Marketing ROI On Eloqua’s Social Media Playbook & Content Grid Infographic
August 27, 2010
Joe Chernov is Director of Content at Eloqua, and he is a long time friend in PR and Social Media. I have tremendous respect for his quiet, studious communications skills and campaign management. So when he emailed me recently about a current campaign, I paid attention to his pitch. I asked him if he could share some stats on the campaign, here’s what Joe replied:
Joe: I have some real stats (really real ones) on our launch of the Social Media Playbook and Content Grid infographic if you would like. Huge results!
John: And yes he did, Joe described the campaign and process, and results, and the results were big, here they are:
Joe: What were we trying to do:
- Three things:
- Make Eloqua more “relevant” when it came to Web 2.0 and social media conversation. We operate in an adjacent space to social media, but hadn’t historically been part of the conversation.
- Attract a new breed of marketer to our website to discover marketing automation and Eloqua
- Increase traffic to our new corporate blog
What was the campaign description:
- We issued two pieces of social content designed to be as sharable as possible: the Content Grid and the Social Media Playbook. We published them two days apart. Rather than follow typical PR protocol and try to extend our awareness over time, we chose instead to issue them back-to-back to trigger the response, “Who are these guys and where did they come from?” (Remember, we were largely an unknown in these circles.)
- It’s important to note that each piece of content had a unique story. The Content Grid began, literally, on a napkin as I sketched my vision for my new role as director of content and shared it with Leslie Bradshaw of JESS3 who said, “We should make this an infographic!” The Social Media Playbook began as a training guide for staff (also created with JESS3) and people loved it so much we decided to “set it free.”
What channels did you use to promote the campaigns?
- Our blog
- Our website
- Facebook – AND ran a Facebook advertising campaign targeting our fans and all of our key clients and prospects staff
- SlideShare – AND ran a SlideShare advertising campaign
- LinkedIn Groups
- Delicious
Any outreach conducted
- We pitched our traditional press, our fans, our competitors’ followers, people talking about relevant trends, friends of our content creation/design partner JESS3 (they were VITAL in this process), reps of the companies mentioned in the Playbook, and social influencers
- To sustain interest over time, we also created a “Thank You Wall” on our blog in which we listed the Twitter handle or blog name of everyone who had, at the time, created content about our resources
- To set the stage for the next wave of content, we invited those truly engaged in the resources to contribute their ideas to V2 of the content
Results from promoted campaigns, and if can split for word of mouth results would be even better.
- Word of mouth:
- 12,000 visitors to Eloqua’s brand new blog
- 2,600+ tweets
- 30,000+ views/downloads
- 50 blog posts, many from the AdAge Power 150
- Applause from influencers including Scott Monty, Jeffrey Hayzlett, Jeremiah Owyang, Jennifer Aaker, Valeria Maltoni, David Armano and Sarah Evans
- Business:
- 43% increase in traffic to the corporate website
- 21% increase in demo views, and it’s VIP to note that demo viewers is our #1 leading purchase indicator
- 12% increase in page views on Eloqua.com
- 14% decrease in “bounces” from Eloqua.com
John: Were the two campaigns joined or separate? If separate can you split out the results interested in the infographics results.
Joe: There was a two day window between them, but they were truly part of the same program. Performance for the two were running neck and neck until Scott Monty blogged about the Social Media Playbook, after that point, it definitely eclipsed the Content Grid.
Here’s a very interesting insight that I’ve never shared before: In the Facebook ad campaign, the Playbook outperformed the Grid. In our SlideShare ad campaign, the Grid outperformed the Playbook. My hypothesis: This is entirely logical, as SlideShare is a professional community, so the Content Grid – being a sophisticated infographic – found a more receptive audience there, whereas Facebook, being a cross-section of the public, is a more likely home for more “introductory” content, like the Playbook. Make sense?
John: Makes sense. Given my interest in blogging, I like the fact the blogs are still at the center of everything.
Joe: The social media playbook and content grid combined for 2600 tweets (1500 for the playbook, 1100 for the grid).
I think blogs HAVE to be the center of everything – it’s the human voice of the corporation. But what’s remarkable is this: Despite the fact that we TRIED to use our blog/website as the hub of our content distribution channel, more than half of the time someone download/viewed the content it was off of our domain!
John: What a great example of a content marketing campaign with infographics and content in general. Thanks for sharing Joe!