Exclusive Interview: Eloqua’s Director Of Content “We Are All Responsible For Social Media”

Last week’s b2b social media and content marketing interview with SAP’s Michael  Brenner received a lot of positive feedback. The main reason: it shared real life experience of implementing and managing social media marketing.

It wasn’t a best practice research report. It was Michael. He shared his story, his advice and his knowledge.  We learned through his experiences.

Well, this week, in my interview Eloqua’s Director of Content, Joe Chernov (@jchernov), you’ll benefit from the same thing.

We cover marketing automation, the recent consolidation in the industry, and of course, b2b social media, content marketing and ROI. I promise, you are going to like Joe. He is a smart marketer, a great person, and one of the people forging a new way of marketing to today’s digital B2B buyers.

Jeremy: Tell me a little bit about yourself, your role at Eloqua, and the size of the team that is responsible for social media, content marketing, and online communities.

Joe: I joined Eloqua in November – the same week my son was born, incidentally – in a PR and social media role.  Over time, CMO Brian Kardon and I realized that there was a broader opportunity, beyond traditional communications. So I sketched out what that role might look like, and eventually that “job description” turned into our first infographic, The Content Grid.

At Eloqua the entire company is responsible for social media.  That said, one person is most accountable for it.  I suppose that’s me.

Jeremy: As a follow up to that actually, can you explain the structure of your marketing organization?

Joe: Our marketing organization is a collection of really strong specialists – data analysts, marketing operations, demand gen, partner programs, public relations – who, conveniently, work great together.   I think these disparate skills are really coming together right now.  We just launched a campaign that fused social media distribution (free, viral content) with demand gen (gated content).  I just haven’t seen companies tear down the fence that tends to separate those two camps.  This notion of “social content … with a purpose” is what I am most excited about.

Jeremy: Tell me about Eloqua’s market position.

Joe: It’s generally accepted that Eloqua built the marketing automation industry.  It’s also generally accepted that some great competitors have come along in recent years.  Competition is raising everyone’s game.  Eloqua is pioneering a new category, dubbed Revenue Performance Management.  We see a huge opportunity for marketers to connect our tools to complementary solutions to arrive at a single view of their sales pipeline, and make more intelligent sales and marketing decisions based on a live data feed.  That’s our vision.  You are going to hear much more on this topic from us in the weeks to follow.

Jeremy: Recent weeks have brought IBM and Oracle into the playing field. How is that impacting Eloqua?

Joe: There’s a lot more focus on us now.  On everyone in the industry.  M&A is fun stuff to talk about, so a lot of the questions we get now have to do with the future of the space, consolidation, who’s next to get acquired.  That sort of thing.  Honestly though, we have this Revenue Performance Management category to establish and a major launch on the horizon, so we are focusing on our core business.

Jeremy: What is marketing automation? How would you describe it to your neighbor? i.e. a layperson

Joe: It’s a systematic way to read a prospect’s digital body language and match content and offers based on the buying signals being sent.

Jeremy: Got it, now that said, how do you keep your marketing automation from being too “automated” and impersonal?

Joe: While the process itself is automated, and much of the back-end components (like lead scoring, progressive profiling, etc.) are automated, the content itself is created and curated by real people.  We work very hard to make sure we are matching the right messages to the right prospects.  A manager in the financial services sector would receive very different content than, say, a VP for a manufacturing firm.  The challenge, of course, is that this model requires us to generate massive amounts of content.

Jeremy: ROI – What’s the ROI on an investment in marketing automation software?

Joe: Here’s the thing about marketing automation software: technology alone isn’t the full solution. To truly maximize impact, behavioral changes are often needed. Sales and marketing teams need to align – agree on lead definitions, priorities, measurement methodologies, and share goals.  That’s when ROI is maximized. The degree of alignment, the quality of content, the industry … all of these attributes affect return.  We have published a number of third-party studies that look at how all of these aspects come together to produce best-in-class results.  Your readers can find the resources here.

Jeremy: It’s really evident that Eloqua and your team understand the transition web is going through – evolving into a much more sophisticated communication network and social place. How long have you embraced B2B social media and content marketing? How does that translate into the impact on your revenue?

Joe: Eloqua has been active of the social Web for quite some time. Well before I got here, leaders like Steve Woods, Chad Horenfeldt and Mike MacFarlane were blogging, tweeting, creating LinkedIn groups.  So the channels aren’t new per se, it’s just that we’ve doubled down on the model recently.  There is so much noise out there, and it’s incredibly difficult to get noticed.  Even if you create great content – from a substance perspective – if you release it into a vacuum, what impact will it have on the business?

