Content, Account-Based Marketing Grab The Spotlight At EE13

Published: October 25, 2013

The recent acquisition of Compendium by Oracle naturally generated most of the buzz at Eloqua Experience 2013, with executives from both companies telling attendees that it would mean a tighter integration between marketing automation and content that would more precise targeting of content going forward.

The company also unveiled enhancements and features designed to help marketers improve targeting, engagement, conversions, and analysis across digital, social and mobile channels.

“The acquisition of Compendium really brings content much closer to Eloqua,” said John Stetic, VP Products for Oracle Eloqua, to more than 2,000 attendees. “Content is important at all stages. You need different content to start, accelerate and close deals,” he said, adding that it is critical to align content with marketing automation to ensure that the right content is being distributed at the appropriate point in the funnel and to provide insights into content performance.

Steve Woods, Founder of Eloqua, added: “We need to convert buyers to revenue, and to do that we need to guide thinking through the buying process with great content.” The challenge, Woods said, is matching content with digital body language to improve targeting, segmenting so that the right content is delivered at the right time in the buying process.

Get the latest B2B Marketing News & Trends delivered directly to your inbox!

Aligning Content And Personas

The Compendium-Eloqua integration also will help content align more closely with persona-based data, according to Chris Baggott, Co-founder and CEO of Compendium, who said he will be taking on a new role with Oracle Eloqua.

Baggott noted that persona information is attached to content when it is uploaded to Compendium, and he told Demand Gen Report that he expects that information to eventually be carried through to the Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud as the companies converge.

In his session at EE13, Baggott discussed the role of various levels of content. He broke them up into low-effort (user-generated content), medium-effort (Q&As) and high-effort categories (thought leadership pieces by industry experts). He noted that some of the low-effort content, such as user-generated content, can produce the best results. “None of it is going to be magical prose, but it gets the highest click-through rates.”

Baggott said there needs to be more frequent updates, especially across social channels. He encouraged marketers to get creative in repurposing content, such as using a blog post in an email. “If you have a good piece of content, don’t let it die.”

Ardath Albee, CEO and B2B Marketing Strategist for Marketing Interactions, stressed the need to tell a compelling story from the buyer’s point of view. “The buyer has to be the hero of the story.”

Albee added that content focusing on products does not help enhance credibility with the buyer. “Go experience your own content as if you were a prospect. It will be an eye opener.”

Nurturing The Marketing-Sales Relationship

Every relationship hits it rough patches — whether in business or in life. Megan Heuer is VP and Group Director, Data-Driven Marketing, at SiriusDecisions discussed the state of the marketing-sales relationship.

“If you haven’t invested in marriage, it won’t be successful,” Heuer told the audience. “Marketing is out of the honeymoon phase and there is a lot of pressure.”

  • The first step to improving any relationship, Heuer said, is identifying the problem areas. Signs of relationship trouble include:
  • Response rates are too low;
  • It is more difficult to get the right contacts on the phone;
  • Sales acceptance is lower than it used to be;
  • Too many in dreaded stage zero; and
  • Marketing is not sourcing as much into the pipeline.

Heuer also shared her prescription for a happy marriage, which includes the following tips:

  • Identify your tactic — account based marketing, named account marketing or industry segment;
  • Don’t plan tactics without account data;
  • Align roles and goals;
  • Execute by map existing assets to account goals; and
  • Evaluate where the relationship stands

Brion O’Connor, Head of Global Campaign Operations for LinkedIn, discussed the need to consider a varied approach in his session on multichannel account-based marketing. “One campaign does not equal one channel.”

O’Connor said LinkedIn conducts closed-loop reporting on various data points for nurture, email and ad campaigns. There have to be metrics for content performance for an account-based marketing approach to be successful. He said that the company increased marketing-qualified leads for a campaign by 55% after benchmarking and refining content performance.

Data is shifting from information to intelligence, O’Connor added. “Data is what happened, information is why it happened, knowledge is what will happen and intelligence is what is the best that could happen.”

Fall Release Includes Ad, Social Enhancements

Eloqua also unveiled features of its fall release during EE13, which included:

Oracle Eloqua Profiler. Marketers now can take data that is not even stored in Eloqua to help target and score prospects for a complete, multichannel view of the customer. Profiler gives sales reps one, detailed view of the prospect to extend views beyond Oracle Eloqua asset activity, including emails, forms and page views, to any external assets stored in Oracle Eloqua.

“Gone are the days of pushing outbound messages,” said Kevin Akeroyd, SVP of Oracle’s Eloqua Global Sales Unit. “This will help marketers get the timing and context of content right. They will be able to deliver the right content at the right time through the right channel.”

Oracle Eloqua AdFocus. AdFocus is designed to give marketers a single platform to dynamically create, manage and measure display ads alongside owned and earned media.

AdFocus enables marketers to target only key accounts or prospects with display ads, as well as provide creative content and personalized ad copy based on their persona and activities.

“AdFocus has been quite a journey with the year-long beta,” Stetic said. “We can capture social link tracking and can feed more data into Eloqua so marketers can gain true multichannel ability.”

Social Capabilities. Recent integration between Oracle Eloqua and Oracle Social Relationship Management (SRM) delivers a comprehensive, scalable and integrated modern marketing solution. New capabilities include better tracking of social activities for a more complete customer profile. Users can engage Facebook custom audiences with AdFocus to deliver ads and meaningful experiences through trusted social networks.

Specifically, Eloqua is now able to integrate with Facebook Custom Audiences, a tool that allows companies to use their customer lists to filter out particular groups that should or should not see a given ad.

Marketing Resource Management. New capabilities create more secure and controlled access to marketing resources and data. New integrations provide greater insight into campaign resources and management through a central marketing calendar and also help simplify resource management.

Integrated Sales and Marketing Funnel. An integrated sales and marketing funnel view gives marketing and sales users, cross-functional teams, and executive management a consistent and clear view of pipeline performance. It also provides users with historical metrics across different time spans and conditions.

Eloqua AppCloud. More than 20 new AppCloud partners have been added to the community, which now includes 100+ apps.  Eloqua AppCloud provides marketers with a broader range of marketing applications that help expand and enrich sales and marketing efforts. The AppCloud also is more easily accessible in the Topliners Community.

 

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
B2B Marketing Exchange
B2B Marketing Exchange East
Campaign Optimization Series
Buyer Insights & Intelligence Series
Strategy & Planning Series