Topic results for "B2B marketing"
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?Friday post: B2B AWESOME!!!
This is a Friday Velocity post. That means all bets are off, and this is totally NSFW. But fuck it. I think it’ll make you feel awesome.We’re live and unfiltered on Facebook. Join us!
Perhaps a little less polished but a little more rounded, we're now on Facebook.Moneyball: Why Oakland Analytics will change our world
Every B2B marketer should watch Moneyball. It's another sign that science will change every world. It's time to adapt or die.Billboard boycott – let’s start with B2B billboard ads
Having spent my entire career in marketing, I’m hardly an anti-capitalist. But there is one form of advertising that I’d happily see banned tomorrow: billboards.
The multi-billion dollar outdoor…
The Marketo Revenue Rockstar Tour Review
I just got back to the desk the day after Marketo’s Revenue Rockstar event in London so I thought I’d file a quick report on it.
The event was…
Heavenly B2B Content Marketing: The Ave Maria Moment
Getting it right. How some of our clients are starting to produce content that's just ripe for promotion from day one.Are you coming to FUNNEL?
FUNNEL is a great idea (well, we did help develop it). It’s a B2B marketing event that covers the entire sales/marketing pipeline.
It happens on 1 November at the…
The Devil wants Pravda (and he wants it now)
Find out happens when creative ideas get sidelined in the B2B content marketing process. It's not clever, it's not fun and it's certainly not pretty...Content marketing & marketing automation webinar
In case you missed last week’s Content Marketing & Marketing Automatation webinar put on by DemandGen’s John Sweeney, here’s a link to the archived talk with slides.
In it,…
The A/B and Multivariate Testing Resource Map
We’re always surprised by how infrequently B2B marketers actually test their web pages, emails, banner ads and content offers.
That’s why A/B and Multivariate Testing is one of the Six…
Are you the bore in the corner?
When he was working for a big B2B company, Andrew Walker did a brave thing. He audited every piece of communication that his company put out, with a cold,…
Nine companies B2B marketers should know about
You’re a marketer, we’re marketers. It’s good to share the things we like.
Here are nine companies you ought to know about. They all help marketers make more money…
Internet Marketing Strategy: a meaty new briefing for all marketers
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the change taking place in digital marketing – and all the blogs, eBooks, videos and research reports that try to explain it all…
12 Lessons from the Manifesto Campaign – Project Open Kimono 13
We’ll be wrapping up the results of the B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign soon, but here’s a quick tour of some of the lessons learned as we brought the Manifesto to…
Just buy the f**king product
Inspired by the story of the new best-selling children’s book sensation “Go the f**k to sleep”, we bring you the story of a CEO* brought to the edge of desperation as he copes with digital marketing.Company blog as B2B skunkworks
How making your business's blog into a testing ground for new ideas can drive innovation, and provide proof of concept for radical changes.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.…
We’re Hiring: Digital Marketing Analyst
Are you ready for the Land of Accountability? If you're a B2B marketer with a thirst for measurement then find out why we might be your next assignment.Time for B2B Marketers to Rename AdWords
Google Adwords? Better your own AdWords. Customize your settings or watch the cash flow down the sink.A nice bit of visual B2B personalisation
LinkedIn just sent me a nice piece of highly personalized B2B email.
I’ve never seen ‘visual persoanlization’ in an out-bound email before but it’s pretty compelling to see the faces…
What B2B marketers can learn from Viagra Spam
Viagra spammers have a tough challenge. They know that if they can get their message to a few billion people, a few thousand morons will place an order. But…
Project Open Kimono 10 – The Form Conclusion
We cursed the web form. But warned it might fight back. Has the form risen, Phoenix like from the Velocity flames, in the latest installment of Project Open Kimono?Project Open Kimono 9: The Lead Nurturing Effect.
Project Open Kimono shows how you can use lead nurturing to transform your email returns in just one week. It's like magic.How to inject urgency into your B2B marketing
We talk a lot about the Battle for Attention in B2B and about Buyer Attention Deficit Disorder and the relentless Mississippi of info-dreck that gushes through us all every…
Project Open Kimono 7 – Can analytics find the world’s best B2B marketers?
