As content marketing gains momentum, we find that we’re not having to work quite as hard explaining the principles to prospective clients. But one objection does keep popping up that we thought would have died off by now: “Why should we give content away that tells people exactly how to do what we do? Won’t people just do it for themselves and cut us out of the picture?”

Here’s how we address this understandable but misplaced concern:

• You know far more than you think– If your success really rests on a body of knowledge that can be captured in a white paper, your business is already built on sand. it can’t and it isn’t. Information is only source of the value you deliver. Experience,expertise, intellectual property and methodology all play a role.

Take some time to map the richness of the expertise that lives inside your company. Then think about which areas will be of most value to your prospective customers. That’s your sweet spot.

• Knowing something isn’t the same as doing it – We can tell someone everything we know about how to write a fantastic eBook. But we’ve been doing this a long time and we can still do it better than anyone we teach. If we didn’t have confidence in that, we’d stop letting people download The Content Marketing Workbook.

Realise that your company has a depth of expertise that can’t be replicated with a bit of book-learning. Knowing how to apply that learning is a much harder thing to replicate.

• People don’t WANT to do what you do, they want to find someone who’s great at doing it – Your prospects have a day job. They don’t actually have a secret desire to become experts at video distribution or application management or cockroach prevention. They just want to find someone who is an expert. That’s the power of content marketing: it doesn’t just claim expertise, it demonstrates it.

Understand that your area of expertise is only a small part of your customer’s world. It means everything to you but is only one pain-in-the-arse of many to them. It may be critically important but it’s still not their universe.

• Sharing your expertise doesn’t mean sharing ALL of your expertise– Deciding to engage in content marketing does not forfeit your right to decide exactly what to share and what to hold back.  If you believe you’ve got some proprietary knowledge that gives you a competitive advantage, don’t spill it all over the web. But you can still allude to it and discuss the insights that inform your special sauce.

Decide exactly what knowledge in your company represents precious intellectual property. The list will be shorter than you think. But protect it with your life. Often it’s in the specifics of methodology and delivery rather than the principles that inform them (and the principles are the stuff people really want to understand).

• Your weakest competitors will copy you anyway– That’s why they’re so weak. People can tell the difference between an authentic expert and a wannabe. And by the time the also-rans have ripped off your latest insight, you’ll have moved on to the next one. This isn’t to say you should let the competition see everything that makes you special – just don’t worry so much about it. They’re not that good.

Keep an eye on the competition but don’t obsess about them. Leaders lead.

• You have no choice– If you decide to clutch all of your expertise close to your chest like a greedy gambler with a full house, your competitors will share theirs and market circles around you. They’ll get the interest, the leads and the new business. Because people will see them as the expert and see you as just another company.

Bite the bullet and capture your company’s crown jewels, then put them to work, helping your prospects do their jobs better.

That last point is really the bottom line. Content marketing is the portion of your marketing plan that actually works. The rest is window dressing. You can be shy about sharing your company’s brilliance with the world and wonder why nobody cares about you; or you can be generous with your goodies and watch the world beat a path to your door.

What’s your experience? Do you come across this concern a lot? Are you effective in overcoming it? Let us know, below.

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photo: creative commons: kwhitten

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, Content, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Corporate Positioning, Lead Generation, Thought Leadership

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Why, he vented, was it so hard to persuade the Limeys to implement cohesive marketing programmes that had been proven to work elsewhere? Why did we find it so difficult to do the hard yards of building a solid database of customers, prospects and suspects, segmenting them every which way, targeting them with creative campaigns and measuring results?  And then doing more of what works and ceasing to do what doesn’t?

His justified spleen reminded me of criticisms of British public policy in the post-War era. We denizens of Blighty have long suffered from politicians taking the non-strategic, easy choices. We prefer to muddle through rather than making decisions on evidence-based analysis. We have a long history of simply firing and calling what we hit the target.  Is this malaise also affecting B2B marketing too? And, if so, why?

