The first guy, me at home, is bursting with envy and admiration for a veritable tyro with a corporate Koh-i-Noor for a CV.

What a tremendous achievement, I thought, for a youngster to show gumption to get on the ladder and win over senior colleagues with insight while other teenagers are, well, just being teenagers.

And it’s this point that makes the second guy, me at work, rather annoyed.  This teenager is exceptional, but hardly typical.  Is one extended group of friends representative of the youth of today?  Unlikely.

I did ask my teenage cousin for her view but she was too busy swimming with her friends.  All teenagers swim on Wednesdays, right?

The serious point is that genuine marketing research is regularly sidelined in favour of anecdotal evidence.  It drives me nuts.  I have seen countless marketing projects shape up after a conversation with one unrepresentative customer is extrapolated to the marketplace.

Conducting effective research might feel like too much trouble – it’s costly and time-consuming - but marketing on a whim is generally a disaster.

Over 50 years ago Isaac Asimov published Franchise, a short story based in 2008, where the US decides elections are simply too much work.  Instead they programmed a computer to identify the most representative voter to pick the government.

Prepared to accept that Norman Muller is a fair substitute for democratically elected government?  No.  Then beware every time you hear strongly held views being presented as the facts.  They’re no substitute for a genuine poll.

© neilstoneman for Velocity - the B2B marketing acceleration agency for technology companies, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, LinkedIn, marketing research

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It’s not B2B but we just had to share this one.  The Nike-sponsored Livestrong Chalkbot is driving the Tour de France about 8 hours in front of the riders, spraying messages on the road in emulsified chalk.  Road messages are a Tour tradition but these are different.  Each message has been sent in by someone whose life has been touched by cancer (the focus of Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong charity). This video shows Chalkbot in action and this one shows how it works.

People text in their messages or enter them on the Livestrong website.  If approved, the message is sent out to the Chalkbot, sprayed on to the road, then photographed in place and sent back to the originator.

An inspired combination of social media, live experience and relationship marketing — all for a great cause.  Bravo to Wieden & Kennedy and DeepLocal who not only came up with the idea but made it happen. Just Do It indeed.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity - the B2B marketing acceleration agency for technology companies, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B social media, Social Media

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In this case, it was we who toiled in the shadow of John Watton, marketing captain of HMS ShipServ. John sees a good idea (or, more often, has one) and just goes for it.  The campaign got shortlisted for the category we’d want our kid to win on school prize-giving day: Best Limited Budget Campaign (the ‘Kindness & Courtesy Cup’ of the B2B world). For, alas, Watton is also a god-damn cheapskate (we’d insert a winky emoticon here if I knew how to do them… — ;{) no that’s not it… “[-}*)… nope… oh to hell with it).

The work was a social media and content marketing blitz executed on the rather disappointing budget of £20k. And it moved some mountains for ShipServ, as Stan touched on in a recent pithy post.  Now, we don’t want all you bastards to come out of the woodwork asking us to move mountains for £20k. We did this because we like John and, whoever you may be, I think the chances are pretty good that we don’t like you.  Think six figures or Stan stays in bed.

Marketing costs money and next year, we want to win the ‘Best Multimedia Extravaganza Shot on St Lucia’ award, a whopping 17 categories higher up on the Gala Dinner list than Best Limited Budget Campaign (on the big night, the finalists for our measly award sit in a cupboard eating take-away curry, watching the B-level comic compère on CCTV while the Extravaganza Boys get a front row table groaning with foie gras. Life is many things but fair is only very occasionally one of them.)

So anyway, we who roam the Velocity campus are today roaming with champagne flutes, blowing kisses to each other and ‘doing’ lunch instead of eating it.  It’s a mah-velous day and we’re going to bloody well enjoy it.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity - the B2B marketing acceleration agency for technology companies, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, B2B social media, Content Marketing, Thought Leadership

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Why B2B Marketing Is So Boring

The deck presented on 8th July.

The Content Marketing Workbook

Content Marketing is probably the most powerful weapon in the B2B marketing arsenal. Here’s our view on how it works.

The Hierachy of Benefits

A quick discussion of how features and benefits relate to credibility and value.

The Holy Trinity

Three questions every B2B marketer needs to answer.

Enjoy!

Any queries please contact Doug Kessler via doug@velocitypartners.co.uk

© Doug Kessler for Velocity - the B2B marketing acceleration agency for technology companies, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Velocity at the New Media Age Effectiveness Awards

We were thrilled to have been a Finalist for the Best B2B Campaign in the New Media Age Effectiveness Awards, celebrated the other night at the Grosvenor House Hotel. We thought our work with ShipServ deserved it, to be honest.

But we didn’t bloody win. Microsoft did. Which kind of sucks.

On the bright side, we enjoyed a lovely smoked cherry tomato and caramelised red onion tart served with lime essence and aubergine caviar (we didn’t even know aubergines laid eggs). Followed by a grilled rump of lamb on a bed of lentil ratatouille with cardomom lamb jus (oh, when will I rest my own tired rump for just one night on a bed of lentil ratatouille?).

