Customer Success stories are so much more than just a humble case study - they are one of the most valuable things you can create for your brand. Creating a robust plan of action for sharing and promotion, and really taking the time to create a forward-thinking strategy can make your customer success stories your hardest working asset. Don’t let it just sit hidden away on your website for only the more adventurous web visitors to find. It’s now crucial to make sure you maximise your return on this content that both you and your client have invested in creating; make a plan for what's next, and make sure your team have the toolkit they need to start building positive engagement.
Making your plan – here are some questions you might want to consider:
1. Where will you promote this customer success story?
- Your website – on the homepage, a dedicated customer success page or a campaign landing page?
- Pull out quotes and testimonials that be used on relevant connected pages across the website.
- Social channels – which channels will you focus on for this? Different platforms use content in different ways – how will you optimise your content for engagement?
2. What messages will you use?
- Think about the best way to position your customer success stories to attract your desired audience.
- Does this depend on the sector you are talking to or the different personas that you want to reach?
- What will make them take notice and want to find out more?
- What do they really want to hear about?
- What answers the questions they might have when it comes to working with a business like yours?
3. Will you use different formats for different customer segments?
- Think about how your different target customers prefer to digest content and check credentials. Are they time poor? Do they like a scannable portfolio of summary stories that gives them a big picture overview they can dip into? Other customer groups might be more visually oriented and prefer to process information via video, or highly visual stories like an infographic.
- Would your target audience be hooked by key data, statistics or results, or all 3?
- Do personal quotes and soundbites have the biggest impact?
4. What do your internal teams need in order to use these stories effectively?
- Sales toolkit - customer stories can empower your sales team to focus less on product specs and more on how, and why, your product or service adds value, making them a powerful tool in your sales enablement toolkit.
- Use customer stories during the sales process to:
- Build credibility during and after initial sales calls and/or demos.
- Overcome objections by contextualising your offering with real-life examples.
So you’ve created a great story, you’re set up for success and your audience are actively engaging – fantastic! But it doesn’t stop there… how else could your customer success content be working for you?
Conducting case studies and customer stories is invaluable research for your business. Not only do you gather crucial feedback, and glowing references, but the stories your customers tell can inspire and inform your marketing strategy. As you dive into your customer stories and discover all the reasons they love what you do, you will be able to extract the trends, themes and challenges needed to create powerful marketing materials.
Here are just a few of the content ideas we have created as a next step using our Customer Success Programme for our clients:
- High impact Infographics that pull together the stats and headlines from a number of customer success stories – showcasing the outcomes, the stats and the data for those that want ROI front and centre.
- Video – a short video with imagery and graphic titling to highlight customer successes for use on social channels, websites and in the sales toolkit is an easy to digest asset, giving an overview of the key reasons customers work with you and why.
- Blog series focusing on insight and themes discovered in the interview process. What common challenges have you solved? What pain points have you discovered that you could focus on in your marketing strategy? Can you create a set of blog articles that speak to these challenges and pains, and feel super relevant for your audience?
- The interview – there is an option to include a key question in each customer interview that then plays into the bigger Industry Insight content pieces you create, bringing together your Thought Leadership and the united voices of your customers. This can be repurposed into a benchmark study, which in turn activates and maximises further content ideas.
How Marketing Fusion can help
Our Customer Success Programme provides you with everything you need to create a consistent, powerful, customer story rollout and beyond – from interviewing your customers, developing your messaging to showcasing your success in engaging, easily digestible assets. Let us help you in building credibility, inspiring prospects to move along their buyer journey and providing impactful emotional engagement that activates connection. Talk to us today to discover more about our Customer Success Programme.
