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By Alexie Glover
Your company probably already has a bustling customer reference program, keeping you familiar with the traditional collateral options: slide decks, case studies, solution snapshots, and technical papers.
These options get the job done. But, we believe there is something more powerful you could be doing to breathe life into your marketing collateral.
We’ve seen changes in the way businesses interact with their customers; particularly with the mainstreaming of social media, the use of longer, traditional marketing materials has diminished. Our industry is impatiently awaiting innovation—and the good news is that we don’t need to start from scratch.
We’re borrowing the techniques that our clients are already using (Sales and Marketing departments, we’re looking at you) to liven up customer references.
Want a quick way to enhance existing collateral? Here are a few ways we’ve been helping our clients drive end-customer interest:
Regardless of what kind of customer reference material you’re creating, your team has probably recorded the customer interviews. Those interviews can become more than just pull quotes in a PDF or slide deck. If you’re engaging a customer in your reference program, it’s because your product has solved a key business problem.
So, why not record the interview using video, hearing the customer share their story live? Nothing is better for Sales than having an actual customer share, in their own words, how your solution met their business needs.
We developed a solution that does just that—Quick Videos. It allows us to record customer testimonials without a video production team; instead, this process uses a direct link and none of the precious storage space on your personal device.
Quick Videos use unique prompts so when the customer accesses the link, it guides them to speak to your key messages, without looking phony or staged. The prompts ask the participant to record themselves and their video responses are sent directly to your customer reference team to review and edit.
For clients who have a big following on LinkedIn, for example, the video can be used to advertise the release of a new case study, effectively boosting views and engagement. Our Quick Videos are “snackable” soundbites for the busy salesperson or prospective customer who might be scrolling through their channels.
We suggest integrating video into every collateral option. Quick Videos allow us to take advantage of digital reading and document interaction flexibility. This multi-media asset is useful because not every person digests information in the same way. Quick Videos boost accessibility, inclusivity, and excitement when producing collateral.
Your company is already using social media marketing tactics. Ask your team, what performs better on social media: an eye-catching image/video or a PDF hidden behind a URL preview?
We’ve designed social media templates that feature customer reference assets while maintaining the look and feel of your brand. These posts are designed to emulate those that are already performing well with your audience.
We can work together with your content team who are already creating assets or create a new template in conjunction with your brand, to highlight a specific asset. This approach allows you to deploy tactics that already work for your company.
Your social media platforms can also provide another path for sharing content directly from the customer. We know that testimonials work—so why not share a Quick Video with your audience? It will increase engagement across all of your reference content.
These options seem obvious, yet they haven’t really been leveraged effectively. We’re not seeing many regular social media posts sharing customer success stories, and few are repurposing their customer interviews into “snackable” content. And, why not? Because it takes time and valuable resources!
Let Porter Consulting’s comprehensive customer reference support team take the time to implement these changes in your program. We’ll ensure your leadership sees increased interaction with your reference assets and improved sales metrics without the resource drain of research and development.
If you’re interested in spicing up your collateral, get in touch! We want to learn more about your business, customers, and products/services so we can provide the best customized solution for you. And, if you have some ideas for how to further diversify compelling collateral creation, we’d love your feedback.
Contact us info@porterconsulting.net
Porter Consulting’s seasoned marketing professionals are ready to help push your business to the next level. Contact us at info@porterconsulting.net today!
