Marketers (and demand generators) have to be good storytellers.  They have such a small window of opportunity to engage a person with an idea or message, they need to make it count every time.  A great book was written by Chris Heath and Dan Heath, called “Made to Stick“, and it is a book on why some ideas survive and some die.  They summarize this in six key principles that can be articulated in one sentence: Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story (or SUCCESs).

I thought it would be worthwhile to examine the six principles they discuss, and see how marketers could take advantage of these concepts to tell better stories.

Principle 1: Simplicity

It’s not good enough to be concise, you need to be concise and profound. “A one sentence statement that is so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning it”.  Marketers face this challenge every day – whether it is trying to develop your next brand platform or watching the available spaces countdown in your ad word editor.  How can you communicate your message so that it drives others to think,  and continue to be interested?  This is probably the toughest part of effective marketing.

Principle 2: Unexpectedness

To get people to pay attention to your ideas, “We need to violate people’s expectations. We need to be counterintuitive.”  And it isn’t enough that you just shock or surprise someone, you need to generate real interest or your idea won’t last.  Marketers are some of the best at coming up with creative ways to present their message – one of my favorite customer campaigns recently was Tanberg’s “I want my hour back“.  Which posed an interesting question on “what would you do if you could get 1 hour back?” And then tied it to Tandberg’s video conference solution as a way to get that hour.

Principle 3: Concreteness

We need to make our ideas clear, and to do that, we need to explain those ideas in terms that are real.  Although some analogies can be very successful – they can also be a crutch.  If you are a marketer who has a complex solution or service – try and speak in terms that your customers can relate to and understand.

Principle 4: Credibility

Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials.  Meaningless stats and calculations don’t always leave people convinced something is true.  A good example of this is the concept of email deliverability – no matter how data shows this is important, a much more compelling argument is “have you ever gotten a flaming email from the CEO that one of your campaigns ended up in a prospect’s junk mail?”  All of a sudden a story on bad email deliverability has more credibility than any number of stats you could present.

Principle 5: Emotions

“We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions”.  And we all know that people buy more on emotion than logical choice.  So how can a marketer create a connection with their prospects?  The importance of relevancy cannot be understated in marketing communications.  I believe there are four dimensions of relevancy (personalization): content, timing, delivery and sender. For more details on this concept – check out this article.

Principle 6: Stories

The best way to get people to act on your ideas, is to tell  stories.  By telling stories you mentally prepare yourself and others to deal with situations when they occur.  The best marketers and sales people in my organization, are the ones that have either lived through or learnt the key stories that make our customers great, and can tell them time and time again.

So there you have it, six principles to making your ideas stick.  So the next time you are tempted to rewrite all of your customer case studies into the same boring generic format (Pain, Solution, Results), think twice.  Maybe it is time to figure out how you can leverage the six principles on your stories and really “make it stick”.

Hey look kids, there's Big Ben, and there's Parliament! --Clark Griswold

Eloqua’s recent Customer Success tours have spawned good discussion around lead nurturing.  One question that stuck out to me was “When do you stop nurturing a lead?“

Let’s start by reviewing the basics of a good nurturing program…  First, the goal: to progress a lead from one lead stage to the next with the goal of acquiring a new customer or of retaining or developing an existing one.  To obtain a new customer though, you have to start by building a relationship.

Before you go crazy with marketing automation, let’s think about the journey.  First, recognize where your lead is in your funnel.  Is your intended audience comprised of suspects that you know little about? Are they sales rejects – not yet ready to purchase? Are they pure responses – someone who has responded to a campaign, but who doesn’t yet meet the qualification criteria necessary to send them to Sales for follow up?

Tailor the campaign content, frequency of communication, and messaging vehicle to funnel stage.  Many clients shared successes around their welcome programs.  This early-stage opportunity allows frequent communication and can often yield high conversion.  For sales rejects, less frequent but more personalized content that relates to your original interaction may be more appropriate.

But back to the question at hand:  just how long is this journey?  Sirius Decisions reports that the leads in your database will likely make a purchase within 24 months – either from you or from your competitors.  By process of elimination, the journey may be short for two groups within your target audience – those that convert on to the next stage – and into another phase of the relationship – and non-responders.  (If someone hasn’t clicked or been prompted to visit your site following your communication, it’s just not working.  Remove them, set their status to inactive and try a different tactic to re-engage them.) 

