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Eccolo Media to present at 2010 Customer Reference Forum

Earlier this year, Lorie Loe swore that she would land a spot on the presenters’ panel at the Customer Reference Forum (CRF) in 2010. And as it turns out, that’s exactly what happened.

This coming March, Lorie will deliver a presentation alongside Kathryn Poole, Senior Manager of Customer Experience at Red Hat. The title? “Collateral That Sells.” Specifically, Kathryn and Lorie will show how Red Hat is applying findings from Eccolo’s research to better reach and target technology purchasers.  They’ll discuss:

• Which types of reference collateral are most influential
• When technology buyers consume reference content in the sales cycle
•  How influencers differ from decision makers when consuming case studies, podcasts, and videos
• The channels (Web, direct response, social media, etc.) through which they’re most likely to get collateral
• Why buyers in the enterprise consume more reference collateral than those in small businesses

It’s going to be a great session—most of all because Lorie will offer up the hard numbers that attendees need in order to plan and justify their collateral budgets. To register for the event, go right here. And to take a look at our research in the meantime, don’t forget that you can download it for free.

Survey results: White papers still best bang for your buck

Like last year, our 2009 survey indicates that marketers’ best use of their collateral budgets is to develop high-quality white papers. Hands down, they're considered the most influential type of content.

In 2008, 68 percent of survey respondents told us they’d read at least one white paper in the last six months. In 2009, we saw that number increase to 77 percent, with the vast majority of respondents (84 percent) rating white papers as moderately to extremely influential when making final purchasing decisions. Add in the fact that white papers are also the most frequently shared collateral type, with 89 percent of respondents passing them along to others, and you see why they are the must-have marketing tool.

Our 2009 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report offers up all the details -- plus a few best practices that you can start applying to make the most of your white papers. Download the report right here.

Survey results: Print isn't dead...yet

For the past few years, everybody's been telling us that print is dead. And while our latest survey results certainly confirm that print is on its way out, you shouldn't eliminate it from your collateral mix quite yet.

Yes, purchasers prefer to interact with your collateral and content on the desktop: 79% of our respondents told us that they preferred to consume content in digital form. Electronic content is easy to forward to other influencers and decision makers, greatly increasing its viral capacity. You should take further advantage of purchasers’ online reading habits by inserting hyperlinks or other HTML content into digital versions. This allows the reader to rapidly access relevant Web pages, request additional information, and even link to other materials within your collateral library, greatly extending the reach of any one document.

However, print isn’t dead yet: Recognize that print versions of your collateral may still be a preferred format for some of your audience—particularly decision makers from smaller firms. According to our survey, a significant number still find value in a leavebehind or in print collateral, especially brochures and data sheets. Plan a content strategy that takes both these print and electronic preferences into account.

We have a lot more tips and best practices to share in our 2009 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report—get your free download right here.

Quality matters: Well-written content is the most influential

It's only been two weeks since we released our 2009 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report, and the response has been overwhelming—we've been picked up by B2B Online, among others.

The finding that seems to resonate most? Technology purchasers—both influencers and decision makers—clearly appreciate a job well done when it comes to collateral. Fifty-one percent of respondents felt that high-quality writing is either very or extremely influential. Add those who felt well-written collateral was “moderately” influential, and that number increased to 86 percent. And even though respondents of all kinds said they preferred to have collateral—particularly white papers—written by a third-party, good writing from a vendor trumped mediocre writing from an objective source.

That's only the beginning: the report is full of findings and best practices that you can begin applying right away. Get your free download right here.

Decision makers are important, but don’t forget the influencers

We’re still abuzz about the release of our 2009 Eccolo Media B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report last week. We’ve gotten a great response, and the report is filled with so much interesting information that we wanted to talk about a few specific facts and figures in-depth. Where should we begin?

Before we get into the nitty gritty numbers, we think it’s important to point out a major difference between this year’s survey and the report we released in 2008. Last year, we asked people whether they actually made technology purchasing decisions or merely influenced them. For our 2009 report, we dove a little deeper into this distinction and explored the important differences between the two roles.

Not surprisingly, we found that decision makers are higher up in their organizations than influencers and usually work as C-level executives, vice presidents, or directors. They are also older and have more years of experience in the technology industry. But we came up with some other, more surprising, differences too. For example, decision makers consume more of each type of collateral that we looked at—white papers, case studies, data sheets/brochures, podcasts, and video—and find it more influential than influencers do.

But you can’t count out influencers altogether. They are big sharers and tend to pass on collateral more often and to more people in their companies than decision makers. If you look at white papers, for example, 90 percent of influencers share that content with other people in their organization while only 81 percent of decision makers do.

The bottom line? Purchasing decision makers should be your number one target, but developing content that can be passed from influencers to decision makers easily can help your collateral get into the right hands.

You can discover even more interesting differences between decision makers and influencers in the full survey. Download a free copy of the report here.