The power of beliefs in B2B marketing
July 2nd, 2010 <...by Doug Kessler
Ashley Friedlein of Econsultancy just turned us on to this excellent TED Talk (TED is a fantastic series on ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’). It’s by Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why, and it’s all about the power of beliefs in marketing. Great leaders and great companies start with beliefs not facts, policies, products or services. He cites Apple, Martin Luther King and the Wright brothers among others but the idea is just as powerful for any company and any B2B marketer.
The essence of Simon’s talk: People don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it.
He bases this on brain research that shows that the neocortex, which is responsible for our rational processes (and language) is not the part of the brain that drives decisions. Decisions (and feelings) are controlled by the limbic system. In other words, when we throw features and functions at people, we can’t change their behaviour. But when we start with beliefs, we talk directly to the part of the brain that drives decisions and behaviour. Then people can rationalise their feelings of trust and loyalty with the feature/function stuff.
For Velocity, this plays right into our own belief that B2B buyers are human beings first and engineers or IT Directors second. People buy from people they like and trust. Our first job on behalf of our clients is to earn that trust by communicating the client’s beliefs and passions.
That’s why something that might seem a bit silly (like a stop-motion Lego Man film for a vertical search product) does so much to bring prospects closer and pave the way to a sale. Or why a pair of hugging salt & pepper shakers can boost registration to an exclusive conference.
Two questions:
Do you really know what your company believes?
You know WHAT you do but do you know WHY you do it?
Are you sharing those beliefs with your customers and prospects?
How are you explicitly communicating your beliefs and how are you demonstrating them?
If Simon Sinek is right (and we think he is), these could be the most important questions of your career..
Velocity is hiring geniuses – B2B marketing jobs London
June 16th, 2010 <...by Doug Kessler
We’re Velocity, we’re growing fast and we’re looking for a few geniuses (copywriters, designers, planners…).
But we’re not just hiring anyone who walks past the door and we don’t just fill slots with CVs. We aim a bit higher than that: geniuses with souls, manners and senses of humour.
To us, a genius is not someone with a high IQ, it’s someone who is more than usually passionate about what they do. Almost unhealthily passionate.
If you love marketing and business and technology and creativity, we think this is the single best place in the world to spend a career.
We’ll never be the biggest B2B agency in the world. Our goal is a lot less Gordon Gekko and a bit more Richard Feynman. We aim to be the most interesting B2B agency in the world. Which may not be as lucrative but is a hell of a lot more fun.
If you’re wondering whether business-to-business (and specifically technology) marketing can ever be as rewarding as consumer marketing, there’s a very short answer: it’s more rewarding. Here’s why:
Why B2B is the place to be
- Because business can change the world and technology is changing it.
While Diet Coke will only ever be sugar water without the sugar.
- Because it’s hard.
You have to really understand this stuff to sell it. There’s no coasting. And hard things are always more rewarding.
- Because it’s exciting.
Our clients are innovators and entrepreneurs. Brilliant people inspire.
- Because it’s grown-up.
We don’t condescend to the target audience and we don’t manipulate his or her insecurities. We build compelling arguments, back them up with air-tight evidence and incite action. And you don’t have to shower after doing that.
- Because it’s incredibly dynamic.
Digital, analytics, video, lead nurturing… this is the steepest learning curve you’ll ever be on. Ask any snowboarder: that’s the best part.
- Because it’s cutting edge.
Some of the new B2B tools are much more sophisticated than their consumer versions. They have to be when a sale can mean a million.
- Because it’s important.
For every bottle bought of Katie Price’s Sensation (or whatever), there are a hundred business-to-business transactions behind the scenes. In economic terms, she’s the tip, we’re the iceberg.
If anyone tells you that B2B is a marketing backwater, thank them for their insight and find someone more interesting (and less fashionable) to share a drink with.
This is where the action is and Velocity is smack in the middle of it.
If you’d like to be a part of it, get in touch.
Try to contain your excitement
May 24th, 2010 <...by Lucy Longhurst
Roger Warner, friend of Velocity and all-round PR guru, has flung open the doors to the Museum of Social Media. Before you all start planning an office field trip to see it, it’s actually online – you can visit it here (and no, it doesn’t have a gift shop).
Conceived as a repository for the good, the bad, and the just plain baffling, it charts the meandering and sometimes hiccupping progress of social media marketing.
