Chris Koch

MARCH 12, 2010

Though it has become a generic term, customer intimacy was first coined by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema who worked at CSC/Index back in the 90s when I was a thought leadership marketer there. Magazines have been doing it for years. The theory is that every company competes in three disciplines: Customer intimacy. Tweet This Post.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Thought Leadership Work Management 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 7, 2009

When I covered CIOs for 13 years at CIO Magazine, I found that it was very difficult to generalize about the profession, beyond a handful of universal problems such as alignment with the business and the complexities and the voracious needs of the IT infrastructure. And that has big implications for marketers.

Planning 100

Planning Segmentation Work Management Gartner 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 7, 2009

When I covered CIOs for 13 years at CIO Magazine, I found that it was very difficult to generalize about the profession, beyond a handful of universal problems such as alignment with the business and the complexities and the voracious needs of the IT infrastructure. And that has big implications for marketers. Tweet This Post.

Planning 100

Planning Segmentation Work Management Gartner 100

Chris Koch

MAY 21, 2010

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? But I will tell you that this week I attended an excellent event run by Silver pop called the B2B marketing University in Boston. So take my comments with a grain of salt.

Privacy 100

Privacy B2B Marketing Lead Ranking B2B 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 10, 2009

The questions display a healthy distrust for accepted wisdom, which I like, and provide a good test of the thinking behind thought leadership marketing. Thought leadership marketing is based on the academic research publishing model, in which academics created journals built around a peer review process.

Thought Leadership 100

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

Chris Koch

JANUARY 21, 2011

At ITSMA , we’ve been busy preparing for our annual State of the Marketing Profession briefing next Tuesday. It’s where we introduce some of the top findings from our annual budget survey of marketers. So we spend weeks leading up to the briefing arguing about what the numbers actually mean and what marketers should do.

Social Media 100

Social Media Budget Programs Paper PR 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 26, 2009

When I despair at ever mastering all the social media tools that exist out there, I remind myself (as I hope you will) that at its core social media is all about communication and that marketers are all expert communicators. My job is to learn about how to become a better B2B marketer and to share what I learn with others.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Personalization 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 26, 2010

One of the biggest challenges for B2B social media marketers isn’t creating content, it’s helping others create content. Marketing is the default head of social media management in most companies. That’s why marketers have to step in and help out. Marketers should use them to help inspire their content creators.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership RSS Enterprise Management Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 12, 2010

Social media experts often chide marketers about control. 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.

Social Media 100

Social Media Forrester Media Transparency 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 22, 2010

We track the marketing mix (including PR) over time against trends in sales. This is what it would cost to place an ad in a magazine vs. the cost of getting the story placement. Lots of variables there. Return on media impact. Again, tough to isolate PR’s role. Value of earned media. Volume and quality of interactions. startups.com).

Social Media 100

Social Media ROI Lead Ranking RSS 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

Then Gartner did what it always does; it coined an acronym: TLM, or Thought Leadership Marketing. At CIO magazine, I spent years writing about one of those Gartner-coined acronyms: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. That’s why I suggested last year that we ditch thought leadership and use the phrase idea marketing instead.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Gartner Planning 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 1, 2010

If you’re in B2B marketing, you gotta go to this thing. What are some ways B2B marketers can position themselves as thought leaders? Marketers can never be thought leaders! But marketers must lead and support SMEs in the development and publishing processes. Marketers today are too focused on the publishing part.

Thought Leadership 100

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

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 20, 2009

We’re all getting constant advice—hectoring, even—about how we need to make social media a key part of our B2B marketing strategies right now. Your competitors are adopting social in their marketing strategies, so if you don’t do it, they will. Trade magazines are imploding as marketers continue to pull out of print advertising.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Work Management 100