Chris Koch

JANUARY 29, 2010

The price is the forms we make people fill out to download white papers or sign up for events. This price is one that high-level executives have been calculating for years as providers woo them with memberships in customer councils and invitations to private events. That has to change. Relationship. Culture and location.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Lead Scoring B2B Thought Leadership Mobile Advertising 100

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.” Your internal learning network should integrate with the ones you want to build for customers. The rest is promotion.

Social Media 100

Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 18, 2012

As I interview SMEs around SAP and external influencers like analysts and customers, I want to be able to share the raw ideas in their earliest stages so that I can inform people and get their feedback. I’m excited about the prospect of not just presenting ideas to the SCN community but also in building ideas with this community.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Communities Transparency 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 25, 2011

In other words, unless we become idea organizations, we’re not going to have much to say to customers, prospects, and influencers in social media. One company has created an internal portal where project members submit ideas that are vetted and voted on by the project customers. What do I mean by an idea organization? Make it visible.

Social Media 100

Social Media Organization Peer-to-peer SME 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. But from the ashes of publishing, subtle association is making a comeback.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies Paid Search Agency 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

MARCH 19, 2010

Take an active role in social media by engaging with customers and influencers in the various forums where conversations are taking place. Monitoring can be used to discover customers and prospects that are most relevant for your offerings by observing the patterns and topics of their conversations. Here they are: Monitor.

Social Media 100

Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer Media 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

JANUARY 15, 2010

Today, more salespeople are able to have business and strategy discussions with customers and take the time to listen to their needs. But a white paper isn’t just content; it is data. Except that today many of those sales guys are gone. Thus, their skepticism becomes sharper and more justified. It can be tracked and measured.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 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

MARCH 12, 2012

For about 20 years (sad to say I was a journalist for even longer than that) it seemed that every white paper that crossed my desk began with some variant of this sentence: “As the world becomes more global and interconnected, businesses need a way to see through the complexity. I heard six: Mobility changes business models.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Lock-In Marketing Management Paper 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. Customers want to speak to the people they will be working with.

Planning 100

Planning Work Management Paid Search Agency B2B Thought Leadership 100