If you’re a small or mid-size company, chances are you watch the big guys conduct their high-visibility marketing campaigns with some envy. Network television, glossy color ads, big-bucks national sweepstakes, multi-million dollar sponsorships, glitzy publicity campaigns, the list goes on.
How can you compete if you’re not a billion-dollar player? At a BtoB Magazine (www.btobonline.com) NetMarketing breakfast here in Atlanta last week, I was reminded again that social marketing has become that great equalizer. Smaller companies get low-cost access to powerful tools and tactics that can put them in the big guys’ league without breaking the bank.
This particular presentation (check out related Tweets at #btobnet) featured digital and social marketing leaders from global powerhouses like IBM to small enterprises like Atlanta’s www.controlscan.com.
Despite the participants’ disparate company sizes and budgets, common approaches prevailed. Many of these included popular social media tools, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, video and SEO web content. The consensus was that content continues to be the undisputed King. Customer stories and case studies were repeatedly cited as the most valuable piece of content.
I couldn’t agree more. Intriguing customer success stories have long been a staple for public relations professionals. When pitching a company, product or service, you can toot your own horn all you want, but nothing beats a well-crafted example of how someone else made money or achieved some other amazing result thanks to your stuff or service.
We research, write and tell customer stories all day long – and you can, too. Here are a few tips to get started:
- Put on your Jimmy Clark hat. What’s the news hook? Why should your audience care? Will they learn something? Act like an investigative reporter, not a marketer. Have your questions ready, and start digging. Don’t settle for monosyllabic answers – engage your interview subject and mine for data and metrics that prove success.
- Write it right. Craft a great story that others will actually want to read and share. That means concise, clear writing, supported by plenty of proof points and “aha” moments. Your readers need to learn something. And, of course, you’d like them to be motivated to reach for the phone (or their mouse to click-through to your “Contact Us” page).
- Don’t be self-centered. Brandware clients often tell us that they have a hard time getting their customers to agree to case studies. Well, virtually everyone loves to shine in a peer environment, so frame the story to ensure your customer is positioned as a trend setter, category leader or industry innovator. What makes their approach better, smarter, faster, cheaper or just plain cooler than anyone else’s?
- Offer up some love. Counsel your customer how they might use the case study for their own marketing efforts – then offer to help. Pitch the success story to the customer’s most important trade or vertical media. And, of course, offer an incentive or other value-added feature to say “thanks.”
- Use multiple channels to spread the story. When a customer agrees to participate, also get buy-in for a 2 – 3 minute video version of the story for posting and sharing online. Most customers will love to have a well-shot video segment of their success story. Do yourself and your customer a favor and spring for a professional production team that understands staging and lighting. This is no time for talking heads, shiny brows or that “deer in the headlights” look.