The most challenging group is like an annoying ex-boyfriend – they show occasional interest but just can’t commit.  They click but don’t convert.  They’re active, just not active enough for our pipeline-loving taste. 

Depending on the length of your sales cycle, you may consider several scenarios.  Try mixing up the channels - introduce new tactics such as direct mail, phone outreach, or social media if you’ve not previously.  If your benefit-focused campaign has exhausted all enticement, invite them to subscribe to your e-newsletter or some less-specific content in order to preserve the relationship without the burden of creating additional content.  Conversely, a polite but bold campaign that requests the user to bluntly signal their intention gets to the heart of the matter. 

“We noticed that you’d not responded to our recent emails. We don’t want to continue to fill your inbox if you’re not interested.  If you’d like us to continue to periodically send you information, please click here. Otherwise, we’ll remove you from our regular communications.” 

Bottom line:  There’s no exact answer to how long your nurturing program should last.  Above all, remember, this is a relationship you’re building.  Even if frequency and format change, it’s worth it to stay in touch.

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I was thinking that there are many parallels between how you run a successful fantasy football season, and what it takes to run a successful Demand Generation organization. Indulge me…here we go.

It’s All About How You Matchup Against the Competition

Fantasy football is all about knowing your players and how they matchup against their opposing teams that week.  Even though you may have a great QB, if he is facing the no. 1 pass defense, maybe you should sit him that week. Well the same goes for marketing campaigns.  Many marketers today are using tools that allow them to see how prospects are visiting their website, and what they searched on to get there (great blog on search queries here).  This is becoming a new way of targeting follow-up campaigns or driving lead scores.  The reason search queries are so powerful, is that you know exactly what the prospect was thinking when they came to your site, how deep they are in their buying process, and are they evaluating any of your competition (“us vs. them”)?  By understanding who you are up against, you can zero-in on the strengths to highlight, and weaknesses to defend.

It’s Hard to Know Everything, So Rely on Others for Advice

There are so many things that go on during an NFL week, that it near impossible to stay on top of everything.  I heavily rely on data and advice provided to me by ESPN and other sites.  This allows me to stay on top of key trends and changes during the week.

Well the same goes with Demand Generation.  I am lucky at Eloqua to be involved with hundreds of successful customers, but not everyone has that luxury.  Get engaged with a community, read blogs (such as this one), and spend time with other demand generation professionals (see Eloqua Customer Success Tours).  Many marketers admit that they “don’t know what they don’t know”, but by spending time learning from others, you can at least “know more about what you don’t know”.

Time Kills All Deals (Inquiries)

In Fantasy Football timeliness of action is so critical.  Whether it is picking up a player on the waiver wire, or accepting a trade offer from another team.  You need be ready to take action, every day, every hour, every minute.  Well the same goes for Demand Generation.  You have heard the phrase “time kills all deals”, but how about “time kills all inquiries”?  In a study completed by M.I.T., they showcased that hours matter when following up to inquiries.  In fact, the chances of converting an inquiry to a qualified lead, is increased by 600% if you call in the first hour vs. the second hour. 600%!  That is really unbelievable.

Well there you have it.  If you are reading this article and won your fantasy football season, perhaps you should consider a career in Demand Generation.  Either that or you were just lucky enough to grab Chris Johnson or Aaron Rogers this year.  See you at the Superbowl.

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“It’s just marketing.”
Best quote of the event, courtesy Jeff Taxdahl owner of Thread-Logic. This comment came from his presentation on whether to work with or not work with an agency to manage his PPC Campaign which currently drives 95% of his sales. At the end of the day, there are no tricks. The fundamentals of marketing still apply. Know your buyer; deliver a compelling message to the buyer. And, if it is important to your business, you may be the best person/team to make it happen and you may need to ramp up the knowledge in house.

