Chris Koch

AUGUST 5, 2011

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? What is B2B marketing all about? Relationships, right? And I just don’t see what’s good about Facebook for creating relationships in B2B. But let’s put this all in context.

Facebook 100

Facebook B2B Marketing B2B Thought Leadership B2B 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 11, 2010

This was the gist of a very controversial assertion made by a senior marketer from a very well known B2B technology company during dinner at our ITSMA Marketing Leadership Forum (download highlights from the ITSMA Marketing Leadership Forum) when he said: “An overemphasis on leads is damaging our relationship with sales.”.

Lead Generation 100

Lead Generation Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Sales Qualified Leads 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

I’ve been working with my colleagues at ITSMA on another survey on social media for B2B marketers that I hope you’ll take by going here. B2B marketing lays the path to a sales discussion and supports relationships with existing 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

DECEMBER 18, 2009

The biggest difference between social media marketing and other forms of marketing is control. Most marketing channels are focused on broadcasting tightly controlled messages to audiences that have little opportunity to talk back. 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

APRIL 2, 2010

This may be the ultimate question in B2B, especially as we struggle to integrate social media into the overall marketing mix. That’s what has led to the horrific vocabulary of mindless marketing speak that makes us utter things like “demonstrable value” with straight faces while deluding ourselves that it leaves an impression on customers.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership B2B Marketing Marketing Budget Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 7, 2009

And that has big implications for marketers. To market to these people effectively, you’re going to have to get to know them as being part of multiple, unique segments. Posted in Customer Relationships Tagged: B2B, B2B marketing, CIOs, role-based marketing, Segmentation. CIOs are not all the same.

Planning 100

Planning Segmentation Work Management Gartner 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

Taglines are the last bastions of a classic, one-way marketing messaging strategy, preserving marketing’s perceived right to tell customers what to think. In B2B marketing, we’ve never been given the right to tell customers what to think, much less the budgets to pound a tagline into their minds.

Social Marketing 100

Social Marketing Tactics B2B Thought Leadership Enterprise Management 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

Taglines are the last bastions of a classic, one-way marketing messaging strategy, preserving marketing’s perceived right to tell customers what to think. In B2B marketing, we’ve never been given the right to tell customers what to think, much less the budgets to pound a tagline into their minds.

Social Marketing 100

Social Marketing Tactics B2B Thought Leadership Enterprise Management 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 16, 2010

Marketing owns social media management. In our survey, we asked, “In your company, is marketing the catalyst for social media being used by others in the company (product development, HR, etc.)?” Will social become a silo within marketing? This has big implications for how we organize marketing. That’s right.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Social Marketing 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 7, 2009

And that has big implications for marketers. To market to these people effectively, you’re going to have to get to know them as being part of multiple, unique segments. Tags: Customer Relationships B2B B2B marketing CIOs role-based marketing Segmentation. CIOs are not all the same. Tweet This Post.

Planning 100

Planning Segmentation Work Management Gartner 100

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. These are companies that go out of their way to build close customer relationships. Social media is making that fact plain.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Thought Leadership Work Management 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

They have genetic tendencies towards extroversion, confidence, hope (some would say denial), relationship building, and the real differentiator: emotional perception—usually expressed as the ability to “read people” (and one’s self). This is the one that’s actually within marketers’ control. I do think there is a gene for sales.

Marketing Automation Services 100

Marketing Automation Services B2B Sales Consulting Marketing Automation 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

They have genetic tendencies towards extroversion, confidence, hope (some would say denial), relationship building, and the real differentiator: emotional perception—usually expressed as the ability to “read people” (and one’s self). This is the one that’s actually within marketers’ control. I do think there is a gene for sales.

Marketing Automation Services 100

Marketing Automation Services Consulting B2B Sales Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 26, 2010

The number of B2B buyers who are ready to buy as soon as they engage with our marketing is small—and social media will make it even smaller. But they may be open to building a relationship that could someday lead to a sale. The trust leads to a more personal relationship and hopefully, a purchase. We need to create that content.

Social Media 100

Social Media Lead Generation B2B Thought Leadership Generation 100

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2009

Market change. Consider pairing one of your top executives with a top executive from a customer to build relationship and shepherd participation in various customer programs. Posted in Customer Relationships, Thought Leadership Tagged: customer collaboration, Customer Councils, Thought Leadership. Policy change.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Thought Leadership Practices Best Practices 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 29, 2010

Okay, so it’s difficult to actually pull money out of buyers for your marketing content (though there are rare exceptions: McKinsey has been doing it for years with the McKinsey Quarterly). Make no mistake; buyers understand the prices behind marketing content. Relationship. Image via Wikipedia. Account history.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Lead Scoring B2B Thought Leadership Mobile Advertising 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 29, 2010

Okay, so it’s difficult to actually pull money out of buyers for your marketing content (though there are rare exceptions: McKinsey has been doing it for years with the McKinsey Quarterly). Make no mistake; buyers understand the prices behind marketing content. Relationship. Image via Wikipedia. Account history.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Lead Scoring B2B Thought Leadership Mobile Advertising 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

JULY 16, 2009

Market change. Consider pairing one of your top executives with a top executive from a customer to build relationship and shepherd participation in various customer programs. Tags: Customer Relationships Thought Leadership customer collaboration Customer Councils. Policy change. Organizational change. What would you add?