We want great B2B marketing clients. But where can we find the people who share our view of the marketing world. Find out how we used our analytics to narrow down our search for the world's best B2B marketers.The B2B Marketing Manifesto Explained
Doug talks to John Sweeney about the frustrations and hope that inspired the B2B Marketing Manifesto.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...B2B Analytics – Project Open Kimono – Part 5
A digital curtain has descended on B2B marketing content. The next installment of Project Open Kimono looks at the forms that increasingly guard the door to our resource sections.Five things I’ve learned in B2B marketing
Well, I’m moving on to work for Thomson Reuters (the siren call of being able to walk to work proved to be too strong to resist), and I thought I’d get all reflective and try to sum up some of the (many) things I’ve learned at Velocity.Top B2B bloggers: we have favourites and we’re not ashamed of it
We’ve been fishing around and come up with a digest of recent blog posts and B2B resources that we think are pretty cracking. Have a look and see if you agree.Cross-Promoting B2B Content: Project Open Kimono Part 4
It’s time to talk about cross-promoting content as we approach week three of Project Open Kimono, the real-life, almost-real-time, warts-bunions-and-all case study of our B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign. The…
B2B Marketing Analytics – Project Open Kimono Part 3
Two weeks in and the analytics Kimono is wide open. Take a look and see what you can learn from our B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign.B2B Content Marketing Trends and Spends
Marketing Profs and Junta 42 haven’t half been busy lately. They’ve produced a report into content marketing, surveying skills, resources, and trends. It’s the biggest and most comprehensive report of…
B2B Case Study Live – Project Open Kimono – part 2
B2B Case Study live: Project Open Kimono Part 2, in which Velocity, the B2B Marketing Agency shares it's experiences in promoting the B2B Marketing Manifesto.B2B Marketing Analytics: Project Open Kimono
You might call us brave. You might call us stupid. But I like to think we're honest. Project Open Kimono is a warts and all look at how we plan our content marketing strategy for ourselves and, of course, for our clients.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…
Sales and Marketing: the same hymn sheet
Our friend Stephanie Tilton (one of the Savvy B2B Marketers) and the folks at AG Salesworks have just published an excellent eBook on the subject: Gear Up For Success: 8 Steps to Get Sales & Marketing Cranking in Unison:Sex, Lies, and Advertising
Back 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.Are walled gardens the end of the party for web analytics?
No man is an island, entire of itself, especially not on Facebook (that’s the point of it, after all). But increasingly it’s becoming an island to analytics. It’s not alone, either.Modern SEO: optimize for show, organize for dough
Search engine optimizers are no longer the superstars of B2B marketing. Find out how SEO is being reinvented from a content to a people challenge.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.Ten ways that B2B marketing copy goes wrong
Let's face it, most B2B copywriting is not very good. There are many reasons, but here are our top ten. Is your latest B2B marketing copy guilty of any of them?Why bounce rate envy doesn’t help anyone, not even marketers
Ask people about bounce rates and they’ll tell you that a high bounce rate is bad. Fair enough, it sounds pretty logical. But how do you know what’s a high bounce rate?Analytics can be fun, honestly.
Ok, fine; maybe not as much fun as driving a speedboat up the Thames, but it can be extremely handy and oddly satisfying –if you get it right, that is. If you get it wrong, it’s less “fun” and more “total bloody nightmare”.Why government and SEO don’t mix
You can practically hear the moral outrage screaming between the lines: “Four government departments spent almost £6m ensuring their websites appeared on search engine results pages in the last two financial years, according to newly released figures.” (BBC)Why great B2B marketers must (sometimes) fail
To achieve greatness you must be prepared to fail. What's true in sport is true in B2B marketing. It's time to accept the power of failure in a glorious career.Ten Tips for Cross-Promoting your Content, Part II
As B2B marketing content libraries start to grow, we all need to think about how we cross-promote our content to people who have already engaged with us.B2B marketing jobs in London
We want your body. And your brain. We're looking for talented copywriters, designers and project managers, so if you're looking for a job in B2B marketing, come and talk to us.Why KPIs underpin your B2B content marketing cycle?
