I have seen the future of B2B marketing. It’s on Forbes.
November 7, 2012 by Chris Koch · 2 Comments
I’m sure I don’t need to introduce you to Forbes’ “BrandVoice” program (used to be “AdVoice). The guy who manages the platform at Forbes, Lewis Dvorkin, (if he also created the platform he’s a freakin’ genius) recently wrote about its power to disrupt traditional journalism, citing my new employer, SAP, as one of the companies that sometimes get more hits for the stuff it posts than Forbes’ own journalism. He concludes that journalism (what little is left of it) is safe from … Read More
I have seen the future of B2B marketing. It’s on Forbes.
November 7, 2012 by Chris Koch · 2 Comments
I’m sure I don’t need to introduce you to Forbes’ “BrandVoice” program (used to be “AdVoice). The guy who manages the platform at Forbes, Lewis Dvorkin, (if he also created the platform he’s a freakin’ genius) recently wrote about its power to disrupt traditional journalism, citing my new employer, SAP, as one of the companies that sometimes get more hits for the stuff it posts than Forbes’ own journalism. He concludes that journalism (what little is left of it) is safe from … Read More
Is ghost writing in social media right or wrong?
June 18, 2012 by Chris Koch · 3 Comments
This week, I posted the first of what may prove to be a series of controversial blog posts on the SAP community network (known to members as SCN). The posts won't be controversial so much for the content itself (although I hope that that happens eventually) as for the way I'm presenting it. I'm going to channel other people’s ideas, not my own. You can read the entire post here. It introduces me to the community and explains what I'm planning to do. They may not like it and you may … Read More
Should we stop marketing to the CIO?
October 12, 2010 by Chris Koch · 7 Comments
Technology marketers have spent the last 25 years trying to get and keep the attention of the people with their hands on the technology tiller inside multi-billion dollar organizations, CIOs. And for nearly that long, pundits have been predicting that the CIO role would become extinct, and that the strategic decisions about technology would be subsumed into the business. Those pundits have always been wrong. But this time, they may finally be right—at least about certain types of CIOs. … Read More
Where is the utility in mobile apps for B2B?
December 10, 2012 by Chris Koch · Leave a Comment
Mitch Joel has a nice post on HBR this week about bringing utility to marketing and social media. As is often the case, his advice pertains more to B2C than B2B, as I point out in a comment: "Utility" is a clear, succinct way of putting it. I am concerned about the B2B side of things, though, for complex technology solutions in particular. For customers in this realm, I think utility has long meant access to their peers and to expert advice during the purchasing and post-sales processes. … Read More
The last of the anti-social marketing tactics
November 11, 2011 by Chris Koch · 12 Comments
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 truth, customers have never listened, except in a few cases of companies with the budget muscle to pound the tagline into customers’ heads over and over again though mass marketing and TV. 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 … Read More
Idea Marketing
I have seen the future of B2B marketing. It’s on Forbes.
I’m sure I don’t need to introduce you to Forbes’ “BrandVoice” program (used to be “AdVoice). The guy who manages the platform at Forbes, Lewis Dvorkin, (if he also created the platform he’s a freakin’ genius) recently wrote about its power to disrupt traditional journalism, citing my new employer, SAP, as one of the companies [...]
Is ghost writing in social media right or wrong?
This week, I posted the first of what may prove to be a series of controversial blog posts on the SAP community network (known to members as SCN). The posts won’t be controversial so much for the content itself (although I hope that that happens eventually) as for the way I’m presenting it. I’m going [...]
Why salespeople should sell ideas: an FAQ
We all know the increasing importance of ideas in B2B marketing. But idea marketing doesn’t start and stop with marketers. For the program to be successful, those ideas must find their way into the hands of salespeople. And I’m not sure that salespeople share the same passion for ideas as we do. I think they [...]
Social Media
Is ghost writing in social media right or wrong?
This week, I posted the first of what may prove to be a series of controversial blog posts on the SAP community network (known to members as SCN). The posts won’t be controversial so much for the content itself (although I hope that that happens eventually) as for the way I’m presenting it. I’m going [...]
Is “social media campaign” an oxymoron?
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. I would have had only slightly less disdain for the audience for these campaigns. Fly-by-night opportunists hoping to win your Facebook sweepstakes. [...]
Does integrity make you a social media loser?
In three plus years of tweeting, I’ve picked up what I perceive to be the general etiquette for engaging on Twitter. I’ve also done research asking B2B marketers how they engage and how they educate their employees and SMEs to engage. I’ve rolled all that up into an approach that I doubt constantly. I don’t [...]
Customer Relationships
Should we stop marketing to the CIO?
Technology marketers have spent the last 25 years trying to get and keep the attention of the people with their hands on the technology tiller inside multi-billion dollar organizations, CIOs. And for nearly that long, pundits have been predicting that the CIO role would become extinct, and that the strategic decisions about technology would be [...]
B2B social media lessons from Steven Slater and Mark Hurd
At first glance, Steven Slater seems like a total crackpot—cursing out a passenger on the intercom and snagging a few beers on the way to a fun-house exit on the inflatable emergency slide (admit it, haven’t you always wanted to slide down that thing yourself?). But we’re in the era of social media now, so [...]
In social media, no one knows you’re an introvert
Image via Wikipedia Two interesting posts this week on how our personalities affect our online behavior. First, Paul Dunay (did I mention that Paul is my favorite B2B blogger yet today?) expresses shock that he turned out to be an extrovert on the Myers-Briggs personality test and wonders if you need to be an extrovert [...]
Mobile Marketing
Where is the utility in mobile apps for B2B?
Mitch Joel has a nice post on HBR this week about bringing utility to marketing and social media. As is often the case, his advice pertains more to B2C than B2B, as I point out in a comment: “Utility” is a clear, succinct way of putting it. I am concerned about the B2B side of things, though, [...]
6 ideas for sifting the mobility chaos
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. [Hire us.]“ But now the [...]
15 things marketers should stop doing and thinking in 2011
Here’s a list of things I wish we would stop doing and thinking as of December 31st: Social media Social media cause people to waste time at work. Companies have a long and pointless history of resisting new forms of communication. From Facebook to email to putting telephones on employees’ desks (remember, the telephone started [...]
Marketing Strategy
The last of the anti-social marketing tactics
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 truth, customers have never listened, except in a few cases of companies with the budget muscle to pound the tagline into customers’ heads over and over again though mass marketing and TV. [...]
6 lessons on how NOT to market to customers
Here’s the kind of pressure that social media puts on us: After not posting anything to my blog in nearly six weeks, I feel compelled to offer an explanation. Isn’t that sad? Hey, but that’s how it is. Social media are like a school of sharks; keep moving forward or sink lifelessly to the bottom. [...]
How to measure influence in social media marketing
Measuring influence is the new obsession in the social media world—adding another layer of anxiety to the dark cloud of existential dread that is marketing ROI. 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. Indeed, science tells us [...]
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