Our content model has two basic tenets: 1. “aestheticize” content so that it compels people to consume it, 2. don’t expect the world to come and find it on our Website. The first tenet speaks to some of the work we are doing with a-list designers JESS3, the second can be seen in our branded social media outposts, like “The Revenue Hub” on SlideShare and “The Revenue Stream” on Twitter.  They are stylistically more consistent with a digital agency than a B2B marketing automation firm, but that’s by design. We need this next generation of marketers to know that we “speak their language” too.

Jeremy: I think the number is five, correct me if I’m wrong, but Eloqua has five different blogs – a mix of corporate and individual written blogs. How did you get there?

Joe: It’s a hub-and-spoke model.  Our primary blog is called It’s All About Revenue, and that’s essentially the corporate hub. As you mention, there are several spokes, one of which is Steve’s Digital Body Language blog.  “Thought leader” has become a hackneyed term, but Steve Woods truly is one.  His blog, which we refer to internally as “DBL,” is his platform to share his expertise with the world.

Sometimes it’s better for credibility to allow an executive to have his own platform, unadulterated by a corporate brand. That’s DBL. It’s Steve’s blog, but Eloqua benefits indirectly from the glow of his credibility.  Like I said earlier, everyone in the company is responsible for social media.  I am happy to support executive blogs.  I just hope they share their perspective on the corporate blog from time to time as well.

Jeremy: How do you manage that from a brand personality and voice perspective?

Joe: When I first started here, Steve Woods gave me the single best piece of advice imaginable.  He said, “If the social media guy is the only one talking, the social media guy failed.”  A company is the people.  We have some very basic rules – don’t flame, don’t spread rumor … basic netiquette – when it comes to employees expressing their personal voice online, but I want to build highways, not roadblocks.

Jeremy: Fun and B2B. Eloqua’s definitely bringing it. From the comics, to Juan Eloqua, what’s behind that?

Joe: A lot of very funny meetings with the marketing team and CMO Brian Kardon, that’s what.  Gosh we had so many crazy ideas when it came to this promotion.  It started from a content standpoint.  That is, we asked, “How can we take something that’s perceived to be complex – like lead scoring – and make people want to read about it?”

The answer to the question was: make it short, simplify the language, and wrap it in fun.  Short and simple became the Grande Guide series, fun became the design of the Guide, the nuanced microsite and, of course, our dear friend Juan.

Jeremy: How are you measuring the success of your B2B social media and content marketing initiatives? Who is accountable for their successful or failure? What metrics are most important to you?

Joe: Every marketer in the world is asking himself these questions.  For us it depends on the campaign. The Content Grid infographic was about becoming relevant in the “marketing 2.0” conversation, the Social Media Playbook was about providing value to our community, and Juan Eloqua is about generating demand. In the end, what matters most?  Everything.  Reputation, awareness, lead generation, SEO, buzz, happy clients (through social support) … it all matters.  To measure solely by ROI is to undervalue the discipline.

Jeremy: What advice do you have for other B2B marketers who are in the process of shaping their company’s social media efforts?

Joe: Beware of the ROI trap.  Paul Dunay nailed it when he wrote, “Social media is not a campaign, it’s a commitment.”  Chasing ROI will trick you into thinking of social media in campaign terms.  That is, reducing the broader vision to isolated, serial campaigns, because it’s easier to calculate the ROI of an isolated campaign – say a Facebook contest – than it is to measure how many customers you retained by providing instant, remarkable service on Twitter.

Jeremy: If there was one myth you could dispel about B2B social media and content marketing, what would it be?

Joe: That it should be measured exclusively in ROI terms.

Jeremy: Finally, SOX playoffs? How many wins for the Pats?  Sox playoffs?

Joe: They’ve been 5 ½ back forever, and with like 30 games to go. I just don’t see it happening, not with the Yankees’ payroll and Tampa’s pitching.  Pats wins.  Tough schedule, but I am not as obsessed with the J-E-T-S as everyone else seems to be.  That said, they’re getting a little long in the tooth.  I’ll give them 10.

Jeremy: Thanks Joe.

If these interviews are teaching us anything, it’s that the people (the Joe’s, Michaels, Staceys, Jefferys, and Gords of the world), are making the difference, not b2b social media and content marketing.

Will you be one of those people?

You should be.