As part of the download process for our recent B2B Marketing Manifesto we asked people to complete the sentence, “The hardest part of B2B marketing is…” (You can read the full results of the survey here). An eye-popping finding was that the hardest part of B2B marketing was convincing other people within the company to do the right things.

So, why? Two factors, I think, are key. British firms are either sales-led or engineering-led. Hardly any are marketing-led

Lead by sales

Much of the British tech industry happens to be entirely sales-dominated outposts of American technology companies. Or run by people who earned their spurs at such companies. American firms love the openness of the UK market and the fact that we speak the same language (though after 20 years, Doug is still confused by the difference between the top or bottom of a road. And he insists on bringing things when he should be taking them and vice versa. We’re hoping Velocity’s newest star striker Ryan Skinner, (born in Portland, OR, but brought up and educated in the Peach State) isn’t cut from the same Yankee cloth.)

American tech firms most often choose guys (and it’s nearly always guys) with stellar sales track records (usually from other American firms) to lead their Redcoat subsids. These people invariably cut their teeth in the pre-digital age. By and large, they see marketing as made up of people who make the arrangements, rather than the ones who make the rain. As our survey showed, most B2B marketers spend a lot of their time trying (and often failing) to persuade their boss to do the right thing. This was OK (though definitely not optimal) when we were locked into the broadcast, print-centric world of a few years ago, where the marketing pinnacle was launching Version 3.1.6, organising the next industry piss-up (I mean, exhibition) and inviting some  trade press to the company’s latest product launch. But in the new science-based marketing world, where you need to blend multiple tactics to move individuals through a complex sales funnel, it doesn’t cut the mustard. Sales fixated managers often don’t get that.

Lead by engineering

By contrast with the sales-led invaders, many indigenous tech firms were begun by engineers and techies. While these folks should  be open to the science-based arguments marketers can make today, most have experienced marketing as a discipline that dumbs down their products and solutions, reducing them to white noise benefits. This has largely been the fault of B2B marketers themselves, too many of whom have been happy simply to be the marcoms person, rather than getting so close to their company’s technology they can smell the benefits, let alone articulate them clearly and concisely.

A dearth of world-class product marketing

There’s a third reason that British B2B marketing is so hard. The obsession with sales and the preponderance of engineers has led to a dearth of true product marketing in the UK.

Product marketers are the people who are responsible for conceiving and defining a new product (based on customer interaction and insight), for developing and improving the product through its lifecycle, for its application in new market segments and solutions, and for, should the time come as it inevitably must, deciding to kill it. They tend to be people who are as comfortable talking to engineering as cutting edge customers. They are people who are responsible for the success (and failure) of any product. They are vital to any marketing department. They have been largely invisible in perfidious Albion.

Doug and I have been in the business a long time and have met many, many brilliant product managers in the US tech firmament. Many have become CTOs. But we can count the number of great ones in the UK on our fingers – and a good proportion of those were American in any case. This is not, despite what he says, because Yanks are inherently superior. It’s actually a painful symptom of the other two issues: an obsession with sales and engineering. And it really hurts B2B marketing over here.

The good news for my American CMO is that the situation seems to be changing. Most of our clients (and an increasing number of the people we run into out there) are embracing analytics and lead nurturing. And most are throwing their weight behind complex, mutli-thread content-led campaigns that motivate prospects to move towards a sales conversation. They understand the importance of the right positioning and messages (and keeping these refreshed in the light of changing marketing circumstances.) And they value creative that incites action.

It is true that Brit B2B marketers have found it traditionally difficult to earn an equal place at the sales or engineering table. In future, and in the best companies, that will not be the case.

© stan@velocitypartners.co.uk for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B agency, B2B content marketing, Branding, Content Marketing, Corporate Positioning, digital marketing, Lead Generation, lead nurturing, Technology Marketing

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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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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.

IBS is a leading provider of distribution resource planning software.

