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7 Incredibly Rare Mistakes in Social Media Marketing
There are literally thousands of blog posts, slideshares, eBooks and articles called, “The 24 Most Common Mistakes in Social Media Marketing”. But no one ever bothers to list the really…
The F word in B2B marketing
Is it just me or is typical B2B marketing utterly joyless? Why is that? Why do people who are passionate about carp fishing and bicycling and the Beatles become robots…
Marketo’s new Definitive Guide gets some Velocity
We’ve been working with Marketo, the biggest cheese in B2B marketing automation, to design and sub-edit their new eBook ‘The Definitive Guide to B2B Social Media’. It’s the latest in…
Exploiting your tacit knowledge
We’re always a bit sceptical about the jargon du jour. But one buzzword keeps cropping up and we think there might be a reason: Tacit Knowledge.
Tacit knowledge, first conceptualised…
The Cliché and The Copywriter
Trawling LinkedIn as is my wont, I came across this website which was thoughtfully shared with the world by Reuben Webb:
http://www.101cliches.com/view-the-101
Oh how I sniggered. What fool uses this kind of…
Read this or the world will end
So Gesu was wondering aloud the other day whether negative or positive headlines are more effective. By negative and positive we mean, respectively, the ones that say things like: ‘Ten…
The power of B2B Lead Nurturing
The sales team owns the sales funnel.
But as a B2B marketer, you feed the top of their funnel.
So you own your company’s revenue pipe.
The success or failure…
B2B web marketing: the platform battle
As B2B web marketing comes of age, a battle is brewing between some pretty big players (and a few upstarts) over who will become the primary dashboard for marketers. The…
Why clients hate marketing agency folk
I just stumbled over a piece from Canada’s Marketing Magazine called “ Here’s to 2010: Industry experts share predictions for the year ahead” and read this, among other forecasts. Thought I’d…
Never mind the Barack, it’s mobiThinking
Birth of a thought leadership website
dotMobi is a mobile Internet services company and the registry for the .mobi domain name. It’s backed by leading mobile operators, device manufacturers, and Internet…
You can have it done right, cheap, or quick. Pick two
Fortunately, it’s very rare that we ever get a client who doesn’t understand that you can’t have all three at once. Yet it’s still something that a lot of agencies…
What’s white, invisible, invaluable and online now?
No search returns!
By that I mean the empty returns so many B2B websites deliver to their users. They’re actually gold dust. They allow us to extract value from exactly nothing. …
EPiServer uses market momentum to go public
We just learned that our client EPiserver is preparing to go public on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.
The company offers the best Microsoft .Net CMS on the planet (running nearly 10,000…
The rise and rise of B2B content marketing
Content Marketing is rivaling social media marketing in the hype stakes — and for good reason. It may not be particularly new, but in the age of the informed buyer…
IBS injects Velocity into turnaround
When we met them in 2009, IBS, the specialist ERP vendor, was in turnaround. They’d just finished a major restructuring to focus the entire global business on one sector, wholesale…
2010 Content Marketing Trends and Predictions
ClickPredictions 2010
View more documents from Ambal Balakrishnan.
There she is. The 2010 Content Marketing Trends and Predictions eBook from ClickPredictions — a crowdsourced effort by “39 of the world’s…
You say tomato… copywriting for international audiences
We have a lot of international clients. Most of them are European or American, but occasionally they’re based further afield. This generates an interesting issue: how do you accommodate international…
Should free B2B content hide behind a form?
The debate rages on: is it better to ask people to fill out a form to download your content (chasing shy people away) or maximise downloads and go without a…
Our New Year’s B2B Marketing Resolutions
Inspired by Neil’s resolution “to eat breakfast every morning”, I got everyone at Velocity to give me their B2B marketing resolutions. So here are the new year’s resolutions from the…
In Which The Hero Helps SmallWorlders Sell Intranets To Marketers
We’ve been working with a great company called SmallWorlders. They produce smart, sociable intranets for marketing types. Their Sandbox™ platform, hosted model and marketing-savvy service teams combine to deliver the…
Velocity Does Video: Nine kinds of B2B web video
As this quick showreel demonstrates, we’ve been doing more and more video for our B2B marketing clients. Why? because it’s a great way to get even the most complex ideas…
Low-tech videos for a high tech product
We love these Google Features videos on YouTube. Most tech demonstration videos are all high-tech flash with little icon men and screen shots and slick animations. These are the opposite:…
Let us march!
My favourite quote from Ogilvy On Advertising:
“When Aeshines spoke, they said, ‘How well he speaks’. When Demosthenes spoke, they said, ‘Let us march!’”
Unfortunately, when the typical B2B copywriter speaks, they…
How often do you need to publish content? 1-7-30-4-2-1
Content Marketing is like publishing — you need an editorial calendar and a bit of discipline. This guest post on Junta42 by Russell Sparkman of Fusionspark Media talks about how…
Woo hoo! John Watton, B2B Marketer of the Year
Deer… headlights…
Woke up in a haze on a strange sofa in an unknown flat. Looked down: dinner jacket. Weird purple stain on shirt. Ah — it wasn’t a dream then:…
Why B2B customers are easier to lose than convert in one visit
I spent a fun and productive day at Econsultancy’s heavily moustachioed Marketing Masterclass #OMN last week.
