Chris Koch

OCTOBER 7, 2011

ITSMA research shows that 66% of buyers seek information themselves rather than waiting to hear from providers. They seek that information through search: 79% of c-level executives do at least three searches per day. We need a lead management process to act as a place to bring people from social media.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 7, 2011

ITSMA research shows that 66% of buyers seek information themselves rather than waiting to hear from providers. They seek that information through search: 79% of c-level executives do at least three searches per day. We need a lead management process to act as a place to bring people from social media.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 22, 2010

And that is a huge change in the buying process. ITSMA’s annual survey of IT buyers found that this year, for the first time, a majority of buyers in the US—and 75% when you include other countries—are using social media in the purchasing process—especially the younger ones. Buyers are removing salespeople from the buying process.

Lead Management 100

Lead Management Marketing Management Automation Marketing Automation Services 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.” Every buyer wants to learn at all stages of the buying process. Create a content development process.

Social Media 100

Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Create a content development process. The key components of the program are: Create a publishing process and calendar. Marketers must become publishers, with a process for refining and presenting thought leadership content through various vehicles, (such as conference presentations, white papers, social media, etc.).

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing B2B Sales 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Create a content development process. The key components of the program are: Create a publishing process and calendar. Marketers must become publishers, with a process for refining and presenting thought leadership content through various vehicles, (such as conference presentations, white papers, social media, etc.).

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing Paper 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 10, 2009

Thought leadership marketing is based on the academic research publishing model, in which academics created journals built around a peer review process. In industries where the product or service is very information intensive, such as research, management consulting, technology, aerospace, etc., 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

As social media becomes more prevalent in marketing, we’re going to have to rethink how we gather information from prospects. Given the potential for lead generation through social media, the question then becomes how much information should we try to get from people coming to us through social media? In our recent Web 2.0

Web 2.0 100

Web 2.0 B2B Thought Leadership Ideal Customer Profiles Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

MAY 15, 2012

As buyers do more searching, they are stretching the buying process earlier and earlier, to the point where they may not have a specific product or service in mind when they search. So you’re saying there’s a part of the buying process that doesn’t involve salespeople? What does online search have to do with selling?

FAQ 100

FAQ Custom Publishing B2B Sales Work Management 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 11, 2011

Most companies do not yet have closed-loop lead management processes supported by systems, for example. We need to use analytics to quantify and manage how fast we move prospects through the buying process and to increase loyalty and trust after they’ve bought from us. So we need some important systems installed in the short-term.

Analytics 100

Analytics Paid Search Agency Marketing Management Loyalty 100

Chris Koch

MAY 21, 2010

If you go to Facebook and look at your profile, your immediate reaction is going to be that it’s asking for too much information. The question that we’re asking Facebook is the question that we should be asking ourselves in our marketing: Do we really need all this information? The expectation on Twitter is that 99.9%

Privacy 100

Privacy B2B Marketing Lead Ranking B2B 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 30, 2010

The classic B2B mobile applications have been internally focused, giving maintenance people access to service information while they are out in the field. One possibility is to use location at your events so that attendees can find each other or share schedules and information. Continuity.

Mobile Marketing 100

Mobile Marketing Mobile Advertising Paid Search Agency Wiki 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 18, 2009

When buyers engage their most important sources of information—their peers—most of those conversations (90%, according to a study by Walter J. Social media seems better suited to B2C, with its larger scale and simpler buying process. The most trusted information source for buyers has always been each other. With good reason.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

JANUARY 29, 2010

For example, there is no way that the typical Webinar is worth as much as an in-depth research report, yet we make buyers give us the same amount of information for both—we charge them the same price. For example, research shows that Europeans value their privacy more than Americans—meaning that their information may cost you more.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Lead Scoring B2B Thought Leadership Mobile Advertising 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 29, 2010

For example, there is no way that the typical Webinar is worth as much as an in-depth research report, yet we make buyers give us the same amount of information for both—we charge them the same price. For example, research shows that Europeans value their privacy more than Americans—meaning that their information may cost you more.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Lead Scoring B2B Thought Leadership Mobile Advertising 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 21, 2011

It has made those little pictures and bios at the end of white papers seem inadequate when compared to the wealth of information we can see about people on such social media channels as LinkedIn and Twitter. What this means for marketers is that social media have increased buyers’ expectations for intimacy at all stages of the buying process.

