Competition Winner and Chris Brogan Spin-off Contest!

16.11.2010 - B2B Marketing —

Thank you all for your blog posts on the subject of B2B Marketing.
We have received over 25 blog posts on this topic but only one of them can win the challenge of playing a Ping Pong match with Chris Brogan, AND a free pass to attend the Next Generation Marketing conference hosted by KGS on December 1-2 at the Scandic hotel Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.

November 15 was the deadline to submit your blog posts and videos and we are proud to announce the winners of this challenge are: Daniel Fennessy from Amplify Media & Bart Kalisvaart from Kaliz in Amsterdam. Congratulations Bart & Daniel!

If you got inspired by the winning blog entry (see below), we would like to introduce a spin – off contest to win the book – Trust Agents, signed by Chris Brogan AND one more free pass to attend the Next Generation Marketing conference hosted by KGS on December 1-2 at the Scandic hotel Potsdamer Platz.in Berlin.  with speakers from leading companies such as Dassault Systemes, Forrester Research, KLM, Philips, Accenture, Canon, Gyro HSR, Kodak, PayPal, HP, Symantec and others.

To win, you must submit a blog post or video about B2B Marketing (social media in B2B, email versus social media, neuro-marketing, lead generation etc) by November 27. The blog post has a limit of 900 words and a video must be 90 seconds or less and posted on YouTube / Vimeo. Please submit your entries to info@kgsglobal.com

Winners will be notified on November 29, and their names made public November 30.

Our special guest from the USA, Chris Brogan, is speaking for the 1st time in Germany, he is perhaps less known in Europe, but in America, Chris is a real powerhouse when it comes to social media. Besides being a popular speaker, he is also the co-author of the book Trust Agents (a New York Times bestseller) and stands in the top 10 Advertising Age Power150. Chris is a champion of humanizing the relationship with the customer and sees social media as a perfect tool for this.

Here is the winning video entry:

We like it because:

  • After reading many wonderful blog posts this video was very refreshing and entertaining, so it supports the message that video is becoming one of the most popular social media tools
  • You can always get the message across more effectively by using humor!
  • It is a great marketing move to leverage social media trends, such as the Old Spice commercial
  • Need to more reasons? Come to Berlin and reserve your seat!

There is a bonus just to submitting – everyone who submits an entry will receive a special discount code for the event (on your request). That’s a €250 Euros discount per ticket.

Join the Ping Pong Match:

When: November 30 2010 at 19.00

Where: at one of the most popular social media locations of Berlin: HomeBase Lounge address: Köthener Str. 44, Berlin

How to attend: Add yourself to the event

Sign up here for the Next Generations Marketing conference on December 1-2, 2010 in Berlin! Next Generation Marketing - B2B Marketing in Europe Want more B2B news? Join our B2B Marketing Europe Fanpage and receive regular updates on the topic of B2B Marketing. Or follow our Twitter Account @b2bmarketingeu.

Chris Brogan on B2B vs. B2C, Europe and future employee mindset

12.11.2010 - B2B Marketing — Tags: , , , —

Chris Brogan will be keynoting our Next Generation Marketing conference on December 1-2 at the Scandic hotel Potsdamer Platz.

We blogged before about how you have a chance to win a free ticket for the conference but due to requests we also can offer you a limited amount of tickets for the morning including the keynote session with Chris.

In preparation for the event, we asked him some specific questions in regard to Europe, the differences on B2B and B2C and what he thinks employees of the future should look like.

Question: Is is really about B2B or B2C anymore – or is it rather about B2P, business to people?

I think the difference is basically in decision trees. We say yes easier when it’s a consumer purchase. In a business purchase, we have to please more people, satisfy more requirements, and integrate with the rest of our systems or services. I think that the way we use social media to accomplish these kinds of goals is very similar to how we do business-to-consumer type projects. It just takes a bit more time and a bit more wrangling to find the right people.

Question: Where do B2B people interact with their customers? Is it just business networks on the one side and consumer areas some where else?

I think that the various social tools can be used equally for b2b or b2c, but that there’s a predisposition for people to think that LinkedIn is the right place for businesses, and Facebook and Twitter are the right places for consumers. It’s not true. Everything is a jumble. You have to use tools to find where your audience of interest is, and work with them there.

