Chris Koch

MARCH 19, 2010

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. Gather information by asking questions. Asking for information helps deepen social media relationships. Develop a target audience. Create continuity. Seed discussions.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 18, 2011

Our prospects and customers want us to cut through the noise of social media just as they’ve wanted us to cut through the noise of every other communications channel that came before. Good ideas aren’t enough; those ideas need to be informed by a wide-ranging exposure to other inputs and opinions. Storytelling.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Thought Leadership Social Media Storytelling 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 12, 2010

The experts say that in the new era of social media, marketers need to stop delivering tightly-scripted, one-way messages and start engaging in uncontrolled, transparent conversations with customers and prospects wherever those conversations happen. It takes time, money, talent, and innovation to create good information.

Social Media 100

Social Media Forrester Media Transparency 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 11, 2011

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. We need to connect the analytical dots. I think the larger and more long-term need is for marketing to become data driven.

Analytics 100

Analytics Paid Search Agency Marketing Management Loyalty 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Marketing needs to develop materials that are appropriate to each stage of the buying process, so that customers and salespeople can get the right information at the right time. Marketers can use the consumption of thought leadership to track the readiness of prospects to buy if they have a system for tracking a prospect’s activities.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing Paper 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Marketing needs to develop materials that are appropriate to each stage of the buying process, so that customers and salespeople can get the right information at the right time. Marketers can use the consumption of thought leadership to track the readiness of prospects to buy if they have a system for tracking a prospect’s activities.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing B2B Sales 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 5, 2009

The company took a different approach with customers and prospects, saying, “We’re a new Oracle.”. In times of crisis, research with the following groups is especially important: Customers and prospects. Industry and financial analysts will likely have differing opinions about the current and future prospects of the company.

Paid Search Agency 100

Paid Search Agency Companies Work Management Ethics 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 8, 2011

I speak to many regulated B2B companies who (still) don’t believe their employees can engage in uncontrolled conversations with customers and prospects. I’ve yet to see a B2B company have any success in social media that doesn’t have a social media policy, at least some training, and an informal social media center of excellence.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Paid Search Agency PR 100

Chris Koch

MAY 1, 2009

Marketing needs this information to create thought leadership and marketing materials designed to reach many different clients at once. Salespeople may have this kind of broader perspective, but more than likely they don’t have time to gather it. Because it is a deeper, more thorough version of what they already are doing to make the sale.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Cross-Selling B2B Sales Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

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. We could control the public conversation because our audience had few public outlets for giving or receiving information. After all, that’s how we’ve always done it.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

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. We could control the public conversation because our audience had few public outlets for giving or receiving information. After all, that’s how we’ve always done it.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 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. The most trusted information source for buyers has always been each other. Giving up control of what is being said about your company is difficult for most marketers.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

JANUARY 22, 2010

The only effective argument I’ve heard recently is that we embed calls to action in social media that drive readers to a landing page where we capture their information and start nurturing them as leads. Here are some metrics, mostly for blogs, that help build engagement with customers and prospects. And blogs are really measurable.

Social Media 100

Social Media ROI Lead Ranking RSS 100

Chris Koch

JULY 22, 2011

Many of us in B2B can be proud of how we educate our customers and prospects on the business issues they face—from current regulatory changes to future “sea changes.” Then, the day after surgery, the nurse informed me that I was being moved to be “with my own kind” over in orthopedics. I was in heaven.

Work Management 100

Work Management Marketing Management Social Media B2B Marketing 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

NOVEMBER 20, 2009

ITSMA research shows that 63% of buyers proactively seek information about providers themselves, and the Forbes/Google survey found that 79% of executives perform at least three web searches per day. The pool of information they are sifting through contains an increasing amount of social media content. The trade press is dying.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Work Management 100