To love your customers is to love your analytics. Find out why B2B content marketing campaigns need KPIs for measured success.B2B marketing’s virtuous digital circle: Spin Cycle
At Velocity we believe in making our content work harder than we do. Find out how just a little bit of joined up thinking can make you the toast of your management team in just three months and still have spare time to enjoy the sunshine.Bite me, Michael O’Leary
Photo credit: Le Scribbler
I’ve never flown Ryanair before. And now I never will again. If I’d wanted to raise my blood pressure, I could have done that for…
How to structure a B2B argument
B2B marketing always comes down to building an argument; telling a story that leads to an inescapable conclusion: ‘You need to buy this, now.’ If your argument isn’t solid, the creativity of Björk and the budget of Nike will not move your business.IBS campaign shortlisted for B2B Marketing Awards 2010
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.Real women don’t sell
Ultimo, the lingerie maker, has launched a new line of evening dresses. Interesting bit of diversification there – I suppose it makes sense for company that makes bras to also make outer garments. Hopefully the dresses will be designed with the logistics of bra-wearing in mind...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.B2B Copywriting: hitting the sweet spot
There are four kinds of B2B copywriting and they fall into the neat little quadrants formed when two important axes intersect: Clarity and Authenticity. If you can get both in your writing, you're in the Sweet Spot and wonderful things will begin to happen to you...Calnetix Power Solutions gets a dose of Velocity
The problem: how to sell a ground-breaking innovation to one of the world’s most conservative industries.
Calnetix Power Solutions has invented a technology that captures waste heat from engines, boilers…
What hugging cruets and joined-up marketing have in common
Answer: Econsultancy. Let me explain…
Econsultancy have a brilliant new event called JUMP (which we helped launch a few months ago). It’s the most exclusive “online meets offline marketing” event…
Avoid marketing intranet pitfalls
Here’s an eBook we’ve written and designed for our friends SmallWorlders, the people who create fun and social intranets for marketing teams. Since it's been up on the SmallWorlders website they've seen traffic increase 10 to 20 times the usual, which is pretty damn impressive.Turns out a picture is worth at least 2,380 words
The old cliché “a picture is worth a thousand words” has been around forever so there must be some truth to it. But only a certain kind of obsessive…
An infographic with sound
We love infographics here at Velocity and are big fans of Edward Tufte and Information is Beautiful and Data Flow and stuff like that. But we just had to…
The value of story? About 2,776%
We’re always talking about how important a story is in marketing — but now someone has finally proven it with an ingenious experiment.
As summarised in a recent DoubleThink…
Free B2B Hugs: 25 ways to reward your most engaged customers
Everyone's always talking about 'customer engagement' and we can see why: fully engaged customers -- the ones who comment on your blog posts, join your Facebook group, reteweet your tweets, eat all your content, give you testimonial quotes, participate in case studies and attend your events – add tremendous value to your business and your brand.Making the sales team irrelevant
Roger Warner, online PR maestro, sent us a link to this Doug Richard video. It’s a two-minute extract from one of his start-up seminars, this one on the relationship…
Notes from a General Election: the power of decisions
B2B marketers are always looking to influence decisions. But the recent General Election shows how every customer decision can change the dynamic of your relationship.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’.B2B Content Marketing: Mobilise Your Home Front
Anyone else hate time, resources and expertise? I know I do. Find out how you can stop B2B marketing's ancestral enemies from wrecking your social media programmes now.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.Nativ gets its mojo on
We’ve been working with a great company called Nativ, who offer a digital video content management and distribution platform and service.7 reasons B2B buyers share content without looking
Find out how you can get people to share your work before they've even taken a look.We explain ourselves – in infographics
As you’ll know if you got our newsletter we’re big fans of infographics over here. We got inspired by all of these and decided to have a go ourselves. This is…
‘Margin Killers’ eBook reaches 600 downloads
We didn’t mention this? We’ve been working with IBS, the wholesale distribution software experts, to produce a content series on the five big success drivers in wholesale distribution.…
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.What fashion and marketing have in common
