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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In the post Driving Demand for Your Online Events, we covered 4 key areas to focus on in order to not only get people to register for your webinar, but also to drive attendance. But it doesn’t stop there. The success of your webinar continues past the day of the event. Here are a few tips on maximizing the investment of your successful online event.

Click image to watch this 2 minute video!

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As we begin 2010, think of ways you can create points of reference within your organization where you can create standards.  Then evaluate and compare against past performance to ensure you are improving your overall marketing effectiveness.

Standards should be created in each of the four disciplines of the Demand Lifecycle™ – lead management, contact management, campaign management and marketing effectiveness. 

To get you started, Eloqua Best Practice recommends the following standards for measurement to create a baseline for evaluation and comparison.

Demand Lifecycle(TM) Recommended Metrics for Benchmarking

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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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1.        Benchmark and assess for improvement in marketing effectiveness

2.        Review the health of your database

3.        Lead stage definitions – get in alignment with sales and implement in CRM and Eloqua

4.        Implement lead scoring and make sure you are monitoring results

5.        Identify manual processes and automate where appropriate

6.        Track everything you possibly can, but only report on actionable data

7.        Have fun with your campaigns

8.        Identify MBOs that are jointly shared with sales

9.        Document your marketing processes

10.      Take inventory of your campaigns, update where appropriate

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Then I ran across a post by Dennis Dayman, Eloqua’s Email Delivery and Privacy Officer. Dennis blogs on Deliverability.com where he recently shared this holiday story that his friend Rick Buck of e-Dialog had sent around. Thanks Rick!! This certainly resonated with me and I wish I could send this message to all those vendors spamming me this month.

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‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the land,
marketers were scheming to hit year-end plans.

Their e-mails were designed in great detail and care,
in hopes that all of their customers soon would be there.

Mail the entire list. Mail them all!
Mail away! Mail away! Mail away all!”

The executives were nestled all snug in their beds,
with visions of Q4 revenue dancing in their heads.

When back in the office arose such a clatter,
that delivery support ran to see what was the matter?

Away to their reporting tools they flew like a flash,
investigating each client’s mailing to look for the trash.

The data before them on the newly sent mail
gave all indications of why they did fail.

When what to their wondering eyes should appear,
but a slew of bounce codes that no one would endear.

Unknown User! Inactive Account! Mailbox Doesn’t Exist!
Blocks from the ISPs were hard to resist.

If only they’d listened and segmented their data.
Their mailing would have been delivered,  staying off of the ISP’s radar.

Relevance, hygiene, permission and more,
ultimately gets the campaign safely out the door.

Reach out to your clients now and give them a shout.
Make sure they understand what this is all about.

Eliminate unknown users, non-responders, and hard bounces alike,
and watch delivery and response rates soar and spike.

It is important to take heed of this trustworthy advice,
because the ISPs know if you’re naughty or nice.

During this important mailing season we must get it right.
Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good-night!

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More mistakes that Marketers need to avoid in 2010 can be found at Anything Goes Marketing. One of the five mistakes listed: “If you continue to only send email blasts on a schedule that you dictate to your email subscribers, you risk massive list attrition, damaging your overall email deliverability.”

Happy *successful* email deliverability in 2010!

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As an online marketer trying to figure out how to leverage social media, you may be facing a similar information overload of content on *social marketing how-to* leaving you unsure of where to start. In the guest post below, Joe Chernov, Director of Communications & Social Media at Eloqua, shares how Eloqua can get you from Zero to Social in three easy steps.

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It’s virtually impossible to discuss marketing without the conversation shifting to social media.  For many of us, social media and marketing have become almost synonymous.   But with this spike in attention comes a surge in information.  There are countless books, blogs, reports, tweets and articles on the topic of social marketing.  This staggering amount of content can cause marketing paralysis:  With so many paths to follow, taking the first step can be daunting.

When facing an impasse, it’s best to keep moving.  And when it comes to social media marketing, the best move is the one that allows you to get started.   It’s this awareness – the notion that marketers don’t want to do everything in social media, they want to do something in social media – that drove us to create our new Social Sharing & Reporting tools.  What is it?  It’s a simple way for our clients trigger conversations about their products and join conversations already underway.  Because when it comes to social media, all conversations matter.

In the end, social media isn’t about products, marketing or even media.  It’s about people.  So my colleague, Jody Mooney, created this super-short video in which she explains, person to person, how Eloqua can take you “from zero to social” in three easy steps.

Once you get started in social media, it’s critical to stay engaged.  You cannot pop in and out when it suits you.  Unlike traditional communications, in which marketers dial-up and dial-down messaging based on corporate developments, social media is not a sine wave.  It’s a flat line. It’s an ongoing conversation with your customers, your partners, your fans and even your detractors.

And for those of you who want to dive a little deeper into social media marketing, I recommend MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide.  This book contains every chart conceivable on marketing across the social Web.  You will be an expert in no time.

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