In this campaign – working closely with Andy Bailey and the IBS marketing team –  we re-positioned the company as a distribution specialist, developed a new web marketing platform and launched an ambitious content marketing campaign to generate leads, increase engagement and position IBS as a thought leader.

Campaign goals:

• Consolidate the web infrastructure for global marketing campaigns

• Position IBS as the thought leader in global distribution software

• Generate leads and feed the CRM system for follow-up

Campaign strategy:

• Create an online engine to drive international content marketing

• Deliver flexible content for global marketing and PR programmes

• Measure the improved performance of the website and content

• Measure impact of different marketing investment across countries.

• Provide global content support for local marketing execution.

We’re now writing and designing an ongoing series of eBooks on the value drivers of wholesale distribution: expenses, cash, revenue, inventory, and margins. The first eBook, on the Six Margin Killers, has already resulted in 1,050 downloads from 4000 views: a conversion rate of 26%.

It’s been a really successful campaign, with a proven increase in visitors to the site, more time spent on the site, and a lower bounce rate. And as the content builds, these will all improve even more.

Neil Stoneman masterminded the campaign and he’s riding the analytics like a bucking bronco. Watch this space.

© lucy for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, Content Marketing, Corporate Positioning, design, Lead Generation, Thought Leadership

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Ok fine, the iPad is better than this.

Photo credit: Phil Campbell

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Just when you thought the Apple Cosa Nostra couldn’t have its fingers in more pies (or i’s) the iPad arrived to fill the void in your life that you didn’t know you had. Marketed with Apple’s customary élan, the iPad seems set to achieve world domination despite the very obvious question which no one seems to be asking: how are men going to carry it around? Are we going to finally see widespread uptake for the man bag?

Doug and Stan have got themselves a pair of iPads. Strictly speaking, they ought to be blogging about it, but it’s my turn to write a post so I’m hijacking their topic. So far it seems they love their new toys, and although they’ll deny it, Apple’s branding must have a lot to do with it.* The appeal of the coquettish lower-case i is so irresistible the designers must be hugging themselves (whilst carting another wheelbarrow-ful of cash to the bank).

Like the iPhone, the iPad can do just about everything except bump off your mother-in-law: music, films, video, unrivalled on-the-go internet access –it’s a veritable smorgasbord of entertainment and future models will undoubtedly exhibit hundreds of other handy features. All this can leave you feeling like the Apple progeny are taking over the world. They are, of course, but don’t let that worry you.

It’s worrying the people at Adobe though. Unless you live under a stone you’ll know that the iPad doesn’t do Flash. AdMob has also joined the ranks of companies who have incurred Apple’s imperial displeasure. Sure, Apple should be allowed to do what it likes with its own stuff – but only up to a point. Econsultancy’s Meghan Keane pointed out that Apple’s move to force developers to use iAd is anti-competitive and could land Apple in trouble with the regulators.

I’d argue that Apple’s general behaviour is becoming increasingly anti-competitive; it’s not just confined to AdMob. What’s frustrating is that Apple doesn’t need to behave this way. It’s already got the edge in terms of innovation, usability, and design. Sure, it’s still a little pricey but that actually only helps its brand image. It doesn’t need to act like the bully in the playground – acting that way just makes it look a bit… paranoid, frankly. Paranoia and bullying are signs of weakness. Maybe it’s no coincidence that Jobs has been quite seriously ill: that would be enough to make anyone fearful about losing their edge.

Apple’s behaviour doesn’t fit with its brand image: laid back, cool, sleek, and user-friendly. If it’s not careful it’ll destroy that: people are already disappointed about the lack of Flash. Of course Flash has its flaws, and it’s good to try and innovate to make poorer alternatives vanish into oblivion, but there’s a difference between offering new things and marketing them, and imposing your will on the market. It’s a difference Apple seems to have lost sight of.

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*I shouldn’t be smug because it works on me too.

