Why the content marketing deluge will force all B2B marketers to raise their game and build a great content brand.
[VIDEO] B2B Masters: How marketing technology levels the playing field
John Watton of Expedia Affiliate Network shares how new marketing technology helps to level the playing field between big companies and their smaller competitors, in this latest B2B Masters video.
B2B Masters Video – On the relationship between B2B sales and marketing
John Watton of Expedia Affiliate Network and Velocity MD Stan Woods discuss the changing nature of the relationship between B2B sales and B2B marketing teams.
Godless Barbarians at the Gates of IT
Cloud, consumerization and startups are the push, but who’s pulling? An examination of a new and growing market. And a thrilling tour into the future of the enterprise software biz.
Social Success: a new content site for Salesforce.com
We’re inordinately proud to announce the launch of a new microsite by Salesforce UK that Velocity helped with. The site is called Social Success and it’s all about helping businesses harness the power of social media. Our job was to find the considerable pockets of expertise within Salesforce (the place is crawling with very, very [...]
Should we still be talking about the B2B marketing funnel?
I’m thinking we should give up on the funnel. But what would life post-funnel look like?
B2B content marketing: when target audiences clash
Marketers are instinctively inclusive. Our default is to set our crop-sprayer on the widest possible setting, covering the largest possible audience for everything we do. But content marketing is different. The best content marketing tends to be narrowly targeted, focusing on a very specific audience. That’s how we maximise relevance, earn downloads and reward engagement. [...]
Closing The Kimono: Lessons from the B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign
Project Open Kimono is over. It’s been fun, but has it led us to marketing heaven or straight to hell? Get the final judgement in our definitive wrap up post.
Project Open Kimono 12: Re-purposing and atomising your content
This is typical: you put a lot of effort into a chunky piece of marketing content — then retire it, move on and start working on the next piece. When you do that, you’re leaving a lot of content value behind and wasting a real opportunity to get more goodies for just a little more [...]
Are B2B marketers wimps? Project Open Kimono part 6
Our recent micro-survey generated some disturbing data: B2B marketers are wimps. Not a pretty result but maybe it’s time to face up to it…
The B2B Marketing Manifesto: hot off the press
“This is without a doubt the most exciting time in history to be a B2B marketer. It’s also the scariest.” That’s how our new eBook, The B2B Marketing Manifesto begins. It’s a lunatic rant, a call to arms and a plea for ambition in B2B marketing — with eleven specific recommendations for rising to the [...]
Anatomy of a project: Calnetix
We’ve just completed a big project for Calnetix, a company that turn waste heat from industrial processes into energy. It’s green, clean, and it saves money. What’s not to like? Watch the Prezi to find out what we did.
The power of beliefs in B2B marketing
Check out this great TED Talk by Simon Sinek on the power of beliefs in marketing. Great leaders and great companies start with beliefs not facts, policies, products or services. People don’t buy WHAT you do they buy WHY you do it.
Velocity is hiring geniuses – B2B marketing jobs London
B2B marketing job openings London: we’re Velocity and we’re hiring. But we’re not just hiring anyone. We’re hiring geniuses with souls, manners and senses of humour. If you like marketing and business and technology and creativity, we think this is the single best place in the world to spend a career.
Try to contain your excitement
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 [...]
A stop-motion movie for ShipServ
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’.
When was the last time you flossed?
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’.
Cleaning up your B2B product portfolio
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.
Five mistakes to avoid in the B2B selling process
The buying process is long and complex in B2B tech markets. Here are 5 mistakes to avoid when planning and executing your B2B sales.
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 when they sit down to tell the world about the thing they do for a living — the thing they spend a THIRD OF THEIR [...]
New B2B buying influences
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.
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.
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 things you’re doing wrong in your life’ or ‘How to be even more lovely than you are already’. They both boil down to the same thing: fear.
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 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 [...]
Woo hoo! John Watton, B2B Marketer of the Year
Woke up in a haze on a strange sofa in an unknown flat. Looked down: dinner jacket. Weird purple stain on shirt. Ah
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 for B2B marketers like you. Come and get it!
How strong is your B2B positioning?
Positioning is one of the essentials of B2B marketing but we don’t see a lot of companies getting it right. 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. We use this triple-test to develop strong positioning statements for our clients…
