So you’ve got a great success story … maybe even a few of them. Now what?
Too often, we’ve seen fantastic success stories and glowing customer testimonials get shoved to the back of a corporate kit or buried among thousands of files on a network. Success stories can be fabulous marketing tools if used properly. So we thought we’d share a few tips for putting those stories to work.
Sage and Microsoft Customer Success Stories
- TAKE IT WITH YOU – Take it to every sales meeting. In fact, why not just cut right to the chase in your first meeting and offer up a fantastic success story or two? You might just save yourself the hassle of providing a bunch of references later in the sales cycle … and you’ll save your customers the hassle of fielding a bunch of referral calls as well.
- FEED EM’ BITE-SIZED PIECES – You don’t always have to use the whole story. Some folks are just too busy to read that much. But that doesn’t mean you can’t pull pieces of the story out and use short 1 or 2 sentence testimonials on your website, your brochures, in your prospect newsletter, or in email communication.
- DO A PRESS RELEASE - We’ve all seen press releases announcing a new customer. But you may not know that the press release can also get tremendous search visibility when you combine a carefully-crafted, keyword-optimized press release with an online newswire service that distributes your news to Google, Yahoo, and thousands of technology news sites. Announce your success AND drive traffic to your website … two birds, one stone.
- INCLUDE IT IN YOUR NEWSLETTER – If you’re nurturing prospects with a regular newsletter (and you should be!), simply include a quick intro and a link to the full success story on your website.
- GET SOCIAL WITH IT – share your success stories and testimonials with your network on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. “Wholesale distributor improves inventory turns by 250% (link to story)”
Build Your Collection
It’s not a bad idea to have a collection of success stories in your arsenal. That way, you have an inventory of happy customers to draw from and can provide something that’s relevant to a given prospect based on their size, industry, and type of business.
And if you need to start building your library, take a peek at our Success Story program or have a gander at our newest offering Customer Buzz – it’s like a success story, but shorter.
So, how are YOU using success stories in your sales and marketing effort?
Tags: Channel Marketing, Content Marketing, Microsoft VAR Marketing, Sage, Sage VAR Marketing, VAR Marketing Tips
We joined the social media conversation the year, and it’s provided awesome opportunities to do mutually beneficial marketing with our customers through customer spotlights on our blog and direct communication, “liking,” and sharing links on networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Same-old same-old success stories can start to feel repetitive, so mix it up! Video is a great alternative to the sometimes “tired” press release. Weave success stories into product or service-focused videos, and lavish some attention on those loyal customers by getting their enthusiasm on camera during your next consulting visit (or make a special trip!) You can embed the videos right on your website, and they get lots of clicks on sites like Facebook compared to your average link-to-article.
@Kissinger Associates – Now THAT’S leveraging customer success in a very creative (and social) way. I particularly like the idea of customer spotlights on your blog. Great tips, thanks for sharing!
[...] P.s. You might also be interested in reading “Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Existing Success Stories“ [...]