Topic results for "Web Marketing"
Ten Tips for Cross-Promoting your Content, Part II
Here’s Part II of the post I started on B2B Bloggers, the excellent resource run by Jeremy Victor:
The story so far:
We learned about the importance of cross-promoting your content to…
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 and…
Try to contain your excitement
Roger Warner, friend of Velocity and all-round PR guru, has flung open the doors to the Museum of Social Media. Before you all start planning an office field trip to…
A stop-motion movie for ShipServ
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Girls on film (actually Lego men)
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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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 Microsoft .Net CMS on the planet (running nearly 10,000…
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…
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…
2010 Content Marketing Trends and Predictions
ClickPredictions 2010
View more documents from Ambal Balakrishnan.
There she is. The 2010 Content Marketing Trends and Predictions eBook from ClickPredictions — a crowdsourced effort by “39 of the world’s…
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 a…
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 the new year’s resolutions from the…
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…
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 opposite:…
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…
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:
THE KIND-OF-OBVIOUS PREDICTIONS:
Content Marketing will…
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. Apparently this is a higher concentration than for Wikipedia and much, much higher…
You can’t have a conversation when you use a megaphone
Selling to B2B customers has been changed forever by the Internet. A truism maybe, but it’s surprising how many B2B marketing organisations are still structured as they were in the…
Quick Case: when content goes social
Gotta love Twitter…
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…
Microsoft marketing hits new low
Oh. My. God.
We’ve given Microsoft’s marketing a hard time in this blog before and we’ve also had some nice words to say about them. But this one takes the cake:…
Join us for a Demand Generation Webinar
An illustrious panel
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…
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 and…
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…
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…
The Web Form Wall
It’s a perennial debate: give your content away with no registration (web form), or force people to give you their details to get the goodies. Both arguments are compelling.
We tend…
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.…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
Customer Value Propositions in B2B Markets
Andrew Findlater from Reed Business Information recently turned us on to an excellent article in the Harvard Business Review (back in 2006 but still daisy-fresh):
Its called Customer Value Propositions in…
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…
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…
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,…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Good Reasons to do Social Networking in a B2B Environment
Social networks are extremely interesting things. They give an online home to folks with common interests and hobbies – like staying in touch with one another or following Metallica.
They’ve actually…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 –…
New Velocity B2B Marketing Newsletter Available!
The latest edition of our semi-regular newsletter update is now available. It’s packed with goodness inside, including our star new white pager, Marketing, Meet Sales, which offers eleven ways to…
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…
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…
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…
ShipServ.com Goes Live: a B2B Before and After
We’re proud to say that shipserv.com launched successfuly this morning. May all who sail in her find reasonably priced shipping supplies from a broad (and competitive) selection of maritime vendors….
ShipServ…
New White Paper Available: How to PPC in B2B
Hey!
We just published a new web marketing white paper on the thorny subject of how to do PPC properly in an B2B environment.
Here’s a snippet:
If your goal is to generate…
Why ‘Web-to-Lead’ Forms Suck for B2B Lead Generation
I just returned from a great week away in the Inner Hebrides – the small cluster of islands to the west of Glasgow. The single malts were stunning, the weather…
Keywords: how to build an effective strategy in B2B
We’ve just completed a number of SEO strategy projects for various clients. Part of our work here is to help folks understand what they’re getting into and why – to…
Whose Tipping Point is it Anyway? A B2B Perspective…
There’s a great piece in this month’s Fast Company that asks if Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling notion of a ‘Tipping Point’ is fundamentally flawed (see: Is the Tipping Point Toast?)
The conclusion…
Pico-Branding: New Rules for Marketing
UPDATE: this post has been kindly featured on BtoB Magazine’s ‘Blogs of the Week’. (Thanks guys!)
I’ve been mulling on this one for a while: how does Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, blogging,…
B2B web marketing trends for 2008
Here’s our first broad brush, crystal ball prediction of the year: 2008 is the year of web engagement for B2B technology firms.
You built v2 or v3 of your site last year.…
Why Blog in B2B? The Final Word…
Whilst blogs are no longer the sexiest subject on the block, the ‘why blog?’ question still rages in B2B – and nowhere more so than here at Velocity.
Like many of…
How NOT to sell yourself online
I was just uploading some images to our Flickr stream when I caught sight of the one of the most useless, intrusive banners of all time.
See the ad to the…
Why Web Usability Matters
You know the scene. You or your boss thought it’d be great idea to build a new web site and it’s the first planning meeting. Across the table someone shouts:…
Your 2008 marketing plan: the B2B Svenn Diagram dilemma
Aside from tinsel and cheap booze offers, it’s that planning time of year again. A special place where you need to create futurama fireworks out of Powerpoint.
Co-incidently, it’s also time…
Widgety Goodness: Widgets and Social Media – WTF?!
Today’s ‘Widgety Goodness’ conference in Brighton brought together some in-the-know folks and some much-needed clarity to the hoopla that is social media and widgets.
Organised by the good folk at Snipperoo…
How many agencies does it take to change a light bulb?
The answer of course is 57. There’s the SEO guys, the branding guys, the PR guys, the viral guys, the advertising guys, and so on…
The fact that there are simply…
Velocity time warp: going way, way back to the early SEO days
Do you remember the time when you didn’t exist? Nope, me neither. But today is a big day for us because we kind of experienced re-birth…
…web re-birth that is.
As you…
A Second Life for Marketers?
We’ve been keeping an eye on virtual worlds like Second Life for a while, waiting for the killer app for business.
Does search matter in B2B?
Search matters.
The Role of Search in Business to Business Buying Decisions by Enquiro and Marketing Sherpa reported the following:
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93% of participants said they would research online when making a B2B…
x5 reasons to blog
That’s right, FIVE reasons your company should blog. Count ‘em:
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Improved SEO – a steady flow of dynamic content published on a weekly basis to your web site. Search engine spiders…
YouTube for B2B Technology Marketing
Just posted a short film we did for BT Counterpane in the US on to YouTube. It’s an interview with Bruce Schneier, security guru.
YouTube is fast, cheap (as in free)…
Reasons a business should blog a lot…
I’ve just read an interesting piece in this month’s Wired magazine on the subject of blogging.
I’ve written elsewhere about the various benefits of blogs as early product conversations, focus groups…
Insult to injury
Pet Peeve:
I HATE when a website asks me to register for something, takes all my details, validates my email, makes me jump through hoops, THEN tells me the service is…
What makes a good web site?
Originality, originality, originality!!!
See “No One Belongs Here More than You”, a promotional site for Miranda July’s book.
Now, I know its SEO will suck because it’s all images and no text,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
