Chris Koch

APRIL 16, 2010

In our survey, we asked, “In your company, is marketing the catalyst for social media being used by others in the company (product development, HR, etc.)?” Marketing as a percentage of revenue for technology services companies is at an all-time low—less than 1%. But one finding sticks out. Marketing owns social media management.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Social Marketing 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 25, 2010

Two interesting posts this week on how our personalities affect our online behavior. Then David Weinberger, big thinker, co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto (and nice guy) proposed an interesting framework for determining our internet personalities. What if you post a thread on a topic that your company doesn’t want you talking about?

Social Media 100

Social Media Peer-to-peer Media Wikipedia 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 18, 2011

Interesting research from Edelman shows that there has been a decline in trust in “people like myself” and “regular employees.” Meanwhile, trust in “credentialed experts” and “company technical specialists” is rising—we’re getting so desperate we even want to hear from the CEO. Hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Thought Leadership Social Media Storytelling 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 26, 2010

Marketing is the default head of social media management in most companies. Here are some ways to do it: Send them what interests you. If you’re in tune with your SMEs, then what interests you should interest them (at least from a business perspective—no need to go nuts and take up golf). Have regular pitch meetings.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership RSS Enterprise Management Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

There’s little point in doing thought leadership if it’s something that the company can’t follow through on. Thought leadership is little more than an interesting opinion unless it is backed up with data and case studies. The ideas should be presented against a backdrop of deep contextual understanding and experience.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Best Practices Case Study 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

There’s little point in doing thought leadership if it’s something that the company can’t follow through on. Thought leadership is little more than an interesting opinion unless it is backed up with data and case studies. The ideas should be presented against a backdrop of deep contextual understanding and experience.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Best Practices Case Study 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 19, 2010

First, here’s what we do as part of monitoring: Track conversations about your company. You need to know what’s being said about your company online. Trouble is, we’re finding in our research that most companies stop here. Pretty obvious, right? There’s much more that we should and could be doing with monitoring.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

MAY 30, 2014

As you might imagine, stories like these are starting to throw a scare into the cable companies and the entertainment industry as a whole. “In Needless to say, if a tiny, barely two-year-old startup is already having its day in (Supreme) Court (against its will), we are in the midst of interesting times for the entertainment industry.

Cable 100

Cable Television marketing Broadcasting Copyright 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 16, 2009

Surrounding the blog with links to other sections of the site gives the blog credibility and helps build interest. Being on the corporate site is a good way for bloggers to raise their visibility inside the company and promote their careers. Independent blogs can appear and disappear without reflecting badly on the blogger’s company.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Blogger Thought Leadership Word of Mouth 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 31, 2014

What’s interesting about the video is that it captures the most important historical event in Fallon’s career while also offering insight into who Fallon is as a person. They are a new way for entertainment companies to market their celebrities and to track them over time without waiting for the book or the movie.

Wikipedia 100

Wikipedia Youtube Profiling Video Marketing 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 2, 2010

I got a really interesting question last week through my Skribit box: How do you use emotional engagement when talking about dry technology? We have to stop torturing ourselves trying to write interesting things about our dry technology. This company understands my pain. Those two things are built into the process.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership B2B Marketing Marketing Budget Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

JULY 10, 2009

Data gathering should be reserved for the interest phase, when people are creating a short list of providers and will more willingly put up with being a prisoner of data capture. Prospects are only required to give up their names and emails to access content that then tells the marketers how interested the prospects really are.

Web 2.0 100

Web 2.0 B2B Thought Leadership Ideal Customer Profiles Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 10, 2009

See what you think of my answers: How did thought leadership initiatives in companies begin? Other companies have adopted pieces of the academic research publishing model for their own thought leadership marketing. Thus, thought leadership is applicable to any industry with interest in competitive information and process improvement.

Thought Leadership 100

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

Chris Koch

JANUARY 28, 2011

One of Forrester’s former analysts, Jeremiah Owyang, developed a big following on his personal blog “Web Strategy” in part because he hits on all cylinders of blogging: frequent posts, engaging content, and an active audience that contributes interesting and insightful comments. Co-branding the individual and the company.

Personalization 100

Personalization Forrester Brand Identity Branding 100

Chris Koch

MAY 1, 2009

Few salespeople or marketers feel qualified—or interested—in crossing over to the other side. You need to find tasks that both sales and marketing have a need for and interest in, but that make sense to share. In typical functional fashion, sales and marketing have gravitated toward things that the other can’t or won’t do.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Cross-Selling B2B Sales Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 26, 2009

In my last post, I hope I convinced you why you should establish a personal presence in social media even if your company hasn’t done so yet. Paul has been a B2B marketer for years for companies like BearingPoint and Avaya and has accomplished quite a bit with social media in those jobs. That was the why of social media.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Personalization 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 12, 2010

Every company needs a guard dog or two to be around in case of a PR disaster. PR works to identify people in the organization who would be good representatives of the company, its value, and its offerings. to prepare them to be public representatives of the company. I’m not saying we fire all PR people. Gatekeeper. Visibility.

PR 100

PR Peer-to-peer Press Public Relations 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. What are customers’ areas of interest? are target customers most interested in? Here are my thoughts on the big pieces.

