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 smart people) then help package up their ideas and best-practice advice into content assets for the site.

The core piece of content on the site is a chunky eBook called The Social-Powered Enterprise: how social media is transforming your three most important disciplines. The three disciplines are sales, marketing and customer service and the book presents plenty of action points and cases in each area. There’s a form to fill in to get the eBook — but it’s worth it!

If you’re putting social to work in your business, the rest of the Social Success site is full of best-practice content and expert advice for you, including:

Social Media Expert Interviews
With people like Jacob Morgan on Social Collaboration and Brad Cleveland on Social Customer Service.  These guys really know their stuff and the interviews capture their thinking really succinctly.

Social Media Resource Roundups
These are short curated pieces that summarise some of the best resources out there across the web on subjects such as Mobile Social Media and Social Business Metrics and Social Selling (among others).

Dreamforce Takeaways
Dreamforce is the hottest tech event in the world, attracting amazing speakers. Dreamforce Takeaways are our attempt to summarise the most social-media-relevant sessions in a quick, easy-to-digest way. And you can listen to the original sessions and see the slides here too.  Our favourite is the Social Roadmap session with Gary Vaynerchuk, Charlene Li of Altimeter Group and Adam Brown of Dell.  But there are five more excellent ones to browse through.

Social Media Mini-Guides
These are more extensive articles on specific social disciplines including Social Selling and Social Customer Service.

Social Media Articles
Including this crowdsourced piece on Social Media Business Etiquette that had dozens of top-notch contributors or this one on Social Innovation.

A killer Social Media Infographic
On the Six Principles of Social Media Success from the eBook. It’s the social ethos captured in one rather tall graphic.

The site is a major initiative by Salesforce UK and it’s all about helping growing businesses (and businesses that are already massive) to get social media into their DNA – as Salesforce itself has done.  It’s not about selling software, it’s about evangelising something the company really believes in (working with them, we’ve seen how they walk the talk).

The project was the brainchild of Kieran Flanagan, the Search Manager for Salesforce EMEA and it’s an impressively ambitious play — the content will be rolled out to France and Germany this year. We’re not kissing arse when we say this (maybe a little) but Kieran has been hugely impressive through the entire process. He mined the considerable expertise and experience inside Salesforce to make sure we were capturing best practice strategy and real-world tactics. And did it with intelligence, focus and charm.

We loved working on the project and learned a hell of a lot on the way.

There’s a lot more to come on the Social Success site. Drop in, find the content most relevant to you – and do share it with your Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, Facebook friends and Google+ circles. They’ll thank you for it…

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B social media, B2B technology marketing, Content, Content Marketing, Social Media, Thought Leadership

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The funnel seems kind of wobbly these days. Here’s why:

No buyer wants to think he’s in a funnel.
It doesn’t align with how buyers feel like they approach a purchase. Can we say a model is good if the protagonist of the story dislikes it?

You’re not in charge.
In a market characterized by information surplus and driven by search, social and rich content signals, the buyer owns the rhythm. Not the seller.

Buyers don’t proceed. They swirl.
The stages in the funnel (defining a need, drawing up a shortlist, etc.) just don’t sync with purchase journeys anymore. Buyers don’t do linear. They circle.

You don’t have time for mapping.
The funnel model assumes that there are some absolutes, that the ground isn’t shifting underneath the market. In fact, all is in flux.

Buyers’ journeys don’t just end.
The funnel assumes that there’s a pool of people called the market who don’t know you, and that your job is done once they’ve bought your product. “Plop! You’ve gone through the funnel.”

There are smarter people than me who have been saying much the same thing for years, like Steven Noble of Forrester, MarketingProfs and countless others who say the sales funnel is dead. They replace the funnel with flows, maps, nets, circles and webs – everyone wants to own the next model.

Does the death of the funnel apply to the big B2B decisions? Yes. We have piles of information from trillions of sources – this applies just as well to the professional as the personal world. Industrial tumult is just as strong as consumer tumult, if not stronger.

The funnel was a model for storekeepers. The top of the funnel was the street. Then the funnel led into their shop, browsing, comparing, asking questions and then going to the register. The current model needs to be crafted on an Italian piazza. Consumers bounce in and out and all over the place, asking countless questions, listening in to conversations, examining and gossiping.

