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.

For a long time I had one type of bird feeder in my backyard, a feeder I kept filled with one type of food: black sunflower seeds.

The feeder attracted the typical birds you see in New England backyards: Blue Jays, Chickadees, and Cardinals, to name a few.

A few weeks ago, however, I added two new feeders, a nut feeder and a bowl feeder filled with millet in order to attract smaller birds.

Over night my backyard went from being the equivalent of a sleepy small town airstrip to a busy municipal airport.

Birds of all kinds flocked to my feeders — Woodpeckers, Titmice, Nuthatches, Rose Breasted Grosbeaks, Grackles, Finches, Mourning Doves, Sparrows and others I have yet to identify.

In fact, the bowl feeder / millet proved so successful, I now have five to six Sparrows sitting in the bowl eating seed at any given time, others fighting for a position on the bowl and more milling around on the ground waiting for seed to drop.

Wow!

Attract more B2B buyers with multiple offers

Generally, companies offer people something in return for “raising their hand” to be identified. I ask people to give me their first name and email address in exchange for my monthly newsletter, for example.

Other companies ask for additional information when it comes to Webinars, white papers and the like.

Giving people free information is good. The problem, however, is that people respond to offers depending on where they are in the buying cycle.

• Someone just starting research will download white papers or checklists but definitely doesn’t want a sales person to call and isn’t ready for a demo.
• Someone who is narrowing down the vendor selection list has probably already read a half dozen white papers and now is now ready to participate in a Webinar and/or read case studies.
• And a team that’s ready to make a buying decision may want to talk to a sales person or have a demo.

Having just one type of offer, i.e. white papers, will attract some buyers, but these buyers will most likely not be ready to buy for months, which is why you need to include offers that attract buyers no matter where they are in the buying cycle.

Instead of attracting people who are “just looking,” you’ll also attract those who are serious about finding a vendor / partner and making a purchase.

As to my new found birding love, I’m now researching platform feeders. My buddy Mac McIntosh (who inspired this post) said to put out cut up oranges, grapes, and bread crusts. He also recommended suet feeders. What’s your recommendation?

(Photo credit: Liz Leyden)

“Our customers already know who we are.”

This is a line I’ve heard since starting my business 12 years ago this month. The reasons for the statement vary with the company and the product / service offered:

• “Our known universe of customers is small. They all know us and we know them.”
• “We’re a big company with a big name.”
• “We’ve been doing this for decades.”
• “No one else does what we do.”

But what “Our customers already know who are we are” really means is this: “We don’t want to go to the effort and cost of changing our marketing approach.”

This is why you see B2B Websites filled with hyperbolic fluff that says nothing and little in the way of high-value content that educates people (leads and prospects) on how the company can solve their business challenges.

It’s why B2B companies (large and small) continue to rely on marketing tactics from decades ago . . . the “old boys’ network,” the expensive print ads, the fruitless telemarketing calls.

Yes, yes, I know. These tactics still work somewhat. But what would happen if a B2B company approached its marketing this way:

“Lots and lots of men and women out there need our services / products but they don’t know who we are. How do we get the word out?”

• All of a sudden, marketing becomes an imperative, not a cost center that can be cut at whim.
• The Internet now becomes a tool for reaching many, not something to be feared.
• Marketing analytics and marketing automation become must-have tools that give knowledge and insight versus keeping a company in the dark.

Over time, the company increases sales and as sales increase, it hires someone fulltime to develop marketing campaigns and write content and use social media tools more effectively . . . which gets the word out even more . . . which increases sales.

Rinse, repeat.

In the old days, markets were relatively local. A business owner or marketer would might do business with people he or she knew outside of work. You found customers and vendors through your local Yellow Pages, Chamber of Commerce, or maybe even your Rotary meeting.

Now markets are “global.” Your competitor is no longer in the next town or state. Your competitors live and work all over the globe — and trust me, they aren’t resting on “Our customers already know who we are.”