Here’s something I hadn’t really thought about: the analogous relationship between B2B and haute couture. In fact, fashion in general. And marketing in general.7 Incredibly Rare Mistakes in Social Media Marketing
There are literally thousands of blog posts, eBooks and articles called, "The 24 Most Common Mistakes in Social Media Marketing". But no one ever covers the really rare mistakes in social media marketing -- the ones almost nobody ever seems to make.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…
Marketo’s new Definitive Guide gets some Velocity
We’ve been working with Marketo, the biggest cheese in B2B marketing automation, to design and sub-edit their new eBook ‘The Definitive Guide to B2B Social Media’. It’s the latest in the series of Definitive Guides (you can read the first one on Lead Nurturing here).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.The Cliché and The Copywriter
Trawling LinkedIn as is my wont, I came across this website which was thoughtfully shared with the world by Reuben Webb: http://www.101cliches.com/view-the-101 Oh how I sniggered.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.The power of B2B Lead Nurturing
The sales team owns the sales funnel. But as a B2B marketer, you feed the top of their funnel. So you own your company’s revenue…
B2B web marketing: the platform battle
As B2B web marketing comes of age, a battle is brewing between some pretty big players (and a few upstarts) over who will become the primary dashboard for marketers. The three combatants: CRM, CMS and marketing automation vendors.Never mind the Barack, it’s mobiThinking
Birth of a thought leadership website dotMobi is a mobile Internet services company and the registry for the .mobi domain name. It’s backed by leading mobile operators, device manufacturers, and Internet players, including Microsoft and Google. Essentially, .mobi is the only domain name that tells users, ‘This site will work on your phone’.You can have it done right, cheap, or quick. Pick two
Fortunately, it’s very rare that we ever get a client who doesn’t understand that you can’t have all three at once. Yet it’s still something that a lot of agencies come up against. But perhaps these problems wouldn’t arise if we marketers explained ourselves properly.What’s white, invisible, invaluable and online now?
No internal search returns! Find out how your own site's search results can turn you into a better informed marketer in minutes.EPiServer uses market momentum to go public
We just learned that our client EPiserver is preparing to go public on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The company offers the best Micorosft .Net CMS on the planet and has delivered some really impressive numbers over the last few years.The rise and rise of B2B content marketing
Content Marketing is rivaling social media marketing in the hype stakes -- and for good reason. It may not be particularly new, but in the age of the informed buyer and zero-cost distribution (the Internet), it's what works in B2B marketing. The 2010 Content Marketing Spending Survey by Junta 42 confirms the trend (though anyone with a passing acquaintance with Twitter, LinkedIn or any B2B marketing blog won't need it confirmed)...IBS injects Velocity into turnaround
When we met them in 2009, IBS, the specialist ERP vendor, was in turnaround. They’d just finished a major restructuring to focus the entire global business on one sector, wholesale distribution, and asked Velocity to clarify their positioning, develop a new story and take it to market.2010 Content Marketing Trends and Predictions
Drumroll please... Introducing The 2010 Content Marketing Trends and Predictions eBook from ClickPredictions -- a crowdsourced effort by "39 of the world's top B2B marketers, e-mail marketers and social media gurus" (including, erm, me). Ambal Balakrishnan, the tireless ClickDocuments founder, asked each of us a straightforward question, “What are key marketing trends and predictions for 2010?”Should free B2B content hide behind a form?
The debate rages on: is it better to ask people to fill out a form to download your content (chasing shy people away) or maximise downloads and go without…
Our New Year’s B2B Marketing Resolutions
Inspired by Neil’s resolution “to eat breakfast every morning”, I got everyone at Velocity to give me their B2B marketing resolutions. So here are…
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…
Velocity Does Video: Nine kinds of B2B web video
As this quick showreel demonstrates, we've been doing more and more video for our B2B marketing clients. Why? because it's a great way to get even the most complex ideas across in a clear, compelling way.Low-tech videos for a high tech product
We love these Google Features videos on YouTube. Most tech demonstration videos are all high-tech flash with little icon men and screen shots and slick animations. These are the…
Let us march!
