Chris Koch

JANUARY 15, 2010

The impact of our content will be visible if that content is linked to an automated, closed-loop lead process. Getting agreement with sales on a sales-ready lead is critical. Marketing needs a better relationship with IT. Content creates relationships. Advanced Lead Nurturing Tactics with Ardath Albee (slideshare.net).

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2009

I was researching the ITSMA archives this week to see what we’ve written about customer councils over the years and discovered some great advice that I pass along here: Research what customers would like to see from a council—make a few calls to lead customers before getting started. What would you change on this list? What would you add?

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Thought Leadership Practices Best Practices 100

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2009

I was researching the ITSMA archives this week to see what we’ve written about customer councils over the years and discovered some great advice that I pass along here: Research what customers would like to see from a council—make a few calls to lead customers before getting started. What would you change on this list? What would you add?

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Practices Thought Leadership Best Practices 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. The trust leads to a more personal relationship and hopefully, a purchase.

Social Media 100

Social Media Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 13, 2010

But we’re in the era of social media now, so there are breadcrumbs in the forest that lead us to a fuller explanation of who Slater is and why he did what he did. Following the trail of bread crumbs leads us to a caring, thoughtful person. Here are a few thoughts: We must monitor what’s being said about our companies online.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media SME B2B 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 5, 2011

Every time we talk about it, we have an endless argument that leads nowhere.”. Relationships, right? And I just don’t see what’s good about Facebook for creating relationships in B2B. The marketer in charge of the company’s social media effort gave me a clear edict: “Look, I don’t want you focusing on Facebook, okay?

Facebook 100

Facebook B2B Marketing B2B Thought Leadership B2B 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 2, 2011

I’m a content guy and I think thought leadership is the best way to build nurturing relationships with contacts in B2B marketing. Can campaigns coexist comfortably with a thought leadership lead nurturing strategy? Or will the campaigns just distract us from the need to do the hard work of a consistent relationship building strategy?

Social Media 100

Social Media Campaigns B2B Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 2, 2011

I’m a content guy and I think thought leadership is the best way to build nurturing relationships with contacts in B2B marketing. Can campaigns coexist comfortably with a thought leadership lead nurturing strategy? Or will the campaigns just distract us from the need to do the hard work of a consistent relationship building strategy?

Social Media 100

Social Media Campaigns B2B Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 7, 2011

We need a lead management process to act as a place to bring people from social media. In our recent lead management survey, just 53% report consistent definitions of lead tracking that are adopted globally. Only 65% have defined the lead flow process. They care about the size, speed, and quality of the pipeline.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 7, 2011

We need a lead management process to act as a place to bring people from social media. In our recent lead management survey, just 53% report consistent definitions of lead tracking that are adopted globally. Only 65% have defined the lead flow process. They care about the size, speed, and quality of the pipeline.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

APRIL 16, 2010

That means that if we are to keep up with our competitors, we’re going to have to take the lead on developing a strategy not only for marketing with social media, but for getting the rest of the organization involved as well. And we have to use other tactics that, in and of themselves, build trust and relationships with buyers.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Social Marketing 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 16, 2011

Yet even in B2B, we have a growing concern over privacy in lead management. Rather than trading information for value or simply stealing it through invisible cookies, what if we actually did it the way people do in real life: through a personal relationship? Privacy is a concern in B2B, too. Buyers click more on pages with people.

B2B 100

B2B Privacy Click Rate Internet Marketing 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 16, 2011

Yet even in B2B, we have a growing concern over privacy in lead management. Rather than trading information for value or simply stealing it through invisible cookies, what if we actually did it the way people do in real life: through a personal relationship? Privacy is a concern in B2B, too. Buyers click more on pages with people.

B2B 100

B2B Privacy Click Rate Internet Marketing 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 22, 2011

Marketing is essentially in charge of collaboration both inside and outside the company through its leading role in social media. Social media aren’t even just for facilitating conversation and customer relationships. Move beyond brand stewardship. Today, CMOs have the same opportunity that CIOs did back in the 90s.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management Social 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. Because it is a deeper, more thorough version of what they already are doing to make the sale. Sharing what works.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Cross-Selling B2B Sales Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 9, 2010

The way that we establish trust and relationships with buyers is through authority. Here are a few to consider: Lead a niche. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about how to get others to blog. But it’s not enough just to support bloggers. For them to be successful, we need to help them establish their voices in a blog.

SME 100

SME Aggregators Blogger Social Media 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

For centuries, publishers had an uneasy, co-dependent relationship with advertisers. A simple entry point leads to deeper and deeper related content. The two have to work together to create themes that are thoughtful and that are about getting readers interested—it’s about leading the horse to the idea marketing bucket.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 21, 2011

So we spend weeks leading up to the briefing arguing about what the numbers actually mean and what marketers should do. We have individual salespeople making calls and we have marketers establishing deeper relationships with existing customers through intimate channels like reference programs and customer advisory councils.

Social Media 100

Social Media Budget Programs Paper PR 100

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2010

Coppola was just leading me by the hand through his vision of the Godfather (and I’m really grateful that he did, don’t get me wrong). The trick is to do it in a way that leads to constructive thinking. We just have to design creative ways to bring it out so that it results in better relationships and ideas. Use empathy.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer Wikipedia 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 22, 2010

I wish I could say that social media leads to sales. We need to believe that more engagement between our companies and the people we want to reach is a good thing that ultimately leads to sales—but down a long, narrow, winding path with a few jumps between cliffs thrown in there. And it leads back to the problem we have with PR.

Social Media 100

Social Media ROI Lead Ranking RSS 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 5, 2010

The pressures on the guard dogs lead to a lot of problems: The emphasis is on risk avoidance. In B2B, that’s not going to build relationships with customers. Much like IT people, they don’t hear much from anyone inside their companies unless something goes wrong. Then they get plenty of the wrong kinds of attention. Placement PR.

PR 100

PR Press Paid Search Agency Lead Ranking 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 26, 2009

Here are some important B2B blogs that I track: Acquiring Minds: A B2B Lead Generation Blog. But Twitter lets you start to build a professional relationship without getting in each other’s face. Transfer Twitter relationships to LinkedIn and Facebook. But it’s nice to have them all in one place. Pick blogs to follow.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Personalization 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 5, 2009

When a crisis hits, customers make a decision about whether the promise of a brand has been broken and whether the relationship can be repaired. Meanwhile, the company kept up its emphasis on research and development so that customers would see that it was still committed to offering leading edge products. Breaking the promise.

Paid Search Agency 100

Paid Search Agency Companies Work Management Ethics 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. Social media relationships are shallow and meaningless. Interactions substitute for relationships.

Planning 100

Planning Work Management Paid Search Agency B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

Having been a journalist for years, I know that these acronyms lead even the most feeble-minded of us journos to the next obvious question: What do you mean when you say (insert acronym here)? I think that this definition will lead to the perpetuation of the brochure-on-steroids interpretation of thought leadership.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Gartner Planning 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 1, 2010

But marketers must lead and support SMEs in the development and publishing processes. Marketing has more peer relationships with thought leaders inside the company than PR. Companies and customers and prospects will have a more continuous relationship than they do today. Marketers can never be thought leaders! More integrated.

Thought Leadership 100

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