ContentWise

How to Create, Produce & Deliver Your Organization’s Content

No. 3/2010
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Best
your
Salesperson
is your
Customer
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inside
f e at u r e s


Directness and Depth
 How do your customer success stories rank,
and how should you use them?


Words Are Nice, But Pictures Rule
You want to direct? Go for it.


credits
Cover Story



Your Best Salesperson is
Your Customer
 Your marketing collateral becomes
a lot more compelling with a little
help from your customers.

 No.3/2010 becontentwise.com 
 cover story
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in this issue 

The latest Nielsen

 our Best Salesperson is
Y Global Online Consumer

Your Customer Survey revealed that

70 percent of consumers
trust recommendations

I
f you’re aiming to add credibility to your marketing collateral, there are many ways from other consumers
to do it: using data points that substantiate a claim; writing clear, compelling prose;
who have already bought
and telling engaging stories. The best possible way? Use the voice of your customers.
There’s no better way to give your content the weight of truth than by having your and used a product.
customers go to bat for you. After all, your customers have two distinct advantages
going for them: 1) they use your products or services; 2) they are not on your payroll.
The latest Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey revealed that 70 percent of
consumers trust recommendations from other consumers who have already bought
and used a product. And if the potential buyer knows or can relate to the person
recommending, the trust factor goes up to 90 percent. Compare that with the amount
of trust consumers have in e-mails they opt in to: 54 percent. What does that add up
to? Your customers are the best salespeople you have.
Happy customers are everyone’s job. A great customer experience is as much your
responsibility as it is the customer service team’s. The messaging you deliver on re-
flects customers' actual needs, and it presents an accurate picture of the product and
value your organization provides. So how do you go about including your customers’
voices in your content? The topic is treated in two parts.

 No.3/2010 becontentwise.com 
 cover story
in this issue 
Part 1: Creating Great Customer Success Stories
There are three elements to creating effective customer success stories.
e Identify the right customer
There is a wide variety of criteria you
should consider when selecting the cus-
tomer whose story you’re aiming to tell.
Among the variables you want to think
about are the customer’s demographic,
including their industry and their role in
the organization. Will your target audi-
ence be able to relate to the customer in
some way? What product do you want to
feature in your customer story? Make sure
the customer who is using the featured
product is using it to the fullest extent pos-
sible, not in a basic, stripped-down way. If
you’re working in the software industry, be
sure to take into account the customer’s
technical environment and any partners
who may be in the picture.
As for diversity of customer criteria, it’s
best to develop multiple success stories that
 No.3/2010
ContentWise
highlight as many different scenarios as your
prospects may find themselves in. The more
variables that the featured customer has in
common with your audience the better. This
goes back to the notion that people trust
people they know and can relate to. And,
perhaps it goes without saying, but we’ll
say it anyway: Be certain that the customer
you’re showcasing is a happy customer.
Ask the right questions
r and hope for rich, compelling responses.
You’ve chosen the right customer. Now Often, this does not happen. The e-mailed
how do you get them to tell their story? responses are usually short and they lack
The most effective way to draw your cus- compelling detail. When you talk to your
tomer’s positive experiences out is through customer in person, you can pick up on nu-
an interview. If you can do it in person, ter- ances and pursue questions that you didn’t
rific. More likely, you’ll have to conduct the anticipate asking. Often, these lead to the
interview by phone. Either way works very most valuable insights you’ll get. Before
well. The least desirable option is to send you begin the interview, ask your customer
your customer a list of questions via e-mail if you can record the conversation. It’s a
becontentwise.com 
 cover story
in this issue 
lot easier to recreate all of the great things
they told you when you can listen to it over
and over again.
So what do you ask?
· What issue or problem motivated you
to buy our product or service?
· What made our organization, product
or service the right choice for your needs?
· How well does our product or service
solve the problem that motivated you to
buy it?
· Have you conducted any research on
return on investment, and can you share
any results?
· Is there a particular aspect of our
product that you find especially valuable?
Can you describe how you couldn’t live
without it?
· Would you recommend our product or
service to a colleague? Why?
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· Is there anything we haven’t asked you Do the right thing
t
about that you’d like to share about your After you draft the customer success
experience with our organization, product story, then comes the review process.
or service? While it adds days (sometime weeks)
to the approval cycle, you need to give
This last question is critical. It allows
the featured customer an opportunity to
your customer to give you a free-form
review and edit their story. It’s common
answer about all of the ways you’ve
courtesy, good business and the customer
made their life better.
will be all the more loyal for having the
Once you have the interview transcript,
opportunity. But before you send the piece
you can begin crafting the story. Focus
to your customer, be sure it’s gone through
on quantifiable benefits that the customer
internal review. You want to give the cus-
has realized. (That’s why you asked the
tomer the story in its most finished state
question about return on investment.)
possible. And you wouldn’t want one of
How much money has the customer
your internal reviewers accidentally editing
saved? How much time have they saved
a point that the customer added in review.
in accomplishing various tasks? How
So now your customer success story is
have they improved their own customer
complete. Part 2 of this feature focuses on
service and loyalty? To what extent have
how to get the most mileage out of your
they reduced their carbon footprint?
good work. 
How are they more profitable? These are
the kinds of points that will have a direct
impact on helping your sales team win
the next deal.
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 No.3/2010 becontentwise.com 
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Part 2: Using great Customer Success Stories