Take, for example, the bizarre decision to promote Skittles by posting a load of ker-razy videos and ask people to share them. Unlike their previous Twitter-based campaign, this was a campaign that deserved to have a loud raspberry blown at it. So, there it is in a virtual glass case, preserved for posterity.
We decided to interview the esteemed Professor Warner, to see if he had any pearls of wisdom to impart about the development of social media marketing.
Where did you get the idea for the museum? Why did you start gathering the stories together?
It’s a ‘keeping perspective’ thing. What’s going on today is very similar to what happened 10 years ago… Social Media, like the first promise of the Interweb, has become near-mythical. Having lived through round one, I’m keen to keep a scrapbook this time. When I look back, discussions about bricks vs clicks were almost irrelevant. The real winners were the ones who rolled up their sleeves and got stuck in – and we need to remember this right now.
Grand concepts and frameworks didn’t work well (e.g. Boo.com); whilst more randomly organised, iterative services did (eBay, Flickr, etc…). This is very close to my heart. I run a new(ish) Social/Online agency and I’m building a services business around doing pragmatic stuff now. So having a museum means I can put the futurology that bugs me (and also all the great stuff) into a box and keep it close by for future reference. As such, it’s a pet project.
Why do you think even big brands with such a lot of marketing clout get it wrong?
Often they’re taken in by the glamour of it all and get blinded. A common request is ‘I’d like to do a Twitter campaign.’ This is bit mad. Brands have to ask themselves ‘why?’. If they don’t have a very concrete answer then they should have a lie down and/or read up a bit on some history.
In other words, it should never be about the Social Media-ness of it all. My feeling is some brands get so lathered up that they lose context. They just get strung out on the *possibilities* and the *concepts*.
Today, the world needs to understand that just because YouTube lets us upload video, this doesn’t mean a million people want to create mini feature films for brands in exchange for a gong.
Social-for-Social’s-sake campaigns fail because they ignore the basics. And it’s not Social’s fault… it’s more to do with human nature and the way we use things. We *really* need to remember the lessons of the past and to keep reading our little blue book of effective marketing. The psychology of DM still applies. Good old content is even more critical. And Google is still huge, huge, huge.
Social Media changes *how* these things are important… but they certainly don’t go away. Also, a little research never hurt anyone. We should all do more of it before we get excited.
Do you think we’re now entering a more egalitarian age of marketing, where the consumers can get involved?
We ought to be asking: can Social fulfill the promise of a mega conversation with all of the marketplace? Probably not, unless more Twitter-friendly sales people are employed. There’s a fundamental tension that we need to figure out. Generally, marketing is about NOT TALKING TO PEOPLE in the physical sense. Talking is the job of sales. Good marketing reduces the amount spent on sales people and processes. In this context, the promise of Social gets a little messy…
We need to de-focus on the promises, concepts and the channels and start thinking about the core value of it all. Right now, lots of marketing departments see Social as a must-have. Near term this may not be the case – unless they can prove that it helps marketing to do better marketing.
Marketing has changed for good I think. Today, the campaigns and content that work best aren’t Marketing with a capital ‘M.’ They’re conversational pieces, support things, widgets and whatnot. Gone are the days of Ridley Scott TV spot blockbusters. Brands need to be helpful, memorable and available and figure out how their customers are using Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc in this context.
Any particular favourites?
I love Converse’s domination campaign. It’s not particularly Social, but it’s so pragmatic and smart it hurts. I wish we’d done it.
A stop-motion movie for ShipServ
May 7th, 2010 <...by Doug Kessler-
Girls on film (actually Lego men)
-
My oh my have we been having fun over here recently! Long-term Velocity client and all-round legend John Watton from ShipServ asked us to produce a video to promote Pages, the maritime ‘Find Engine’. And since we fancy ourselves as Richmond’s answer to Martin Scorsese we were more than happy to oblige.
We wrote a script and a plot outline following our hero, Rex, owner of RexStar and supplier of spare parts to the shipping industry. He’s trying to grow his business, but he’s struggling to get his voice heard. We won’t tell you what happens next, you’ll have to watch the video and see.
Then we roped in Guy Hocking as our producer. We couldn’t have picked a better man for the task – he’s surpassed himself this time. Having stolen his kids’ Lego men and set up a studio in his spare bedroom, Guy produced a brilliant stop-motion film to fit our script. After that we signed up Paul Ridley to do the voiceover, and the end result is what you see above.
