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Customer Service Marketing Management

Using Customer Success Stories With The Media

Customer Success Stories are a great tool to use in Communications Vehicles, the Sales Process and with the Media.

Successphoto © 2007 Alosh Bennett | more info (via: Wylio)
Customer Success Stories are a great tool to use in Communications Vehicles, the Sales Process and with the Media.

Four ways that the success stories can be utilized in the Media are:

Pitching Stories to the Media

A well-written e-mail or scripted phone call to media contacts with a compelling customer success story can get the creative juices flowing.  Writers and reporters need to fill pages and airtime each day.  Make their jobs easier by providing compelling content.

Advertising

Feature the story in an advertisement that is run in an industry publication, local newspaper or in an online publication.

Press Releases

Writers and editors like to tell a story in their articles.  Live examples with local companies grab the attention of readers.  Making a connection is what the writer is seeking to do and featuring local personalities helps.

Contributed or By-lined Article

Targeting a story to an industry publication plays to the relevancy angle.  I have utilized this technique myself.  The article ended up being the cover story.  The result was fantastic publicity and a reprint opportunity.

Bonus Techniques

I have written 4 other posts on Customer Success Stories. Click below to read them.

The Takeaway

Customer Success Stories are a great technique to use when pitching the media with a story concept or idea.

Those are the ideas.  What are your ideas?  Please comment below.

1.      What other techniques do you use to pitch customer success stories?

2.      Have you been effective in pitching stories?

3.      Please share a success story.

If you would like to contact me, you may do so by visiting myLinkedIn page, following me on Twitter,  or e-mailing me at rcberman2 (at) yahoo.com.

By Rob Berman

Rob Berman is a PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT / MARKETING Executive with a proven track record of success growing the top and bottom lines in small, medium and large companies as well as matrixed and multi-national organizations. Experienced in domestic and international markets. Effective in a fast paced environment with multiple priorities -- meet deadlines while consistently bringing new products to market, managing existing lines of business, driving communications and achieving financial targets.

15 replies on “Using Customer Success Stories With The Media”

Rob:
To extend the idea a little — “nothing succeeds like success!” Being in the web publishing area myself, my work does not involve traditional customers. But when I am “selling” what I do to an agency, then what they want to hear about is how successful my enterprise has been, whether it’s year to year, audience demographics, or whatever the metric may be. Success sells!

I agree Rob. Customer success stories bring life to the point being made. However, I find it equally important to tell the overall story with solid numbers. If the one or two success stories don’t reflect the bigger picture, you can lose credibility. I find that some of the biggest payoff in developing those stories is helping to cement relations between my clients and their customers who are the subject of the stories. Good luck.

Peter:

You make an excellent point about cementing the relationship between the company and the customer who is featured in the success story. Numbers always bring a reality to the situation and raise the level of credibility.

Rob

By Post Author

Rob, thanks for this brilliant idea. While I have numerous success stories with my clients, I had never thought seriously about using them to promote my services. I guess I falsely assumed that in order to be featured in a newspaper, I would have to be a celebrity of sorts!
I have published articles for major publications in my area, but they are more generic. Many publishers will not permit self promotion of any kind.

Keyuri:

Newspapers do not want self-promotion. You can share success stories in your more generic articles. Better yet, let them know the success stories and have the newspaper or radio station or TV station feature you.

Rob

By Post Author

Hey Rob, using customer success stories (testimonials) has many purposes. To promote your brand like Catarina mentions – showing potential customers that you have made other customers “happy”. Great suggestion to use them to get media coverage. The rationale is if you show the media how others have benefited from your product or service, your brand now becomes “newsworthy” as you can offer the same benefits to new customers. Thanks for the idea 🙂

Julie:

Absolutely about brand building. You want your name out there and the post suggests some ways. The two posts that were hyperlinked also have some other ideas on how to use success stories.

Rob

By Post Author

Good points Rob. Have only ever used customer successstories as references for promotions i.e. web sites, broshures and so forth.

My favourite was a colonel in the US Army that wrote a letter to the conglomerate I worked for in Saudi Arabia saying that Americs wouldn’t have manage to liberate Kuwait (the first Gulf War) if it hadn’t been for the company I worked for. Loved that one – actually it’s the best such story I’ve ever heard. And the Saudis had not used the letter for promotion, so I changed that.

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