The first part of this article offered guidance
on how to create a great customer success
story. This second part provides suggestions
for shouting customer success stories from
the rooftops and getting the most out of them.
Your customers love your product. They
tell you all the time how happy they are with
it. It’s made their lives so much better. While
that’s nice for you to know, it’s not you who
really needs to know it. Your prospects do.
So how do you direct your customers’ suc-
cess stories to this key audience? Since your
customers probably aren’t going to stop
everyone they pass on the street and evan-
gelize the great stuff your organization sells,
it’s going to take a little work on your part.
The first thing you need to do is publish
your success stories to your organization’s
web site. You can place them on your site
a variety of ways. Give them prominent
placement directly on the home page, where
visitors can access the full story with a
single click. Salesforce claims “2 million
success stories and counting” on its home
page. The claim sits below the fold, so they
arguably have more valuable content to fea-
ture above. Or create a home for them under
a “Customer Success” or a “Testimonials”
section. The advantage to creating a landing
page to house all of your customer success
stories is that you can organize them there
by industry, product, partner, customer role,
etc. for easy and intuitive access. Intuit epit-
omizes this approach with their customer
case studies. Organizing the assets this way
allows you to leverage the metadata around
each item, so you can also syndicate the
success stories on relevant product pages
or industry sections of your site. They key to
having them on your site is so visitors will
come across them at logical and expected
points during their online visit.
While on the topic of your prospect’s online
experience, you should consider how webi-
nars can help broadcast your happy custom-
ers’ stories. Think for a moment about the
best webinar you’ve attended that was put
on by a vendor. Was it the one where the
vendor did all of the talking? Or was it the one
where the vendor was smart enough to give
the stage over to their customer, who did the
selling for them? Webinars featuring your
customer are easier to produce than it may
seem. Once you have your customer success
story, all you need to do is translate it into pre-
sentation form. The customer conveyed their
story to you when you originally captured it.

 No.3/2010 becontentwise.com 
 cover story
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Now that it’s all polished, transform it back
into narrative form. And have your customer
present it on the webinar. Ciber, a systems
integrator, routinely makes the most of their
customer evangelists by featuring them in
company webinars. (Ciber also lists their
client case studies by industry on their web
site for intuitive access.)
The in-person version of the webinar is
the tradeshow. Tradeshows make excel-
lent venues for sharing your customers’
success stories. Whether they’re in your
booth with you talking to prospects or have
the floor during a breakout session, your
customer will enjoy the limelight. Giving
your customer the floor for the breakout
session also allows them to be recognized
as a leader among their peers and in their
industry. Media and analysts often attend
tradeshows as well. Consider offering these
influential parties access to your evange-
listic customer so that they can share the
latest insights and impressions about your
product, thereby validating all of the claims
 No.3/2010
you make in your marketing content.
You would not be doing your job if you
didn’t trumpet your customer success stories
via social media. When you publish a new
success story, post it on as many outlets as
you can: Twitter, your organization’s Facebook
page, LinkedIn and any relevant groups you’re
a member of there, Deli.cio.us, Digg, Reddit
and other social media outlets you have an
affinity for. You may also want to post the
story to article databases, such as Articles
Engine and Articles Base. More off-site links
to your website help with SEO, so don’t
be shy about posting the story in as many
places as makes sense. Speaking of SEO,
you also want to create a branded YouTube
channel, such as SAP TV. Load all of your
video success stories there and include
the tags that best serve your organization’s
brand. The more off-site content you have,
the more diligent you need to be about
keeping it fresh and updated. Something to
consider before posting content and links
willy-nilly.
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If you want to make your e-mail marketing
efforts more substantive, extract the three
most compelling customer quotes from
each success story and use them selectively
in your e-mail marketing efforts. Be sure
to align the customer you’re quoting with
the audience you’re targeting. You can link
directly to the customer success story from
the e-mail, as an optional action for your
e-mail recipient. This also helps further per-
sonalize the e-mail, which goes a long way
toward conversions. Campus Management
extends this idea to their web site, giving
customer testimonial snippets prime real
estate so that visitors can learn about how
they make their clients successful. (Notice
how a four-year public university’s success
story is on the four-year public college and
university web page.)
Above all, constantly merchandize your
customer success stories and related proof
points with your sales team. Your field reps
get a lot of mileage out of these stories and
will likely rely on them to help win deals. 

