Koen DeWitte's blog

Q: Got this very interesting question from someone at E&Y Australia: “I have understood the buying process to be a number of steps in a journey from a buyer being unaware of a problem to engaging and buying again. My question relates to whether you think the steps in the journey have evolved over the last 20 years and what specifically has caused this.”

A: I don’t think the buying process has changed much. Whether it is AIDA AIDAC, AIDAS, CAB, Dagmar, etc. They basically are all saying the same thing.

Seth’s post today http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2123/26770596 ends with “the thing that persuades you is unlikely to be the thing that persuades the next guy

Made me think about Quantum Physics

I picked up a recent tweet from Jeremiah Owyang. About what it is “the definition of marketing”. And ‘what was first product or marketing?”. Seems like the AMA opened a can of worms recently by rewriting the definition of the word.

One of the responses I came across wrote about “marketing” finaly “leading” the product development function. And social media being a great example of that. Not sure whether I’m adding value. Still wanted to share my thoughts. I have thoughts:

In Europe webinars are less popular than in the US. Although I continue to see more and more pick up. American B2B marketers with global responsibility always ask me about this. For me this is about cultural differences. It has to do with the way people seek information. One of the most eye opening articles that talks about this issue can be found here: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/hermeking.html

Engagement marketing…..online or offline…convergence. For all those with an iPhone; check out this post on LinkedIn’s blog: http://blog.linkedin.com/

Great example on how to accelerate engagements in offline mode. Cool stuff. I uploaded it already.

Cobbling together a name, the person’s title and a phone number isn’t going to cut it. Yet…guess in how many organizations this is what is called ‘lead’-generation!

All I can say that it ‘leads’ to the modern day cold call - “a lead” who has not interest in what you’re selling. As as result he may opt out of your universe. Try to get back on the radar screen then!

Understanding when to message, and what to message to the right audience is something totally different than populating a rolodex with just names.

Your potential client universe is alive and changing with each day. It is imperative to use metrics to do two things:

1. Increase the probability that you’re talking to tomorrow’s clients.
2. Decrease the probability that you’re wasting valuable resources on people that will never become a client.

Are you?

I read this on Seth Godin’s blog this morning: “It’s too easy to criticize hope and in the end cynicism is a lousy strategy” http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/02/its-too-easy-to.html

I had a good laugh; Seth Godin restating Rick Page’s famous quote. From a philosophical angle you’re right, Seth. If you don’t try you’ll never know.

Technorati Profile

Lately a lot of attention is going to concepts like nurturing and maturation. Whenever I’m reading about it I get the sense that not everybody is interpreting these concepts the same way. For example, “nurturing” is defined as the activity that takes places after that tactic was executed.

Imho that is not really doing justice to the definition of nurturing. What was just described simply is called a “post event (multi) touch”. Why is the difference so important? And why is nurturing more than a post event follow up touch?

This is probably the most interesting article I’ve read so far this year: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/49c55232-cda2-11dc-9e4e-000077b07658.html

Most rules in B2B social media haven’t been written yet. There is no general best practice, except but maybe one: be honest, be yourself, post frequently, communicate, reach out, avoid selling (sounds familiar this last one?), add some flair of altruism.

People sometimes are connected in the strangest ways. The internet is not any different than real life. Think about “LinkedIn”. It’s based on the 5 degrees of separation which claims that via 5 hops you can reach everyone in the world. So we basically all start out on the same foot.

Sirius Decisions’ latest newsletter included some interesting stats re: perceived effectiveness of lead gen tactics.

I found this on 1to1 blog: http://www.1to1media.com/weblog/marketing/

I share the opinion of those that say that the 4Ps are of all times. Customer centric thinking, accelerated by new Internet driven models does not replace this. I agree that old school product centric business management is over and out.

Came across this interesting report today in emarketer Daily:

We are in lead gen and not advertisement you say? Good catch! But that’s not my point. The point is that various industry sources agree that this mode will substantially grow in terms of adoption. Even though the same sources also notice today that frequent usage is not consistent (yet), marketers should start taking this mode more serious, also in the B2B space.

How many B2B marketers today really have implemented a permission based communication strategy? Btw: how do you interpret permission based marketing? Is your definition one of stating: “It’s about sending information to people that have given their explicit consent to receive information from you?” Or do you define permission marketing as the discipline that tries to reach a contact at the most appropriate time? e.g. at the best possible times during the prospect life cycle? I think consent is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Amazing to see how several industry sources are talking about the need to get serious about systematizing B2B marketing and sales alignment. This is good news because it supports directly our mission statement as well.

It’s becoming a recurring theme in this blog. Any lead generation tactic is about trying to establish a conversation between a solution provider and his target audience.

I just came across an awesome video:

Is there a relationship with B2B lead generation, you ask?