Question: Does the B2B industry ‘have friends’ or ‘fans’?

I love lots of b2b services and products, and I imagine that they have fans the way people do, but ultimately, we like to get excited about people, not products. If we like a server made by HP, we probably want to know the person who champions that server every bit as much as we want to know the specs for the product. This is new, I think, in business, but it’s spreading. We want relationships, not just purchases.

Question: What can B2B companies learn from successful B2C  campaigns / companies?

Content creation is probably the area where B2B people can get the most value from observing B2C  experiences. People in B2B environments still want videos and blogs and all kinds of useful information. Learning how to build material that’s interesting and easy to consume is a great starting point for B2B to learn what B2C  has been doing.

Question: Would you agree, that though every industry has different ‘best tools’, that today a blog with text and other content is still the best bet for being successful online?

I think blogs are a vital anchor to any social or digital marketing experience. Between their abilities to inform, their capabilities to provide organic SEO value, and their abilities to point and direct people’s attention, a blog is a core product.

Question: You often talk about outposts, what do you mean by that?

Outposts are those things that are off your main site. Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn are outposts. In outposts, people connect with interested parties on their terms, on neutral ground, and make conversation. Should you be compelling or interesting enough, the goal is that people you interact with at the outposts will want to visit your home base (the blog or your corporate website).

Question: Does story telling work for B2B?

Storytelling works very well for B2B . In my estimation, the best sales are those that come with a story. If I am buying pipes, I want to know who made them. If I’m buying office supplies, I want to know the story of the people supporting my company’s orders. Whatever the service or product, I want to be engaged in an experience (most times) and not just a transaction.

Question: What are the differences from your point of view for doing a national / international strategy / campaign, esp in regards to Europe?

I feel that localizing social media is vital. If you have target audiences in multiple countries, then it’s important to have native speakers and local thinkers there to execute and build the business relationships. Having some silly person in the US run everything isn’t likely going to endear any European audiences, and so keep it distributed and local-minded.

Question: Small baby steps or big strategy, all in one? Startup motto is “fail quick, fail often” – do think this should be applied to B2B as well? Or would this hurt reputation?

I spoke recently on a panel with Charlene Li and David Meerman Scott. Charlene and I agree that failing fast and often is a great way to work on social media. Being 100% ready and 100% correct means that you’ll be nearly a year before you use the tools, and then your competitors will have already taken the world by storm.

Question: What kind of mindset do employees need to have for the future?

Employees need to think of themselves as little holding companies and to think of their salaried job as one stream of income and not the be-all, end-all. Companies aren’t working as hard to create careers and career paths for their employees. It’s up to people to manage their own portfolio careers from here on out.

Question: What is your wish for B2B companies to do?

I want B2B companies to consider people the most important part of the equation and to tell stories that connect people together in service of business goals.

Sign up here for the Next Generations Marketing conference on December 1-2, 2010 in Berlin! Next Generation Marketing - B2B Marketing in Europe Want more B2B news? Join our B2B Marketing Europe Fanpage and receive regular updates on the topic of B2B Marketing. Or follow our Twitter Account @b2bmarketingeu.

Don’t Let Leads Get in the Way of Sales

8.11.2010 - B2B Marketing —

The secret to driving the right leads to sales is alignment. For as long as most marketers can remember, sales and marketing have played a never-ending game of finger-pointing. It’s time to stop. How? Bring sales and marketing together around a common objective – revenue. That can only happen when sales and marketing agree upon:

  • A common definition of a lead
  • Lead qualification requirements
  • Measurement and reporting criteria

This new approach requires accountability. With accountability comes the unprecedented need for metrics, results and visibility across departments and at the executive level.

Common definition of a lead

Historically, marketing has been tasked with generating high volumes of leads. While sales teams expect volume, they also expect quality – now more than ever. As organisations have fewer resources, there are less people, with less time to call and chase “leads” that may or may not be ready to have a conversation.

While there are many legitimate sources of leads, including email responses, downloads, registrations, etc. it is much more important to determine “what’s next” for those contacts than to immediately hand them over to sales. Marketing needs to take some responsibility for the lead quality, as well as quantity. We need to find out the level of need, timeline, purchase authority and budget before we expect sales to accept them as a qualified lead.