 ContentWise
in this issue 

Directness
High
Site Visit
Reference Call •
Presenting at Tradeshow
• •
and Depth Webinar
• Case Study
•

DIRECTNESS
Like anything measurable, White Paper

customer success stories can

•
Serving as Source for Analysts

be ranked on two axes: level of Serving as Source for Media •

• Guest Author for Company Magazine
directness and level of depth. •
Video Testimonial
While there are multiple types •
Social Media Post
of success stories and methods •
Low
of delivering them, some are Low DEPTH High

more frank, credible and detailed

than others. The stories that are
the deepest and most direct
are always the most effective.
Tip: The tactics in the bottom left quadrant should be used very frequently.
It’s a volume game there. Those in the upper right should be used more selec-
tively, for the best opportunities.
We should point out that the software company Point of Reference, which
makes customer reference management software, has a slightly different take
on how and where customer success stories fall. You can see their thinking on
their blog and decide for yourself how best to use the voice of your customer. 

 No.3/2010 becontentwise.com 

Words
Words are
are Nice,
in this issue 
Nice,
T hink back to your elementary school
days. Name the one thing you remem-
ber most vividly about show and tell.
It’s the thing, the object, the show, right? You
may have no recollection of the vivid descrip-
tions and gripping stories your classmates told
about the thing they brought in to class, but
you probably can remember the thing itself.
Not much has changed about the way you re-
call things as an adult. People are programmed
to retain visual stimuli, and we remember
pictures much more easily than we remember
words. This is why you want to capture your
 No.3/2010
ContentWise
customer success stories on video.
Video productions used to be exactly that:
productions. With the advent of compact,
user-friendly video cameras, such as the Flip
Video Camcorder, even a novice can serve as
the producer, director, production designer,
set decorator, director of photography, key
grip and camera operator. All you need is a
well lit environment and a very steady hand.
OK, maybe you need a little more than that.
To help you get the most out of capturing your
customers’ testimonials on video, here’s a
primer on how to be a one-man camera crew.
becontentwise.com 
 ContentWise
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Choose a quiet room where your subject’s voice will fill the space. If you shoot in an open area, such as a ballroom or a
hallway, their voice tends to get lost and sounds distant during playback. Choose a simple background because it will
always be in focus. Be sure the area behind your subject is free of movement, distractions, computer screens or detailed
backdrops. Definitely avoid using full bookshelves, patterned wallpaper or intricate tile work as your backdrop.

You should position the camera about two to three While your subject may not
feet away from your subject. This may feel a little look exactly like Natalie Portman,
up-close-and-personal for American tastes, but it you get the idea. Also, your
will yield the best audio and provide a more personal subject doesn’t need to look
experience for the viewer. directly into the camera. Have
them look slightly off to one side,
as if they’re talking to someone
directly over your shoulder. Avoid
full profile shots. These create an
With any camera equipment, it’s always advised to use a tripod. You’re not trying to evoke impersonal perspective. Lastly,
memories of The Blair Witch Project, and your audience won’t appreciate a shaky hand. make sure you don’t cut off the
Set the camera up on a simple tripod on a level surface, and you’re ready to shoot. With the top of the subject’s head.
Flip Video Camera, it’s best not to zoom during shooting. In the span of a 60-second video That’s not nice.
featuring a single subject, there’s really no compelling reason to zoom. It will only distract
the viewer and take their attention away from your customer’s compelling story. 

 No.3/2010 becontentwise.com 
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How to Create, Produce & Deliver Your Organization’s Content

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