Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

All of our talk about marketers becoming publishers is incomplete. Marketers, meanwhile, didn’t have a wall, so they filled their content with self-aggrandizing references to their own products and services that pissed off readers and sent them to other sources for advice. Marketing through association. Let me explain.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 8, 2010

Toyota’s market share wasn’t built by Toyota’s marketing; it was built by Consumer Reports. Using ideas from the learning network, marketing needs to develop content. Marketing needs professional content developers who know how to collaborate with thought leaders to develop clear, compelling packages. What do you think?

Social Media 100

Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 25, 2011

I confirmed something I’ve been hearing in my research on idea marketing over the past month: idea marketing requires a deep commitment not just from marketing but from the entire organization. Some companies have companywide competitions for the best ideas or the best white paper. Make it competitive.

Social Media 100

Social Media Organization Peer-to-peer SME 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 18, 2012

I’ll also name the writers that I have working with the SMEs as we are doing interviews and working towards the “final” products: white papers, videos, etc. If I don’t have an answer, I’ll go to them and get the answer and come back with it. What are your arguments (for and against)? Related articles.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Communities Transparency 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. Tags: Lead Management Marketing Automation Automation B2B marketing Forbes Google ITSMA marketing Sales Social Media. No, there’s something bigger going on here.

Lead Management 100

Lead Management Marketing Management Automation Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Survey internal sales and marketing staff, customers, target markets, and influencers to determine what they are looking for. What types of thought leadership vehicles (councils, conferences, white papers, social media, etc.) Marketing is great at the latter, but needs help with the former.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing B2B Sales 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Survey internal sales and marketing staff, customers, target markets, and influencers to determine what they are looking for. What types of thought leadership vehicles (councils, conferences, white papers, social media, etc.) Marketing is great at the latter, but needs help with the former.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing Paper 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. Promote other types of marketing. Pretty obvious, right? Seed discussions.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

JANUARY 15, 2010

We needed to hear from marketers who were out there day-to-day listening to CIOs’ problems and aspirations. Back then what marketers had to say was all about their offerings. Marketers and salespeople didn’t have to do much coaxing to get CIOs to buy, so why get complicated? But mostly we were. And why not? And why not?

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 22, 2010

We track the marketing mix (including PR) over time against trends in sales. So if you buy that leap of logic, let’s say that blogs are another channel, like PR, in a marketing mix designed to familiarize customers and prospects with our companies and us. But you’re not going to like them. Jumping through ROI hoops. What do you think?

Social Media 100

Social Media ROI Lead Ranking RSS 100

Chris Koch

JULY 16, 2010

I’ve been reading through applications for ITSMA’s Marketing Excellence Awards this week and I have been blown away by the quality of innovation and creativity that’s going on out there among our members (and other B2B companies)—I mean, I’m talking about a quantum leap over what I’ve seen in the three years that I’ve been mingling with these folks.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer Wikipedia 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. Rooted in Michael Porter’s timeless work in business strategy, Treacy and Wiersema took it a step further with their three “value disciplines.”.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Thought Leadership Work Management 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

Then Gartner did what it always does; it coined an acronym: TLM, or Thought Leadership Marketing. Or at least, as some colleagues who also write thought leadership marketing have told me this week, too narrow. 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

DECEMBER 28, 2010

That’s why employees and subject matter experts should be on the front lines of social media rather than marketers or PR people. External social media marketing is more important than internal social media collaboration. ROI should be measured on a higher level—as in the ROI of all of marketing to the business.

Planning 100

Planning Work Management Paid Search Agency B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 12, 2012

For about 20 years (sad to say I was a journalist for even longer than that) it seemed that every white paper that crossed my desk began with some variant of this sentence: “As the world becomes more global and interconnected, businesses need a way to see through the complexity.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Lock-In Marketing Management Paper 100