Doug Kessler

I'm a founder and Creative Director of Velocity, a B2B marketing agency specialising in technology companies.

Twenty-plus years in B2B marketing, most of them in technology markets.

www.velocitypartners.co.uk

Maintaining momentum in B2B marketing

A planning vacuum means most B2B marketing progresses in fits and starts. Inertia kills momentum.

Ask a consumer marketer for a look at their marketing plan and you're likely to get anything from a 20-page powerpoint deck to a 400-page binder with tabs, spreadsheets, gant charts and dashboards.

Ask a B2B marketer for their marketing plan and you're likely to get a funny look and some awkward rationalisation. "Erm... we're agile here. Our market moves too fast. If we had a plan it wold be out of date in a week." Yadda-yadda-yadda.

by Doug Kessler 13 September 2011 12:23pm 8 comments

Psychographic targeting in B2B marketing

There are so many ways to segment an audience and target your messages – by job title, industry, seniority, behaviour... But there's an important dimension that's often ignored by B2B marketers: psychographics.

How different prospects feel about things can guide your segmentation, offers and creative. The trick is to find ways to get your psychographic targets to identify themselves so you can market to their specific biases.

by Doug Kessler 08 July 2011 09:48am 10 comments

When retargeting turns into stalking

Online ad retargeting is a very powerful concept that, in the wrong hands, can not only infuriate your prospective customers but also threatens the entire cookie-fueled display advertising market.

We've all been the victim of this: you look at a pair of pink, fluffy handcuffs on BondageMaster.com and for the next three months, the very same handcuffs appear on almost every other site you visit. Spooky.

by Doug Kessler 25 May 2011 10:01am 22 comments

As website management derails, marketers suffer

Studies show large websites are failing to deliver on the most basic expectations for usability and accessibility.

Why is this? How does it impact marketers? And what can they do about it?

by Doug Kessler 23 May 2011 11:44am 11 comments

B2B marketers: the revenue cat is out of the bag

There's been a sea-change in B2B marketing and it's all about our relationship to revenue.

Here's why it's a good thing, why it's an inevitable thing and what you B2B marketers can do about it.

by Doug Kessler 13 January 2011 10:00am 1 comment

B2B Test: LinkedIn DirectAds

We thought we'd give the PPC ads in LinkedIn a go to promote our B2B Marketing Manifesto. Here are our experiences...

by Doug Kessler 08 December 2010 15:07pm 18 comments

B2B marketers are stumbling in the dark

The value of a learning culture has bypassed most B2B marketing departments. They're missing out on a hugely powerful asset...

There's a never-ending dialogue about the difference between B2B and B2C marketing. For me, it's always been a bit of a spurious debate (the two clearly overlap on almost all dimensions). But one thing does seem annoyingly true of B2B marketing departments compared to their consumer peers: B2B departments don't learn.

by Doug Kessler 01 November 2010 11:55am 14 comments