For 8 years, I've maintained two websites: the one here for my book and another for my copywriting and consulting business. To keep things simpler for you and me, I'm merging the two into a single site, located at www. compelling-cases. com. Now you can ...
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"Blog – Stories That Sell" - 5 new articles

  1. Moving! Where to Find the New Stories That Sell Blog
  2. 5 Tips for Tweeting Your Customer Case Studies
  3. 7 Companies Boldly Leading with Customer Stories
  4. The Small Marketer’s First Steps to a Customer Advocacy Effort
  5. How to Cut Case Study Approval Times by 75%
  6. More Recent Articles

Moving! Where to Find the New Stories That Sell Blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For 8 years, I've maintained two websites: the one here for my book and another for my copywriting and consulting business. To keep things simpler for you and me, I'm merging the two into a single site, located at www.compelling-cases.com.

Now you can find all Stories That Sell blog posts - past and future - at https://www.compelling-cases.com/blog/.

If you follow the Stories That Sell blog in a feed, here's how to switch to the new location: On my main blog page, scroll to the bottom and click on the orange button to choose your favorite feed location.

Join me at the new address for regular insights on customer case studies, including this week's post, Bait Customers for More Compelling Storytelling.

 

 

   

5 Tips for Tweeting Your Customer Case Studies

salesforce

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In spreading the word about new content, marketers clearly see the value of social media. In fact, 93% of B2B marketers use social media to share their content, with 87% of them choosing to do so on Twitter. (2016 B2B Content Marketing: 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America)

Customer success stories - with their focus on real customers, real results and how-to messages - are some of the most engaging content to share. And on Twitter, posting a written or video customer case study is pretty quick and simple.

Here's a short guide for crafting your customer-story Tweets:

Use Graphics

A study found that Tweets with images get 18% more clicks and 150% more Retweets, and are "favorited" 89% more.

Let's look at a few examples...

 

You can choose to Tweet a photo that ties into your story, that represents the customer or the customer's industry. Maybe even overlay a featured customer quote.

avaya-tweet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Create a graphic that conveys some of the biggest take-aways from your customer story.

sai-tweet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or share your customer video right on Twitter.

mswar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Create an Engaging Headline

Entice the reader to click by using words proven to increase engagement such as "new," how to," "check out" and "free." Microsoft's September post on Uber generated 299 Retweets and 374 favorites.

microsoft-pic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Package Tweets

Recently, Twitter announced the availability of Twitter Moments, which allows you to tell a story by bundling existing Tweets of your own or others. For example, you might bundle a handful of Tweets about customer case studies all in one industry, or all in one geographic area. Or package Tweets all related to customers presenting their stories at your user conference.

 

Shorten Links

Include a link to the case study or related blog post, and shorten it to make the most of your 140 characters. You may choose from sites such as goo.gl, ow.ly or bit.ly, among others, to shorten your link.

 

Tag It

Tagging posts with Twitter handles and hashtags helps Twitter users find posts relevant to them. In the examples above, these companies have used hashtags such as #Quakes (the featured customer), #SAFe (product name), #veterans (intended audience) and #MSIgnite (an event). Don't forget to tag the featured customer with @ so they notice and can Retweet their story.

All these tactics are easy, free (except for your time), and fun. Try them and watch how your Twitter engagement - and site traffic - respond.

Share your Twitter experience. What have you found gets more traction?

   

7 Companies Boldly Leading with Customer Stories

I’m sorry to tell you this, but your marketing has a credibility problem.

You’re not the only business facing this challenge. Potential customers distrust nearly all marketing. Why? When promoting ourselves, we usually make a lot of promises, and prospects don’t know whether we’re living up to those promises. For that, they need objective, outside opinions.

Think about it this way: when you’re planning a special-occasion meal out, do you trust the restaurant’s claim that they serve the best steak in town? Or do you ask around among your family and friends, and do your homework on Yelp to learn about the experiences others have had at the restaurant? The more expensive the meal (and the more important the occasion) the more likely you are to dig for objective viewpoints.

That’s why prospects considering your products and services need to hear the stories of your happiest customers. And I’m suggesting that you shouldn’t just use customer case studies, you should lead with those customer stories. A few organizations do just that.

Here are several companies dedicating the most valuable space on their websites – the home page – to showcasing customer stories.

Microsoft

It doesn’t get better than this. Microsoft featured two bug scientists on Microsoft.com: “Kristie and Jessica of The Bug Chicks - two entomologists dedicated to teaching kids all about insects, spiders, and other arthropods.”

microsoft customer stories

Microsoft is continuously changing its home page content, so this story - which ran a few days ago - has been replaced by others.