Go on. Put the popcorn and watch it.
When was the last time you flossed?
April 27th, 2010 <...by Doug Kessler
In B2B as in life, there’s a whole genre of pains-in-the-arse that nobody ever talks about: things that are really annoying but not quite annoying enough to actually force you to do anything about. This class of arse-pain needs a name. I hereby suggest ‘Plaque’.
Plaque clogs up your life, degrading its quality without ever actually demanding your full attention. Like barnacles on a hull, plaque slows you down but never stops you dead in the water.
A smashed windscreen is an emergency. A slightly cracked windscreen is plaque.
A gushing pipe is a call to action. A dripping tap is plaque.
Some people have a low plaque threshold and spring into action the moment something happens to make their toaster or doorknob or light switch sub-par. I happen to have a very high plaque threshold. I can ignore almost anything until it’s a genuine emergency — except I’m not really ignoring it at all, I’m registering it, logging it, making that tooth-suck sound about it and regretting the hell out of it. (I tell myself that this is because I ‘have a life’ but really it’s because I just can’t be arsed.) (Is an American allowed to use the word ‘arse’ twice in one blog post without some kind of UK tax kicking in?) (What about three times?).
Anyhoo: here’s where I segue towards some semblance of relevance for B2B marketers like you: every B2B marketing department suffers from an accumulation of plaque.
The About Us page on your website doesn’t reflect what you do any more. The last press release in the News section was dated 1987. The logo on the powerpoint template is WAY too intrusive. The list goes on and on. And, here’s why all this kind of matters: while no single bit of plaque will seriously undermine your performance or cripple your KPIs, Gartner estimates (or surely will one day estimate) that, taken together, accumulated plaque can suck away 10-20 hard-earned Brand Mojo points. Fact.
So here’s a Velocity Two-Step Action Plan™ for your own personal War Against Plaque:
1) Every time you notice a bit of plaque, write it down on a whiteboard, flip chart or wiki page for all to see.
2) On the 3rd Friday of every month, spend one hour removing plaque – you can call it Floss Friday if you really want to.
Are you with me? I hope so — because I visited your website recently and there are some howlers on there. No offense.
—
Photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons by kate*
Cleaning up your B2B product portfolio
April 26th, 2010 <...by Doug Kessler
A lot of our consultancy engagements involve helping companies structure a product portfolio that makes sense. Usually that means organising a long list of products or services into a few sensible buckets. It can be kind of tricky and isn’t always intuitive but putting in the time to get it right is well worth it.
A well-considered portfolio makes your company look cohesive and focused. A messy portfolio structure makes it look like you just kind of accreted new products and services on a drunken bar-crawl (“For all your fish and bicycle needs.”).
The goal is simple: make it quick and easy for prospects to find solutions to their problems as they describe them. Of course, you don’t want to leave any product or service out and you don’t want too many buckets (people won’t wade in, they’ll just waddle off). A few tips:
- Use the buyer’s perspective not yours – you may like to organise your life and your products by department or line of business; they don’t care about that. They come to you with problems in their head. Organise around that.
- But don’t forget the spiders – your product page and its copy, URLs, tags, headings and subheads should generate major search mojo. Make sure you integrate this important web section into your overall SEO strategy.
- Don’t hide your hot products – the more specific a product, the more relevant it’s likely to be. Don’t bury your discrete offers far below the top line categories. If one of your popular products logically lives beneath the surface, bend your logic and get it on top for all to see.
- If you do have to bury a hot product, compensate – by promoting it in feature boxes, sidebars and web banners
- Make your labels descriptive – cryptic, cool or evocative labels may sound good but if it isn’t instantly clear what’s inside, you’re losing eyeballs (and the eyeball-bone’s connected to the wallet-bone).
- Keep lists parallel – it’s kind of annoying to have a portfolio consisting of three nouns and a verb, or three vices and a versa. Makes you look tone deaf.
- Don’t be a slave to alliteration – don’t bend over backwards to present ‘The 6 Rs’ if it doesn’t work. Having said that, Velocity is starting to present our services in four buckets that all really do start with C (as does ‘coincidence’): Consulting, Content, Campaigns & Creative.