I thought conversion experts Craig Sullivan (in particular), Markus Shilling and Louise Mullock stole…
Why CIOs don’t belong on the board
We did a fascinating interview with IT industry evangelist and FT.com columnist Ade McCormack yesterday (watch this space) and he shared some controversial ideas about CIOs and IT departments being…
Diary of a Tweet: Clarity vs Twitterjunk
The birth of every every new communications medium is followed by a period during which the underlying technology actually cramps the communication it’s supposed to be enabling. When it comes…
16 ways to alienate a B2B buyer
Most B2B marketing doesn’t just fail – it actively repels the people it’s trying to attract. In other words, most B2B marketing would deliver better results if it didn’t exist…
B2B marketing predictions for 2010
We were recently asked where we thought B2B marketing would go in 2010. Made us think. So here are some predictions for the next year:
THE KIND-OF-OBVIOUS PREDICTIONS:
Content Marketing will…
Lethal Generosity: a key principle of social media marketing?
According to the Harvard Business Review, 90% of tweets are generated by just 10% of Twitter users. Apparently this is a higher concentration than for Wikipedia and much, much higher…
Rise Up And Defy Marketing’s Inquisition
I’ve always found Heresy fun.
By that I don’t mean the historical variety – the prospect of burning agonisingly at the stake is deathly serious. I’m talking about the Radio 4…
You can’t have a conversation when you use a megaphone
Selling to B2B customers has been changed forever by the Internet. A truism maybe, but it’s surprising how many B2B marketing organisations are still structured as they were in the…
How you market is almost as important as what you market
We spend a lot of time looking for ways to differentiate our clients based on what they do. Sometimes - surprisingly often - it’s really hard to do because the…
The Velocity B2B Marketing Tube Map
The B2B Journey Planner
We’ve always loved Harry Beck’s legendary design for the London Underground Tube Map, so thought we’d do our own version mapping out the B2B marketing landscape. Kind…
Brevity is the soul of traffic safety
Pet peeve: signs that desperately need a sub-editor.
This one uses nine words where… none would do (the number 30 when posted on the roadside pretty much says it all).
…
Quick Case: when content goes social
Gotta love Twitter…
It’s been about four months since we published the B2B Content Marketing Workbook and we thought we’d report back on how the campaign has worked so far. It…
Microsoft marketing hits new low
Oh. My. God.
We’ve given Microsoft’s marketing a hard time in this blog before and we’ve also had some nice words to say about them. But this one takes the cake:…
Join us for a Demand Generation Webinar
An illustrious panel
Stan Woods will be taking part in what’s shaping up to be an excellent webinar on Innovation in Demand Generation and we thought you, as a loyal Velocity…
B2B blogging for beginners
Let’s face it: these days, if you don’t have a blog on your website you’re admitting that you have nothing to say about your market, your customers, their problems and…
Ghost in the machine: who should write your blog?
There’s a debate in the blogosphere about whether it’s right for a blog to be ghost-written, particularly one advertised as being written by a particular author. Rather than get exercised…
Why ShipServ won a 2009 CRM Market Award
Once again, ShipServ has ’scooped’ a marketing award (why are awards always scooped?) — this time the 2009 CRM Market Awards run by CRM Magazine. ShipServ, piloted by CMO John…
It’s Time For The Corporate Galactico
In 1992 Sky won, after a cheque signing competition, the rights to show live English Premiership football matches. The deal changed the game and, arguably, British culture forever.
Football tittle-tattle is…
All CIOs (or CEOs) are not the same
We’re often asked s for creative ideas that target ‘the C-suite’ - CEO, COO, CFO, CIO and so on. It’s natural because these guys are usually the ones to sign…
Check out the eBook Ebook
We came across a great new e-book from Jonathan Franz, a great copywriter based in Massachusetts, yesterday on the emerging discipline of e-books. Called the eBook Ebook, it’s really well…
The Web Form Wall
It’s a perennial debate: give your content away with no registration (web form), or force people to give you their details to get the goodies. Both arguments are compelling.
We tend…
Why Real Research Is Better Than Norman Muller
Reading the report into teenage media consumption by Morgan Stanley intern Matthew Robson, aged 15 and a half, didn’t just leave me in two minds. It made me feel like…
Chalkbot sprays the Tour
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…
V Shortlisted for Glittering B2B Gong
We’re pleased as Punch to have been shortlisted for a B2B Marketing Magazine Award for our recent work with ShipServ. It’s hard to come over all surprised about it -…
Velocity takes New Media Age Awards by storm (but loses)
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…
Bloggers and Influence Part II
A few weeks ago we decided, and we hope you all agreed, that independent B2B bloggers have a significant and growing industry influence.