Funnels don’t do bouncy very well.

So what’s the fallout of a post-funnel world?

If the funnel doesn’t fit well with buyer behaviour, then the tools based on this model won’t work. Prospects who don’t act like they’re in a funnel will get treated in ways that don’t suit their actual intent. Vendors seem to be racing to address this, but it’s a tough move, as many were built up on the foundations of funnel thinking.

Funnel-based content will start to feel funny. That one case study that applies to that one particular part of the theoretical buyer journey goes flat. It feels faked, forced, one-dimensional and lame to buyers who have a three-dimensional view of the market.

Efforts to push prospects through a funnel process meet resistance. Marketers who push themselves on webinar attendees to read the next piece of corporate literature fail. Prospects can see through tired funnel-driven tactics. They’re not buying escalation.

That’s a start anyway.

So what would I do, post-funnel?

I’d start by thinking facilitation. No matter where you think you have a prospect, you don’t. You. Don’t. Have. Them. They’re in charge. You’re just facilitating them. Help them. Don’t push, and don’t play games. To hell with your sales quotas. But do get serious when they get serious.

Build out your non-linear expeditionary forces. Buy a blogger breakfast. No joke. These independent expert-istas are the developing gauge of influence in a noisy market. They are the conversational coin in the new media bazaar. And don’t send them emails studded with your opinions and product news. Buy them breakfast. Lunch? Drinks? Then chat.

Think non-competitive business development. Start partnering with people who are in your space, but who you don’t compete with, to develop content, events, staff trades and such. A pretty clever marketer named Joe Chernov said: “When you are the only one tweeting about your infographic, you probably blew the execution.”

Assume you don’t know where people are coming from. When someone lands on a page of your website, do not think you know why they came there, or that you know what they’re looking for. Be humble. Offer choices. Like this:

Those are my ideas anyway. Do you have any of your own?

© Ryan Skinner for Velocity Partners, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, marketing funnel, marketing models, sales funnel

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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.

Of course, there’s no need to be too narrow. and if a single piece of content can cover more than one target audience, why not go for it? It saves time and money and raises your Return on Content. Unfortunately, it’s not always a good idea to try to kill two birds with one content stone. In fact it’s rarely a good idea. Here’s why:

Different people ALWAYS have different perspectives, agendas and issues

• A board member has a different view of the world than a junior manager (where seniority is the dimension of differentiation)
• A test engineer has a different set of challenges than a sales director (the target’s discipline is the dimension)
• A hospital administrator cares about different things than a high school administrator (market sector)
• An existing customer has a different view of you than a cold prospect (degree of familiarity with your company)
• A Chinese manufacturer has different concerns than a French one (region)

Pick almost any meaningful dimension and you’ll find your prospect base starts to divide itself up along that spectrum.

The key questions are:

– How important are these differences in the context of the story you want to tell?

-- What are the penalties for addressing more than one target audience in the same piece?

Let’s go to the whiteboard please, Janice.

Here are two targets – Persona A and Persona B.
They have some things in common but lots that are not shared:

You’ve got a few options for targeting A and B with content:

• Aim for the common ground– keeping your story in the lavender zone; this is good if that zone is still compelling enough to both A and B. The downside: you’re often forced to leave out really good parts of your A story or your B story.

Tip: Signal the scope of the piece in the title and the introduction, then tell people up front who it’s for and why: “This piece is for A and B — we know you’ve got a lot of differences but here’s what you have in common and why this piece is great for you.”

• Try to tell the whole A + B story– signalling to the reader that ‘this bit applies to A’ and ‘this bit applies to B’. The downside: B people get bored during the A bits and vice gets bored during the versa.

Tip: Sidebars that clearly signal “Hey Mr A! Read this bit!” can help you balance your agenda without boring the pants of of one target or the other.

• Do a piece of content for A and another for B– This lets you tell your best story to each audience. The downside: it costs more and takes more time.

Tip: Use broader, more generic content to buy time while you develop your targeted, persona-specific stuff.

Of course, it’s great if your target audiences have a lot more in common, so the middle ground contains most of your goodies:

But sometimes, you cant fake it. Your two targets have so little in common that almost every paragraph contains a fork in the road and every sentence needs a conditional:

B2B Content Relevance & Alienation
There are two tests to help determine if the piece you’re developing really ought to be two pieces:

The Relevance Test – lumping two audiences together means each will have to wade through things that are not relevant – that’s a negative experience and can lose readers.