Continuing this line of thinking – we spent several hours on social media on Day 1. And, I have to say, I am “kinda over” social media. I am tired of us talking about it with shiny penny syndrome and marketers’ utter confusion on “How does it fit? Is it worth it?” It’s just marketing! The fundamentals of marketing still apply. Know your buyer and deliver a compelling message to the buyer. Build the relationships, don’t force the brand.

“Relevance requires major data”
Second favorite quote. This came from Thomas Hayden, Director of Marketing for Sage Systems. So true Thomas, so true. In the way that an in-person conversation requires excellent listening skills (human data processing), an automated conversation demands pristine data quality. Your data quality represents your ability to listen to your customer effectively.

“Be Helpful.”
OK, this is actually a quote from Chris Brogan who wasn’t at the event but I love the quote and it sums up an important theme in terms of content and delivery of that content. I really enjoyed the session that featured Troy Monney from Novell (and not just because they are an Eloqua client) but because they clearly demonstrated how they mapped out content for buyer personas at different stages of their buyers’ evaluation process (v. the internal selling process). I thought all of the sessions on Day 2 that focused on content and buyer personas really helped us to think in the shoes of our customer v. the mindset of just pushing our brand.

“Can you tell us about the ROI on that example? Ummm…”
Many marketers are still struggling with key metrics and demonstrating ROI. Yes, it is a controversial subject in terms of the HOW, but I think that a clear understanding of Campaign impact on revenue is still a struggle for most. It is still a very anecdotal and correlation game.

“Marketing is still from Venus. And, Sales is still from Mars.”
I can’t believe we are still so siloed in our areas of focus on the funnel. Marketing focusing only on “sales ready” with no clear “acceptance/rejection” points along the way to gain objective feedback on lead quality. The one presentation on Scoring seemed to even accentuate this further. To truly drive sales and marketing alignment – there needs to be a clear mapping of process, communication touch points, and responsibilities at every step of the funnel, not just the top.

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1. Am I where I expected to be?
2. Is it relevant to me?
3. Do I believe you?
4. Is it easy to take action?

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Kris Shorter: Marketing Manager at Roche Diagnostics

How did you get where you are today?

4 Words – Path of Least Resistance

What’s interesting in marketing for your space right now?

The entire Life Science Research Community is trying extremely hard to capture as much of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds coming from the NIH as possible. Companies and institutions that do a superb job of this will have a giant advantage over their competition.

How do you get good ideas and inspiration?

I constantly ask myself, “What would Jack Bauer do?”.

What campaign have you seen recently that really blew you away?

Samsung LED TV Series campaign.  Samsung’s recent television ad portraying a digital  humming bird is extremely interesting from a creative and visual standpoint.  I also think their messaging does a nice job of trying to distinguish themselves from the competition.  When you visit their website, they maintain the same look and feel of the ad and have a very cool and dynamic product selection guide.

The Clip

The Web Site

If you were a font, which font would you be?

Chiller.  Because it sounds cool.

Please share with us a nugget of your marketing wisdom for our readers.

It is very important to understand and be able to stratify your current customer base – as well as the prospects that you are either not working with or do very little business with.  I always try to develop a contact strategy based on these segments and then allocate a higher percentage of budget towards the top prospects and less towards prospects with low potential.  For instance, a high-end direct mail campaign with telemarketing follow-up may be utilized for top prospects and a simple nurturing email campaign may suffice for those prospects with low potential.

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I also have been following Aaron on Twitter for some time and have really enjoyed his insights and blog posts.  So well, in fact, I am blatantly stealing his idea with this Marketing Masters series. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and so I see it only fitting that Aaron is featured first on our humble imitation.

Aaron Strout: CMO at Powered Inc.

How did you get where you are today?

Well, for an old guy like me, that’s a “bigger than a breadbox” type question. But in fairness to your project, I’ll give it a shot. It all started with waiting tables and bartending. That’s where I learned a TON about customer service and multitasking. I taught myself what I know about the Web back in the early 90’s (which had roots back to my dad’s computer programming career in the 70’s and 80’s). Fidelity Investments taught me nearly everything I know about marketing. And then in the early 2000’s, I took the people skills I acquired from aforementioned waitering/bartending jobs and started down the online “social” path with LinkedIn and Facebook. Oh, and then along came Francois Gossieaux who taught me a ton about marketing 2.0. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention Barry Libert, my last boss, who taught me how to properly channel my thought leadership skills.

