In an earlier article this week, we discussed how doing the unexpected is a great way to engage the minds of prospective buyers.  This is so important, we should look at other examples.

Let’s look at an illustration from the book Made to Stick.

The television commercial for the new Enclave minivan opens in a familiar way — sitting in front of a park.  A young boy with a football helmet climbs in, followed by his younger sisters.  Dad’s driving and Mom’s in the passenger seat.  It looks very comfortable — with cup-holders everywhere.  ”Introducing the all-new Enclave” begins a woman’s voice-over.

Dad pulls away from the curb “It’s a minivan to the max.”  They begin cruising through quiet, tree-lined streets.  ”With features like remote-controlled sliding doors, 150 cable channels, a sky-view roof, temperature controlled cup-holders, and a six point navigation system…it’s a minivan for families on the go.”

The minivan stops at an intersection and the camera zooms in on the face of the young boy — staring out the window at leafy trees.  The picture of serenity.  Dad pull into the intersection.

That’s when it happens.  A speeding car barrels into the intersection and slams into the side of the minivan.  There’s a terrible crash with smashing glass and buckling metal.

The screen fades to black.  A message appears.  ”Didn’t see that coming?”

The message fades and a new one appears:

“No one ever does.”

With the sound of a stuck horn blaring, a final message appears on the screen.  ”Buckle up….always.”

What’s going on here?

There is no Enclave minivan.  The ad was created by The Ad Council, a government agency founded in 1942.

This technique, of doing the unexpected, is a powerful marketing concept and a key element in getting attention.

How can you duplicate this?  How can you do something unexpected with your products and services?  Find a quiet place and think.

What do you think? We love comments and people who share.

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” Check out the online show every Friday at 11am ET, “Laugh and Learn with the Fearless Competitor.” Find New Customers is one of few lead generation companies in New York.

Find New Customers helps companies like yours (with 50 to 5,000 employees and complex products) implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in online lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

If you wish to do sales lead generation online, contact the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers using the form below.

In this day and age, when it is harder than ever to get attention, let’s look at the concepts from the book, Made to Stick.

According to the research done by Chip and Dan Heath, great content exhibits these characteristics:

1. Simple — it’s quick and easy.  Take a proverb like “A Bird in the Hand.”  What does your Brand stand for? (Also, check out Brand-Telling for more info on how to craft your message.)
2. Unexpected — a great way to get attention is to do something unexpected.  The loud bang of bb’s being dropped into a metal bucket is a great unexpected result.
3. Concrete — it’s got to be specific, clear and easy to understand.
4. Credible — is it believable?
5. Emotional — do I really care?
6. Stories — people relate to stories.  Does it tell one?

In order to ensure that your marketing messages resonate with your audience, keep in mind that you want your audience to:

• Pay attention
• Understand and remember
• Agree/believe
• Care
• Act on it

One key to watch out for is the Curse of Knowledge.  When an informed person asks “Will they understand my idea?” they answer “Of course, they will.” But only because the expert understands. Often the expert is shocked when the audience fails to exhibit the passion they do.

Take each of your marketing messages and measure them up against these.  You’ll find them much more effective.

What do you think? We love comments and people who share.

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” Check out the online show every Friday at 11am ET, “Laugh and Learn with the Fearless Competitor.” Find New Customers is one of few lead generation companies in New York.

Find New Customers helps companies like yours (with 50 to 5,000 employees and complex products) implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in online lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

If you wish to do sales lead generation online, contact the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers using the form below.

This concept, which I have witnessed over and over, especially in the technology industry, was illustrated wonderfully in the book, Made to Stick.  It was also in a great eBook by David Meerman Scott called the Gobbledygook Manifesto, which you can obtain at Find New Customers in the eBook section.

The concept of Curse of Knowledge was illustrated by the “Tapping Game,” which I share with my readers.

Elizabeth Newton earned her Ph. D. in psychology from Stanford in 1990 by studying a simple game in which she assigned people to one of two roles:

• Tappers
• Listeners

Tappers received a list of twenty five well-known songs, such as “Happy Birthday to You” and “The Star Spangled Banner.”  Each tapper was asked to choose a song from the list and tap out the rhythm to the listener (by knocking on the table).  The listener’s job was to guess the song based on the rhythm being tapped.

Before the tapping started, the tappers were asked to predict what percentage of listeners would correctly guess the song title.  The odds predicted were 50%.

In reality, 120 songs were tapped out and only 3 were guessed correctly, a whopping 2.5%!  Tappers were successful 1 time in 40, but they predicted 1 time in 2. Why?

When a tapper taps, she is hearing the song in her head.  Try it.  It’s virtually impossible NOT to hear the song in your head.  But to the listener, all they hear is a bunch of taps.

What’s going on here?

The crux of the problem is that the tappers have been given knowledge that makes it impossible to imagine what it like to lack that knowledge.