My favourite quote from Ogilvy On Advertising is, "When Aeshines spoke, they said, 'How well he speaks'. When Demosthenes spoke, they said, 'Let us march!'"How often do you need to publish content? 1-7-30-4-2-1
Content Marketing is like publishing -- you need an editorial calendar and a bit of discipline. This guest post on Junta42 by Russell Sparkman of Fusionspark Media talks about how frequently you should be doing different elements of your content marketing mix.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 -- 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...Diary of a Tweet: Clarity vs Twitterjunk
The birth of every every new communications medium is followed by a period during which the underlying technology actually cramps the communication it’s supposed to be enabling. When it comes…
16 ways to alienate a B2B buyer
Most B2B marketing doesn't just fail – it actively repels the people it's trying to attract. In other words, most B2B marketing would deliver better results if it didn't exist at all. When I buy things for Velocity, I'm a B2B buyer. Here's the best ways to alienate me...B2B marketing predictions for 2010
We were recently asked where we thought B2B marketing would go in 2010. Made us think. So here are some predictions for the next year:, including kind-of-obvious ones, less obvious ones and a few we'd wish would come true...Lethal Generosity: a key principle of social media marketing?
According to the Harvard Business Review, 90% of tweets are generated by just 10% of Twitter users, reflecting the fact that these people are subject-matter experts, passionates, mavens, and thought leaders. B2B brands that can create places where this type of exchange can happen are engaging in something called 'lethal generosity', a key principle of social media marketing.How you market is almost as important as what you market
In a world where B2B companies all communicate in the same boring way, the way you market is as important as what you market. A mixture of humanity, empathy and confidence in your communications will help you rise above the herd.The Velocity B2B Marketing Tube Map
We've always loved Harry Beck's legendary design for the London Underground Tube Map, so thought we'd do our own version mapping out the B2B marketing landscape. Kind of makes sense if you give it some time. The junctions were the trickiest bits...Brevity is the soul of traffic safety
A friend sent this photo of a Velocity-related traffic sign. I'd like to say we couldn't have said it better ourselves, but if that were true, we'd be out of business...Quick Case: when content goes social
It's been about four months since we published the B2B Content Marketing Workbook and we thought we'd report back on how the campaign has worked so far. It was the first time we've used social media as a vector for our content marketing and so makes a nice case study.Join us for a Demand Generation Webinar
Stan Woods will be taking part in what's shaping up to be an excellent webinar on Innovation in Demand Generation and we thought you, as a loyal Velocity blog reader, might like to drop in (register here). John Watton will top the bill with a short case study on how ShipServ created 75% more sales opportunities without extra budget or headcount.B2B blogging for beginners
Let’s face it: these days, if you don’t have a blog on your website you’re admitting that you have nothing to say about your market, your customers, their problems…
Ghost in the machine: who should write your blog?
There's a debate in the blogosphere about whether it's right for a blog to be ghost-written, particularly one advertised as being written by a particular author. Rather than get exercised about whether this is right or wrong, the question is: can it ever work effectively? Find out what we think.Why ShipServ won a 2009 CRM Market Award
Once again, ShipServ has 'scooped' a marketing award (why are awards always scooped?) -- this time the 2009 CRM Market Awards run by CRM Magazine. ShipServ, piloted by CMO John Watton, won a CRM Elite Award given to customer implementations that push new boundaries. The judges recognised ShipServ "for its holistic use of Marketo, Salesforce.com, and social media" -- including viral video, eBooks, Twitter and a LinkedIn group (we're kind of proud of our work on all these).All CIOs (or CEOs) are not the same
We're often asked s for creative ideas that target 'the C-suite' - CEO, COO, CFO, CIO and so on. It's natural because these guys are usually the ones to sign the cheques, particularly for significant purchases. But the question implies that these people are pretty much all the same in what they do and how they think and behave. In our experience, this isn't true.Why Real Research Is Better Than Norman Muller
Well done to young Matthew Robson for his report into teenage media consumption. But anyone taking a look should remember that individual points of view are no substitute for real research.V Shortlisted for Glittering B2B Gong
We’re pleased as Punch to have been shortlisted for a B2B Marketing Magazine Award for our recent work with ShipServ. It’s hard to come over all surprised about it –…
Velocity takes New Media Age Awards by storm (but loses)
We were thrilled to have been a Finalist for the Best B2B Campaign in the New Media Age Effectiveness Awards, celebrated the other night at the Grosvenor House Hotel. We thought our work with ShipServ kind of deserved it, to be honest. But we didn't bloody win. Microsoft did. Which kind of sucks.The white paper is dead…or is it?