But it’s only a part of the influence…
The white paper is dead…or is it?
At a webinar I presented the other day I said that while white papers were still the staple of content marketing, they’re getting really stale as a communications vehicle for B2B.…
The Content Marketing Workbook
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…
Choose your patients carefully
Choose your B2B patients wisely
The most respected surgeons in the world have the best survival rates. But they don’t have the best survival rates because they’re better surgeons. They have…
Watch the Velocity web seminar on Content Marketing
Stan just presented our web seminar with B2B Marketing magazine, called “Content Marketing: Thought Leadership in a Web 2.0 World”. Seemed to go really well.
Over 130 people attended and the…
Join us for our new Content Marketing Webinar
Traditional, interruption-based marketing is dead (or dying fast). The new B2B marketing is Content Marketing. And while a lot of marketers think that’s what they’re doing when they crank out…
The changing look of listing / portfolio sites
Websites that present a portfolio or list of creative work are always a design challenge. They have to be easy to navigate, and present visual ideas without overwhelming the viewer.…
Viagra spam gets creative
I received this excellent spam the other day:
Penis enlargement spam with a twist - it made me double-take and earned a giggle.
Just a little creativity gets you noticed.
…
Velocity/ShipServ shortlisted for Best B2B Campaign at New Media Age Awards
We’ve just learned (and are delighted) that our recent content and social media engagement work work with ShipServ has been shortlisted for the Best Business-to-Business Campaign category at this New…
B2B Bloggers and Influence: Part I
Nothing - not even a finger buffet served on two separate tables - splits a room of B2B communication professionals down the middle like the issue of bloggers and influence.
We…
Why we steal from our clients.
In the marketing world, agencies are supposed to be the ‘creative’ ones and clients are supposed to be the dullards who are grateful for a fresh source of ideas. In…
ShipServ wins First Tuesday ‘Most Promising Internet Company 2009′
We swelled with pride yesterday when our client ShipServ won First Tuesday’s prestigious ‘Most promising Internet Company in the UK 2009‘ award.
We’ve been working with the company and its CMO…
Web personas and Mind Maps
Like most good digital agencies, we’ve been exploring web personas for a while and we’ve found them to be a critical aid to great site design.
If you do them thoroughly,…
Simple Steps To A User Focused Site
We never tire of building websites. The sheer pace of technology change means we constantly push the barriers back. No two projects are ever the same.
But the excitement is tempered…
How strong is your B2B positioning?
Positioning is one of the essentials of B2B marketing but it’s very rare to see it done well. It’s a simple idea: as a marketer, you should explicitly manage the…
Clean tech marketing and green tech marketing: a different kind of B2B
We’ve recently worked with a handful of companies that offer clean technologies or green technologies (or both if SEO is important to you) and we’ve noticed some issues that they…
New media frenzy: the medium is just the medium
It’s an exciting time to be in the communications business. It’s not just that there are so many new ways to reach people. It’s also that we get to watch…
Bessemer’s Ten Laws for SaaS companies
Just came across an excellent presentation by Philippe Botteri and Byron Deeter from Bessemer Venture Partners called the ‘Ten Laws of Being SaaSy‘ . It summarises the key principles of…
Twitter in B2B – a Velocity Slideshare
In the last few months, Twitter has shot from being a cult web app to a full-blown global fad. Celebrities are doing it (Stephen Fry has 361,225 followers as of…
Don’t get lost on the mobile Web: a mobile marketing e-Book
We just completed a new e-Book for our client dotMobi on mobile content discovery. Called ‘Don’t get lost on the mobile Web’, you can find it at www.mobithinking.com, the online…
The Disruptive Idea: that’s what it’s all about
There is so much written about the black art of marketing and even more written about digital marketing (or internet marketing). Zillions of blog posts. Millions of white papers, books,…
SouthWest rap elevates the brand
Saw a fabulous YouTube video the other day, where a Southwest airlines attendant delivered the pre-take-off welcome and safety instructions via an entertaining rap. See it here.
It’s a wonderful example…
ROI and social media marketing for B2B
One of our clients is talking to us about spending budget on creating online buzz. Naturally, she’s thinking hard about how to justify what is effectively a new cost line…
Postcreditcrunchism: marketing is the measure of all things
Every recession is a reckoning. Seemingly untouchable business empires crumble and disappear practically overnight. New ones, perhaps Richmond based, rise out the rubble.
This recession is no different. The financial industry’s…
Cross-fertilisation in social media:
tweet my post and I’ll post your tweet
Social media is a whirling tornado of content and comment. Throw a new white paper into it and, if you’re lucky, it gets tossed around in the vortex, throwing bits…
Atomizing your content: your B2B social life
Web marketing used to be all about driving traffic to your website. Now, it’s also about driving your content out into the wider web to see who trips over it,…
Digital Velocity in eight tweets: accelerate your online engagement
B2B marketing has become almost synonymous with digital marketing. If you’re not getting your story out on the web, you’re probably not getting your story out at all. Now,…
‘Inspired by Kittens’ - Five branding lessons from social media
I always keep an eye on what my friend Laurence Green’s company Fallon is doing (disclosure: our elder daughters have known each other since they were about three weeks old…
Is the Mobile Web ready for B2B (and vice versa)?