No. They’re making sure your customers and prospects know who they are by pitching them. Every. Single. Day.

Thanks to the Internet, I can find and do business with a company in New Zealand just as easily as I can a company that’s a few towns over from me.

In fact, it might be easier to find the company in New Zealand.

Which is why B2B marketers and business owners really need to stop saying, “Our customers already know who we are.” Yes, yes they do because they’re doing business with you. Duh.

But what about all those people who don’t do business with you? Do they know who you are? No, they don’t. But they do know your competitors.

I have never forgotten the last paper I wrote in order to finish my Masters in English.

I wrote about Austen’s work, Emma. After being five years in the program, I had “good” writing and grammar down pat.

In fact, I strove to hand in error-free papers. I’d type and proof, retype and proof again. It took me days to write a simple five page, double-spaced paper.

I remember my Emma paper because the professor found a mistake.

When referring to Emma and Mr. Knightly, I used an apostrophe “s” after Mr. Knightley’s name only to denote they owned something in common.

The professor wrote, “A glaring error in an otherwise perfect paper.”

I can still feel the rage that welled up in my stomach when I read that comment.

I was so angry, I looked up the grammar rule and sent my paper back with a note to show that I was right.

The professor wrote back, “I stand corrected.”

A bad experience in an otherwise wonderful time in the Masters program.

In his book, Linchpin, Seth Godin writes:

Read someone’s resume, and discover twenty years of extraordinary exploits and one typo.

Which are you going to mention first? We are hired for perfect, we measure for perfect, and we reward for perfect.

So why are we surprised that people spend their precious minutes of self-directed, focused work time trying to achieve perfect?

I am not perfect.

Especially when it comes to writing typo-free content. When you get something written from me, it might have a typo in it. Or two. Maybe even three.

This is not to say I don’t care about my work. I do care. Deeply.

Like most writers, I proofread my work. I print out reams of paper, edit and proof, edit and proof. (I print out so much paper, I’m on a first name basis with A1 Datashred.)

For years I struggled to produce copy that did not have one typo. I firmly believed these truths:

• Typos show a lack of attention to detail.
• Typos reflect poorly on you and your work.

But given the nature of my work, I find it incredibly difficult to produce typo-free copy. I write all day long. I type a million miles a minute. My eyes glaze over from staring at the computer screen.

Given that 99% percent of what I write is digital content, it’s pretty easy to fix mistakes.

But here’s the big idea (you knew I’d get there at some point): I’m not writing so much as I’m creating content that will help my customers grow their businesses.

I’ve been working on my DH Communications Facebook page and found myself writing this little description about myself:

“Dianna Huff is an all around B2B marketing expert who has been in the trenches since . . . forever. My passion is helping my clients grow their businesses through marketing. I ‘woot’ when this happens. Woot!”

I love, love, love when a client emails to say, “Dianna! Someone found my Website via search and I just got a huge order that will keep me busy for the next two months.” Woot!

These are the clients that “get” that I’m on their team. Not just rooting for them. Trying to hit singles, doubles, and triples and maybe if I’m lucky, a home run.

So a typo or two just isn’t that big of a deal.

“Here’s the problem [when we measure for perfect],” writes Godin. “Art is never defect-free.”

What it means — which is the thesis of Godin’s book — is that measuring for perfect won’t get you anywhere. If you’re a business and you want to grow, you need to start looking for the “remarkable.”

A few months ago, while deep in the planning stages for my son’s bar mitzvah, I added up the costs of a typical bar mitzvah party, looked at the number for a long time and then said to my son, “Dude. I could take you to California for a week and give you a better time.”

His response, “Can we tour Google?”

“Uuuuhh, sure.”

The first thing I did, after hearing my son’s request, was to find out if Google even offered tours. In fact, they do! However, according to the Google page I read (which of course I can’t find now), the only way in is through a Google employee as employees are allowed to host two guests per month.

Pulling some strings, I snagged a tour . . . and off we went to California for eight days. Woot!

