Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 6, 2009

The winners get serious recognition for their work that helps their companies and their careers. Creating the narrative helps project members focus their efforts and will help sell the effort to others inside the business and with customers. Marketing programs should help the business stand apart from competitors in the segment.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Budget Programs Business 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 24, 2010

I heard a great definition from my former ITSMA colleague Jeff Sands the other day: Sales enablement is helping salespeople be more credible with customers. Marketers helped salespeople put words to the insanely complex products and services they were trying to sell. What do I mean by sales enablement? But then the internet came along.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Wiki Marketing Management Internet Marketing 100

Chris Koch

MAY 20, 2011

Creating an idea network helps demonstrate the importance of ideas to the organization. Marketers need to help create that culture in the company by facilitating the idea process. Primary and secondary research. Competitive intelligence. External: Customer councils. Collaboration with academics and analysts.

Social Media 100

Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Media Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 3, 2010

Writing style guides can also help, but who has time to plow through them? Gaining a reputation as the first with the latest news in your chosen subject area increases your relevance among others in your network and helps attract new followers. But developing a social media voice is a more complicated proposition.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Recently, I was asked by a former ITSMA client to help put together a plan for a thought leadership program for a B2B technology company that sells both products and services. Answers to these questions will help drive the structure of the program and provide a foundation for achieving ROI goals. Here are my thoughts on the big pieces.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing Paper 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Recently, I was asked by a former ITSMA client to help put together a plan for a thought leadership program for a B2B technology company that sells both products and services. Answers to these questions will help drive the structure of the program and provide a foundation for achieving ROI goals. Here are my thoughts on the big pieces.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing B2B Sales 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 17, 2009

Our research shows that customers don’t think their providers do a very good job of helping them with their business issues. Marketers could help with that problem. And customers have an opportunity to get help and ideas on the issues that are most pressing to them. But there’s more that can be done.

Planning 100

Planning Process Work Management Verticals 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 3, 2010

Writing style guides can also help, but who has time to plow through them? Our helpful deeds in social media are often seen by many others who spread the help farther and enhance our reputation. But developing a social media voice is a more complicated proposition. But these policies are more like guardrails than signposts.

Social Media 100

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

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

And in Gartner’s defense, sometimes IT can be so complex and confusing that it really does help to have an acronym for talking about things. So I’d like to try, with your help, to nip TLM in the bud before it gains the power to make us all miserable. Marketing is potentially great at the latter, but it needs help with the former.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Gartner Planning 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 10, 2009

Especially in B2B, where the products and solutions are complex and usually need to be adapted/customized in some way, developing the relationship through knowledge helps demonstrate to customers that providers can go beyond the product specification sheet and help them with their business needs.

Thought Leadership 100

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

Chris Koch

MAY 5, 2014

What has kept musicians and inventors in the basement for all those years wasn’t the promise of financial reward (though that certainly helped), it was that the costs of producing and distributing the thing they wanted to do were just too high for them to bear on their own. The artists are simply continuing to suffer just as they always have.

Copyright 100

Copyright Distribution Youtube Internet Marketing 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 1, 2010

Ideas that educate customers and prospects about important business and technology issues and help them solve those issues—without selling. Another way is by picking themes to help guide your TL development. Smarter Planet helps SMEs at IBM focus. Marketing is helping develop offerings. Please add your thoughts!

Thought Leadership 100

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

Chris Koch

MAY 1, 2009

That can help, but salespeople and marketers need more concrete reasons to work together. Marketing can help. Marketing develops an institutional memory that can help salespeople create shortcuts by identifying what has worked in the past and what has not, what resources may be appropriate, and what company assets exist that can help.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Cross-Selling B2B Sales Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

MAY 14, 2010

We need to create an idea engine within the organization to help SMEs come up with things to Twitter and blog about. Someone who helps identify smart ideas and people within the organization and makes decisions about how to develop them. We shouldn’t just turn employees loose without helping them learn about the tools.

Organic Leads 100

Organic Leads Social Media Social Marketing Organization 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 30, 2010

At ITSMA, we’re seeing four main reasons for doing it: Help. Is there a reason for you to offer whatever help you give to customers through mobile? Could your salespeople benefit from mobile access to a sales enablement application giving them advice in the field for helping customers?

Mobile Marketing 100

Mobile Marketing Mobile Advertising Paid Search Agency Wiki 100

Chris Koch

MAY 15, 2012

They assume that salespeople can’t help them at that point. Sales and marketing need to work together to develop an idea network —a group of internal and external SMEs that can help develop and vet new ideas and put them into the hands of salespeople. And for the most part, they’re right.

FAQ 100

FAQ Custom Publishing B2B Sales Work Management 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 5, 2010

First, it focuses the agency on some clear goals—cranking out press releases and getting press mentions—and gives the guard dogs a degree of separation that helps with risk management. This means that metrics are based on merely making contact and shoveling crap out the door rather than helping influencers meet their goals.

PR 100

PR Press Paid Search Agency Lead Ranking 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 12, 2012

who is a veteran of corporate networking (he helped develop the first devices for connecting PCs on the corporate network). Not so with an iPad, said Bob Egan, VP of Mobile Strategy for Mobiquity, Inc., But you can’t do this with one app.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Lock-In Marketing Management Paper 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 16, 2009

These marketers take a direct role in finding and supporting internal bloggers and in helping them develop content. They encourage subject matter experts to blog, track what they write about, and offer blogging guidelines and help when needed. Earlier this year I surveyed B2B marketers about their approaches to corporate blogging.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Blogger Thought Leadership Word of Mouth 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 8, 2010

You need to build an internal network that focuses on identifying internal thought leaders and building alliances with external academics and customers who can help develop and test ideas. A calendar helps marketing plan out the frequency and focus of its output.

