More food for thought.

I say track away! And don’t come for free content if you don’t want to be observed. It is kinda like the TV advertising deal – free shows for permission to run 30 seconds ads!

But just like ads had to be become more valuable (ie entertaining etc) the people who act on my data need to do it with more sophistication and value in order to engage me!

Cheers

S

Here’s a question that always haunts me. Your model starts with “Extracting Knowledge”. Makes sense. But how do you determine whether that knowledge adds real value, unique value, to the provider’s community, or whether that “knowledge” is just more noise in an already very noisy world. And how do you decide (or who decides) what is noice and what is unique, valuable content?

I need to dig into Scott’s thinking still…thanks for the reminder. The reason I’ve keyed on knowledge as the root is that I think there’s an opportunity to focus on where one’s true expertise lies rather than trying to say in just the right way what the audience thinks it wants to hear. I believe there is power in the natural affinity between a vendor’s trueknowledge/expertise and a prospect’s perceived value of that knowledge. I also believe that power should translate into customer relationships if nurtured effectively.

“Extract / Transform / Infuse” @dmscott advocates less of a “what do you know?” and more of a “what do they want to hear?” philosophy. Something as simple as truly understanding the B2B client’s pains and finding a way to make them smile could be considered a sign of meaningful knowledge in the age of entertrainment.

Here’s 3 of your top concerns, and how Gossamar is addressing them:

1. “No one does a great job with the entire picture”. For starters, we’re integrating SEO/SEM, Reputation Management Analytics, Demand Generation (Inbound and Outbound components), and CRM silos. We’ve integrated the entire spectrum into one central dashboard for B2B marketers to manage their marketing effort. Check out http://www.inbound-marketing-automation.ca/blog/2009/09/27/the-inbound-marketing-dashboard/

2. “Pricing is all over the map … sky-high fees”. We’ve addressed that by partnering with SMB-oriented suppliers with SMB pricing. It wasn’t easy. Hundreds of different suppliers, each with different value/pricing logic.

3. “Minimum vendor relationships to manage”. Most SMBs don’t have the internal resources to research, implement, and manage all the silos. So we’ve developed 3 options to give SMBs the choice of how much stuff they want to keep in-house, and how much they want to outsource. Check out: http://www.inbound-marketing-automation.ca/getting-started/

In your blog you ask “What have I missed?” Let me ask you, Nolin, what have we missed?

Keep up the great insight!