Are we bitter? You bet your arse we’re bitter. To be beaten is one thing. To be beaten by Microsoft is quite another.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity - the B2B marketing acceleration agency for technology companies, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B agency, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, digital marketing

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But it’s only a part of the influence debate. Now we must ask how these influencers can be, well, influenced. The absence of an easy answer perhaps explains the lingering reticence to accept blogger power.

Traditional media is easier to get. It’s a relentless story-gathering machine with fixed editorial schedules and an absolute commitment to publish. The BBC won’t send Fiona Bruce home in a taxi just because it’s a slow news day.

Such reliability leads to conventional content tools that help fill editorial space: press releases, feature pitches, case studies, bylined articles etc.

Such tools have little, if any, appeal to rich-media loving bloggers who pay little, if any, attention to convention. If your communication department entirely mirrors the traditional media then it’s time for a change of mindset.

Competition v Community
Publishers and broadcasters are like secret agents looking for a big ‘scoop’. B2B bloggers are more of a knowledge sharing community.

Communicators cannot influence bloggers furtively from the shadows. They need an open ethos to engage the community and publicly win its respect.

Education v Expertise
Correspondents are often a mile wide and an inch deep. The genuinely influential B2B bloggers are invariably the opposite.

Content tools designed to educate rarely provide bloggers with the depth required to analyse products, issues and events as experts.

Lines v Loops
Traditional media operates linear, repeatable processes that mean today’s news is tomorrow’s chip paper. B2B bloggers return to the same issues.

Traditional content tools are ‘hit and run’ and fail to satisfy the need for regular returns to the blogger’s world.

Ten Steps To Influence
So here are ten key tips to help you influence key bloggers in the absence of established behaviour and content conventions.

1. Research – Identity the big hitters. You need to know which bloggers carry most weight with their industry peers.

2. Listen – Hold! Don’t hit the pitch button. Establish the prevailing thinking and consider the impact for your business.

3. Engage – Ease in. Get involved in an open, two-way dialogue by responding to posts. Earn your stripes by following the agenda.  That’s different from imposing your own.

4. Gather – Break convention. Open your organisation’s content vaults and identify the arguments and proof points that apply to the key issues.

5. Adapt – Be blogger-friendly. Crystallise responses into visual or aural content packages ripe for expert analysis and sharing: videos, podcasts, schematics, ebooks, diagrams and slides fit the bill.

6. Complement – Stay aligned. Ensure your content complements, but doesn’t simply replicate, what the media relations teams are doing.

7. Share – Populate distribution channels. Make content easy to find, use and share on your own site and YouTube, SlideShare and Twitter.

8. Monitor – Keep watching. Good content spreads quickly across the web and lands in unexpected places. Use dashboards, Twitter and blog aggregators to keep up.

9. Follow-Up – Don’t stop. Bloggers will respond. Make sure you’re there to answer questions or face looking exposed and unengaged.

10. Measure – Prepare metrics. Ensure you can report on KPIs like web traffic, downloads, engagements and meetings arranged.

The Blogger Bounce Effect
Blogger and media relations use different content, but effective synchronisation can deliver spectacular results.

The following graphic, christened “The Blogger Bounce Effect”, illustrates how a synergised approach improves the impact, credibility and longevity of big announcements.

© neilstoneman for Velocity - the B2B marketing acceleration agency for technology companies, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B agency, B2B Bloggers, LinkedIn

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• 76.3% use white papers for general education on specific technology topic or issue;

• 73.8 % use white papers to investigate possible solutions for the business/technology need;

Putting aside the fact that the research was designed to convince B2B marketers to pay for Information Week’s digital download service, I should probably have qualified my comments about white papers in a couple of ways. In our experience, while B2B marketers say that they write white papers to exert some thought leadership, few really do this.

This is backed up by the Information Week data: almost two thirds of readers believe that the white papers they read are too sales or marketing focussed - and only 17% said that the white papers they read were unbiased. That means more than four out of five people are disappointed in the content of the white papers they have taken the trouble to download.

Surely, great thought leadership is about putting your agenda aside and putting your prospect’s agenda at the heart of your piece? Don’t cram your latest widget into every paragraph. If you overkill on your offer  - like most white papers do - you’ll undermine the value of the piece. (Incredibly 70% of Information Week’s respondees said that a vendor representative contacted them before they had a chance even to evaluate the white paper - talk about putting obstacles in the way of downloads.) 

Readers aren’t stupid: they know you have an agenda, but by setting it aside and showing that you understand their challenges you can earn the right to sell to them at a later date. 

The second qualifier is to do with format. In the early stages of sales cycles in information hungry markets, most prospects don’t care about your vision, your latest product or your technology leadership. It’s safe (even sensible) to act as if your B2B buyers are pretty busy - even if most are under tremendous pressure to learn about how new technologies can help their companies.

In information gathering mode, prospects will gravitate to material that matches their concerns and is easy to consume, providing it’s intelligent. Most don’t want to spend hours ploughing through screeds of  pompously-written, self-serving dreck. If you’ve got some leading thoughts to share, why not recognise that we’re now in a broadband, YouTube world?