B2B Marketing Magazine just published an article we wrote on what every B2B marketer should be thinking about the mobile web. These are clearly still early days for the mobile…
Velocity commissions new Alan Kitching poster
Alan Kitching is a bit of a hero. A master of letterpress design and printing, he’s done some wonderful, iconic work for all kinds of clients and cultural institutions from…
7 tips for writing number-based headlines
Recent research from Spurious has proven that every piece of thought leadership content in the world now has to have a number in the headline or it just won’t get…
Microsoft gets it right
We’ve given Microsoft some bad reviews here — especially for the “I’m a PC” ad campaign, so it feels only fair to give them some credit when they get it…
Going social in B2B: seven automatic actions for every piece of content
Time was, you generated a piece of thought leadership content, stuck it on your website and eNewsletter, then sat back counting the hits. Today, whenever we produce a new piece…
17 Strategies to Killer Ads
I stumbled across a great blog today that attempted to categorise advertising strategies. Based on an analysis of The Advertising Concept Book by Pete Barry, it’s a really useful list…
Why Ronald Reagan is the Spitting Image of an internet pioneer
Presidents are all the rage. Obama and Nixon, in their own ways, are the toast of the Hollywood glitterati. And Ronald Reagan has emerged as a genuine internet pioneer.
Okay, okay. …
Who needs editors?
Google has dis-intermediated the content business.
You don’t have to hire a PR agency to kiss the arses of the editors any more.
You just have to generate content that people really…
10 Tips for Using Twitter And Email Marketing for B2B
We’re exploring how to use Twitter for B2B marketing right now (you can follow us at http://twitter.com/dougkessler and we just started http://twitter.com/velocitytweets for tweeting blog posts like this one). As…
B2B Content Marketing - five or so mistakes
In B2B marketing, content marketing is what works. It’s all about generating content that the target audience will value, then driving that content into the market and out over the…
Digital PR: Shut up and listen
A good interview on ScobleizerTV with Joshua Reynolds who oversees Hill and Knowlton’s global technology practice. Traditional PR firms get a lot of stick lately about being slow to pick…
Slugwatch: the power of content marketing
We were just having a really thought-provoking conversation about content marketing with Andrew Findlater and Hooman Bassirian from Reed Business and they told us about Slugwatch, a service for UK…
The web is 6500 days old
Apparently it’s only 6500 days or so since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. At Christmas in 1990 he initiated the first successful communication between a web client and…
The perfect direct mail list: just 23 companies
I recently received this letter, offering me a personalised number plate with my last name on it:
The author, one Ray Kessler, needs to get rid of his vanity plate fast. …
Papa’s got a brand new bag, maaan.
I’ve been a member of emusic, a great music download service, for a few years now (I had an argument with iTunes and vowed never to use them again, but…
Drop-down positioning at the Royal Opera House
We’re always telling clients that everything you do contributes to your positioning.
A great example from a drop-down menu in a Royal Opera House web form:
That’s just a small sample. Check…
Five Basic Social Theories of Online PR
Roger , our web wonderwall, posted a terrific article on the essentials of Online PR. The central metaphor: the web is a party — work the room instead of stumbling…
Velocity Xmas B2B Technology Marketing Newsletter: the Gift That Keeps on Giving
That’s right, deck the halls - it’s that giving time of year….
In our bumper edition Xmas newsletter, you’ll find:
A super-shiny new White Paper, ‘The Hierarchy of Benefits‘, which identifies one of…
Survival kit for growth companies
Max Bleyleben’s excellent Technofile Europe blog recently posted this Survival Kit for Growth Companies, suggesting a strategy (or at least a list of tactics) for surviving the crunch. It ranges…
Opt-Out: Digital Marketing’s punch in the stomach
Marketing used to be all about the upside. You fired off a message; some people responded; others didn’t. Net gain.
In the digital world, there’s a downside that’s as painful as…
Zappos’ culture: paying employees to leave is great marketing
Saw a fantastic video online today that I thought I’d share.
It’s a presentation by Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, the US online retailer famous for shoes. He talks about…
Customer Value Propositions in B2B Markets
Andrew Findlater from Reed Business Information recently turned us on to an excellent article in the Harvard Business Review (back in 2006 but still daisy-fresh):
Its called Customer Value Propositions in…
Credit Crunch B2B Marketing: Demand Generation, Lead Nurturing and Online PR
The CEO is stalking the corridors, blood dripping from his Budget Axe — and he’s on his way to the marketing department. Your department.
How will you defend your marketing plan? “That…
Evel Knievel, corporate positioning & corporate message development
B2B tech companies are often run by engineers. Engineers are great at talking about technology, but not so great at translating the technology into business benefits that people actually believe.
Being…
Spamalot to the Holy Grail: a personal email journey
Are you a spammer? I’m sure you’re not. But I’ll cheerfully wager that some of you have, at one point, been confused for one.
