Rescuing a Case Study from Certain Death
Whew!
A case study has been saved. It was close.
Here’s how it went down:
We created a case study that my client really needed, the first one on a specific mix of products used together by one customer.
Everything went incredibly smoothly until the signoff phase. Our main customer contact sent it up to his legal team, who said effectively, "No, we don’t like your release form, so we can’t agree."
From there, we engaged the company’s PR contact, who was frustrated that legal shot down this free PR opportunity.
The PR guy let legal know the case study was important, getting legal to take another look.
We compromised with some modifications to the legal release form and the story got through.
It’s a lesson in not taking "no" for an answer. If you understand the reasons for case study rejection, you can often work through them successfully.
All’s well that ends well.
Lessons learned: Let legal see the release form before starting a customer story.
Find more tips on clearing roadblocks to customer story signoff in Ch. 8 of Stories That Sell.
The Media Wants Your Customer Stories
Journalists are constantly looking for interesting stories to bring to their audiences.
"When PR agencies and businesses come to me with customer stories, I'm always interested‚" said Mila D'Antonio, Managing Editor of 1to1 Magazine. "It's a challenge to get a good story if it doesn't have a good customer story in it." (from Ch. 9, Stories That Sell)
You can bring customer stories to journalists in a couple of ways:
A story press release
A story pitch, with a customer story or customer reference in hand
The story press release
The "story press" release highlights a specific customer connected with your news. Maybe it's a product release or an announcement about that customer's success. Weave the customer's story right into the press release.
Several of my clients craft press releases that highlight specific customers. Here's an example from Customer Expressions.
When creating my own press release this week, I turned to a relevant story for an engaging intro.
The story pitch
If you don't give a customer example in a press release, still offer a customer success story to a media outlet to increase your chances of getting a journalist's attention.
With your pitch, you might give some bullets about the customer's success, send a video or written case study, or recommend that the journalist talks to a specific customer.
If you don't provide it, reporters will likely ask to interview a customer anyway. It's better to be prepared.
This takes the focus off the vendor business (which editors really like), and puts it on the successful customer, made successful with your solutions.
I'd love to see any examples you find of customer stories in press releases.
Stories, Inspiring Focus in a Complex World
After coming back from the holiday break, I'm more aware than ever how complicated life has become.
I've got four email accounts to log into, and an encrypted file that holds 18 different usernames and passwords for various sites I use. And that's not even all of them.
As usual, there's also quite a bit on the to-do list.
How do I settle down and focus? The true focus in my day comes in the act of storytelling, the crafting of case studies and success stories. To do them well, I have to set everything else aside for that time.
I need that focus to weave the pieces of the story together into a compelling whole.
When well-written, a story commands the same kind of complete attention from readers. It has the power to pull them into focus despite all the chaos around them.
Among millions of marketing messages, a story gets noticed and draws audiences in in a way that shouting never can. And it keeps readers there, engaged and moving along the tracks of the narrative, until resolution.
Maybe it's about getting back to our roots, to simpler times. Prehistoric people explained their past, present and future in story formats. Today, we still communicate best in this format, whether it's explaining something to a child or conveying the value of enterprise software.
What do you think, is story the answer to simplifying communication in our complex world?
Marketers Increasing Content Investment
Business news lately has been grim, but it's not all bad.
A recent survey by Junta42 found that 56% of marketing and publishing decision makers plan to increase their content marketing spending for 2009.
Among their plans for 2009, case studies. Fifty-five percent indicated they would be investing in case studies among other tactics such as social media, blogs and video.
Why the increase in investment in these conditions?
Junta42 says: "As the economy worsens, more corporate marketers focus on keeping their current customers by showing clear value through relevant content distribution. But the more likely story is that we've seen a clear shift away from ‘interruption' style media toward content marketing and social media, which seeks to add value to a conversation instead of a ‘sales through distraction' mentality."
Looking for ideas on how to leverage your customer success stories? Check out StoriesThatSellGuide.com.
The First Book on Case Studies – Now Available!
Ten years ago this month, my phone rang.
On the other end was a client with a new project—a case study on one of the software company's satisfied customers.
Admittedly, as a corporate freelance writer, I'd never heard of case studies—let alone knew how to approach one.
I searched the web, looked in bookstores, and asked around. Yet I couldn't find any information on the "whys" or "hows" of customer case studies.
I forged ahead anyway, and in the process discovered a love for storytelling.
Over the past decade, that one project has led to hundreds more for dozens of companies.
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Companion ebooks to Stories that Sell!
Get the most out of Stories that Sell with The Marketer's Toolkit AND The Writer's Toolkit. These additional resources provide proven tips to help you succeed with success stories.
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