehicles to the buying process. What do you think?

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing B2B Sales 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. It’s a no win for everybody except the ad agencies.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 29, 2009

Even if we believe deeply in the power of social media, we all have that gnawing feeling deep in our guts that says that there’s little reason for a busy, intelligent person to want to receive frequent updates about our brands when those brands produce complex services and products with two-year sales cycles. The research confirms it.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management B2B Marketing B2B Thought Leadership Marketing Management 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. If you have the ability to measure those two things, then great.

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. 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. We know from our research that we in marketing don’t do much with analytics—i.e.,

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. 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. We know from our research that we in marketing don’t do much with analytics—i.e.,

Lead Qualification 100

Lead Qualification Marketing Automation Services Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 100

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2010

For example, in the three categories I’ve looked at so far (there are six categories altogether), we have one company using analytics to predict customer buying patterns (and this ain’t diapers or laundry detergent, ladies and gents—we’re talking six-figure jumbles of complex products and services here).

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer Wikipedia 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. Despite all the breathless hype about social media these days, what I hear most from B2B marketers is frustration.

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. Despite all the breathless hype about social media these days, what I hear most from B2B marketers is frustration.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

Marketers, meanwhile, didn’t have a wall, so they filled their content with self-aggrandizing references to their own products and services that pissed off readers and sent them to other sources for advice. What’s the point? And they’re linking this content to their social media management strategies. But that’s only part of the answer.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

JULY 22, 2011

The short-term costs are marginal compared with the longer-term goodwill they buy. The highest production-value material I received upon discharge was a two-color, 24-page glossy magazine entitled “A Guide to Taking Warfarin.” In both B2B and B2C, we’re getting better about throwing unhappy customers a bone. Motivational.

Work Management 100

Work Management Marketing Management Social Media 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? But a quick read of our magazine showed that we didn’t write about products. The IT industry was on fire and the stuff was flying out the doors.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 22, 2010

This is the number of articles or blog posts that mention the product or service measured against the trend in sales. 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. Lots of variables there.

Social Media 100

Social Media ROI Lead Ranking RSS 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

It may look better and read better than a brochure, but it’s still a brochure because it emphasizes our products and services over the needs of the people we are trying to reach. It presupposes that we have something to talk about besides our products and services. How can idea marketing influence customers’ buying behavior?

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Gartner Planning 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 28, 2010

From Facebook to email to putting telephones on employees’ desks (remember, the telephone started as a “consumer” communication technology, too), companies think that every new wave is going to lead to gajillions in lost productivity. The ultimate risk in business is that your customers stop buying from you because they don’t trust you.

Planning 100

Planning Work Management Paid Search Agency B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 12, 2012

Connectedness equals productivity, as we discovered (eventually) with PCs and laptops in earlier times that began just as chaotically as mobile has. Without following employees through “a day in the life,” as consumer product goods companies do, you won’t enable the right people with the right devices and apps. Far from it.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Lock-In Marketing Management Paper 100

Chris Koch

MAY 5, 2014

The Costs of Production Approach Zero for Everything. There are three other areas where the costs of production will soon reach zero, according to a fascinating academic article (in this rare case that’s not an oxymoron) by Mark A. Thanks to something called a patent. Patents Make Things Valuable Through Scarcity.

Copyright 100

Copyright Distribution Youtube Internet Marketing 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 20, 2009

We found that usage of social media among IT and business buyers of technology rose 50% over 2008 and finally pushed to majority status—55% said they use social media as part of the technology buying process in 2009 versus just 37% in 2008. Search is becoming increasingly dominant in the buying process. Marketing factors.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Work Management 100