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Is word-of-mouth best for business execs?

Conversation is more than a social media strategy. While all the attention these days seems to be on online marketing – and, sure, that’s where the excitement is, there are still plenty of B2B executives getting results from good ol’ fashioned face-to-face networking and word-of-mouth exchanges. By and large, we are social beings, and most of us still value the opinions of people in our personal networks and trusted business connections more than rather tenuous Twitter and LinkedIn connections. But what is word-of-mouth marketing worth in B2B? Find out below and find three tips for making your clients become your biggest advocates. Continue reading →

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Content marketing – old wine in new bottles?

by Jens Victor Fischer

Effective content marketing is based on a genuine desire to help potential customers – and can, when implemented, lead to fundamental change in company culture. But old wine is old wine…

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A Christmas Wish: that marketers ‘get’ the need for content promotion

by Jonathan Winch

Imagine you had asked your ad agency to create a TV commercial for your latest product. But you hadn’t allocated funds for actually airing the commercial on the right TV channels. Would you expect your campaign to be the talk of the town? No, right? Then why should corporate marketers expect they can create great content and the world will just sort of, well, see it and engage with it? Content promotion is key in today’s communication landscape. Continue reading →

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Boring is bad. Decision making needs emotional incentives.

by David Hoskin

Let’s face it. So much of what goes for B2B marketing is ghastly boring. How many variations of lower cost, higher efficiency, longer lasting, better ROI, etc. have we already seen? Buyers will often take these messages for granted, so just stating and repeating them has little or no impact.

Human beings are emotional beings – even when they’re at work, and there are many studies that show decision making (even for the most rational people including the people who might be interested in your device, substance, software, or whatever it is you manufacture) is heavily influenced by emotional incentive. Continue reading →

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Is branding an artifact of the past?

I recently read an article titled “Why Branding is an Artifact of the Past” which I think touches on a point that should be carefully considered by any B2B marketing professional – Is branding really all that important for your business? Continue reading →

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Honesty and your Voice of Customer messages—can you go too far?

by Jonathan Winch

Those who’ve read our book, The Death of Propaganda, will know that we’re staunch advocates of honesty in advertising. Specifically, we advocate a more direct delivery of the facts, albeit in a helpful way, when it comes to talking about a company’s own products or those of its competitors. But how far can that honesty thing go? Continue reading →

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Is consulting a necessary evil?

by Jonathan Winch

How would you feel if, in front of a staff gathering, a client called your company a “whorehouse”? That’s what I witnessed recently when attending a reception at one of Denmark’s largest organizations. Luckily, it wasn’t our agency whose name was being besmirched but that of a major global consulting company. Fair or not, and not exactly helped by the popular US TV show “House of Lies”, the consulting business has a pretty nasty reputation for overcharging and under-delivering – and making a sport of it. But I was still shocked to hear such open hostility communicated from management to staff about a supplier. Continue reading →