Avaya

This billion-dollar, global communications company last week featured a series of healthcare customer stories as the marquee content right on the home page.

Avaya customer story
Three customer case studies rotated “above the fold,” an old-time expression for what you see on the front when a newspaper is folded. Site visitors could click to read more.

 

Adobe

Adobe customer stories

Dramatic image, no? And way more engaging than some boilerplate product description. This is not an interior page on Adobe’s site; this is what you see when you go right to Adobe.com (as of go-live with this post). Here we see Deadpool from a new Marvel Comics feature film, cut using Adobe Creative Cloud.

Honorable Mention – Stories below the Fold

While very few sites run a customer story as the top feature, a number of companies still include customers on the home page. The following are admirable examples of showcasing customers “below the fold” but still on valuable first-page real estate.

Atlassian
American Writers & Artists Inc.
Zuora
Oracle

What’s the Payoff?

It’s no small decision choosing what to run on the company’s home page, with many types of messages and content vying for that spot. I have heard from at least one organization that making case studies more visible does increase traffic to case studies, naturally. But does it increase leads and sales? Only these organizations know their backend stats. If these bottom-line focused companies continue this practice, then it’s likely beneficial for them.

Feature a Range of Customers

How do you feature customer stories on the home page? Today’s websites run screenwide lead images, and many organizations struggle with how to fill that space. Instead of a stock image, choose an image from your customer’s actual environment.

Be sure to showcase diverse customers; rotate stories across vertical industries, geographies, solutions featured and sizes of customers.

Your Customer’s Story = Your Story

As I rummaged around online for examples such as these (and had fun doing it), I found that nearly every site kicks off with marketing language and information about its products or vision. Many start with Our Story, which usually recounts the history and mission.

Customers are your stars, your heroes on the ground. Why not lead with your customer ambassadors? They are what prospects believe most.

   

The Small Marketer’s First Steps to a Customer Advocacy Effort

 

A few years ago, I delightfully observed as a client started a customer advocacy program. What’s that, you might ask? It’s an effort to go beyond one-off case studies and reference calls to engage with customers who are willing to serve as advocates for your products and services in a variety of ways.

The new program didn’t disappoint: My client grew named customer case studies by 50%, customer participation in speaking engagements to 164% of goal, and customer participation in media interviews by 650%.

To clarify, these are all outcomes where the happy customer went on record – publicly – to share the story about their success. Impressive.

Why Your Business Needs an Advocacy Program

If you follow this space, then you probably already know that satisfied customers – willing to talk about their experiences – are one of your greatest marketing assets. They’re way more believable than your marketing promises.

But ideally, a customer’s praise isn’t limited to a single case study. Today, savvy organizations are pursuing “customer advocacy” (what used to be called customer referencing).

Customer (or brand) advocates are five times more valuable than average customers because they spend more on your products. And they do even more: they willingly promote your products to others. And those recommendations carry a lot of weight.

Advocates are two to three times more effective than non-advocates in persuading people to make a purchase, and that’s good news for your business. A good advocacy program has a distinct effect on your company’s bottom line: a 12% increase in advocacy yields a 2x increase in revenue growth rate.*

How Advocates Engage with Your Business

Advocates might support your organization by speaking one-one-one with prospects, starring in videos, presenting at industry conferences or webinars, speaking to the media, joining an advisory board, or sharing their stories for awards programs.

If you simply ask for a single advocacy activity, you limit the relationship’s potential. I’ve seen individual contacts at customer organizations richly rewarded in their OWN organizations and industries with promotions and accolades after the exposure gained from presenting at conferences, participating in case studies and videos, speaking to the media and/or participating in industry awards  - all facilitated by a vendor's advocacy program.

Starting Your Advocacy Program

But if you’re a smaller organization, how do you begin the first steps of customer advocacy with no dedicated budget?

For answers, I turned to Barbara Thomas of Creative Tactics. Barbara has spent years working in customer advocacy and is the author of the forthcoming book, Advocate Marketing: Strategies for Building Buzz, Leveraging Customer Satisfaction and Creating Relationships.

“If you want more than the occasional one-off case study or want a list of go-to customers for references to support your sales, then you want an advocate marketing program,” she says. “With zero to little budget as a small organization, you can start a sustainable advocate marketing program that will help create extraordinary content. All you need is a surveying tool, Excel spreadsheet or CRM, and about 8 hours periodically from an organized staffer to work on the project.”