I presented a webinar the other day where I stated that while white papers are still the staple of content marketing, they're getting really stale as a communications vehicle for B2B. A few people were so incensed they contacted me to say I was talking nonsense. So click here to find out whether they changed my mind...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!Choose your patients carefully
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 the best survival rates because they choose their patients very, very carefully. Here's why B2B marketers should do the same thing...B2B Bloggers and Influence: Part I
The issue of bloggers and influence divides B2B opinion. Do you think they're anti-social ranters or a genuine community of influence? Find out our verdict now.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 our experience, that's just not how it works...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.
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, personas mean you can develop better sites faster, ones that meet the needs of your customers, prospects and other stakeholders more effectively. They force everyone to think about what users might actually want to do when they visit your site and then shape the design accordingly.Simple Steps To A User Focused Site
We never tire of building websites. The sheer pace of technology change means no two sites are the same. But the same old battles are usually just round the corner.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...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 have in common. So we thought we'd capture them in this new slideshare...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 as each of these new media gropes for its place in the communications ecosystem. But all this new media is still powered by the same thing...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 today); businesses are doing it (not just techie ones either); bloggers are doing it; and, yes, lonely people are doing it. ShouldB2B marketers be doing it?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 resource for mobile marketers.The Disruptive Idea: that’s what it’s all about
Disruptive ideas are not the only way to build a successful business. Sometimes just doing lots of little things better than the other guys is enough. But a disruptive idea is probably the single most powerful weapon in the marketing arsenal. And most marketers spend far too little time generating them.ROI and social media marketing for B2B
One of our clients is talking to us about spending budget on creating online buzz. Naturally, she’s thinking hard about how to justify what is effectively a new cost line…
Postcreditcrunchism: marketing is the measure of all things
The history books will look upon the credit crunch as an agent of dramatic change. Marketing, for one, will never be the same again. It's probably for the best.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 off into Twitter tweets, blog posts, comments and backlinks. This cross-fertilisation can feel distressingly self-referential but that's really the source of social media's power...
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, links to it, re-tweets it, rates it, comments on it, shares it and (of course) follows the backlinks back to your site. This social media is becoming increasingly important in digital marketing. At Velocity, we have content all over the place, including...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, as social media beds down and Twitter takes off, we thought it would be a good time to summarise all the things we do to help our clients engage with their audiences online.‘Inspired by Kittens’ – Five branding lessons from social media
In September 2008, Fallon's Executive Creative director, Al Kelly, posted a video to YouTube called Kittens Inspired by Kittens.Within five months, the video had had 4.8 million views on YouTube, 95,000 references on blogs around the world, 64,000 Tweets and 1.5 million Google searches (as well as 28 traditional media stories).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 web in B2B markets but it's exploding in B2C and we can see the shock wave approaching on the horizon.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 right.Going social in B2B: seven automatic actions for every piece of content
Time was, you generated a piece of thought leadership content, stuck it on your website and eNewsletter, then sat back counting the hits. Today, whenever we produce a new piece…
17 Strategies to Killer Ads
I stumbled across a great blog today that attempted to categorise advertising strategies. Based on an analysis of The Advertising Concept Book by Pete Barry, it's a really useful list of advertising approaches that underscores that it's the quality of the original idea and the associated strategic thinking that really make great campaigns.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.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…
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/velocitytweets). As part of that exploration, I saw a great post from Chad Horenfeldt at his Anything Goes Marketing blog about how to use Twitter for B2B marketing in tandem with email.B2B Content Marketing – five or so mistakes
In B2B marketing, content marketing is what works. It’s all about generating content that the target audience will value, then driving that content into the market and out over the…
Digital PR: Shut up and listen
A good interview on ScobleizerTV with Joshua Reynolds who oversees Hill and Knowlton's global technology practice. Traditional PR firms get a lot of stick lately about being slow to pick up on digital, but this guy seems pretty switched on.Slugwatch: the power of content marketing
We were just having a really thought-provoking conversation about content marketing with Andrew Findlater and Hooman Bassirian from Reed Business and they told us about Slugwatch, a service for UK…
The perfect direct mail list: just 23 companies
Ray Kessler needed to sell his vanity number plate fast. How did he generate a list of just 23 companies with a good chance of being interested? I know because I was one of them...Papa’s got a brand new bag, maaan.