According to the BBC, undercover US researchers,…
Your new content may not be as relevant as your old
All the best B2B tech marketers are mini-publishing houses — they never stop cranking out thought-provoking content on the issues their target market cares most about. White papers, blog posts,…
A really good newsletter
We know we ‘big up’ Pär Almqvist, the Marketing Dude at VNL, quite a bit. But we thought you’d like to see what we consider a really, really good eNewsletter…
Cisco gets gold star for daring to do it differently
As a marketing company, we spend a lot of time trying to get attention for our clients’ latest gizmos.
Just getting prospects to look at your new ad or pick up…
Microsoft’s baffling “I’m a PC” campaign
Apple got a lot of attention with its “PC vs Mac” commericals. They were simple, funny, well-scripted and seemed to capture the essence of what Mac people love about their…
Because you’re worth it
Why are so few B2B companies as good at naming things as consumer companies?
We all could learn a lot from beauty companies like L’Oreal, which uses naming to great, if…
Branding as body language
A friend of ours who also happens to be a God of Branding just sent us an article he wrote ten years ago but could have been written yesterday. He’s…
I beg you: don’t bore the bejesus out of me
Marketing is communication.
B2B marketing is bad communication.
That’s how your audience thinks about everything you put out.
Their expectations couldn’t be lower.
They’ve waded through thousands of case studies and brochures and web…
Tech marketing trapped in Plato’s Cave
Will we ever learn?
The hilarious spoof of Microsoft’s attempt to re-label the iPod packaging appears to focus on a modern marketing issue. But Plato, the pick of Greece’s golden generation…
Good Reasons to do Social Networking in a B2B Environment
Social networks are extremely interesting things. They give an online home to folks with common interests and hobbies - like staying in touch with one another or following Metallica.
They’ve actually…
B2B Web Marketing Tools Around Town
Being a nice chap, I thought I’d share a few of our secret web marketing tools with you. These are the apps and widgets that we use day in, day…
Wordle Does Velocity
James Pearce and his mobiForge blog turned us on to Wordle, the online toy that turns any text into a word cloud.
We pointed it at the Velocity blog and this…
Playing in the creative sandbox
Despite living in a ‘creative’ world, most agencies are pretty linear. They take the brief, then they do the creative.
Velocity is a bit different. When we do consulting engagements –…
Buff Your Pitch Up. Google Suggest & B2B Content Marketing
It’s funny, but oftentimes we marketers are our own worst enemy when it comes to marketing ‘ideas’. In my time I’ve had the pleasure of conceiving some truly dreadful press…
The C word: the importance of confidence in B2B marketing
A great website. Lots of white papers and thought leadership content. Case studies and customer testimonials. Great campaigns and creative. Awards, editorial coverage and analyst attention. They’re all important to…
Quick Start Pimp Your Content Guide to SEO
I’ve been doing a stack of content optimisation for client web sites lately, so I thought I’d share some of my ‘how to’ notes with the interweb.
As I do this…
Guerrilla video: VNL thinks beyond B2B
We blogged a while back about the idea of guerrilla video for B2B websites — foregoing expensive video productions to just go out and get the footage you need to…
A Different Kind of Growth Equity Investor Needs a Different Kind of Web Presence
Don’t know about you, but it’s Friday evening and we’re offski. Peroni awaits. We’re celebrating the launch of a brand new web site for Kennet.
This is our latest and greatest…
The 4 steps to a B2B sale: rational meets irrational
My old boss Steve Trygg (a great copywriter) used to talk about the role of marketing in business decision-making by breaking down every purchase decision into four steps — the…
Marketers everywhere - get a little mobiThinking
…check out mobiThinking.com, which was launched today to help the world’s marketing community to better understand the opportunities and challenges presented by mobile marketing. (Note: it’s web marketing Jim, but…
Mobile Marketing Madness: What We Learned this Week
We’ve been beavering away over the past few weeks on an important new campaign for one of our shiny new clients in the mobile internet space.
It’s a fascinating area -…
Guerrilla video for B2B companies like yours
We used to do short films for clients that took weeks to plan, weeks to shoot and edit and never came in for less than £30k. Now we’re experimenting with …
New Velocity B2B Marketing Newsletter Available!
The latest edition of our semi-regular newsletter update is now available. It’s packed with goodness inside, including our star new white pager, Marketing, Meet Sales, which offers eleven ways to…
The Velocity B2B Social Media & Web Engagement Mind Map
We’ve been working on a number of ‘web engagement’ programs lately, where we’ve been helping clients to increase their web ‘footprint’ in order to improve their general SEO and awareness…
B2B lead generation with thought leadership content: ditch the web-to-lead forms and win
Here’s an experment for you to try.
Open your web stats app and check out which pieces of content are your top performers over the past month. (By top performers, I…
Love Writing? Love Tech? Love Marketing?
Velocity is in hiring mode again….
Love getting to grips with new clients, new markets & new ideas?