Social Media 100

Social Media Budget Programs Paper Stats 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 30, 2009

We found that usage of social media among IT and business buyers of technology rose 50% over last year 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.

Social Media 100

Social Media Peer-to-peer Enterprise Management Media 100

Chris Koch

MAY 1, 2009

For example, the trend towards creating a closed-loop lead generation and nurturing process between marketing and sales is a positive step, but it seems like a bridge across the chasm rather than a true route to collaboration. Right now, it seems that the gap between sales and marketing is mostly papered over with technology.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Cross-Selling B2B Sales Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 5, 2010

The process is incredibly expensive and inefficient. The process of getting subject matter experts placed in publications or other third-party content channels is awful for everyone involved. The entire process was focused on trying to use me and my publication for corporate messaging—as though that’s what my readers wanted.

PR 100

PR Press Paid Search Agency Lead Ranking 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 2, 2010

Those two things are built into the process. And you never get any interesting assignments if you aren’t able to communicate information through a narrative structure—a story with a number of star characters and a beginning, middle, and end. Journalism has long understood that people respond to other people and to stories.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership B2B Marketing Marketing Budget Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 7, 2012

But the Forbes platform is an important step in helping companies understand that there is a time for selling but there is also a time (generally much earlier in the sales process) when customers and prospects are simply looking to be informed, educated and entertained.

Disintermediation 100

Disintermediation B2B Marketing Marketing Management Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 24, 2009

Thanks to Kent Huffman for giving me a great starting point for this post): Invite employees into the process. Social media is supposed to be fun, informal, conversational and open. Employees will feel much more comfortable adhering to policies if they feel that they have had a voice in shaping them—as IBM’s and SAP’s employees did.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Guidelines B2B 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 26, 2010

so that buyers can consume the information in any form they choose. And target that content to all of the stages of the buying process so that anyone encountering your content will find something that speaks to them personally. Hire a content director. Have you noticed what’s been happening to the media lately?

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership RSS Enterprise Management Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 13, 2010

The information from a social site like this changes how journalists can write about a huge company like HP. We need a process and people for reaching out to them. We need to keep track of the arc of sentiment and reach out to these customers before the blowup. We must be able to engage with customers through social media.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media SME B2B 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

We could control the public conversation because our audience had few public outlets for giving or receiving information. Though I will probably get some arguments about this, I think the participation strategy is a linear process—i.e., After all, that’s how we’ve always done it. We push messages out and try to stir up attention.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

We could control the public conversation because our audience had few public outlets for giving or receiving information. Though I will probably get some arguments about this, I think the participation strategy is a linear process—i.e., After all, that’s how we’ve always done it. We push messages out and try to stir up attention.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 5, 2009

In this case, marketers work to restore faith and credibility in the company through other means than a brand change, such as customer outreach, a change in management, change in processes, or other steps. Customers and prospects are better informed than ever, thanks to the Internet and global connectivity.

Paid Search Agency 100

Paid Search Agency Companies Work Management Ethics 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

Gartner’s definition of thought leadership marketing is this: “The giving—for free or at a nominal charge—of information or advice that a client will value so as to create awareness of the outcome that a company’s product or service can deliver, in order to position and differentiate that offering and stimulate demand for it.”.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Gartner Planning 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 28, 2010

You need people who know how to create analytical processes and algorithms and all that stuff. Creating a temporary virtual community in the run up to an event to inform and liven up in-person meetings at the event. We need to close the loop on what buyers do with our content and use that insight to predict what they will do next.

Planning 100

Planning Work Management Paid Search Agency B2B Thought Leadership 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. The trade press is dying.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Work Management 100

Chris Koch

JULY 29, 2011

That information vacuum led some bloggers to fill it with questions about the quality of McKinsey’s research and its motives. The political stir encouraged journalists and bloggers to try digging deeper into the story and that’s when McKinsey got into trouble. Too late, transparency—and defensiveness. Of course, you know what happened next.

Social Media 100

Social Media Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency Companies 100