How much of your content is actually irrelevant to A or B? Can you make it relevant by explicitly building bridges? If a third of your content has no relevance or resonance for one target or the other, it’s probably time to split the piece.

The Alienation Test – Even if there’s lots of common ground, a single message that’s gold dust for A can be a major turn-off for B. One example: when marketing some kind of media (trade show, magazine…) one audience (the exhibitor or advertiser) is selling to the other (the visitor or reader). In this case, talking all about how the former will enjoy a ‘captive audience for your sales team’ will be perfume to A and skunk juice to B.

Is there any important message to one audience that will actually alienate the other? These need to be managed carefully — and lumping both targets together is rarely the answer.

Of course, sometimes — like on the home page – you have to address the issue and find the most compelling common ground. But if there are significant relevance or alienation issues, you want to stream people off of that common ground home page as quickly as possible so you can look them in the eyes and sell to them without fear.

Why this matters
As a reader, you know when you’re reading a great piece of content: it seems to almost have your name on it. It’s aimed at a spot right in the middle of your forehead. It uses the language you use to describe the challenges you face in terms you recognise.

You also know when a piece is not quite aimed at you. It uses unfamiliar language; is pitched at the wrong level (too techie, not techie enough); talks about problems you haven’t experienced and skips over ones you have.

The penalties of badly targeted B2B content marketing
Making a piece to target two different audiences forces some bad things to happen:

– You’re forced to use generic language – instead of language that’s specific to one of the audiences.

To a hospital administrator, “increase asset utilisation” is a bore, but “double your operating room throughput” resonates. But you can’t say that if you’re also targeting high school administrators with the same piece.

– You talk about abstract ideas – instead of concrete realities.

To a marketing director, ‘improve process efficiencies’ is ho-hum jargon while ‘get more campaigns to market faster’ is lean-forward stuff.

– You’re forced to ‘couch’ your killer messages – instead of letting them fly.

‘For people like A, this widget halves costs and for people like B it’s doubles revenue.’
‘Finance guys love it because it saves money; engineers love it because it improves performance.’

Yuk.

The Bottom Line
(because all lines have bottoms have and all bottoms, alas, have their lines):

Non-specific, abstract, couchy talk sucks. While specific, concrete and direct talk moves mountains and blows away molehills.

‘All things to all people’ results in boring work. While relevant points told in familiar language feels ‘just for me’.

Great content hits people between the eyes. And mediocre content falls at their feet with a pffffttt.

The time to discover which of the two piles your next piece of content marketing  falls into is at the outline stage – where the problem will leap off the page and kiss you full on the lips (but in a bad way).  That’s reason enough to always do an outline stage.

The Reco: do occasional broad-brush content marketing but, as a rule, do more pieces and make each one highly targeted, with a persona so clear you can talk to it.

How about your own experiences? Any pieces you wish you had split into two or three? Any that spanned different audiences but worked just fine?
We’d love to hear about it.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B lead generation, Copywriting, persuasion, Thought Leadership

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The project has been our commitment to showing business value from our B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign. If you’ve been following then you’ll be familiar with the ‘warts and all’ B2B analytics case studies we’ve published along the way.

It’s been great fun but now – after a long campaign and an equivalent budget spend of £25,000 (made up of our time and a dabble of a few hundred quid in PPC experiments) – comes the definitive wrap-up post for the first six months. Did we fulfill our promise of last year? Or have we been hoist by our own petard?

Let’s find out.

Business Goals

Conversions
We set two new business targets.

Two projects from new clients
We’ve smashed this target. We’re sure the likes of Baynote and AppCentral will be happy to rubber-stamp the fact.

Three projects from existing clients
Another tick in the box. We loved welcoming Magus and Elateral back into the office for new campaigns and projects.

So what’s that in actual ROI terms? I talked to the guys huddled by the company abacus and they assured me the top line return is running at 700% plus. One of them actually smiled (rare for an abacus guy).

But what about the bottom line? Well, the figure of 175% (hat tip to the Lenskold Group) after only six months makes some pretty tidy reading.