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Practices Thought Leadership Best Practices 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 6, 2009

Like most marketers, I spend most of my time desperately seeking to understand my target audience (B2B marketers) and delivering content that they find relevant and engaging. That’s when I get to sit back and watch the submissions for our Marketing Excellence Awards (MEA) roll in. It’s a struggle. It’s a beautiful thing.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Budget Programs Business 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 22, 2010

We should care more about lead management automation in B2B marketing. This is where we as marketers need to provide more content—but not sales content. Put another way, we have to use content to establish a relationship with buyers where our salespeople can’t. No, there’s something bigger going on here. What do you think?

Lead Management 100

Lead Management Marketing Management Automation Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 13, 2010

So what can we take away from all this as B2B marketing professionals? The trajectory of Slater’s postings look a lot like the things that customers say about our complex B2B products and services, which have a much longer arc of relationship than B2C. Our customers aren’t going to do a United breaks guitars on us. What do you think?

Social Media 100

Social Media Media SME B2B 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 25, 2010

Reading these got me thinking that we probably need to rethink the concepts of introversion and extroversion in social media marketing. I think for marketers, the issue is less about whether our customers will be more extroverted online—they already are. and, of course, came up with a theory. On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.

Social Media 100

Social Media Peer-to-peer Media Wikipedia 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 23, 2011

There are only two types of relationships in social networking. G+ is touted as something new, but it’s really a combination of two elements that I’ve talked about here before: Permission-based and viral-based relationships. G+’s relationship model mix of the two is a little bit complicated. So much so that it takes a PhD.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Social Networks B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 23, 2011

There are only two types of relationships in social networking. G+ is touted as something new, but it’s really a combination of two elements that I’ve talked about here before: Permission-based and viral-based relationships. G+’s relationship model mix of the two is a little bit complicated. So much so that it takes a PhD.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Social Networks B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 9, 2014

Second, I spent most of my career as a journalist, which trained me to be vigilant about whether what people say is what they really mean – especially when it comes to marketing, which is the function I work in in SAP. But after two-and-a-half years working here, I’ve decided that both of those assumptions are completely wrong. Not so much.

Distribution 100

Distribution Training Opinions Trust Marketing 100

Chris Koch

MAY 15, 2012

We all know the increasing importance of ideas in B2B marketing. But idea marketing doesn’t start and stop with marketers. Please tell me if you think the following does the job: Relationships are what matter in selling. Relationship selling skills matter more than ever. I think they need to be convinced.

FAQ 100

FAQ Custom Publishing B2B Sales Work Management 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 2, 2011

If you had asked me a few years ago whether the traditional marketing campaign had any place in social media I would have scoffed. Just more evidence of marketing’s old-fashioned, ADHD-driven, love-’em-and-leave-’em approach. These campaigns were the winners of this year’s ITSMA Marketing Excellence Awards. I still believe that.

Social Media 100

Social Media Campaigns B2B Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 2, 2011

If you had asked me a few years ago whether the traditional marketing campaign had any place in social media I would have scoffed. Just more evidence of marketing’s old-fashioned, ADHD-driven, love-’em-and-leave-’em approach. These campaigns were the winners of this year’s ITSMA Marketing Excellence Awards. I still believe that.

Social Media 100

Social Media Campaigns B2B Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 12, 2009

In tracking B2B marketing through Twitter, I find a ton of great content being shared through blogs whose creators have already swamped the output of trade magazines. But social media tools can alter relationships. That’s why I’m so intrigued by the viral relationship model invented by Twitter.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Paid Search Agency Viral Marketing 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 19, 2010

I think it’s important to try to do this if we’re going to get social media integrated with the rest of marketing. The next step is to categorize how we use social media in these different areas and how our actions hook back into the rest of marketing. Asking for information helps deepen social media relationships.

Social Media 100

Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer Media 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

APRIL 22, 2011

This shift in innovation has big implications for marketing. ITSMA’s social media research (free excerpt available) shows that marketing is responsible for monitoring social media and for training, governing, and supporting the organization in using social media. Marketing is in a similar position today to where IT was in the 90s.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management Social Media 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

Despite all the breathless hype about social media these days, what I hear most from B2B marketers is frustration. Most of the marketers I talk to are trying to reach a few top executives in big organizations who make buying decisions about big, complex products and services. I think that’s the right decision—up to a point.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

Despite all the breathless hype about social media these days, what I hear most from B2B marketers is frustration. Most of the marketers I talk to are trying to reach a few top executives in big organizations who make buying decisions about big, complex products and services. I think that’s the right decision—up to a point.

Social Media 100

Social Media Allocation Media Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 16, 2009

To someone her age, the concept of following immediately conjures up the issue of personal relationships—who you hate and who you like—and status—who is popular and who isn’t. Thankfully, adults have another context for developing relationships: communities of learning. Follow to learn. Think about it. Nobody knows but me.

Twitter 100

Twitter Web 2.0 Social Media Communities 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

We need to create a mix of these two types of thought leadership content to maintain strong relationships with their target audiences. Here’s why: Marketers who do this are more successful. In ITSMA’s Thought Leadership Survey, marketers with formal thought leadership processes segment their ideas this way 95% of the time.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer Loyalty Case Study 100