Unwieldy portfolios are usually a function of a company’s history. Re-organisations, acquisitions, aborted strategies and weed-choked routes to market all leave their mark. If yours is starting to feel clunky, start over with a fresh sheet of paper — or get some advice from people who don’t know (or care) why things evolved the way they did.
—
photo credit: flickr creative commons: curiousmess
Five mistakes to avoid in the B2B selling process
March 22nd, 2010 <...by Gesu Baroova
The buying process is long and complex in B2B tech markets. Usually, the bigger the company, the more people are involved and the longer it takes. So where can a B2B salesperson trip up in this drawn out process? We’ve worked with some of the very best B2B sales people in the business and these 5 mistakes often come up in our conversations:
1. Failing to engage all stakeholders: Typically there are a number of people involved in the buying process – those who write the specs, those who control the budget, those who influence the decision, those who actually use the product and finally the ultimate decision makers – usually the CTO or the CEO. You have to identify who these people are in your prospective client and make every effort to meet them and strike a relationship with each one of these influencers. Countless salespeople have failed because they didn’t take the time to meet the people who specified what the product needed to do or managed to engage with everyone involved in the decision. Often your main contact may not want to give you this access — your job is to earn it.
2. Failing to leverage conversations with one stakeholder when talking to other stakeholders: If you’ve learned from the product user why he likes your product over that of the competition, you’d be foolish not to mention it when you’re talking to the buyer. It’s obvious but you’d be surprised how many people fail to leverage every conversation. The sales people we admire most are always listening, assessing and using their conversations to their advantage.
3. Failing to manage internal disagreements within the prospect: The people involved in the buying process are bound to have disagreements about which product or service to go for.. Don’t wait for things to sort themselves out; they probably won’t and you’ll lose the sale. If you’ve spent your time well in the initial phase, getting to know the people involved in the buying process, then that’s your map for managing internal conflicts. Don’t leave this to your ‘champion’.
4. Failing to keep the prospect engaged: Sales cycles are long and slow, so it’s easy to lose focus. Are you allowing too much time to pass by between phone calls or visits? Keeping the momentum even if the prospect is slow to respond to you is important especially if competition is high. Our favourite sales people have a way of keeping the energy up and sounding like it’s a new sales call even if it’s in the ninth month.
5. Failing to make the value argument: If you find yourself haggling on price, you probably haven’t been effective in making the prospect understand your product’s value. Price should be one of the last things to be discussed not the first (as it often is). Good marketing can really help in defining the value proposition and communicating it clearly and simply. Too often tech companies disconnect marketing messages form sales conversations – the fastest way to get dragged into price haggling.
Of course, there are hundreds of ways to lose a B2B sale, but these five seem to lead the pack.
- Photo credit: Tim Green
The F word in B2B marketing
March 9th, 2010 <...by Doug Kessler
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 when they sit down to tell the world about the thing they do for a living — the thing they spend a THIRD OF THEIR LIVES doing?
Whatever happened to fun? Don’t you prefer to do business with people who enjoy what they do? Don’t you find yourself attracted to companies that look like they’re glad to be doing what they’re doing?
A good friend of mine, Nick, is an accountant. Boring, right? But he’s incredibly successful and his clients love him and recommend him because, to him, accountancy is the furthest thing in the world from boring. Nick loves accountancy. He loves business and the hydrodynamics of finance and the way small, sound decisions can have big, positive impacts on businesses and the people who care about those businesses. There’s nothing boring about that.
You might sell software that helps trucking companies improve their fuel efficiency. Or a service that helps IT departments protect their databases. Or a piece of middleware that improves the way some ERP application interacts with some other ERP application. But if you love what you do; if you really see the value in it; if you enjoy the challenges or the tech problems or the look on a customer’s face when he gets it… why in the world would you want to bury that passion under layers of business-speak and techno-babble?
Maybe it’s time to lighten up. If you can’t muster some enthusiasm for your work, find another job. And if you can, share it with the people who most need to see your passion: your customers and prospects.
How does fun manifest itself in a B2B context without becoming frivolous? Here are a few ways:
- Light, honest, human blog posts – a blog is a great place to have a bit of fun without jeopardising the hallowed brand values.
- Social media – another place to let your hair down and give the world some evidence that your company is not driven by robots.
- Video fun – quick, short videos are a great way to have a ‘play’ with your story and your brand. Stick them on YouTube, embed them on your site, email them to prospects.