Love writing about technology and business?
We’re a fast-growing, insanely ambitious B2B…
Your First (Free) Baby Steps in B2B Web Marketing
OK, Listen Up
Your web site is not your field of dreams. Build it and most likely they will not come.
Nope, once it’s built your goal is to make it work as…
Velocity at Pecha-Kucha night
Intrepid Velocipedes Doug Kessler and Stuart Rothwell attended the first ever D&AD Pecha-Kucha night last night. Nine creative supremos (mostly digital marketers), each delivering their first Pecha-Kucha presentation to a…
ShipServ.com Goes Live: a B2B Before and After
We’re proud to say that shipserv.com launched successfuly this morning. May all who sail in her find reasonably priced shipping supplies from a broad (and competitive) selection of maritime vendors….
ShipServ…
New White Paper Available: How to PPC in B2B
Hey!
We just published a new web marketing white paper on the thorny subject of how to do PPC properly in an B2B environment.
Here’s a snippet:
If your goal is to generate…
The power of “You”: the 2nd person singular in B2B copywriting
Most B2B technology copywriting is so boring because its so neutral. The best copywriting looks the prospect squarely in the eye and says, “I’m going to sell to you and…
17 credibility builders that make your claims believable
Anyone can claim anything they like about their product or service. Claims are empty. Your job as a B2B marketer is to get believed.
But credibility is a funny thing. It’s…
Why ‘Web-to-Lead’ Forms Suck for B2B Lead Generation
I just returned from a great week away in the Inner Hebrides - the small cluster of islands to the west of Glasgow. The single malts were stunning, the weather…
How Steve Jobs (and Dick Hardt) wows the crowds
Our friend and client John Watton, Marketing Director of ShipServ, recently shared with us a Business Week article that dissects and analyses Steve Jobs’s latest keynote at Macworld (the one…
Fighting Inertia: the toughest competitor of them all.
Most B2B technology companies have a clear set of competitors they’re battling. But for some (usually early stage) tech companies, there are no other companies to fight: they’re inventing a…
Keywords: how to build an effective strategy in B2B
We’ve just completed a number of SEO strategy projects for various clients. Part of our work here is to help folks understand what they’re getting into and why - to…
Champions and the Siren Effect: how early wins can mislead
Early stage tech companies would do anything for those first few big wins — especially from blue-chip companies. But we’ve seen more than a few companies who were steered off…
Empathy and foreplay in B2B Marketing
I don’t know how else to put this: nobody gives a shit about you. Your software or service or widget may be the center of your world but the people…
Whose Tipping Point is it Anyway? A B2B Perspective…
There’s a great piece in this month’s Fast Company that asks if Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling notion of a ‘Tipping Point’ is fundamentally flawed (see: Is the Tipping Point Toast?)
The conclusion…
Tweakonomics: Why B2B Marketing Agency Retainers Suck
Tweakonomics is what you should be using to pay for your marketing services - it’s what we advocate for all our clients.
Let me explain….
This post hereby announces the death of…
The difference between B2B and B2C… in one New Yorker cartoon
I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between B2B versus B2C marketing. Thought maybe I’d write a white paper on it. Then I came across this cartoon in the…
7 ways to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in B2B marketing
Every marketing communication has two parts:
• The Signal – your message; the thing you want people to take away
• The Noise – everything else; the things that distract, delay and get…
The ‘Big Mo’ in B2B technology marketing: are we listening to Gartner?
As we seek to build our business and capture the ‘big Mo’ (the winning momentum that every US Presidential candidate is droning on about at a town hall meeting near…
Building a B2B case: 8 tips from criminal lawyers
We B2B marketers are in the business of building cases. We’re advocates. So it pays to look at how other professional persuaders ply their trades. I started with a little…
Pico-Branding: New Rules for Marketing
UPDATE: this post has been kindly featured on BtoB Magazine’s ‘Blogs of the Week’. (Thanks guys!)
I’ve been mulling on this one for a while: how does Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, blogging,…
The Power of Content: a video case study
We’ve been experimenting with ‘guerrilla video’ as a promotional tactic for our clients and thought we should taste our own medicine. So here’s a rough draft video case story about…
Building a case: structure before style
If you’re marketing fabric softener, beer or perfume, you’re in the business of manipulation. You win if you make someone feel a certain way. If you’re marketing security software or…
B2B web marketing trends for 2008
Here’s our first broad brush, crystal ball prediction of the year: 2008 is the year of web engagement for B2B technology firms.
You built v2 or v3 of your site last year.…
Selling to existing customers
They’ve already bought something from you. You’ve already jumped nine of the ten hurdles on the way to a sale (or however many there are these days). Wouldn’t it make…
Why Blog in B2B? The Final Word…
Whilst blogs are no longer the sexiest subject on the block, the ‘why blog?’ question still rages in B2B - and nowhere more so than here at Velocity.
Like many of…
Usability error - won’t work, too new…
Had to share this one. I was just doing a spot of browser testing on an old PC. Got the following error pop-up from a security app deep in the…
LinkedIn: Facebook for ugly people?