Touring the Google Campus

For those of you who haven’t seen the Google campus, it is . . . amazing. I hadn’t been to Mountain View since I left California in 1999 and was astounded to see building after building that make up the campus.

According to our tour guide Karen Wickre, Senior Manager, Global Communications and Public Affairs, Google employs over 8,000 people in Mountain View alone — which is one reason why the company has dozens of cafes / cafeterias / smoothie and frozen yogurt bars through out the buildings.

To have thousands of people descend on the local area during the noon rush hour would cause instant gridlock.

In fact, according to Karen, due to having access to so much food, new Googlers often gain 15 pounds, referred to as the “Google 15″!

“We also lose lots of man hours when people leave campus,” said Karen. “People have to get into their cars, drive somewhere, eat, and then come back. By providing on-campus cafeterias, people can eat here with other Googlers and save time.”

In the hour that Karen generously gave us, we visited three or four buildings, a couple of the cafeterias, one of the gyms, the post office, and one small work area that wasn’t off limits to the public.

We also saw the beach volleyball area, the outdoor eating areas, the Corporate Store (in beta) and the funky bicycles that Googlers use to get from building to building.

Even more astounding, however, was the bus depot. To reduce pollution and traffic, Google buses its employees to various points around the Bay Area, including San Jose and San Francisco. We’re not talking vans — we’re talking full-sized coaches equipped with wifi!

I came to the Google campus with a slight chip on my shoulder. Google is a big company, it has made some questionable moves (re: the initial roll-out of Google Buzz), and it sometimes feels like Google is trying to take over the world.

But I came away with a new-found respect. I was simply blown-away at how the company treats its employees, its respect for the environment, and its visionary thinking.

We could all use a little Google dust in our businesses.

In addition to visiting Google, my son and I made stops at the Apple campus and the Intel Museum.

Unlike Google, Apple doesn’t offer tours, so we settled for walking up and down Infinite Loop and buying a t-shirt from the Company Store (which is open to the public).

The Intel Museum, on the other hand, was way cool. Free and open to the public, the Museum features a well-laid out historical timeline of the founding of Intel and the development of the silicon chip. I learned about Intel’s “Copy Exactly” strategy and how it manufactures wafers.

The museum even includes a history of Intel’s marketing and advertising — including its audio logo.

The lesson I learned from Intel? Don’t be afraid to be different and keep things simple. Intel’s founder, Bob Noyce, for example, wrote Intel’s business plan on one sheet of paper.

Because I focus on B2B Web marketing, I sometimes forget that everything a company does is marketing — from the way it answers the phone (or doesn’t answer the phone) to how it treats people who obviously aren’t customers.

Google gets five stars for its corporate tour — it’s the best one I’ve had. And the fact that Karen, a senior level employee, took time out of her incredibly busy day to show two tourists around campus says something.

How many companies would do this? I’m thinking not many.

And Apple? Steve, honey, you could easily build a pretty cool Apple museum or visitors center for the Apple faithful. Having one would go far in generating a little more good will. I love your products and I totally admire you, but you could do more to give people a peek behind the curtain.

I like this new white paper from Silverpop, “From Cargo Pants to Cargo Containers: B2C Tactics that Boost B2B Revenue.”

In it you’ll find six email marketing tactics you can implement to help increase B2B email effectiveness — from transactional email to e-newsletters.

The nine-page report is easy to read and well laid out. It also prints well in black and white — meaning the font isn’t unreadable gray mouse type.

What I like about it the white paper is that Silverpop offers tactics any business can put to use over time. For example, a B2B company can start off with learning how to better segment messages, which according to Silverpop, will put it ahead of other B2B marketers.

According to MarketingSherpa’s “2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Report,” only a third of B2B marketers segment their lists. On the other hand, 51% of B2C marketers segment their lists.

For each tactic, Silverpop gives examples of what you can do to implement that tactic.