Business Pipeline
We also set a target of fresh fuel for lead nurturing campaigns.

Gather 200 names for our database
A slam dunk. Of the thousands of new contacts, we added 392 names that meet our criteria (demographic and psychographic) to our prospect database. The others are still in our wider list of ‘people we’re happy to know’.

We expect a future ROI boost as our B2B lead nurturing campaigns work their magic and turn prospects into future sources of revenue. The pipeline’s rumbling.

So the job’s a good one and, if we’re writing a senior management report, we would probably stop here.

But if you’re keen to know the details that underpinned our success, we’re keen to share them.

Operational Goals

Site Performance
We had three main key performance indicators (KPIs) measured over six months and, when relevant, benchmarked against past performance.

Generate 1000 Manifesto downloads
Another winner. In six months the flood of downloads (1506 to be precise) means we’ve outperformed our target by over 50%. Here’s a month by month break-down.

Inspire 50 comments on the download page
A tough assignment but a success. You’ll find 87 (minus one we made ourselves) lined up on the download page, and at least a dozen more across various other parts of our site. It helped that we begged:

Drive 25% increase in thought leadership downloads
This one’s out the park. We scored an ultimate 171% uplift in downloads as the Manifesto itself became a huge source of referred traffic as visitors came, in droves, to check out our B2B content marketing library.

Search Performance

We wanted to improve our overall search performance in three ways.

Get higher up Google.com and UK index for ‘B2B Marketing’
Whoops. We’ve been up and down here (as you might expect) but finished the project down four spots in the UK and even further adrift in the US.

Increase search traffic on “B2B Marketing” stem by 50%
More like it. A 86% increase in search traffic shows why you should never forget the value of longer tail searches.

Increase search conversions on “B2B Marketing” stem by 35%
Close, but no cigar. But a 26% conversion rise is still a decent return (see the small green number under “Goal: Conversion Rate):

We also wanted to match the backlink performance of Content Marketing Workbook. The current running totals from SEOmoz (excluding internal links initially counted*) are:

We’re happy with the results for three reasons: the content marketing book is 14 months older, it’s a more instructive (rather than inspirational) read and it has benefited from campaign cross-promotion.

Social Media

We also used the Content Marketing Workbook as a benchmark for our social media results.

Increase visits from social media by 50%
Back on track. We scored a 65% spike from key social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, SlideShare, Reddit, Delicious and Facebook.

Increase social media conversions by 100%
I think we’ve done it. Is a 2910% rise enough? It’s almost too good to be true.**

Improve our time on site and bounce rates
Two boxes, two ticks: a 21% and 8% hike respectively – see the small green figures that compare data with the benchmark period:

Online PR

Using the Content Marketing Workbook launch as a benchmark we found.

Increase visits from Online PR by 50%
Ace! It’s an increase of 194% on our benchmark period.

Increase Online PR conversions by 100%
Whoosh! Increased by over 5000%. Almost certainly too good to be true**

Improve our time on site and bounce rates
Mixed bag. A 13% drop in time plays a 17% better bounce rate.

The Seven Cs of Strategic Analytics

So that’s the project in numbers. We’re delighted, relieved and more than a little bit wiser. It got us thinking about the role analytics play in helping B2B marketers create better campaigns. Your analytics deliver more when they’re:

1. Commercially-Focused
The first thing is to make sure you work out the impact on sales and revenue. Imagine you can prove that your work brings in the revenue (and the profits); then imagine your next review; now ask yourself why marketing analytics are so important.

2. Campaign-Driven
You can’t measure everything. And measuring the odd random statistic is pointless. That’s why campaigns with clear budgets, costs, timelines and outcomes are a great marketing focus. What’s not to measure?

3. Conversion-Based
Getting people to your site one thing, but the goal has to be to make them do things: download, play, contact, buy. These action-orientated behaviors are signs of funnel movement. And that’s what we’re paid to do.

4. Consistent (Part 1)
We’re all (most of us anyway) programmed to act consistently. The chances of us doing something increase exponentially when we publicly declare we’re going to do it. The act of writing Open Kimono significantly increased the likelihood of its success. The main point: the best analytics shape your future, they don’t just report on the past.