So if sales professionals are wasting time calling on unqualified leads, it is true that leads can get in the way of sales. By starting with a common definition of a lead, sales and marketing have greater levels of accountability and expectations for leads to produce sales.

Lead qualification requirements

In order for sales and marketing to maintain their newfound alignment, there needs to be an ongoing dialogue about the requirements. As needs change, new products enter the market, a competitor repositions themselves, it is critical that sales and marketing share this information with each other to make sure they are asking the right questions of the “leads” they are calling on. What was previously considered a valid lead may now be someone who is either ready to buy sooner, or perhaps the other end of the spectrum and no longer in the market.

Therefore, marketing has a level of responsibility to stay engaged with new leads as they go through the qualification process, and sales has got to share their visibility into the market as things change. The bottom line is trust. Sales have got to trust that marketing is delivering the highest quality leads, leads that have been touched multiple times, called and qualified, and are sales-ready.

Not to be lost in this process is cost. One of requirements needs to be that all leads must be measurable – whether by cost per lead, cost per sales accepted lead, or cost per sales conversion, or any combination thereof. Regardless of the cost of the lead, and they can range from £10.00 to many thousands of pounds for a high value product, you must know that you get what you pay for. Especially when human resources are scarce, it makes a lot of sense to spend a little more for a qualified lead that is accepted by sales than continuing to generate low-cost, high-volume leads that don’t generate revenue. When you are able to demonstrate the return on marketing investment, it is much easier to gain budget approval for future plans.

Measurement and reporting

We live in a world that makes every form of technology available at our fingertips. The measurability of your marketing campaigns, short-term response as well as long-term nurturing results can all be displayed at the click of a button. Marketing professionals expect visible results. Executive teams demand them.

Marketing reporting can not only show sales your contribution to the business but also display what channels work best and where you can improve. Because the results are available online, in real time, you can quickly adapt marketing programmes to apply best practices and proper lead qualification steps. As trust and alignment between sales and marketing increases, so will your ROI.

If you would like a copy of our Sales and Marketing whitepaper ‘Can’t live with them! Can’t live without them’ contact zoe.maolm@mardevdm2.com or tweet her @taylorzoe

Sign up here for the Next Generations Marketing conference on December 1-2, 2010 in Berlin!

Next Generation Marketing - B2B Marketing in Europe

Want more B2B news? Join our B2B Marketing Europe Fanpage and receive regular updates on the topic of B2B Marketing. Or follow our Twitter Account @b2bmarketingeu.

Entering New Markets Through the Collaborative Tribe B2B Marketing Campaign

3.11.2010 - B2B Marketing —

After 28 years spent in leading global software companies Thierry Collet (VP Global Marketing and Education, Dassult Systemes) calls himself an IT veteran, feverless he maintains an enormous appetite for hi-tech and innovative marketing techniques.

He will be sharing his expertise at the Next Generation Marketing conference with his presentation on How Dassault Sytemes Have Entered New Markets Through the Collaborative Tribe B2B Marketing Campaign. By using social media and viral marketing, Dassault sytems reached as high as 13.000 highly qualified new leads per campaign and each of their blog posts and videos are viewed by 700 – 4000 professionals.

Would you like to know who to leverage your social media channels to reach such high results?
Come to Berlin to listen to Mr Thierry Collet’s presentation on December 2nd at Next Generation Marketing conference, where he will present his case study on investigating how you can successfully create awareness in new B2B markets, utilising social media to connect with B2B prospects and customers, creating a competitive edge and being innovative through your B2B marketing tactics, learning how The Collaborative Tribe helped some of the social media platforms to rethink their value proposition for B2B businesses, evaluating and fixing the marketing campaign through analysis and understanding the market reaction and challenges associated with the marketing campaign.

Thierry Collet presenting at KGS’s B2B Marketing Europe from KGS on Vimeo.

To meet Thierry Collet and learn more about entering new markets through the collaborative tribe B2B marketing campaign, sign up for the Next Generations Marketing conference on December 1-2, 2010 in Berlin!

Next Generation Marketing - B2B Marketing in Europe

Want more B2B news? Join our B2B Marketing Europe Fanpage and receive regular updates on the topic of B2B Marketing. Or follow our Twitter Account @b2bmarketingeu.