Using customer “stories” to help sell your products (Part 2)
22nd October 2015 - Last modified 28th November 2023
Written by David Robinson.
In my previous blog I covered ways of turning your customers’ great research into usable case studies. This week, I look at how best to use this great marketing content.
Generating leads from customer stories
So you’ve got customers willing to talk about the results they’re getting with your products. There are a number of ways to use this to generate leads and enhance your product’s/company’s credibility and reputation.
Presentations
Personal presentations to groups of prospects bring the research to life and allow questions and answers.
Speaker slots at events
Prepare well in advance (9-12 months) and work to get your customers on the programme of relevant, targeted conferences.
Webinars
Broadcast your customers’ research through the web. These can either be done in association with a third party, like a publication, or in-house using platforms such as Webex or Workcast. If working through a third party, they will manage the project and will promote the webinar, in some cases guaranteeing a number of registrants. This makes it much less time-intensive for you…but requires a (significant) financial investment. Either way, you will have a live “event”, and can then have the webinar for viewing on demand.
Videos
Videoing your customer presenting their work is another way of bringing the research to life, with the added benefit of being able to feature your product in action, and show off its benefits. Video of a customer talking can also be enhanced by animations to show a process in action. Many media/publication companies will produce videos at an exhibition and these can be used for customers to talk about their research. Some opportunities are free and some are charged (please contact us if you’d like any help or information about videos).
Printed/digital
Numerous printed and digital opportunities exist – and of course one customer’s research can always be re-used for different purposes.
Posters
Excellent lead generators at shows. As with all marketing collateral, make sure they are clearly presented, with easy to understand aims and conclusions.
Application notes and case studies
Can be different ways of presenting the same research and data. Case studies are more personal, and generally feature the researcher and their approach. This is a very good way of closely associating your product with a key opinion leader or a significant organisation. Application notes tend to concentrate on the research and the data generated.
Published articles
For most life science companies, getting their products and technologies published in the Materials and Methods of peer-review journals is essential for building credibility. Once published, this research can be re-drafted for publication in one of the many trade publications, or these articles can feature new research. The benefit of publishing in the trade media is that the application of your product can be seen by tens of thousands of people in one “hit”. If needed, Alto Marketing will be able to help you get these articles published. In addition we often re-purpose customer stories, so that we can get a number of uses out of one story (eg multiple articles, fresh web content), which ensures you get a very good return on investment.
White papers
White papers mean different things to different people. At their most basic – and we believe least effective – they are no more than the content that might be in a long promotional brochure. They are really effective when they are more in-depth reviews of a topic, for example comparing and contrasting different techniques for a particular application. In this way they are seen as a useful resource by your prospects – and are therefore likely to be read. The promotional aspect comes from driving the reader to the conclusion that your product/technology is the most sensible solution, and this is where you can reference your customer data.
Developing white papers that are interesting to prospects and powerful lead generators does, however, take time and expertise.
If you don’t have the internal resource of capabilities to do manage the above projects, or would like some more detailed advice on how to go about it, Alto Marketing can help. We have a team of PhD-level scientists who have real expertise in developing compelling all types of scientific marketing communications.
For more information and examples of our work, contact us now.
In next week’s blog…
You’ve developed a range of marketing collateral that features your customer and the great work they are doing with your products. How to use this to the maximum advantage? Find out in my next blog.
As life science marketing experts, we know and understand the media and routes to communicating with scientists. Our services also include:
- • Awareness raising PR programmes
- • Lead generating digital marketing campaigns
- • Event marketing for face-to-face contact
- • Strong brand development
- • Sales and marketing strategy
Written by David Robinson – Founder/Managing Director