5. Consistent (Part 2)
And there’s the other kind of consistency. You need to stay focused from start line to finish line. We’ve tried to be consistent and report on the things we identified at the start. Sure business directions change, but shifting the project goal posts too far simply leaves you with data that makes no sense.

* We included internal links in our initial analysis. We shouldn’t have done that.

** The data looks great but reflects better goal organisation and management in our analytics more than actual performance.

6. Comparative
Only by benchmarking results against your own past projects or competitors (using tools like compete.com) can you really determine success. It’s not about how things are: it’s about how much better you can make them.

7. Continuous
This project is over, but it’s just one of a number we’ve got running at any one time.  A commitment to great analytics is a commitment to great marketing. You don’t stop one if you want to carry on doing the other.

Summing Up

So it’s time to close the Kimono and get on to our next ideas. The entire exercise has been hugely rewarding, enlightening and just plain fun. We put our money where our mouths used to be. We set out our targets, metrics and performance for all to see. And we’re really glad we did.

Campaigns for our clients have already benefited from the things we learned in this project, with measurable results. So watch this space.

Thanks for staying with us – do catch up with the rest of the project if you’ve not done it before – and don’t be shy to leave a comment below. We’d love to know what you think of this exercise.

Project Open Kimono Part 1 – the one where we commit ourselves in public (Planning)

Project Open Kimono Part 2 – the one where it all kicks off (Thinking)

Project Open Kimono Part 3 – the one where confidence starts to rise (First results)

Project Open Kimono Part 4 – the one where the trick shots start (Cross-promotion)

Project Open Kimono Part 5 – the one where we share the first month’s results (Reviewing)

Project Open Kimono Part 6 – the one where we toughen up (Soul Searching)

Project Open Kimono Part 7 – the one where we find the world’s best marketers (Segmenting)

Project Open Kimono Part 8 – the one where we show that design isn’t everything (Style v Substance)

Project Open Kimono Part 9 – the one where lead nurturing proves its worth (Marketo)

Project Open Kimono Part 10 – the one where the form fights back (Form v No Form)

Project Open Kimono Part 11 – the one about autoDMs in Twitter

Project Open Kimono Part 12 – the one about re-purposing and atomising your content

Project Open Kimono Part 13 – the one with an early peek at the outcomes

© neilstoneman for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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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 work.

Here’s an example. Our B2B Marketing Manifesto has had a great run (Neil will summarise just how great in an upcoming post) but traffic and downloads have started to settle down. Similarly, our Content Marketing Workbook went gangbusters for a while and is now a steady earner rather than start performer.

So here’s where the re-purposing comes in.

The Manifesto ends with the Six Staples of B2B Marketing (seven actually, there’s a bonus staple thrown in). So now the plan is to turn each of these into a short piece where we can drill down a bit more than we could in the Manifesto itself.

The first effort is The B2B Content Marketing Tutorial, a highly visual, interactive guide to a best-practice content marketing workflow. We did it as a Prezi to vary the media a bit (it would be great to do all seven in seven different media — if we can come up with seven). Take a look — but make sure you view it in fullscreen mode and use the play button to advance.

We hope The B2B Content Marketing Tutorial is more than an excerpt or simply a reshaping of existing content (you’d all get bored with that pretty quickly). Instead, it’s a new spin on a smaller topic within a larger piece: in this case, a guide to the HOW part of content marketing instead of the WHAT and WHY covered elsewhere.

Here are some principles of content re-purposing:

Zoom in – take a single chapter or topic from your big eBook and make it the whole subject of the next, shorter piece.

Complement – the Manifesto was strategic, so the Tutorial is tactical and practical.

Morph – change formats to keep things interesting. We’ve turned eBooks into checklists into videos into webinars into slideshows…

Connect – make an explicit connection between the pieces. Make them feel like a family. The Tutorial is in the Manifesto ‘spray paint stencil’ style. (It’s also connected to the Content Marketing Workbook, but we changed styles since doing that one).

Atomise – the Tutorial is on our site and the Prezi site, too. If it was, say, a deck, we’d put it on Slideshare, Scribd and Docstoc, too. If a video on YouTube, Vimeo and beyond.

