Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 25, 2009

It’s tough to work your butt off on something that you’re not sure about. In working with our clients, we’ve found that it’s particularly important to survey both customers and employees when developing an important new service, because it allows you to put the “why” argument to rest using objective data.

Research 100

Research Service Product Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 25, 2009

It’s tough to work your butt off on something that you’re not sure about. In working with our clients, we’ve found that it’s particularly important to survey both customers and employees when developing an important new service, because it allows you to put the “why” argument to rest using objective data.

Research 100

Research Service Product Paid Search Agency 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. I resisted treating it as a standalone in the survey. What’s been proven to work in B2B is for marketers to reach out to prospects with smart, engaging, educational content that leads to trust.

Social Media 100

Social Media Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 16, 2010

We just completed our ITSMA survey on social media. 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.)?” That’s not to say that these more traditional tactics don’t work anymore and should be abandoned. That’s right.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Social Marketing 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

The same web analytics that have destroyed publishing are now getting marketers fired because nobody’s clicking on their white papers and surveys. They think up all the different things that magazines offer to readers and then make a list: Surveys? The publishing model of ads next to content won’t work, of course.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 21, 2011

It’s where we introduce some of the top findings from our annual budget survey of marketers. But we don’t like to just parrot the numbers from the survey. This is not how it usually works. At ITSMA , we’ve been busy preparing for our annual State of the Marketing Profession briefing next Tuesday.

Social Media 100

Social Media Budget Programs Paper Stats 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 7, 2009

When I was at CIO, I was very frustrated with the findings from our State of the CIO survey because they were relentlessly identical from year to year. So one year when I ran the State of the CIO survey we decided to take a deeper look at this data. Since I did the original archetypes work at CIO, they’ve morphed a little bit.

Planning 100

Planning Segmentation Work Management Gartner 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 7, 2009

When I was at CIO, I was very frustrated with the findings from our State of the CIO survey because they were relentlessly identical from year to year. So one year when I ran the State of the CIO survey we decided to take a deeper look at this data. Since I did the original archetypes work at CIO, they’ve morphed a little bit.

Planning 100

Planning Segmentation Work Management Gartner 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 6, 2009

And the publishing process works better than the marketing content development process because the publishing process developed without an overlord (e.g., Most magazines do annual reader surveys to ask subscribers what they think of the magazine and what could be improved. How to adapt the publishing process to marketing.

Planning 100

Planning B2B Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 6, 2009

And the publishing process works better than the marketing content development process because the publishing process developed without an overlord (e.g., Most magazines do annual reader surveys to ask subscribers what they think of the magazine and what could be improved. How to adapt the publishing process to marketing.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Planning Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

JULY 24, 2009

I’ve been working on a report for ITSMA clients this week about analytics and it got me thinking about the proverbial bigger picture of B2B marketing. Only 50% of marketers in our survey said they had analytics programs, and of these, few were focused on predicting behavior; most were simply reporting past behavior.

Top of Funnel 100

Top of Funnel Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

JULY 24, 2009

I’ve been working on a report for ITSMA clients this week about analytics and it got me thinking about the proverbial bigger picture of B2B marketing. Only 50% of marketers in our survey said they had analytics programs, and of these, few were focused on predicting behavior; most were simply reporting past behavior.

Lead Qualification 100

Lead Qualification Marketing Automation Services Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 18, 2011

I’ve been interviewing ITSMA members about their thought leadership programs as follow-on to our recent thought leadership survey and asking about what makes a good thought leader. But they can’t merely seem like a peer; they need to be perceived as an expert. Hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Thought Leadership Social Media Storytelling 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 2, 2010

It’s why our latest ITSMA marketing budget survey shows (free summary available)that thought leadership has risen to a higher priority level than in any recent year. Even making a cat more like a person works.) It’s why those expensive private events work so well. It’s the same in B2B. Ideas can create an emotional connection.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership B2B Marketing Marketing Budget Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 18, 2011

In fact, our most recent thought leadership survey found that few marketers are measuring much besides consumption of their marketing content. One great way to connect ideas to offerings is to create a business theme—think IBM’s Smarter Planet or Cognizant’s Future of Work. Alas, no such magic metric exists.

Work Management 100

Work Management Thought Leadership Marketing Management Paper 100

Chris Koch

JULY 10, 2009

survey, (all ITSMA clients can download this executive summary ), we found that “increased web traffic&# was the most frequently cited benefit of Web 2.0 Indeed, some B2B early adopters are seeing 10-15% of their lead totals generated through social media, according to this survey by DemandGenReport. In our recent Web 2.0

Web 2.0 100

Web 2.0 B2B Thought Leadership Ideal Customer Profiles Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

MAY 6, 2011

Social media present us as individuals seeking status within a community, which is something that humans have been working at since our days as monkeys. Through surveys, both qualitative and quantitative, marketers ask their target audiences to tell them how they perceive the company. The two most important components of influence.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing Work Management Media 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 13, 2010

The first review I saw listed under the search was entitled, “OK to work for, but watch your back.” In a piece on SiliconValley.com, they interviewed the CEO of Glassdoor, who was able to offer an assessment of Hurd’s reign based on over 1000 reviews of people who work there. Nothing like faint praise.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media SME B2B 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 11, 2009

Google is offering offices in the cloud so that corporate IT systems become little more than sync devices for all the work being done away from a desk. For example, a Forbes survey found that C-suite executives are more likely to make the time for a video than other executives. Mobile drives an urge for immediacy. What does it mean?

Mobile Marketing 100

Mobile Marketing B2B Marketing B2B Storytelling 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

Surveys work particularly well for assuring customers that the information they’re getting is more than a veiled sales pitch. Marketers need to do the primary and secondary research on markets and customers to lend the depth and objectivity necessary to create information dependency among customers. Bring in the experts.

Marketing Automation Services 100

Marketing Automation Services Consulting B2B Sales Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

Surveys work particularly well for assuring customers that the information they’re getting is more than a veiled sales pitch. Marketers need to do the primary and secondary research on markets and customers to lend the depth and objectivity necessary to create information dependency among customers. Bring in the experts.

Marketing Automation Services 100

Marketing Automation Services B2B Sales Consulting Marketing Automation 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 15, 2010

During one of the first few days I went to work at CIO magazine in 1995, I had what we called a “vendor visit”—one of many I would have in the coming years. In his mind, I shouldn’t even have been working there. The idea behind the visits was to avoid having us journos become isolated in our ivory tower.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 16, 2010

Back in the eighties, when newspapers were only beginning to disappear, I worked for a local paper in a very competitive (journalistically, anyway) part of the world: the moneyed, New York City suburban area of Fairfield County, CT (Greenwich, Stamford, etc.). But it’s also more than the sum of its parts.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 3, 2010

In ITSMA’s social media survey, 68% said that marketing is the catalyst for social media. We should make our writing sound more like the way we speak (when we’re at work). Writing style guides can also help, but who has time to plow through them? That means we need a new standard for ourselves.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

AUGUST 3, 2010

In ITSMA’s social media survey, 68% said that marketing is the catalyst for social media. We should make our writing sound more like the way we speak (when we’re at work). Writing style guides can also help, but who has time to plow through them? That means we need a new standard for ourselves.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 20, 2009

Our latest annual survey of 355 buyers of complex IT solutions, How Customers Choose Solution Providers, 2009: The Importance of Personalization, Epiphanies, and Social Media, shows that the door to the C-suite is opening up. Customers (the younger ones, anyway) are adopting social media. Marketing factors.

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Work Management 100