Here are Barbara’s tips to move forward on your advocate marketing effort:

1.    Plan – Brainstorm with sales, product marketing/management, IT and the web site manager and other relevant team members to determine what information is already captured about customers and what processes can be automated easily.

2.    Run customer surveys – Surveys can help identify customers that might be promoters and then advocates, and possibly even elicit some content, such as testimonials.

“The results of your survey should provide you with several customer testimonials ready to be shared publicly, a list of reference customers, and a list of content marketing candidates willing to engage in various valued activities for your organization,” Barbara says.

From this point, you can estimate the budget or resources to ask for to secure the new content from your pool of respondents.

3.    Create communications – You’ll want a few tools and templates such as follow-up notes, thank-you and engagement emails, voice mail scripts, and FAQs for internal staff and customers about advocacy opportunities.

“Make the communication as personal as possible, but still in a cookie-cutter format,” Barbara says. “I know that concept is an oxymoron but inserting data fields helps to personalize and is easy to do.”

4.    Organize it – While there are very cool tools nowadays for organizing customer advocates, you can begin with your CRM application or Excel.

5.    Measure results – Lastly, if you want more resources for your program, you have to show the outcome. Your first step is likely measuring quantity. What were your goals in terms of advocacy activity? Did you generate more of it – more videos, case studies, calls, event attendance and more?

Social media and web traffic stats make it easier to measure the impressions that advocacy content generated. What traffic can you tie to advocacy-related posts?
For the more advanced, the next step would be tying activity to leads, sales and revenue, which even more sophisticated programs struggle to do.

If all this sounds overwhelming, simply start at the beginning and take it step by step. It’s what numerous organizations have done, many of which now have funded advocacy programs.

*http://appdataroom.com/statistical-argument-customer-advocacy-infographic/

   

How to Cut Case Study Approval Times by 75%

hurdle

When it comes to customer case studies, there is a worst-case scenario. You can spend a healthy sum and 1-2 days’ worth of work crafting a beautiful tale of a customer’s positive experience with a product or service.

Then, slam. The project hits a brick wall when it reaches the customer. Case study approval can take weeks, or months. Or worse, the customer declines to approve it at all.

Nearly all seasoned marketers and case study writers have a horror-story of this sort to share. But fortunately, the instance of this happening is declining. Here’s why:
•    Better prep on the front end
•    Fewer hurdles on the back end

Better Prep on the Front End

Surprises are lovely, such as an unexpected visit from a friend or flowers from a loved one.

But customers usually don’t like surprises in the form of a case study that hardly anyone knew was in the works. The customer contact you interviewed may have agreed and participated in the process, yet he or she may not have the authority to consent to use the story.

Often, a higher-level manager, or legal or PR person within the company, must give the green light to participate. If those folks don’t know the case study is coming, and SURPRISE, there it is, then you’re hurting your chances of getting approval.

Instead, when you ask for permission to feature a customer, go beyond the interviewee. Find out who will ultimately need to give their blessing. These folks like to be consulted and possibly even involved in the interviews and messaging early on.

If everyone expects the case study, you’re being collaborative and upping the possibility of approval.

Fewer Hurdles on the Back End

Fifteen years ago, the average legal release form for a case study was 2-3 pages long and filled with legalese such as herewith, indemnify and duly executed. Customers regularly pushed back on wording, or rejected them altogether - killing the project.

Today, like long-distance calling costs, the average legal release is a fraction of what it used to be. And in fact, for most organizations, it’s no longer a form, but some simply worded email text.

What a difference it has made. Asking customers to provide consent to use a case study via email has dramatically shortened the approval process. Anecdotally, not scientifically, it’s probably cut approval times by 75 percent in my experience.

Not having a legal document that needs an actual signature means that the case study (usually) bypasses the inbox of a legal professional altogether. Instead, it’s more likely to go to a manager or PR person, the latter of which really wants to say yes to positive PR for the organization.

What to Put in Your Email Text

Companies using email approvals today follow these best practices…

1.    Keep it short – 2-3 paragraphs at most.
2.    State the type of material it is (case study), and how it will be used in broad terms (“in electronic or paper format”).
3.    Include the approval text in the body of the email and attach the case study draft for approval.
4.    Ask the customer to reply indicating agreement with the text, “I agree.”

The approach above is one I see used in increasingly more organizations today, with success – even in global, public companies. Week after week, I see this method proven.

A little prep work and simple processes will help your case studies sail over approval hurdles.

   

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