Cross-promote – the Tutorial promotes the Manifesto and CM Workbook. And we’ll update those pieces to promote the Tutorial. Makes sense. Of course, we’ll also blog about it (like, um, now) and tweet about it and post it in LinkedIn groups and bookmark it and send it out to our e-newsletter subscribers (sign up using the form on the right)…

Open the gate – the Manifesto had a short form for data capture. The Tutorial doesn’t. We discuss that here.

Measure – this is essential on of any list of B2B principles. All links in the Tutorial are tagged for analytics and for Marketo, so we can watch our honoured audience as they poke and prod around our soft bits. (Ooh. That tickles.)

It’s early days — we only just posted the thing – but we’re getting lots of hits, some really good comments – and downloads of the Content Marketing Workbook and B2B Marketing Manifesto are spiking again. It’s like B2B Viagra.

Don’t just relegate your latest content piece to the dusty digital shelf. Give it a new spin, a quick squeeze and a zotz of energy.

More Project Open Kimono, in which Velocity exposes itself to the elements:

Project Open Kimono Part 1 – the one where we commit ourselves in public (Planning)

Project Open Kimono Part 2 – the one where it all kicks off (Thinking)

Project Open Kimono Part 3 – the one where confidence starts to rise (First results)

Project Open Kimono Part 4 – the one where the trick shots start (Cross-promotion)

Project Open Kimono Part 5 – the one where we share the first month’s results (Reviewing)

Project Open Kimono Part 6 – the one where we toughen up (Soul Searching)

Project Open Kimono Part 7 – the one where we find the world’s best marketers (Segmenting)

Project Open Kimono Part 8 – the one where we show that design isn’t everything (Style v Substance)

Project Open Kimono Part 9 – the one where lead nurturing proves its worth (Marketo)

Project Open Kimono Part 10 – the one where the form fights back (Form v No Form)

Project Open Kimono Part 11 – the one about autoDMs in Twitter

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, Content Marketing, digital marketing, Thought Leadership

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As part of our B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign, we asked a single, simple question in the download form. Tucked under the boxes for name, email and company name is the optional question: “The hardest part of B2B marketing is____”.

To be honest, we threw this question in as an afterthought but it’s proven to be one of the most interesting things we’ve done in the Manifesto campaign, so we’d like to share it here in our ‘living case study’, Project Open Kimono.

Let’s admit right out front that this ‘micro-survey’ isn’t particularly scientific. It’s not a random sample of B2B marketers (just the kind who download things like B2B manifestos) and the question itself is open to many different interpretations (like what do we mean by ‘hardest’ anyway?).

But the results are even better than rigorous: they’re interesting. And they really do make me think a bit differently about B2B. Because what it shows is a kind of snapshot of the state of mind of B2B marketers today. Not a detailed analysis of our priorities but a peek into how we think about our work.  The fact that this was a top-of-the-head question rather than a ‘sit down and take a survey’ kind of experience might even make it more valuable as a mindset indicator. The Wordle of all the responses (above) reads like a CAT scan of any B2B marketer’s brain.

Here are the top five answers, shown as a percent of total answers (clients and agency/suppliers are all lumped together in this one):

A Bombshell: the enemy within
One rather shocking result jumped out of this little exercise: the number one obstacle B2B marketers identify has nothing to do with actually getting through to prospective buyers, winning their attention, convincing them to engage or getting them to buy. The number one obstacle isn’t about creating great content, generating high-quality leads or proving ROI (though all of these showed up in the top five).

The hardest part of B2B marketing turns out to be convincing other people within the company to do the right things. It’s worth saying it again in the boldest face WordPress will allow:

The hardest part of B2B marketing is fighting internal battles.

Think about this. Of all the incredibly challenging things we all have to struggle with, we’re most daunted by getting our bosses or boards or other departments to value us, listen to us and take our advice (these are the kinds of words people used — they’re masked by our aggregated term “Convincing internal people”).

I don’t know about you but seeing this in the cold light of Excel kind of gave me a kick in the head.

But when I thought about it a bit, it not only makes sense, it explains a lot of what I’ve experienced in my 25 years in the business. Here’s what I think this curious little crumb of data actually means:

B2B marketers are not very powerful
We’re not highly valued inside our companies
Our expertise is suspect

Why would this be so? I hate to say it but it’s probably because the doubters are absolutely right: B2B marketers have not earned the respect of our peers and our bosses because we have not delivered clear, undeniable value to our businesses.