To receive the report, you’ll need to register for it. You can also follow Silverpop on Twitter (@Silverpop) as well as become a Fan of its Facebook Page (I know, I know, they’re not called Fan Pages anymore).

My lucky duck son got an iPhone 4 for his birthday and the day it arrived, a friend of our family eagerly asked if he could “FaceTime” us. (See Apple’s YouTube channel for some pretty cool video.)

After participating in the call, all I can say is “Coooool.” Real time video calling — an activity we’ve seen in futuristic movies and George Jetson cartoons — is here.

It took only a few seconds for me to grasp the marketing implications, and what I predict is that FaceTime or applications like it will totally and irrevocably change marketing.

Right now I regularly receive calls from really dumb telemarketers who work for clueless companies. These people call me pitching products and services . . . yet they have no idea who I am (something social media is supposed to solve).

I even had one telemarketer from a major company ask me, “So what exactly do you do anyway?” after pitching some kind of business product at me.

A simple two-second Internet search would have given her links to my Website, my blog, my Google, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles, and some of the articles I’ve written.

Once marketers start using video calls to reach prospects, however, things will start getting nasty.

Granted, relatively few people have an iPhone 4. However, given the rate of technological advances, video calls will be commonplace in a few years. FaceTime will migrate from iPhones to iPads and other smart mobile devices.

Say I’m reading the Wall Street Journal on my iPad over breakfast and in comes a FaceTime call from a telemarketer trying to sell me something and like most telemarketers, he has no clue who I am.

Can you imagine the amount of ill-will this company will have created with one simple call? Forget negative Tweets — let’s talk about posting actual dumb FaceTime marketing calls on YouTube, Facebook, and blogs.

As marketers, myself included, we talk about how social media will help us get to know our customers / prospects — even as they get to know us.

Although you the marketer have “joined the conversation” and work hard to not use social media to push you-focused content, lots of other companies / marketers / consultants use social media as another one-to-many broadcast medium.

Just witness the number of self-serving DMs you receive when you follow people, the self-promotional spam posts on LinkedIn Groups, and the companies that use blogs and social media to push press releases and other corporate dreck.

FaceTime and apps like it will change this scenario.

FaceTime, I predict, will force companies and organizations to really think about how they market to people and what they want to accomplish — or face extreme opposition and blowback.

This is already happening with social media as evidenced when the moderator of the Nestle Facebook page talked smack with its Fans — an event that became fodder for major online media pundents. (See Michelle Tripp’s excellent write-up about how this went down.)

What do you think? Will marketers abuse FaceTime the way they’ve abused social media, direct mail, and the telephone? Or will it force them to change their ways?

In the last month or so I’ve written a few blog posts for other blogs — original content that you won’t find on this blog. I’ve included links to this content below.

Content Marketing Institute
One question I’m asked frequently is how to to generate ideas for Web content. I’ve written frequently about this topic, see here and here. One tactic I haven’t talked about, but use all the time when dealing with clients, is trolling through Web analytics keyword reports.

You can learn more about the nuggets of gold you can find in your own reports by reading, “How to Find Content Ideas in Your Web Analytics Reports.”

Be sure to check out the rest of the blog — you’ll find some really great content and ideas!

NetLine’s Blog Notions Marketers Blog
Do you think small businesses can still effectively do their own marketing? I don’t — and I explain why in my article, “DIY Marketing No Longer Cuts the Mustard.”

I also wrote “Is Your Website Short on Content and Long on ‘Blah’?” where I discuss how to answer the unspoken questions posed by site visitors.

The Wealthy Freelancer Blog
For this blog I’ve written two parts of a three-part article on Web marketing for freelancers and consultants. Check out “Three Penny-Wise, Pound Foolish Marketing Mistakes” and “Three Tips for Developing a Kick-Butt Website on a Budget.”

The Wealthy Freelancer is a fabulous site full of great content on how to create a thriving freelance business AND have a life, too.