Recently we’ve been talking a lot at Velocity about the importance of social media to our client heartland, B2B tech. In tandem, as we build our new company, I’ve been…
How NOT to sell yourself online
I was just uploading some images to our Flickr stream when I caught sight of the one of the most useless, intrusive banners of all time.
See the ad to the…
Sites we like: Flickr Tag Browser
Normally the idea of an unconventional navigation scheme makes my skin crawl, but this is outstanding because it’s so slick and central to the tool…
Check it out: the Flickr Tag…
Why Web Usability Matters
You know the scene. You or your boss thought it’d be great idea to build a new web site and it’s the first planning meeting. Across the table someone shouts:…
Your 2008 marketing plan: the B2B Svenn Diagram dilemma
Aside from tinsel and cheap booze offers, it’s that planning time of year again. A special place where you need to create futurama fireworks out of Powerpoint.
Co-incidently, it’s also time…
Big Eat: Pay-per-click as haiku
In literature, there are novels, short stories, poems and — the ultimate distillation of thought and emotion — haiku. Three lines. Seventeen syllables. In marketing, there are white papers, brochures,…
Widgety Goodness: Widgets and Social Media - WTF?!
Today’s ‘Widgety Goodness’ conference in Brighton brought together some in-the-know folks and some much-needed clarity to the hoopla that is social media and widgets.
Organised by the good folk at Snipperoo…
12 Days Later: SEO Velocity Style - Get Results Quick!
Yes, we’re a living lab, practising what we preach and telling you all about it.
12 days ago I blogged about our (re)birth as a presence on Google. Today, we’re #2…
The Rise of Clean Technology
The National Venture Capital Association (US) reports that Clean Technology is the hottest thing on Sand Hill Road. During the first three quarters of 2007, VCs poured $2.6 billion into…
Four steps to a B2B sale
B2B sales happen in four broad steps. Interestingly, only two of them are driven by rational decision-making. The other two are largely influenced by the buyer’s irrational side — and…
No such thing as B2B
Anil Raj, mobile industry heavy-hitter (and a new client in an exciting venture) hates the term B2B. He’s sold at the highest levels of the mobile industry (as Head of…
What’s the freakin’ (Power)point!!??
What’s the point of Powerpoint?
A crutch to help you through an uncomfortable challenge (public speaking)?
A useful visual aid to convey stories?
A pain in the butt, killed to death, hackneyed, eyesore,…
Straplines: preaching what we practice?
Lots of tech marketers want a snappy strapline for their brand. Something taut and twinkly to tuck under the logo. We enjoy doing them and have come up with some…
How many agencies does it take to change a light bulb?
The answer of course is 57. There’s the SEO guys, the branding guys, the PR guys, the viral guys, the advertising guys, and so on…
The fact that there are simply…
Velocity time warp: going way, way back to the early SEO days
Do you remember the time when you didn’t exist? Nope, me neither. But today is a big day for us because we kind of experienced re-birth…
…web re-birth that is.
As you…
Hot potato: the holy trinity of technology marketing
To celebrate the launch of a whole new Velocity, Doug (our Creative Director) has put pen to paper to get a bunch of important stuff off his chest…
Content Sells: harvest your two big assets
As a technology vendor, you’ve got two major assets that your customers and prospects value highly. Your job is to harvest them and put them to work for you…
…
A Second Life for Marketers?
We’ve been keeping an eye on virtual worlds like Second Life for a while, waiting for the killer app for business.
Abbreviations, Acronyms & Jargon
We just got an email shot from Savvion, a company that does a good job in its marketing…
Going vertical: you can’t fake authenticity
We’ve seen a bunch of companies try to take generic software into specific vertical markets.
They succeed to the degree they can achieve authenticity.
So instead of looking, feeling and sounding like,…
Customer-guided marketing: is yours?
Everybody in technology companies thinks they’re ‘customer-centric’. In our experience, few really are, in the sense that they start almost every process with the customer.
In the marketing department, starting with…
Pecha-Kucha: the future of Powerpoint
Pecha-kucha is the only way powerpoint should ever be used.
Twenty slides, twenty seconds each. Done.
Invented by a pair of architects in Tokyo. Pecha-kucha is pronounced to (almost) rhyme with tchotchke.…
A letter from Mr Al Fayed. It’s how you say it that counts….
I was doing some long overdue filing this morning and came across the following letter….a response to a misguided mass mailer that inadvertently invited Mr Al Fayed of Harrods to…
Mechanical Turks & Zubka
Could there be anything cooler on the web than Mechanical Turks?
People who need stuff done post tasks. Other people do them for micro-payments using Amazon.com accounts.
I’d love to hear from…
Does search matter in B2B?
Search matters.
The Role of Search in Business to Business Buying Decisions by Enquiro and Marketing Sherpa reported the following:
-
93% of participants said they would research online when making a B2B…
x5 reasons to blog
That’s right, FIVE reasons your company should blog. Count ‘em:
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Improved SEO - a steady flow of dynamic content published on a weekly basis to your web site. Search engine spiders…
Marketing whole products
Just unpacked my new Apple MacBook Pro.
