Going From Customers to Evangelists

At B2B technology firms, getting customers to evangelize for you is a critical component of the marketing team’s role – or, it should be! With high-value, complex products in the reckoning, buyers’ decisions are almost always influenced by their peers in the industry.

For most companies however, customer testimonials rarely go beyond cookie-cutter style case studies. Indeed, such case studies have become routine, and few readers would expect to find anything extraordinary in them. Are we recommending that you stop publishing case studies? No, but they are not the only way you can get your customers to talk about you, nor do they need to stop at ordinary.

Here are a few ways in which B2B firms can work with their customers to build more interesting and impactful stories:

Co-creating content: Co-creating content along with a customer, and co-branding it, is a more powerful testimonial than a customer just talking about the value you delivered to them with a product.

Make Case Studies user-relevant: One reason why case studies have become boring (apart from their ubiquity) is that they’re mostly ‘you’, talking about ‘yourself’. Most case studies are highly inward directed and focus on how you resolved a business problem. Why not focus instead on creating content on subjects users want to know more about? The customer experience with your product could be built in as part of such content.

This takes some getting used to, since conventional case studies place you and your customer at the heart of the subject, but perhaps that is not what potential customers are interested in. This is also an opportunity to build case studies around customers who are not comfortable with their name being used in promotional material.

Being present beyond the sale: Opportunities for customer evangelism are usually strongest in the immediate 3-6 month period after a product sale or project completion; yet, other opportunities may arise by being present beyond the sale. Doubts about a high-value buy or internal restructuring that makes your product redundant within the company are opportunities to identify how you could support the customer in changing circumstances – and win brownie points for doing it efficiently.

Helping customers benefit from testimonials: When customers talk about your product or solution, there’s little in it for them. It’s no wonder that even satisfied customers offer pretty mundane testimonials. Help clients benefit from evangelism by creating media opportunities for them, or keeping their customers center-stage. For example, interesting videos or slideshares that appeal to their target audience as well, and include your brand, are a win-win situation.

Confianzys is a well-known, product management, customer Management, product marketing, market research company India, providing training in effective marketing research, customer management and product marketing. For more information please visit. http://www.confianzys.com