- The home page – you might think this real estate is too precious to muck around with. Actually, it’s the perfect place for showing a bit of attitude and energy. You’ll increase time on site and page views by giving people an open, friendly, accessible story. By having fun.
- Data sheet or case study ‘seasoning’ – Even hardworking technical documents can have a bit of fun without detracting from the business at hand. A sidebar, a striking metaphor, a surprising quote…
The list could be endless because the principle applies to everything you do. Before you publish, think “Can this be a bit more fun to read/watch/listen to?”
Of course, done badly, attempts to lighten up can fall flat. That’s probably why B2B marketers tend to shy away from it. The point is not to aim for hilarious. You’ll fail and look silly. Aim for honest and plain-speaking and you’re a lot more likely to hit the target. But for God’s sake have a bit of fun with it!
New B2B buying influences
March 5th, 2010 <...by Doug Kessler
Just came across an excellent post by Matt West of Connected Marketer called A Glimpse Inside the Mind of the New B2B Buyer. It’s based on a study done together with DemandGen Report into the new buying influences in B2B.
The data supports the trends we’re all seeing out there (buyer-driven purchase cycles, the role of content, social media and peer conversations) but it did surprise me how fast things are changing — some of the numbers are a lot higher than I’d have guessed, including:
New Influences in the Buying Process
- 78% of buyers started with informal info gathering
- 59% engaged with peers who addressed the challenge
- 48% followed industry conversations on topic
- 44% conducted anonymous research of a select group of vendors
- 41% followed discussions to learn more about topic
- 37% posted questions on social networking sites looking for suggestions/feedback
- More than 20% connected directly with potential solution providers via social networking channels
Even better: almost 95% of recent purchasers said the solution provider they chose “provided them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process.”
Cancel that six-figure ad budget. Start generating killer content and spreading it across the web.
Exploiting your tacit knowledge
March 2nd, 2010 <...by Gesu Baroova
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 by Michael Polanyi, is knowledge that is hard to put into words — the stuff that’s difficult to articulate and transfer to another person.
Companies and individuals accumulate tacit knowledge over time through front-line experience — often they don’t even realise that they have it. In contrast, explicit knowledge can be easily described in words and transferred to another person (think software demo).
Very often it’s the tacit knowledge that gives successful companies their competitive edge – (or ‘sustained competitive advantage’ for jargon lovers).
It can live in a number of places in organisations – but most often with employees who have a way of doing things that works but find it hard to explain exactly how or why.
It’s what goes on in the head of that great salesperson or that unassuming techie who can crack a problem in minutes (but explain how in hours). It can even be dispersed across a group of people doing things a particular way. Like that business unit that consistently outperforms every other– what do they have that the other units don’t?
It’s a knack, its an insight, its in their gut. It comes with experience. The good news is – it can be brought out and shared. It’s hard but not impossible.
That’s where marketing plays an important role. If tacit knowledge is indeed so important to gaining and sustaining that competitive edge, then its marketing’s job to identify what tacit knowledge the company has, where it is, how to bring it out and make it easy to understand – not only to use internally but also to communicate the advantage it brings to customers.
There’s no short cut: marketers need to get up close and personal with these experts. Talk to them about their work, how they go about it day to day, observe them doing it then question them hard (but lovingly). Fall in love with the word “Why”. Find ways to articulate their knowledge. To make the tacit explicit.
This will take time, patience and most of all a genuine interest in finding out your experts’ hidden pearls of wisdom. But one thing is certain – put in the hard work and the results will be worth it.
Image Copyright Zitona
Read this or the world will end
February 18th, 2010 <...by Lucy Longhurst
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 things you’re doing wrong in your life’ or ‘How to be even more lovely than you are already’. The first, obviously, grabs you by your insecurities, holds a conceptual gun to your head and threatens total and catastrophic failure if you don’t do what the headline wants. The second tries to be your friend and woos you by offering unsolicited advice/help. But they both boil down to the same thing: fear.
Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was nice?
Judging by some discussions on LinkedIn’s forums, marketers don’t like the first type of headline. There’s a sense that it’s a) lazy or b) mean. Or both. It’s as though it counts as cheating. Or like someone’s going to call up your parents to tell them you’ve been bullying your audience. But the analytics we’ve done suggest (albeit tentatively) that the scare-mongering titles produce the most click-throughs. We wrote an eBook and alternated between a positive and a negative-tone headline at random. The negative one got the most reads.