Also be sure to check out my other blog — The Profitable Consultant. During the month of June I challenged myself to work on my own marketing one hour a day. Obviously it paid off!

I get lots of email from people asking if they can write guest blog posts for me. If the request fits my audience, I do reply to people — but they never respond back.

Marc Gordon, who does a video blog, is one of the people who emailed me about doing a video blog post, which I found intriguing.

Instead of writing about marketing, Marc talks about it at his blog,
marctv.net. He’s getting about 50,000 views per video these days, so I’m thrilled to feature him here on my blog.

I love how he took my blog post about Intuit and made it into a pretty cool marketing lesson. Now you can see the power of video — and now I see I need to go buy a Flip.

Marc, thanks for the great video and guest blog post — I love it!

A Quiet Mistake Everyone Heard from marc gordon on Vimeo.

Intuit and all of its Websites, including Quickbooks Online and Quicken, went down Tuesday night at approximately 7:00 PM Pacific time.

The sites were still down as of yesterday afternoon 3:00 PM Eastern.

When I logged on to QB Online early Wednesday morning and saw the message about the site being down, I didn’t think much of it. I know software-as-service companies do routine maintenance or encounter minor glitches.

However, when I logged on later that afternoon and saw that it was still down, my heart gave a thump.

So I did what has now become my habit for breaking news: I checked Twitter. Running a search for “Quickbooks Online down,” I quickly learned that all Intuit sites were down.

I also learned that Intuit hadn’t given any explanation for this outage that was obviously impacting a lot of businesses.

qbguy @diannahuff Intuit really has their hands full with a massive service outage since late yesterday. So far, very poor response and updates.

If we as marketers and corporate communicators have learned anything since the rise of social media and the mistakes of BP, Toyota, etc. it’s that when a crisis occurs, you have to communicate immediately. Period.

You have to tell your customers what’s going on, why it happened, and what you’re doing to resolve it.

I was able to log on to Quickbooks Online this morning where I found this message:

Update June 16 2010 at 8:00pm PST:

We’re beginning to restore all affected Intuit websites and services. Customers already have access to some sites and we’re continuing to work toward full restoration.

Our preliminary investigation indicates the outage occurred during a routine maintenance procedure Tuesday night. An accidental power failure during that procedure affected both our primary and backup systems, taking a number of Intuit websites and services offline. While power was quickly restored, we’re working diligently to validate our systems and bring them back into full operation.

We apologize for disruptions we’ve caused and understand the importance of our services to our customers. We will continue working nonstop until all affected websites and services are fully restored.

If I had seen this message on the Quickbooks home page — versus the one they had yesterday about the site being down — I would have felt relief. I also wouldn’t have gone to Twitter to see what in the hell was going on or posted my own frustrated Tweets.

Intuit may “understand the importance of its services,” but I’m not quite sure the company understands the gist of how its outage impacted people — companies couldn’t run payroll or process credit cards. For some, that was quite painful.

Plus, the outage created a real sense of fear. I know that I debated for a long time about using Quickbooks Online. It was scary to put, what is essentially the core of my business, in the cloud.

Intuit’s outage and lack of communication about it only added to my fear.

Think about how people would have responded if Intuit had communicated truthfully and authentically with all of us. I really don’t mind when companies make mistakes or run into technological glitches. God knows I have enough of my own.

But when you’re holding access to people’s financial data, you need to do more than simply post a “Our site is down and we’re working on it” message.

I’m no crisis communications consultant by any stretch of the imagination, but if I had been in charge, here’s what I would have done:

>> Had a plan in place for just this type of crisis.

>> Posted an honest message on the home screens of all affected sites in order to ease people’s fears.

>> Posted regular updates to the original message to let people know what was going on and when service was expected to be restored.

>> Responded to people on Twitter and other social media sites.

I’m sure this is an overly simplified plan, but it would have gone far in helping all of us know what was happening.

Plus, it would have improved my trust and confidence in using Intuit and its financial software-as-service option.

What do you think?