You can use video, audio or flash or a combination of all three to get your messages across in a couple of minutes. Interview your technology experts in a white board session (making sure the scene is well lit and we can hear what they’re saying of course). Run a round table with customers and partners and film it, editing it down to five minutes or so of the juiciest material. Get your top salesman to interview your best customer and serve it up as a podcast. Production costs these days for this type of material are pretty low. All you need is good ideas and the confidence to put them into action. 

So are white papers dead? Providing they’re not boring, too long and all about you, absolutely not. But we see them as being most relevant when your prospect has a real project and a real budget and when she’s considering your solution as a candidate for a shortlist.

At that point, tech buyers look for as much technical information on a particular solution as they can find (the only time I read computer magazines, for example, is when I’m about to upgrade my machine). In these circumstances, we still see a place for the traditional, highly technical piece filled to the gunnels with product specs and diagrams on integration and implementation.

We still think you need to keep them short - over 50% of Information Week’s survey said they wanted white papers to be shorter than five pages. And because people want this type of information when they are near to making a purchase decision, you could think about whether you should ask for the prospect’s details before allowing the download.

© stan@velocitypartners.co.uk for Velocity - the B2B marketing acceleration agency for technology companies, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B, B2B agency, B2B content marketing, B2B lead generation, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, B2B technology marketing, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing, white papers

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It’s here. The book of the webinar of the movie: The Velocity B2B Content Marketing Workbook.  Over 45 breezy pages of good, solid advice about thought leadership and content marketing for B2B marketers like you.

In the era of information overload, Content Marketing is probably the single most important thing a B2B marketer can do.  You can have lousy brochures. You can be conspicuously absent from Twitter and the Facebook Widget Group. But if you can get content marketing right, the world (or a highly relevant subset of it) will beat a path to your door.

The Workbook covers topics like these:

• What Content Marketing and Thought Leadership are
• Why you need to get good at them (and fast)
• Why you’re perfectly placed to do it really, really well
• How to pick a topic prospects care about
• How to go beyond the dry, stale white paper
• What we think ‘good’ looks like — lots of examples

It’s free, it’s fun and it’s as fresh as new-baked bread plucked from a hot oven.

Download it.

A little bit of insight and inspiration never hurt anyone…

© Doug Kessler for Velocity - the B2B marketing acceleration agency for technology companies, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B agency, B2B content marketing, B2B lead generation, B2B marketing, B2B social media, B2B technology marketing, Content, Content Marketing, digital marketing, Lead Generation, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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The eBook is available to download now from the Velocity website: www.velocitypartners.co.uk.

“In the era of information overload, Content Marketing is probably the single most important thing a B2B marketer can do,” says Stan Woods, Velocity MD, ” You can have lousy brochures. You can be a social media luddite. But if you get content marketing right, the world will beat a path to your door — and your sales guys will throw rose petals in your path (it’s embarrassing but feels kind of nice, too.).”

The Content Marketing Workbook covers topics like these:

• What Content Marketing and Thought Leadership are
• Why you need to get good at them (and fast)
• Why you’re perfectly placed to do it really, really well
• How to pick a topic prospects care about
• How to go beyond the dry, stale white paper
• What we think ‘good’ looks like — lots of examples

It’s free, it’s fun and it’s as fresh as new-baked bread plucked from a hot oven.

“This is the single best overview I’ve yet seen on strategic B2B content marketing”, says David Fideler, B2B marketing strategist and founder of the B2B Lead Nurturing group on Linked In, ” I can’t imagine anyone being disappointed by the ideas and value delivered.”

Download the B2B Content Marketing Workbook here.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity - the B2B marketing acceleration agency for technology companies, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B agency, B2B content marketing, B2B lead generation, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, B2B social media, Content, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Lead Generation, Online PR, technology marketing agency, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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It’s here. The book of the webinar of the movie: The Velocity B2B Content Marketing Workbook.  Over 45 breezy pages of good, solid advice about thought leadership and content marketing for B2B marketers like you.

In the era of information overload, Content Marketing is probably the single most important thing a B2B marketer can do.  You can have lousy brochures. You can be conspicuously absent from Twitter and the Facebook Widget Group. But if you can get content marketing right, the world (or a highly relevant subset of it) will beat a path to your door.

The Workbook covers topics like these:

• What Content Marketing and Thought Leadership are
• Why you need to get good at them (and fast)
• Why you’re perfectly placed to do it really, really well
• How to pick a topic prospects care about
• How to go beyond the dry, stale white paper
• What we think ‘good’ looks like — lots of examples

It’s free, it’s fun and it’s as fresh as new-baked bread plucked from a hot oven.

Go on and download it. A little bit of insight and inspiration never hurt anyone…

© Doug Kessler for Velocity - the B2B marketing acceleration agency for technology companies, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B agency, B2B content marketing, B2B lead generation, B2B marketing, B2B social media, B2B technology marketing, Content, Content Marketing, digital marketing, Lead Generation, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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