This may not be what people want to hear: it would be nice if it was true that lovely positive headlines made people want to read more, and made them think of your product/brand in a lovely positive way. Perhaps it just seems disappointing that people respond more to being scared. But that’s treating people’s response to advertising as being more cerebral than it actually is. It’s much more visceral than that.
People don’t think ‘Aw, how nice. They must be a really good company’. They think ‘Holy Mary Mother of God I need help!’. Then you can reassure them that help is at hand, and in the absence of divine aid your product or service will do the job just as well. Then they’re so glad you can help they’ll listen to you. Being rescued in the nick of time from the Deadly Flesh-eating Serpent of Doom is a better story. That’s why it works.
Hey, we can be nice… sometimes
At Velocity we use both, depending on the tone and the context. If you’re talking to a hard-bitten marketing cynic with his nose spread across his face and a cauliflower ear, the nice approach won’t work. The marble slab where his heart should be just doesn’t want Butlins-style encouragement. Similarly, the sensible guy who just wants to do his job better probably won’t take too kindly to being shouted at. We tend not to threaten people with poisonous serpents*, but you can’t ignore the fact that putting a small firecracker under your audience’s seat does work, so long as you don’t go overboard. Getting too nasty puts people off. But too much nice and you run the risk of being ignored.
*because the last lot escaped and caused havoc on the Underground
Photo credit:
Oabie
In Which The Hero Helps SmallWorlders Sell Intranets To Marketers
January 6th, 2010 <...by Lucy Longhurst
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 best marketing intranets on the planet.
When we started working with them they knew who they were and what they did but only a select few outside the company had any idea. And, as they would probably be the first to admit, their website didn’t shed much light on the matter. But they had a really good offer, so our job was to clarify the company’s positioning and messages, then bring the new story to market, starting with a spanking new website.
The website had to appeal to that most discerning of audiences: brand executives and marketing agencies. So we gave it a cool-as-a-cucumber look, with witty text and quirky graphics, all underpinned by a sleek site architecture. The website had to look enough like a creative agency’s but not so much that SmallWorlders lost their identity. It was about balance.
Here’s what we did:
Tweaked their positioning to focus on marketers –so they weren’t spreading themselves too thin
Recommended packaging up products and service levels – so customers are clear they’re getting what they want
Gave them a new language and terminology – so their products and services sound as exciting as they actually are
Gave them a website that looked and sounded right– so they could walk the walk and talk the talk
Promoted SmallWorlders’ unique approach – through thought leadership pages, laying the groundwork for eBooks, web seminars, white papers, video…
SmallWorlders liked us so much they put us on their Christmas card list:
We love this card
The scribble inside:
‘Stan: Thanks for selling me Velocity’s services…I’m very glad you did!’
–Kevin Cody, MD
Woo hoo! John Watton, B2B Marketer of the Year
November 26th, 2009 <...by Doug Kessler
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: John Watton, our intrepid ShipServ client really did win B2B Marketer of the Year in the B2B Marketing Magazine Awards last night…
It all came rushing back. The ‘gala’ tent pitched somewhere in Moorgate; the Glaswegian comedian abusing the crowd; the backless dress gliding past; the clump of beetroot risotto (see ‘purple stain’ above) propping up a dessicated slab of sea bass; the lights, the music, the envelope please…
When we met John Watton, he didn’t know the difference between PPC and CPM. He thought search marketing involved bloodhounds. Now, he’s reached the pinnacle of his profession. We’re not saying it was easy. We spent countless hours with him, explaining how email really works (Stan wanted to let him go on believing in ‘little digital courier bikes’); why a website is really a good idea in times like these (“Can’t we just have a brochure?” Bless.); what Marketo is and why it’s so powerful (“Those names are called LEADS and, one day, with a little nurturing, they might become SALES” — sheesh).
Okay, when we met him he had done some pretty important marketing jobs for small outfits like Microsoft, Oracle and Ariba. But we’ll always remember the tears of joy that welled up in his eyes when, after long deliberation, we gave him the good news: yes, we saw just a glimmer of something in him (talent: yes; enthusiasm: in spades; but really it was his willingness to learn) and that he had made it on to our client list.