This is the same problem that happens in business.  A small software firm, for instance, may have so much experience with their CRM and ERP offerings that they find it impossible to imagine what it is like to not have that knowledge.  This makes it nearly impossible for them to craft marketing messages that stick.  (Or for that matter, to embrace ideas from smart marketing people on how to make sticky messages.)

In fact, they worsen the Curse of Knowledge when they decide they need a marketing person with industry experience.  They take the hole of Curse of Knowledge and dig it deeper and deeper.  (This person is very glad to be out of that loser situation.)

The only way to deal with the Curse of Knowledge is to take your ideas and transform them with 6 principles found in the book:

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories

These are the six principles of successful ideas.  Learn them, embrace them, and defeat the Curse of Knowledge.

P.S. We’ve got the #1 expert in content marketing for a webinar on March 11th at noon.  Please visit Find New Customers to learn more.

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple”  He’s also the author of the highly acclaimed white paper, How to Find New Customers, as well as The Definitive Guide to Making Quota and Prospect-Driven Marketing. Find New Customers helps business develop and implement programs to improve the way they find and acquire new customers using best practices in lead generation.

We have a great guest speaker for March 11, 2010 at noon Eastern — the #1 expert in content marketing — just for Insiders at Find New Customers.

Sorry, but if you are not an Insider, you cannot attend.  (read on to learn how to become an Insider for free.)

Joe Pulizzi is co-author of the best-selling book Get Content, Get Customers.  He’s also the Founder and Chief Content Officer at Junta42.  He is considered the foremost expert on content marketing.

But you may be thinking, “What is Content Marketing and why should I care?”  Let’s look at Joe’s own definition for content marketing:

Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.

And they do. Content marketing is being used by some of the greatest marketing organizations in the world, including P&G, Microsoft and Cisco Systems. It’s also developed and executed by small businesses and one-person shops around the globe. Why? Because it works.

You can learn more by downloading the free white paper from Junta42, How to Attract and Retain Customers with Content NOW.

Now, you may be thinking “Hey, this is pretty cool.  I’d love to attend so I can learn from Joe, but how can I become an Insider?”  The answer is to click on the link below:

Sign me up for Insiders (free)

Once we receive your Insider signup, we’ll send you an invitation to the event with Joe.

Jeff Ogden is the President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple.”  He’s also the author of the highly acclaimed white paper, How to Find New Customers as well as the soon-to-be-released The Definitive Guide to Making Quota.  He’s also the co-author of the eBook, Prospect-Driven Marketing along with Arthur Germain of The Communication Strategy Group.

Thanks to Jon Miller, VP Marketing at Marketo for presenting to our Insiders at Find New Customers. We hold monthly events with great guest speakers like Jon on the first Thursday of every month at 2:00pm ET.

(However, our March event is rescheduled to March 11th at 12 noon ET and features the #1 expert in Content Marketing, Joe Pulizzi. Joe’s co-author of the best selling book, Get Content, Get Customers and his company, Junta42 is considered the leading authority on content marketing. This is one event you won’t want to miss.)

To join Insiders (free) go to Sign Me Up for Insiders.

Marketo is one of the fastest growing companies in history and Jon’s insights on their unique lead generation programs are invaluable to any business leader looking for improved results. If you need marketing automation software, Marketo should be on your short list.

You can watch this on demand by clicking on

Marketo’s Secret Sauce

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s also the author of three highly acclaimed white papers on lead generation, email marketing and sales:

1. How to Find New Customers
2. Definitive Guide to Making Quota
3. Moving From Transactional to Conversational Email Marketing

as well the e-book, Prospect Driven Marketing (and holds a degree in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.)

Find New Customers helps business develop and implement demand generation programs to drive more sales leads by improving the way they find and acquire new customers using best practices in lead generation.

Recently I had the opportunity to pen an article for Mike Volpe, VP of Marketing at HubSpot.   I penned an article on one of my favorite topics — story-telling, which prompted a lot of comments, but some interesting ones too.  And it really fleshed out my thoughts.  Before I share my new connections and insights, I need to make one strong recommendation to you:

If you’re thinking of doing a guest post for a hot company like HubSpot, get cracking now.  There’s no time like the present.

First, my article prompted discussions from many but one person who connected with me really caught my interest.  Michael Margolis is an expert in corporate story-telling and he shared a link to his great eBook called Believe Me: A Story Telling Manifesto. I highly recommend you download and read it.

As I told Michael, I consider story-telling to be the Holy Grail of marketing.  Like the Holy Grail, many think it a figment of their imagination.   But like the Grail, it is the most powerful marketing weapon a company can wield.

Story-telling is so important, I intend to keep writing about it.  So stay tuned as I share ideas from the very best minds in Marketing.

What do you think? Have you done a guest post? What results did you see?

What do you think? We love comments and people who share.

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” Check out the online show every Friday at 11am ET, “Laugh and Learn with the Fearless Competitor.” Find New Customers is one of few lead generation companies in New York.

Find New Customers helps companies like yours (with 50 to 5,000 employees and complex products) implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in online lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

If you wish to do sales lead generation online, contact the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers using the form below.