© lucy for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Add new tag, Advertising, Branding, Corporate Positioning, design, Marketing, Technology Marketing

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Velocity, the London-based business-to-business marketing agency, ran out of tea today in an uncharacteristic demand forecasting error.

The agency, which recently acquired a large red teapot to support and enable its growing workforce, is now crippled by a complete lack of the beverage that contributes 50% of staff body mass and 76% of all good ideas.

“We’re…,” said MD Stan Woods, “We’re just…”

The agency very recently purchased a Tetley 160-bag super-pack with 50% extra free, bringing the total to 240 bags.

“I couldn’t believe how fast it went,” said Neil Stoneman, comatose sack of meat, “I went to make tea and boiled the kettle and got the teapot ready and when I took down the super-pack, it was really, like, light and I looked inside and I was like, whoah.”

Gesu Baroova, quivering mass of translucent jelly, concurred, “Pllbllbph… brbrbrbrbr fzzzz,” said Baroova.

“What’s the big deal?” asked Doug Kessler, creative director and conspicuous American. “I mean, jeez, drink coffee.” Unfortunately, Doug said this during an all-agency Work In Progress (WiP) meeting at which he was the only attendee.

The agency has no plans to go and get more tea at this time because the agency has no plans at all. None. In fact, when you actually stop and think about it, this whole B2B marketing thing is feeling completely… futile. What’s the bloody point?

No wait. Lucy just went and got some more. Never mind.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, Corporate Positioning, persuasion, Tea

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A lot of our consultancy engagements involve helping companies structure a product portfolio that makes sense. Usually that means organising a long list of products or services into a few sensible buckets. It can be kind of tricky and isn’t always intuitive but putting in the time to get it right is well worth it.

A well-considered portfolio makes your company look cohesive and focused. A messy portfolio structure makes it look like you just kind of accreted new products and services on a drunken bar-crawl (“For all your fish and bicycle needs.”).

The goal is simple: make it quick and easy for prospects to find solutions to their problems as they describe them. Of course, you don’t want to leave any product or service out and you don’t want too many buckets (people won’t wade in, they’ll just waddle off). A few tips:

• Use the buyer’s perspective not yours – you may like to organise your life and your products by department or line of business; they don’t care about that. They come to you with problems in their head. Organise around that.

• But don’t forget the spiders – your product page and its copy, URLs, tags, headings and subheads should generate major search mojo. Make sure you integrate this important web section into your overall SEO strategy.

• Don’t hide your hot products – the more specific a product, the more relevant it’s likely to be. Don’t bury your discrete offers far below the top line categories. If one of your popular products logically lives beneath the surface, bend your logic and get it on top for all to see.

• If you do have to bury a hot product, compensate – by promoting it in feature boxes, sidebars and web banners

• Make your labels descriptive – cryptic, cool or evocative labels may sound good but if it isn’t instantly clear what’s inside, you’re losing eyeballs (and the eyeball-bone’s connected to the wallet-bone).

• Keep lists parallel – it’s kind of annoying to have a portfolio consisting of three nouns and a verb, or three vices and a versa.  Makes you look tone deaf.

• Don’t be a slave to alliteration – don’t bend over backwards to present ‘The 6 Rs’ if it doesn’t work.  Having said that, Velocity is starting to present our services in four buckets that all really do start with C (as does ‘coincidence’): Consulting, Content, Campaigns & Creative.

Unwieldy portfolios are usually a function of a company’s history. Re-organisations, acquisitions, aborted strategies and weed-choked routes to market all leave their mark. If yours is starting to feel clunky, start over with a fresh sheet of paper — or get some advice from people who don’t know (or care) why things evolved the way they did.

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photo credit: flickr creative commons: curiousmess

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, Content Marketing, Corporate Message Development, Corporate Positioning, digital marketing, SEO, Web Marketing

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We’ve been working with a great company called Nativ, who offer a digital video content management and distribution platform and service.