Colonel Tom Parker, once said, “When I met Elvis, he had a million dollars worth of talent. Now he has a million dollars.” (that was a lot then). Well, when we met John Watton, he was a crazy kid with an electric keyboard, a pirated copy of Garage Band and some big ideas. Now, he’s the FUCKING B2B MARKETER OF THE ENTIRE BOLLOCKING YEAR.
This, in a nutshell, is the Velocity Effect. And if you want yourself some of that action, well, take a number*.
[Disclaimer: 99% of the above is false. John came to us fully-formed.]
[Added disclaimer: well, 100%]
As an Agency, we also pulled down a Highly Commended for our snappily-titled “Content and Social Media Marketing Campaign for ShipServ” (hey, it’s how you tell them). If John’s triumph feels like winning an Oscar, our Highly Commended feels like a pat on the head by the neighbourhood wino. (Kidding, judges, we’re thrilled to bits and you look marvelous).
We’d like to say that we created the entry that won John this well-deserved gong (why didn’t we?); but it was Laura Mishima at Marketo, the fast-growing, arse-kicking, lead-scoring giants of Demand Generation. John works Marketo like Jenson Button works a Skoda. The results are now a part of B2B marketing history.
Purple stain aside, we enjoyed ourselves last night and are proud to have played a part in John’s annus (mirabilis).
John Watton reflected in his shiny new gong
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The Content Marketing Workbook
June 11th, 2009 <...by Doug Kessler
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…
How strong is your B2B positioning?
April 16th, 2009 <...by Doug Kessler 
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 place your brand holds in the minds of your target audience so that it’s clearly differentiated from the competition.
The concept gained currency in a series of Ad Age articles in the ’70s by Al Ries and Jack Trout and has kept its place in the marketing lexicon ever since — a sign that there’s something real going on.
A clear, compelling positioning statement is a kind of touchstone for all of your marketing efforts. If everyone in the company knows what you stand for, it’s a lot easier to judge whether a given tactic, headline or video is on-strategy.
We’ve adapted some ideas about positioning from the 1980s work of Bengt Anderson and Steve Trygg, two talented B2B marketers from Sweden, and over time, made them our own. We still use their simple, three-point test that says a positioning has to be:
Relevant –It has to speak to a real need at the front of the prospect’s mind.
Available – No other competitor can ‘own’ the positioning.
Attainable –It has to be credible; you have to be able to deliver on it (and prove you can).
A good positioning passes all three tests. Two out of three is not good enough. Some examples that fail:
“Cures the common cold” – relevant, yes; available, yes; attainable… no.
“The only purple blade server on the market” – available and attainable… but irrelevant.
“The safe car company” – relevant and attainable, but not really available (Volvo built a brand on it and many others chase safety now, too).
And a few examples that have succeeded so well, we don’t even have to tell you who they are:
“CRM without software”
“The computer for the rest of us”
“The open source operating system”
The fact that we struggled to come up with even these three tells you how rare it is for tech companies to create and sustain a clear, compelling positioning.
Sometimes, a positioning can be summed up in a strapline. More often, it takes a bit more than that — and might only have meaning for the target audience (not a bad thing). Here’s a few we prepared earlier:
ip.access is the ‘mobile over IP’ company.
They take mobile network traffic and route it over broadband to cut costs and improve network coverage and capacity.VNL is the microtelecom pioneer.
They’ve re-engineered GSM networks specifically for remote rural communities (just as microfinance did for banking).Psion Teklogix helps companies maximise their Return on Mobility™.
Their rugged mobile computers increase productivity while driving down costs.
We think these ideas pass the triple test for these companies: they’re relevant, available and attainable. And by driving them into the marketplace over and over again, we’re helping carve out a sustainable positioning that, in a world of me-too marketing, is a real competitive advantage.
How clear is your company’s positioning? Can you get it on to a T-shirt?
RSS feedsBack in the 19th Century, you could make all kinds of wild claims about your Tincture of Gripe Water or Dr Astoundo’s Patented Baldness Liniment. Nobody could sue you if it didn’t do what it said on the tin. That changed in the early 20th Century, which is all to the good. It means marketers have to be more creative when promoting products or services, and not just resort to bare-faced lies.
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…
Ice the champagne: our ‘Margin Killers’ campaign for IBS has been shortlisted for the Best International Campaign category in this year’s B2B Marketing Awards.
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sign up now ...Doug Kessler
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