Ouch.

Part of this may be that B2B businesses are less likely to be ‘marketing driven’ than consumer marketing companies are (I could be wrong but I’d be amazed if B2C marketers were as concerned by internal obstacles). In Nike and Coca-Cola, marketing is the most powerful department not one of the least. Rightly or wrongly, B2B companies are often more sales-driven or engineering-driven. You don’t find many consumer brands that aren’t all about the marketing.

A client-side issue
Our first reaction to the topline data was to ask, “Was the focus on internal obstacles skewed by agency-side whingers?”  We thought it must be but the data says quite the opposite. Here’s how client-side marketers differ from agency/supplier side:

As you can see, the agency side didn’t really rate the internal problems highly at all. They did, however consider things like “Proving value to prospects” and “getting C-level buy-in” as the hardest part of their jobs — far higher than their client-side peers.

So it seems safe to say that many B2B marketers within companies are struggling in their efforts to be heard, valued, respected and left alone to do what they know is right for the business.

What can we do about it?
The B2B Marketing Manifesto is really all about this challenge: how marketers can thrive in The Land of Accountability” — and prove our value as we do it.

So the first action is to read the damn thing and see if it inspires a new way of thinking about your job.

Then, it feels like it’s time for some soul-searching: How much value are you really adding to your business? Can you prove it? Have you shown the evidence to the important stakeholders?

If the answer is ‘no’ to any of these questions, here’s a follow-up: Why not?

B2B marketers of the world: rise up! We have nothing to lose but the poor opinion of our peers…

What do you think? We’d love to hear your views on this.

——

Want the full Open Kimono picture?

Project Open Kimono Part 1 – the one where we commit ourselves in public (Planning)

Project Open Kimono Part 2 – the one where it all kicks off (Thinking)

Project Open Kimono Part 3 – the one where confidence starts to rise (First results)

Project Open Kimono Part 4 – the one where the trick shots start (Cross-promotion)

Project Open Kimono Part 5 – the one where we share the first month’s results (Reviewing)

Project Open Kimono Part 6 – the one where we toughen up (Soul Searching)

Project Open Kimono Part 7 – the one where we find the world’s best marketers (Segmenting)

Project Open Kimono Part 8 – the one where we show that design isn’t everything (Style v Substance)

Project Open Kimono Part 9 – the one where lead nurturing proves its worth (Marketo)

Project Open Kimono Part 10 – the one where the form fights back (Form v No Form)

A kind of Quasi–Methodology
The data above represents the first 254 responses to the open-ended question, “The hardest part of B2B marketing is___”. Of these, 189 were client-side and 65 were agency or supplier-side (including marketing tools vendors).

There was a wide variety of answers, which we grouped into 35 different buckets. If someone gave two or three answers, we counted them all. Someone else looking at the raw data might put a few responses into different buckets than we did, but the numbers are big enough to feel our results are worth noting.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B analytics, B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, B2B research, B2B survey, Innovation, Open Kimono

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“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 new challenges we all face.

The eBook is our attempt to make sense of a whole range of disruptions to the once-cozy world of B2B. Clearly, we’re no longer in the business of making brochures and exhibition graphics. We’re now in the business of filling sales funnels and we’re more accountable for it than ever before. Which is either a really, really good thing (if you’re confident and ambitious) or a really, really bad thing (if you just want a quiet life).

Now here’s what we’d love you to do: download the eBook; read it; then come back and comment, ideally on the landing page (though you can use the comment form below if you prefer). The end of the Manifesto makes clear why we’re asking.  So thank you in advance for that.

We’ll be blogging about the progress of our new baby in a living case study called ‘Project Open Kimono’ over the coming weeks and months, including sharing our goals, the tactics we’re using and the results (warts, winces and all), based on Neil’s ace analytics. So do come back.

We’re also happy to guest blog, speak or contribute to webinars on the topics raised in the Manifesto. Just ask!

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B lead generation, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, B2B social media, Corporate Message Development, Corporate Positioning, Lead Generation, lead nurturing, SEO, Thought Leadership, web analytics

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© lucy for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing

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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..

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, Copywriting, persuasion, Thought Leadership

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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.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B agency hiring, B2B marketing agency jobs, B2B marketing job openings

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