Basically, if you own video content in any form then Nativ’s MioEverywhere™ service can help you get it where it needs to be (whether you’re a brand marketer, content owner, or anyone else really).

The video logistics and distribution market is fragmenting as traditional business models struggle to adapt in the wake of disruptive alternatives. This has made the marketplace crowded and confusing, so in order to succeed Nativ has to stand out and deliver a clear, compelling story.

For Velocity, that meant proving the value of Nativ’s offer with a strong core proposition, an arsenal of thought leadership materials and a clean, distinctive brand identity – the ideal platform for new business generation and expansion into the US.

Because Nativ has an overview of the whole sector, they’re in an excellent position to act as an industry expert. So we kicked off with a piece of content marketing gold: an eBook on the Essentials of Online Video Logistics, and set up a blog commenting on news and developments in video delivery.

The new site:

Their old website didn’t really do them justice, so we gave it a complete overhaul. We started with a positioning and message development work to crystallize their story, then we wrote new web copy (filled with juicy nuggets of thought leadership) and redesigned the whole thing. We also redesigned the brand identity, making it sharper and more contemporary, to fit with the new look of the website.

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Before:

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After:

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It’s too early to talk results but here’s what Jon Folland, the CEO of Nativ, had to say: “I just wanted to say a huge thank you for your work on our website and related digital strategy. You’ve all done an amazing job. We were worried we’d never be able to articulate what we do! We’re very grateful to you for your patience and guidance and we’re very proud of our new brand.”

Thanks Jon!

© lucy for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, Copywriting, Corporate Positioning, design, Thought Leadership

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Ganguro girl, Tokyo. Photo credit: Alex de Carvalho

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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.

Both are often considered a bit lightweight and wishy-washy by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Both involve presenting an entity (be it a person or a company) in a particular way. Fashion designers who create something bespoke for an individual are presenting the person wearing it with a message in mind. Clothes make a statement, even if that statement is “I wear stuff that’s comfy” or “clothes are there to keep you warm and make you decent, beyond that I don’t care”.

Most of the time people do care what they wear, even if they claim they don’t. They’re identifying themselves with a particular group, even if it’s the green-hair-and-neon-knickers-with-leopard-print brigade that hang out in Hoxton. This gives out a message, which the person who sees them picks up on and interprets, which then affects how they interact with them.

You can’t complain that you didn’t get the job as a stockbroker because you wore PVC and a bone through your nose to the interview instead of a suit. People market themselves through their clothes. You didn’t position yourself as a stockbroker, and your messages were wrong for the market. That’s not prejudice, that’s marketing.

The bottom line is it matters how you market yourself. Whether you’re getting dressed in the morning or reassessing your company’s positioning and messages, if you ignore marketing you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Obviously there still has to be substance behind the style, otherwise it’s all mouth and no (forgive the pun) trousers. Marketing with no substance is quickly unmasked for what it is, but good marketing and a great company is a killer combination. We only do the latter here, naturally.

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

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Ade feels that it’s time to give up the idea of CIOs belonging on corporate boards. To Ade, CIOs are too wrapped up in data centres and PC support issues to ever really deliver the kind of transformation and innovation that businesses need.  It’s not just because they’re perceived as back-office specialists, it’s because they are back-office specialists.

Ade says that the IT function needs to be split into the operational part (which can often be outsourced), the business IT role (he calls it ‘business entwinement’) and the innovation role (which may not even be driven by technologists).  Not many CIOs would accept Ade’s characterisation of their current status, but I imagine many would recognise it.

He also talks about how CIOs have been further humiliated during the recession, with budgets being slashed to the bone and the IT function being pushed further from the front line of innovation.  For all the lip-service paid to the idea of investing through recession, innovation still equals risk and cost in most boardrooms.  It’s the rare CIO and board that properly values the strategic role of information in every business.

Are visionary CIOs as rare as Ade McCormack believes?

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Add new tag, CIOs, Corporate Positioning

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