Your Buyers Are People – And People Like Stories

A note from Molly: I had the privilege of presenting today at the AMA Phoenix July Signature Lunch Event. We had a great crowd – literally standing room only. We also had a very dynamic interactive discussion, and I wasn’t able to share the last story I had prepared. So I’m sharing it here. (The full presentation is available to everyone who attended; you’ll be receiving it by email. If you didn’t attend but would like a copy, contact us.)

The most effective content pulls readers in to the story. It captivates.

The client is a NASSCOM Top 20 global IT services company. They came to us for a whitepaper that would articulate the value of their oil and gas well integrity management services. When we sat down with the SME, a PhD engineer in Houston, he talked about his vision for the paper: a technical discussion of the firm’s solution. “What is the risk of not having real-time access to well integrity information?” we asked the SME. “A disaster like the Deepwater Horizon,” he responded.

We had our story.

We crafted a narrative around the fact that relying on Excel spreadsheets and a single engineer to monitor thousands of wells makes it impossible to catch the kind of equipment fault that led to the loss of 11 lives, the spillage of 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and $42 billion (and counting) in losses for BP. And then we highlighted the fact that technology exists (and may soon become required) that enables single-dashboard, real-time well integrity management. The kind that could prevent another Deepwater Horizon.

The white paper was the most successful that the client had ever published, resulting in:

• 20% uptick in prospect engagement
• 5 discovery calls for the sales team
• 2 closed deals

In all, the client saw a return of $1.75 million on the cost of developing and marketing the white paper, for an ROI of 17500%.