Vee is for Vaynerchuk

If you've never seen Gary Vaynerchuk speak before, be prepared for some cussing, swearing and F-bombs. Luckily I got to catch his keynote at Raleigh's Internet Summit, what a great speaker! As the author of "Crush It!", "The Thank You Economy" and one of the leading entrepreneurs in Social Media, Gary has earned that verbal latitude. But guess what? He keeps your attention and drills his ideas into your head with ease and ferocity. As he paced and danced across the stage at the Internet Summit last month, there was no doubt in my mind that most every eyeball in the room was focused on this man. And while his domain of expertise is in B2C, it makes me wonder how much of his premonitions and expectations will be leveraged and impact the B2B world? Here are some of Gary's thoughts on how social media is changing the business and marketing landscape:

* Marketing for 150 years has been push-based, now shifting to pull

* Traditional outbound marketing no longer effective, marketing should be a conversation

* Social media and the word of mouth ecosystem carries further than ever before and has disrupted communications and marketing

* Content is king but context (relationships) will be king, we are at the dawn of 1 on 1 marketing

* Companies struggle with social media because they act like 19 year old dudes, they try to close on the first move

* The majority of corporate CEO's and entrepreneurs twenty years from today will be women: marketing will become more emotional, nurturing, intuitive

* We are in a world of transparency where nobody and no business can hide

* We are on the cusp of the humanization of business, put your money into people

Now I do believe that often enough or not, B2C marketing and trends seep into B2B marketing over time. While the B2B marketplace is more factual, less emotional and risk-intolerant, will some of these ideas from Vaynerchuk impact B2B marketing? Or is the B2B market so different that these concepts stay rooted in the B2C world?

While it still remains to be seen how, exactly, social media and inbound marketing will impact the B2B world, we are already seeing some disruption. Transparency on the internet is clearly out there already. LinkedIn allows business ideas and experiences to be shared easily and readily. Will we need to shift the sales model and have sales reps work with prospects in more early-stage relationships? No more marketing-qualified leads or sales-qualified leads. Just focus on establishing connections with people using relevant, value-add content and information?

What I do know for sure is that technology platforms online and offline are transforming marketing as we know it today. While we may not have the definitive B2B platform to bring Gary's beliefs to fruition right now, who knows what tomorrow brings? And yes, maybe Gary is a bit closer to the truth than we'd all care to believe...

Catch Gary on Twitter @garyvee

Inbound, Outbound Marketing and Quality Content The Power of Three in Marketing

Given the impact of Web 2.0 and social media in the online world, it was inevitable that the changes unleashed on the public would eventually find its way to the business world. I've sat in on webinars touting the benefits of inbound marketing with titles like, "The Marketing Playbook is Broken" - Hubspot. And it's a scary thought, isn't it? Do our customers finally have the upper hand with all this online information at their disposal?

As marketers we want to actively influence and impact customer purchasing decisions. Set up a compelling marketing program, create some assets, push out the assets with a call-to-action (CTA), measure the results, re-calibrate. But is the average person so overwhelmed with information that they prefer to research purchase decisions themselves, guaranteeing the quantity AND quality of information they get? Think about it, how many complaints have you heard from prospects and customers about marketing fluff? The reality is on the B2B software side of the world, you may move through a path of software developers, product managers, product marketing, marketing programs and marcomm people before your outbound content reaches the ears of your prospect. And like a game of Telephone, the further down this path the information takes, the more diluted the marketing copy becomes.

I personally have written up many pieces of marketing collateral that absolutely HAD to go through the brand team for edits before being approved. Having been an IT manager, I like to think I have a pretty good idea of what needs to get communicated and with my marketing background, how it needs to be communicated. When the final document was approved by my brand team, the verbiage had changed a bit. In all honesty, I don't think much value was added and some of the sharpness had been lost along with three weeks of time. But if you need to get your assets blessed and printed, you don't have much of a choice.

When you talk to technology people from administrators to executives, losing the authenticity and credibility in your voice isn't a wise idea. So how can you blame B2B technology folks for putting your emails aside and going online to search for more unbiased and accurate information? IT people are as busy as anyone else in the building with little time to spare and guess what? They're also pretty darn bright and understand what marketers are trying to do, regardless of any social awkwardness.

The reality is that certainly, marketing focus may be shifting towards inbound (passive) marketing versus the more traditional playbooks that focus on emails, direct mail, events, roadshows and sales enablement materials. But regardless of which marketing vehicles you use, inbound, outbound or otherwise, you need to have quality content! Content that reassures and validates concerns of all technology stakeholders as they go through the awareness, evaluation, consideration and purchase cycle. The ability to provide needed and credible information to your prospects ultimately relies on the same item: quality content. Whether that content is sourced internally, crowd-sourced or through analysts and third-party groups is another question.

So let's not argue about whether or not inbound or outbound marketing is the way to go for your customers. As usual, you need to find the right marketing mix and vehicles to communicate your value prop and message at the right time. Just make sure you've got informative, interesting content, regardless of how it gets delivered. If you do, your marketing efforts will be rolling downhill and driving your business to the next level.