A bravo for emusic, one of the best music download sites out there, and some thoughts on building relevant communities in B2B. 'Build it and expect them to come' doesn't work in the wild world of social networking.Drop-down positioning at the Royal Opera House
Check out this very funny drop-down menu from a Royal Opera House web form. Did the ROH construct this delightful list of titles to avoid annoying its Earls, Dukes, Barons, Sultans and Rabbis (they must HATE having to choose Mr) or is this just a clever bit of subliminal positioning?Five Basic Social Theories of Online PR
Roger , our web wonderwall, posted a terrific article on the essentials of Online PR. The central metaphor: the web is a party — work the room instead of stumbling…
Velocity Xmas B2B Technology Marketing Newsletter: the Gift That Keeps on Giving
That's right, deck the halls - it's the giving time of year. In our bumper edition Xmas B2B marketing newsletter, you'll find: groovy new white papers, audacious new blog posts, and exciting news about new staff, clients and much, much more. Go grab it NOW!Survival kit for growth companies
Max Bleyleben’s excellent Technofile Europe blog recently posted this Survival Kit for Growth Companies, suggesting a strategy (or at least a list of tactics) for surviving the crunch. It ranges…
Opt-Out: Digital Marketing’s punch in the stomach
Marketing used to be all about the upside. You fired off a message; some people responded; others didn't. Net gain. In the digital world, there's a downside that's as painful as any upside: the dreaded Opt-Out. Here are some ideas for dealing with it...Zappos’ culture: paying employees to leave is great marketing
Zappos, the online shoe retailer, takes a distinctive approach to company culture that delivers real marketing and brand benefits. Check out his excellent presentation from O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Summit here...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. How will you defend your marketing plan? At Velocity, we're deeply into two powerful new weapons that are not only incredibly effective, they're virtually Crunch-Proof™...Evel Knievel, corporate positioning & corporate message development
Engineers take the leap from tech features to Big Business Benefits like Evel Knievel approached the Snake River Canyon: they fall down. Our Hierarchy of Benefits gives you a better way to do corporate positioning and corporate message development. It provides a practical solution: the Bridge (or, for the Tarzan in all of us: the Vine).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, or white hat spammers, have finally unearthed the secret economics of a 21st century boogie man: the junk mailer.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. But even the best thought leaders often follow a simplistic content promotion strategy that completely ignores the idea of a sales cycle. Basically, they pump out some new content, promote it, and repeat. What they're doing is burying the best under the newest...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 that Pär briefed in and designed (we wrote it for him).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 Macs. Clearly, they got under Microsoft's skin, because the crack Seattle Rapid Response team has leapt into action (what, three years later?) with an expensive riposte: the "I'm a PC" campaign. The result is wrong in so many ways, I can't summarise them all in a blog post.Because you’re worth it
Why are so few B2B companies as good at naming things as consumer companies? B2B could learn a lot from beauty companies like L’Oreal, which uses naming to great effect.Branding as body language
A friend of ours who also happens to be a God of Branding sent us an article he wrote ten years ago but could have been written yesterday. He's Axel Chaldecott, co-founder of HHCL, now the top creative on the global HSBC account at JWT. The article's central metaphor is that a company's visual identity is its body language...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 pages from people just like you and IT'S NOT FUN.Tech marketing trapped in Plato’s Cave
For 2000 years we've been told to research and change or suffer the consequences. It's still an issue today. Learn how one of the biggest names in the tech has been reminding itself of the danger of following processes rather than customers.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 out to help our clients do wonderful things in SEO, PPC, and web content marketing in general....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, we do a creative firestorm as part of the engagement, before any specific brief is on the table. Lots and lots of rough concepts -- headlines, images, copy, straplines. Here's why...Buff Your Pitch Up. Google Suggest & B2B Content Marketing
Often 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 'opinion' pieces in the name of trying to grab people's attention. The fault usually lies in believing our own hype. Here's some Google-inspired ideas on how to avoid falling into the trap...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 every B2B marketer. But there's a factor that cuts across all of these and is probably more important than any of them: confidence.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.... Read on for a super-simple guide to pimping your content to search engines.Guerrilla video: VNL thinks beyond B2B
