Books, Blogs, and Demand Generation

I'm in a bit of a circular world right now as I write a blog about Demand Generation that explores the topics in a book I've just written about using various web media, including blogs, for Demand Generation, and of course both the blog and the book will be used for generating demand. So, I should probably explain that, me, this blog, and the book.

It all started about a year ago, in a conversation with our CEO, after a long series of trips to visit a lot of clients. We were chatting about what each client was doing, how they were using our product (Eloqua), and what interesting things they were doing to do campaigns, score leads, automate marketing processes, manage data, coordinate with sales, measure effectiveness, etc. At first glance, it almost sounded like every client was doing something totally unique, but in our conversation I tried to tie it all together and say that it was all part of the same challenge.

And then Joe (our CEO) said "you should write a book about this". Kind of in the same tone as saying "you should order pizza for lunch"... I was not quick enough to say "but I have a day job", and so, with that, the book project was born.

It's been a very interesting year, spending a bit more time working to explain the new world of Demand Generation, but it's been a very fun one. I had the pleasure of interviewing over 50 customers throughout the year, and getting into a lot of details on how they were approaching the changes that are happening in marketing, and what they are doing to build a Demand Generation practice. From small startups through to Fortune 500 multinationals there were common threads in the changes they were seeing and the challenges they were tackling.

But, the most fun part of it so far has been getting to know the "new marketers". Operational, driven, process-oriented, data savvy, quantitative marketers - the exact opposite of the stereotypes.

So, the book... it's in layout right now (aah, that's it's own fun story, more on that another time), and due very soon. Which gives me a bit of time to take the ideas in the book online into a forum for more people to jump in with ideas, stories, and challenges. And, of course, the more people we can educate about Demand Generation, the more people may want to talk with us about how Eloqua can help. Nothing wrong with that at all...

I'll keep this blog updated on our progress with the book, and its trials and tribulations (I'm sure there will be some), as we use it in some of our campaigns.