Social Media 100

Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 4, 2011

But if providers go farther and use thought leadership to help companies clarify their business needs and suggest solutions, 30% of respondents said they are more likely to choose those providers. Does that help clarify what to do next? Even better, more than 50% of this group said they would consider sole-sourcing the deal.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Advertising Agencies B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 23, 2009

This is helpful during important periods like new offering launches or in the aftermath of a crisis. This helps you decide which blogs you’d like to do outreach with, for example. Determine share of attention. You can track the amount of conversation about you versus your competitors. Identify influential sources.

Social Media 100

Social Media Tools Media RSS 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 4, 2012

I’m going to share my experiences in helping to build an engine for developing and disseminating good ideas for SAP (with names changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike). First, because I’ve left ITSMA and joined SAP , where I will focus on marketing the good ideas of the many subject matter experts there.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Social Media Twitter 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 18, 2014

I intended to write this blog about some of the amazing, helpful, and scary things that robots can do today, but even a quick look at the information out there demonstrates that robot is already an archaic term, like calling a car a horseless carriage.

Organization 100

Organization Spyware Domain Opinions 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 18, 2012

And many who do would be better off getting some help. As I say in the SCN post and as I’ve mentioned here plenty of times, I think we are kidding ourselves if we think that many of our best SMEs are going to take the time to blog. I wanted to present the core arguments here to see what you think.

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Communities Transparency 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Wordpress has a list of hosting services on its site to help you get your site started. You really should consider it if you’re thinking about doing a blog or would like more traffic from your existing blog. It’s an incredibly powerful tool. Made it very easy.

Domain 100

Domain RSS Traffic Design 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 12, 2010

No wonder they all steer the argument in this direction; it makes it seem like Forrester is the aggrieved benefactor being sucked dry by selfish, ungrateful employees who insist on giving away the IP that Forrester pays them to create—and whose powerful brand opens the doors for them with the sources they need to help create that IP.

Social Media 100

Social Media Forrester Media Transparency 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 14, 2011

helping my followers learn and discover new people who have smart things to say about marketing. Integrity is one of my few talents and I’m afraid it’s wasted on Twitter. Here’s my list of what seem like the right things to do on Twitter so that I feel like I’m being a good member of the B2B marketing guild —i.e.,

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Twitter Social Networks 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 14, 2011

helping my followers learn and discover new people who have smart things to say about marketing. Integrity is one of my few talents and I’m afraid it’s wasted on Twitter. Here’s my list of what seem like the right things to do on Twitter so that I feel like I’m being a good member of the B2B marketing guild —i.e.,

Social Media 100

Social Media Media Twitter Social Networks 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 23, 2011

These days, my audience is B2B marketers and my goal is to help you learn. And in many years of interviewing this audience and blogging to it, they all tell me that they get online to learn, not socialize (even the older ones use online search like crazy. Twitter isn’t for conversation, it’s for learning.

Twitter 100

Twitter Broadcasting Social Media Advertising Mediums 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 23, 2011

These days, my audience is B2B marketers and my goal is to help you learn. And in many years of interviewing this audience and blogging to it, they all tell me that they get online to learn, not socialize (even the older ones use online search like crazy. Twitter isn’t for conversation, it’s for learning.

Twitter 100

Twitter Broadcasting Social Media B2B Marketing 100

Chris Koch

MAY 19, 2014

Basically it’s the things we tamp down with Ritalin today: “We don’t let kids be playful, explore, or help them understand who they are,” he said. After his speech to the conference at large, Pettis held a Q&A in a small side vestibule where he was asked to explain what makes him so angry. A CEO Who Lived the Crisis in Education.

Conference 100

Conference Education Viral Marketing Class 100

Chris Koch

MAY 12, 2014

He can find stuff if he needs to, though if he drops a tool out of reach (proof of his amazing dexterity, not his klutziness) his expression (he has a simple, kindly monitor face) turns to one of confusion and he throws up his arms (well, actually he puts them down and shuts off and waits for a human to help him). Baxter’s Kind of a Wimp.

Startups 100

Startups Distribution Internet Marketing Education 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 15, 2010

If the vendors can’t help with the integration, IT can. This is where social media tools are helpful. PR people meanwhile should use their thick skins and relationship skills to help build the conversation in social media. You don’t even need to involve IT anymore. Marketing needs a better relationship with IT.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 25, 2011

Collaboration—both internally and externally—will help embed idea development into the culture. Think about it: if employees aren’t comfortable sharing their ideas with each other, how will they ever be comfortable talking about them in social media?

Social Media 100

Social Media Organization Peer-to-peer SME 100

Chris Koch

JULY 22, 2011

We help ease them into the idea that they need our services and solutions to solve these problems so that the experience of spending all that money feels a little less like stepping off a cliff. But healthcare sure could use some help on the marketing front. Here are some examples: Educate the customer—or don’t. Anybody got any ideas?

Work Management 100

Work Management Marketing Management Social Media B2B Marketing 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 3, 2014

The NBA’s stats.NBA.com website, which houses player and team statistics from the league’s 67-year history, has helped double time spent on NBA.com while generating more than 9.5 Approximately 70% of the traffic to NFL.com comes from mobile devices – up from 10% just a few years ago.

Planning 100

Planning Paid Search Agency Work Management Marketing & Strategy 100