Velocity and VNL go guerrilla. The idea for the video was simple: go to Deorhi and interview the villagers about their first experiences with mobile phones. We then edited the results into a warm, compelling piece that makes the VNL story come to life...A Different Kind of Growth Equity Investor Needs a Different Kind of Web Presence
Don't know about you, but it's Friday afternoon and we're offski. Peroni awaits. We're celebrating the launch of a brand new web site for Kennet.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 not as you know it.)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 - full of over-hype and under-delivery a few years ago; now ripe and ready for prime time...The Velocity B2B Social Media & Web Engagement Mind Map
This Mind Map gives you everything you need to do web / social media engagement by yourself. It's easy. Just pin it on your wall and - once you've published a great piece of content to your site - follow the map clockwise and post it to the relevant destinations...B2B lead generation with thought leadership content: ditch the web-to-lead forms and win
For B2B web sites, the content that really matters in terms of positioning and prospecting isn't your 'markitecture' pages - your product and services descriptions, corporate histories and such.... it's your 'thought leadership' pages - the places where you express opinions and ideas rather than features and benefits. Here's why...Your First (Free) Baby Steps in B2B Web Marketing
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 a sales sweat house – and this takes real effort and a bunch of web marketing smarts...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 you're going to enjoy it." Part of this is the 2nd person singular voice. I'm talking to YOU...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 marketer is to get believed. But credibility is a funny thing. It's hard to pin down exactly what makes us believe one person and not another; or believe one claim while remaining suspicious about a very similar claim made by someone else. Need some cred-builders? Here are seventeen...Recent papers
The B2B Content Marketing Tutorial
A roll-up-your-sleeves guide for marketers
If you’ve read the B2B Marketing Manifesto or the Content Marketing Workbook, you’re already hip to the power of B2B content marketing.
But you need a bit of practical help on the process side of content…
The B2B Marketing Manifesto: Five Imperatives and Six Staples for Winning the Battle for Attention
There’s never been a more exciting – or a scarier– time to be a B2B marketer.
It’s not about social media, the web, or email. It’s about a completely new mindset, new buyer behaviours and a shiny new set of tools to address it all.
The B2B Content Marketing Workbook
Content Marketing is probably the single most important weapon in the B2B marketing arsenal. This eBook takes you through velocity’s approach to the art. Download it and see what you think…
A B2B Social Media Checklist
You’ve just published a great piece of content. Don’t just stick it on your website. Use social media to drive people to it (and vice versa). Here’s a one-page checklist to help you socialize your content, driving traffic and downloads…
RSS feeds
Topics
Featured Paper
-
The B2B Marketing Manifesto: Five Imperatives and Six Staples for Winning the Battle for Attention
There’s never been a more exciting – or a scarier– time to be a B2B marketer.
It’s not about social media, the web, or email. It’s about a completely new mindset, new buyer behaviours and a shiny new set of tools to address it all.
Latest Papers
-
The B2B Content Marketing Tutorial
A roll-up-your-sleeves guide for marketers
If you’ve read the B2B Marketing Manifesto or the Content Marketing Workbook, you’re already hip to the power of B2B content marketing.
But you need a bit of practical help on the process side of content…
-
The B2B Marketing Manifesto: Five Imperatives and Six Staples for Winning the Battle for Attention
There’s never been a more exciting – or a scarier– time to be a B2B marketer.
It’s not about social media, the web, or email. It’s about a completely new mindset, new buyer behaviours and a shiny new set of tools to address it all.
Videos
Slideshows
Tags
- Add new tag
- Advertising
- B2B
- B2B agency
- B2B content marketing
- B2B lead generation
- B2B marketing
- B2B marketing agency
- B2B social media
- B2B technology marketing
- Blogging
- Branding
- Content
- Content Marketing
- Copywriting
- Corporate Message Development
- Corporate Positioning
- Demand Generation
- design
- digital marketing
- Identity
- Innovation
- Lead Generation
- lead nurturing
- lead scoring
- Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Online PR
- persuasion
- Petri Dish
- PPC
- Sales
- selling
- SEO
- Social Media
- Technology Marketing
- technology marketing agency
- Thought Leadership
- web analytics
- Web Design
- Web Marketing
- Web Relations
- writing