A great example of a whole product: the hardware, operating system, bundled applications (about 30), utilities, web & phone support, set-up wizards, web-based services…
YouTube for B2B Technology Marketing
Just posted a short film we did for BT Counterpane in the US on to YouTube. It’s an interview with Bruce Schneier, security guru.
YouTube is fast, cheap (as in free)…
Earning the right to sell to CIO’s
We just produced a powerful piece of high-end direct mail for BT Counterpane.
The piece was sent to 150 select prospects — CIOs and CSOs of Fortune 500 companies in the…
What’s in a (domain) name - part deux
See here another list of domain naming snafu’s. Note to all - before you book that domain name, write it down on a piece of paper and scan it real…
iinovate
iinnovate is an intelligent video blog on entrepreneurship produced by some students at Stanford.
The latest post is an interview with Tim Westergren, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Pandora the…
Reasons a business should blog a lot…
I’ve just read an interesting piece in this month’s Wired magazine on the subject of blogging.
I’ve written elsewhere about the various benefits of blogs as early product conversations, focus groups…
Fair Isaac
Tech company names are usually pretty bad.
All those coined words ending in ‘a’ — Plectra, Placenta, Adeptra, Conceptra, Integra, Concentra…
But I’ve always loved the name Fair Isaac.
Stands right out. Sounds…
Yugo now
Yugo Nakamura does some of the best things on the web.
Check out his yugop.com.
Full of fantastic, interactive, imaginative explorations of the web medium.
A favourite:
Clockblock.
Worth a visit. Promise.
…
How (Not) to do email marketing
Another great post from the “Permission Marketing” guru, Seth Godin. Basic rules for email relationships with customers/prospects - don’t go too quickly, but do try harder (than the next guy).
…
Insult to injury
Pet Peeve:
I HATE when a website asks me to register for something, takes all my details, validates my email, makes me jump through hoops, THEN tells me the service is…
What makes a good web site?
Originality, originality, originality!!!
See “No One Belongs Here More than You”, a promotional site for Miranda July’s book.
Now, I know its SEO will suck because it’s all images and no text,…
Lovable Morons are back
Every few years, they come back.
The ad campaigns that depict the advertiser’s customers (or their own staff) as lovable morons.
IBM is doing it now in the UK with its gormless…
Logos we love: IBM
Few logos have stood the test of time better than the IBM logo.
Created by Paul Rand in 1972, it hasn’t changed much in, what, 34 years.
Still strong. Still fresh. And…
Web 2.Over?
Check out this piece from Peter Rip, of Crosslink Capital, a VC firm from Silicon Valley. It’s a nice summary of what legs the ‘web 2.0′ movement now has left….…
Basecamp shows how it should be done
We’re helping Validis develop a website to sell their hosted application — a powerful app that checks any set of accounts for errors.
In exploring the simplest, friendliest, most compelling ways…
Second Life gets its own accounting software
True. Linden Labs has rolled out NetSuite, financial and accounting software to help users manage their Linden dollars and real-world money (an increasingly blurred boundary).
They’ve even got a virtual CEO…
Secrets & Lies
Just finished an excellent primer on digital security: ‘Secrets & Lies’ by Bruce Schneier, the god of security.
Published in ‘04 but still super-relevant.
Schneier cuts through a lot of the nonsense,…
What’s in a (Domain) Name?
It’s usually best to think these things through - in this instance by writing a url string down on paper before getting hitched to it.
God knows, the penny MUST have…
Recent papers
The B2B Content Marketing Workbook
Content Marketing is probably the single most important weapon in the B2B marketing arsenal. This eBook takes you through velocity’s approach to the art. Download it and see what you think…
A B2B Social Media Checklist
You’ve just published a great piece of content. Don’t just stick it on your website. Use social media to drive people to it (and vice versa). Here’s a one-page checklist to help you socialize your content, driving traffic and downloads…
The Benefit Hierarchy in corporate positioning & corporate message development
Managing the relationship between value and credibility is the key to good corporate positioning and corporate message development…
Riding the Hype Cycle
Gartner’s Hype Cycle maps a curve that describes the way new technologies become adopted by the marketplace over time. Here’s how you should ride it to your advantage…
Topics
Featured Paper
-
The B2B Content Marketing Workbook
Content Marketing is probably the single most important weapon in the B2B marketing arsenal. This eBook takes you through velocity’s approach to the art. Download it and see what you think…
Latest Papers
-
The B2B Content Marketing Workbook
Content Marketing is probably the single most important weapon in the B2B marketing arsenal. This eBook takes you through velocity’s approach to the art. Download it and see what you think…
-
A B2B Social Media Checklist
You’ve just published a great piece of content. Don’t just stick it on your website. Use social media to drive people to it (and vice versa). Here’s a one-page checklist to help you socialize your content, driving traffic and downloads…
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