What’s interesting in marketing for your space right now?

The intersection of “social” and “marketing.” There are two keys to this phenomena… a) great content and b) measurement and insight. Social marketing in my mind is the future of business.

How do you get good ideas and inspiration?

From a number of different traditional and new media-esque sources like NPR, marketing blogs and Twitter. Most importantly though, getting together with friends like Dave Evans, Kyle Flaherty, Bryan Person, Peter Kim, David Armano, Jim Storer and Tim Walker – along with my super smart colleagues at Powered – helps me distill these new ideas into “implement-able” tactics.

What campaign have you seen recently that really blew you away?

Hmmm, I’m not sure there’s anything that’s blown me away. However, I’m a big fan of what smart CMO’s like Jeffrey Hayzlett of Kodak and Barry Judge of Best Buy are doing. Those guys are good people to watch.

If you were a font, which font would you be?

As boring as it sounds (love the question though), probably Calibri. It’s simple, clean but easy to read. I always try and keep things simple and make any of my recommendations to others prescriptive.

Please share with us a nugget of your marketing wisdom for our readers.

I’m a huge believer in Karma. To me, that means that I try and do nice things and be respectful of anyone and everyone, irrespective of what they might offer back to me. What I’ve found is that in the grand scheme of things, this always pays back in spades. It also makes people happy and grateful which are nice traits to see in people. I also am a big fan of work/life balance although I’m not always as good at practicing it as I would like.

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[Photo Credit: Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com and bub.blicio.us]

In my role at Eloqua I work with a lot of customers every week. Over time, I’ve learned which ones like to communicate via email and which ones prefer a phone call instead. This hit home to me this week when one of my customers had not responded to the last several emails I had sent to her. When I picked up the phone, we ended up having a great chat and now I’ll remember that she prefers that method of communication instead.

Next time you’re kicking off a campaign, consider making it multi-channel. Perhaps some of your past non-responders would do better with an automated phone message this time around? Do you have an opt-in list of SMS contacts? If so, send them a text message with a URL to register for your event or learn about your offer. Don’t forget to add Twitter and Facebook to your next campaign outreach as well.

Your prospects are listening on different channels, so make sure you’re talking to them in the places where they’ll hear you.

[Photo credit: RickMacMerc via Flickr]

• What should your topic be and who should present it?
• When is the best day to host the event?
• Who should you invite?

WHAT
First you need to determine your topic. You may know exactly what your prospects and customers are looking for in an online event, but if you don’t… surveys can help discover content they are seeking. Post a survey on your website or include in your newsletter to help you identify topics your audience finds significant.

Once you have your topic, you need to find speakers. We all know that using a 3rd party expert will add credibility to your event. But in addition to inviting industry experts or analysts to speak, consider inviting your customers as thought leaders – they can share how they’ve been able to drive success, what lessons they’ve learned, as well as discuss where they stand on critical issues.

WHEN
Now, what is the best day to have your online event? In Bulldog Solution’s Marketing Watchdog Journal, Ken Molay, President, Webinar Success, shared results from his survey on Best Webinar Times. When asked, Ken’s typical answer is Tuesday through Thursday, a little before lunch or a little after lunch depending on your time zone. The results of his survey, when people were asked to pick a single day they would most likely attend a webinar, showed that he was right for the most part. Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s were clear winners… but Friday came in a surprising third at 18%. Timing may be different for your audience, so test various days and times to determine when is most effective for you.

WHO
Once you’ve determined what and when, you need to figure out who. Who is your target audience? Consider the relevancy of the content as you develop your list. Is it focused on a specific industry, or product, or role within an organization? Is it more relevant to someone who has attended a previous event or downloaded a white paper on the same topic? Does it align to where an individual is in their buying cycle?

In the end, the quality of your list will affect the results of your online event attendance, so don’t BATCH AND BLAST, be relevant!

WHAT’S NEXT
Once you’ve figured out WHAT, WHEN and WHO, you’ll need to focus on driving registration. Check out Steve Wood’s recommendations in his post on Four Practices to Increase Webinar Effectiveness.

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