There is no question in my mind. Inbound marketing is the wave of the future. Gentle touches mapped to buyer personas and other variables.

But there’s a fundamental problem. Most businesses are not ready to embrace it.

HubSpot has a great blog article about the differences between outbound and inbound marketing.  I suggest you read it for more background on this important marketing direction.

Two excellent books also provide insights – I highly recommend both.

1. eMarketing for the Complex Sale by Ardath Albee
2. Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah

The idea of inbound marketing can be summed up with a simple image.  Turn your online presence into a watering hole.

• Do watering holes need Super Bowl ads?  No.  [Love the talking babies, eTrade, but that $$$$ could be spent in other ways.]
• Print ads, billboards, etc.  No, no, no.  Do they need to advertise how cool and refreshing the water tastes?  NO.

Animals find a watering hold because it offers them something THEY need.  It’s a virtual magnet to attract thirsty animals.  That, in a nutshell, is the essense of inbound marketing. Offer something THEY, your prospective buyers, really need.

There is a fundamental problem here.  And I had a great conversation about it with the President of Avitage, Jim Burns (Jim is @salesvpi on Twitter, if you wish to connect.)  Jim is one of the sharpest and savviest sales and marketing experts I know. Jim impressed upon me the idea that these concepts espoused by people like Ardath, Brian and Dharmesh are new and very different for most businesses.  CEOs are struggling to deal with this new direction.

Unfortunately, I experienced this firsthand.  I joined as marketing head a software firm in south Florida that produces SaaS ERP and CRM software.  They have great software, delighted customers and a great staff of friendly and very smart people.  But, they also had challenges.

• The website was 100% product centric highlighting awards they had won
• They had essentially zero remarkable content
• They were barely present on social networks
• They had no marketing automation and a stagnant, rarely updated blog

This looked like an exciting opportunity for me.  We could transform this company into a great firm like HubSpot or Marketo.  I was pumped.  To ensure we were on the same page, I gave handed the CEO a copy of eMarketing for the Complex Sale with a personal, hand written note from me.  But reality slapped me in the face.  Hard!  That CEO never once opened the book I gave him.

I learned the hard way how hard it is to teach an old dog new tricks, no matter how much that dog appears to want to learn.  Every time I tried to move us forward, we moved two steps back.  Delay after delay.  Since we had no remarkable content, I began to create our first piece.  Knowing that animals that frequent the water hole don’t care about water, I downplayed product and company.  The draft content was shared with a board member and UK leader.  Boom! Our ‘watering hole content” got panned by not stressing our water quality.  And since I was not focusing on water quality, I was accused of not really understanding the water industry.    They decided to promote their watering hole, they need to hire someone who’s advertised watering holes in the past — and not me.

They told me “Unfortunately, we weren’t ready to embrace the high touch marketing approach you espouse.”  (What other kind of marketing is there?)

Don’t get me wrong.  Great people and superb products, but not ready for inbound marketing.

The lesson for me was profound.  Even if the  leadership professes its desire to move to inbound marketing, the vast majority are not yet ready.  In fact, sometimes the CEO faces a difficult Board of Directors.  Even if he or she embraces inbound marketing, the board ties his hands.  So enter into relationships with healthy skepticism and ask tough questions.

I should have done so.  Shame on me.

Epilogue: The watering hole content I created turned into the hot white paper Definitive Guide to Making Quota.  It’s been very, very popular.

What do you think? We love comments and people who share.

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” Check out the online show every Friday at 11am ET, “Laugh and Learn with the Fearless Competitor.” Find New Customers is one of few lead generation companies in New York.

Find New Customers helps companies like yours (with 50 to 5,000 employees and complex products) implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in online lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

If you wish to do sales lead generation online, contact the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers using the form below.

Find New Customers hosted a webinar featuring Jon Miller, VP, Marketing at Marketo.  Jon shared his “secret sauce” for lead generation. It was an excellent webinar for all of our Insiders at Find New Customers. (You can watch Jon and my webinar on demand at the Thought Leadership page at Find New Customers)

One of the key principals he shared was the process of mapping content to the way your customers buy.  Here’s an excellent ebook from www.junta42.com

clickpredictions2010[1] by Click Documents, sponsored by Marketo.

One of the things I did at A p l i c o r was develop buyer personas, map the buying process, industry, and other factors.  This enabled us to create a grid.  Over that grid we wrote down the questions and concerns that particular buyer, in that particular stage of the buying process, etc. would have.  Once we understand their specific concerns, we can start creating or finding content to fit the specific need of the buyer at that stage.

You can see a copy of the campaign matrix below.

Two key points raised by Jon in this webinar:

1. Ensure the content is valuable to them, and not just you.
2. Don’t do it all yourself.  Find other content and reuse it (with permission)

Unfortunately, I was not given a chance to finish the project at A p l i c o r, but this is the right approach to demand generation that more and more companies should be using.

Have you mapped content across the buying cycle and personas? If so, what resulted?

What do you think? We love comments and people who share.