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Velocity: The B2B Marketing Blog - A Joyride Through The Mean Streets of B2B

Topic results for "B2B marketing"

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…

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Doug Kessler | July 1st, 2009 | no comments

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.…

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Stan Woods | June 16th, 2009 | one comment

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…

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Doug Kessler | June 11th, 2009 | 3 comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | June 8th, 2009 | no comments

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…

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Neil Stoneman | May 8th, 2009 | 4 comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | May 6th, 2009 | no comments

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…

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Stan Woods | April 29th, 2009 | one comment

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,…

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Stan Woods | April 22nd, 2009 | 4 comments

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…

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Neil Stoneman | April 20th, 2009 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | April 16th, 2009 | 3 comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | April 7th, 2009 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | April 6th, 2009 | one comment

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…

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Doug Kessler | March 30th, 2009 | no comments

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…

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Stan Woods | March 26th, 2009 | no comments

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,…

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Doug Kessler | March 24th, 2009 | 4 comments

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…

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Stan Woods | March 19th, 2009 | 4 comments

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…

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Neil Stoneman | March 16th, 2009 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | March 12th, 2009 | 3 comments

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,…

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Doug Kessler | March 10th, 2009 | no comments

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,…

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Doug Kessler | March 8th, 2009 | no comments

‘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…

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Stan Woods | March 5th, 2009 | 4 comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | March 4th, 2009 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | February 24th, 2009 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | February 18th, 2009 | no comments

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…

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Stan Woods | February 13th, 2009 | no comments

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. …

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Neil Stoneman | February 6th, 2009 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | February 5th, 2009 | 2 comments

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…

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Stan Woods | January 28th, 2009 | 3 comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | January 26th, 2009 | 2 comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | January 19th, 2009 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | January 16th, 2009 | no comments

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. …

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Doug Kessler | December 23rd, 2008 | 3 comments

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…

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Stan Woods | December 18th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | December 15th, 2008 | 3 comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | December 11th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Roger Warner | December 10th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | December 10th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | December 8th, 2008 | one comment

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…

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Stan Woods | December 5th, 2008 | one comment

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…

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Doug Kessler | November 28th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | November 25th, 2008 | no comments

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,…

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Neil Stoneman | November 21st, 2008 | no comments

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,…

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Doug Kessler | November 18th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | November 13th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | November 10th, 2008 | 11 comments

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…

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Stan Woods | November 6th, 2008 | 4 comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | November 4th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | October 31st, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Neil Stoneman | October 14th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Roger Warner | September 24th, 2008 | one comment

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 –…

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Doug Kessler | September 16th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Roger Warner | September 9th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | September 4th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Roger Warner | July 25th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | July 22nd, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Roger Warner | July 18th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Roger Warner | June 16th, 2008 | no comments

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 -…

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Roger Warner | June 6th, 2008 | one comment

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…

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Roger Warner | May 21st, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Roger Warner | May 16th, 2008 | 4 comments

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…

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Roger Warner | May 1st, 2008 | 3 comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | April 4th, 2008 | one comment

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…

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Doug Kessler | March 28th, 2008 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | June 9th, 2009 | 5 comments

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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Doug Kessler | March 12th, 2009 | no comments

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…

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Doug Kessler | November 25th, 2008 | 8 comments

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…

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Roger Warner | July 10th, 2008 | 5 comments