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. What are customers’ areas of interest? are target customers most interested in? Here are my thoughts on the big pieces.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing B2B Sales 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Companies are having success pulling in fans by linking to charitable cases. You’re just warming up to social media campaigns because you work for ITSMA and these are the companies who won your contest. Visitors could click on the experts to learn more about them and connect directly with them. Appeal to their sense of charity.

Social Media 100

Social Media Campaigns B2B Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Companies are having success pulling in fans by linking to charitable cases. You’re just warming up to social media campaigns because you work for ITSMA and these are the companies who won your contest. Visitors could click on the experts to learn more about them and connect directly with them. Appeal to their sense of charity.

Social Media 100

Social Media Campaigns B2B Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 5, 2010

The other company has a mobile application for its private, gated online community so that mobile members can keep up with message boards and forums that change frequently (there are over 100 subject-oriented communities within the site).

Wiki 100

Wiki Urgency Marketing Mobile Marketing Content 100

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2009

Engage customers with broad themes of common interest. Consider an external company as a co-sponsor to bring fresh perspective (and to share the workload). Create a set of common objectives as a basis for collaboration, such as: Knowledge creation. Market change. Policy change. Organizational change.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Practices Thought Leadership Best Practices 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 7, 2009

We came up with some interesting insights. These CIOs tend to be in larger companies and generally serve multiple business entities. Can you see how these different archetypes have different needs and interests? So one year when I ran the State of the CIO survey we decided to take a deeper look at this data. Tweet This Post.

Planning 100

Planning Segmentation Work Management Gartner 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 7, 2009

We came up with some interesting insights. These CIOs tend to be in larger companies and generally serve multiple business entities. Can you see how these different archetypes have different needs and interests? So one year when I ran the State of the CIO survey we decided to take a deeper look at this data.

Planning 100

Planning Segmentation Work Management Gartner 100

Chris Koch

MAY 21, 2010

That price is personal information, company information, and buying intent. It’s like the difference between someone asking for your e-mail in exchange for a white paper versus them asking for your salutation, your company size, when you are going to buy, your mother’s maiden name and on and on ad nausea. come at a price.

Privacy 100

Privacy B2B Marketing Lead Ranking B2B 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 12, 2010

The theory is that every company competes in three disciplines: Customer intimacy. These are companies that go out of their way to build close customer relationships. Customers rely on these companies to deliver reliability and quality at a low price. Operational excellence. Product leadership.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Thought Leadership Work Management 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 3, 2014

“A family receptionist would greet them and offer a surprise like a seat upgrade, a free gift, or a chance to meet a player,” says Mark Bradley, founder of The Fan Experience Company , a consultancy that worked with the club. Sales of family season ticket plans increased from fewer than 500 in 2009 to more than 7,500 in 2012.

Planning 100

Planning Paid Search Agency Work Management Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 5, 2010

Among the many interesting ideas thrown around at ITSMA’s annual conference this week was that the era of PR is over. Unless the company they work for is a startup or otherwise desperate for attention, these people tend to be ground down by the risk management aspect of their jobs over time. As in dead. Don’t do it anymore.

PR 100

PR Press Paid Search Agency Lead Ranking 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

I’m hearing a lot from clients and researchers about how vast swaths of salespeople need to be eliminated as companies transition from selling products to services and solutions. Companies need to make it worth salespeople’s while to endure the longer sales cycle and lower margins that come with services. Monitor the chatter.

Marketing Automation Services 100

Marketing Automation Services Consulting B2B Sales Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

I’m hearing a lot from clients and researchers about how vast swaths of salespeople need to be eliminated as companies transition from selling products to services and solutions. Companies need to make it worth salespeople’s while to endure the longer sales cycle and lower margins that come with services. Monitor the chatter.

Marketing Automation Services 100

Marketing Automation Services B2B Sales Consulting Marketing Automation 100

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2009

Engage customers with broad themes of common interest. Consider an external company as a co-sponsor to bring fresh perspective (and to share the workload). Create a set of common objectives as a basis for collaboration, such as: Knowledge creation. Market change. Policy change. Organizational change.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Thought Leadership Practices Best Practices 100

Chris Koch

MAY 14, 2010

At least that’s the conclusion we reached at ITSMA recently when we did our social media survey (there’s a free summary if you’re interested). We’re seeing companies use social media to bring customers into the product and service development processes to collaborate on new ideas and improvements. Now what do we mean when we say that?

Organic Leads 100

Organic Leads Social Media Social Marketing Organization 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.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

JULY 31, 2009

In working with companies to develop lead management programs, Brian has found that the most successful companies have a CEO who does not try to parse marketing from sales and assign credit/blame to each. We need marketing content specifically targeted at that stage, as well as the more traditional stages like awareness and interest.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency Work Management B2B Sales 100

Chris Koch

JULY 31, 2009

In working with companies to develop lead management programs, Brian has found that the most successful companies have a CEO who does not try to parse marketing from sales and assign credit/blame to each. We need marketing content specifically targeted at that stage, as well as the more traditional stages like awareness and interest.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency Work Management B2B Sales 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

But I think the nature of B2B makes it harder for companies and customers to have a satisfying relationship that’s entirely virtual than it is for B2C companies. Trust comes from buyers deciding that providers are as interested in their concerns and needs as they are in selling stuff.

Social Media 100

Social Media Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy B2B Thought Leadership 100