Eloqua Grande Guides: B2B Marketing Can (and Should) Be Fun
If you’re like me, you’re overwhelmed with the amount of marketing information being presented on an hourly basis. On top of that, keeping up with new technologies and terminologies is mind-boggling.
Quite frankly, my eyes have begun to permanently glaze over. So I was happy to hear that the marketing folks at Eloqua agree with me.
“You are correct,” says Joe Chernov, Director of Content for Eloqua, which provides marketing automation products and services. “People tune out when confronted with too much information. And, companies often use confusing concepts and jargon to explain what they do, especially when it comes to marketing automation. We wanted to turn our focus outward and get people’s attention through entertainment as well as substance.”
The result is Eloqua’s wonderful new Grande Guides campaign, complete with spokesperson Juan Eloqua, a “cheeky yet romantic” businessman who specializes in growing coffee — and revenue.
“Our CMO, Brian Kardon, came up with the idea for Juan Eloqua — it was one of those ‘lightning strikes’ type of ideas. Another idea was to film coffee barristas answering people’s questions, but we quickly realized that would be an execution nightmare.”
Campaign goal is more than just buzz
Casting, filming and editing the videos took eight weeks using a professional camera crew and a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) actor. Brian wrote the script; Joe was responsible for developing the Grande Guides.
“We had to go back and reshoot the videos because we wanted Juan to introduce the various Guides,” says Joe. “So that added to the execution time.”
The campaign launched August 24, 2010. “We put it out on various social media platforms and set it free,” says Joe. “However, we want more than buzz. We’re sending out over 100,000 emails asking people to subscribe to the content.
“And, because we’re always looking to add information to profiles in our database, we’ve put up forms to collect this information, which we’ll then use for our own lead scoring. We’re also hoping to reactivate inactive prospects.”
Grande Guides present one concept at a time
What I like best about this campaign is that Eloqua is seeking to educate people — the foundation of successful B2B marketing — while having some fun in the process. As such, the Grande Guides have been designed to look like a beloved moleskin notebook with valuable content . . . the kind you don’t want to throw away.
“The point with the Guides,” says Joe, “is to boil down complex concepts into a document someone can read in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.”
The first in the series, The Grande Guide to Lead Scoring, for example, gives you a detailed overview of the topic, why it’s important, and how to do it. Information is presented in an easy-to-read format with lots of subheads, call outs, graphs — and coffee stains. 
Be sure to check out the Guide. You can also follow Eloqua and the campaign via Twitter, Slideshare, and Facebook.
About the author: Dianna Huff
A B2B web marketing expert, Dianna helps B2B companies grow through SEO, marketing writing, and social media. A frequent speaker, Dianna has been quoted in numerous blogs, books, and articles; her client list includes large and small B2B companies across the U.S. Follow her on Twitter @diannahuff. To receive her e-course on creating great B2B marketing content, subscribe to her newsletter, The MarCom Strategist.
August 27th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Hi Dianna;
You are so right about being deluged with – well to be honest, I’m not sure what we’re bombarded with on a regular basis. It’s a stream of bits, that’s for sure, but “Information?” That would imply that much of it is useful and of course, wading through and sorting out useless facts and rumor from real information is, as you say, a big deal these days.
So while I admire the folks at Eloqua for trying to help in this regard, in some ways they are merely adding to the problem by releasing yet more “information” on top of all that already available on each of these subjects.
Perhaps its time for consultants to step up to the plate and make it easy enough to do all this, that people will just use them instead of spending all this time reading comments like mine and more “Grande Guides”.
I say all this somewhat ruefully, as we have been trying to do just this for our clients for a while now. And it wasn’t until yesterday that we experienced a form of breakthrough in understanding just how to make it easier for our clients to get involved in Inbound Marketing and Marketing Automation, or what we call Inbound Marketing Automation.
Too early to say much about the idea, but if you’re interested, keep an eye on our site.
August 30th, 2010 at 11:10 am
Eric,
Thanks for the response. I am a marketer and find my eyes glazing over at the amount of information being presented and at its complexity. Having the ability to measure everything is good, but it’s resulted in “analysis paralysis.” It’s also resulted in way too much complex, jargon-filled information being published.
So I applaud Eloqua in acknowledging this issue exists and attempting to do something about it.