Success stories are case studies that show how your products and/or services have helped your customers. Success stories are the second most effective form of B2B content marketing after in-person events, according to a B2B Content Marketing Report in 2013. In fact, two out of three marketers find them effective. They can be effective for you too.
Why Success Stories?
The goal of success stories is to show prospects examples of how your product or service solves a problem or fulfills an unmet need. It helps prospects understand why and see how other companies have used your product or service. It makes the claims you make about your product or service more believable.
Where to Start?
The first place to start when creating a success story is with your customers. Talk with your customers for days, weeks and months after they purchase your product or service. Chances are many customers have experienced successful and sometimes dramatic results. Yet, without asking them, you may not ever know.
Once you identify a few dramatic cases, ask your customers for permission to publish a story about their experiences. Then write up the story where the focus is on the customers and how they implemented your product or service solution. Make your customers the heroes of your stories, and tell how their company’s performance improved with the use of your product or service.
Do NOT focus on your company. Your prospects want to know how your customers experienced your product or service. They want to feel what it’s like to be in the customer’s shoes.
Develop Three Dramatic Stories
After talking with your customers, you may discover that you have many great stories to to write about. Nonetheless, the best ones for marketing will be the most dramatic. That’s because drama engages your audience. Hollywood lives and dies with the dramatic effect of the story; so too will your success stories.
Three dramatic success stories are all you need. Each story should be very different from the next. Perhaps one is about the difficulty the customer had in finding a solution. He or she tried many other products that didn’t work. But when yours was found, the customer was overwhelmed with gratitude. Perhaps another story is about the importance in customer service after the sale.
Each story should include the traditional three parts in any great drama. Part one–like act one–focusses on the customers’ problems and their interest to find a solution. Part two involves seeking out the solution and encountering obstacles along the way. Part three involves finding the right solution, seeing the results and making life at the company better.
Although not a B2B success story developed by a healthcare company, The New Yorker article “Why Boston’s Hospitals Were Ready” is great example of a dramatic story of how hospitals in the city were prepared to deal with an emergency. The story shows how moments after the bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon several hospitals immediately responded. Within minutes numerous emergency vehicles and personnel were at the scene. At the same time, healthcare workers at Boston Hospital, Massachusetts General, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Tufts Medical Center, St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center and other hospitals immediately prepared to take in more than one hundred and seventy people who were injured–some with their bones fractured, limbs blown off, vital arteries severed, and flesh torn from shrapnel or scorched by the heat from the blast. As a result of the well-orchestrated emergency response, Boston’s hospitals were able to save the lives among those injured.
After reading this story you can see how these hospitals can use this article as an example of their preparedness in responding to community health emergencies. Each one of these hospitals can develop a success story from this case to support its promotion of their health care services to local, state and federal government and to private businesses.
Strong Call to Action
A good success story will engage your audience to read it. However, you need one more thing to make it effective for your business. You need to have a strong call to action at the end. A call to action leads your prospect, who is reacting with emotion after reading your success story, to contact you. This is the time when he is most excited to learn more about how you can help his company. It’s also a time when he is most likely to buy with the least resistance.
Where to Promote It?
There are several ways you can publish and promote your success stories. The first place is your website. You can either create a web page focused solely on success stories, or you could integrate success stories with information about select customers or clients.
Another way to promote your success stories is through direct marketing. You can send it to prospects after they opt-in to your email. You could send it as part of a direct mail program to your target audience. Success stories add credibility to your promotion so your prospects can see how their companies can benefit from your product or service.
A third way is through social media. By sharing your success stories on LinkedIn or Facebook, you can stimulate word of mouth advertising. People will share it with others they trust. They may also request comments by others who have experience with your product or service to justify the case stories are true.
Examples of B2B Success Stories
Kikkoman Foodservice wanted to increase sales of its soy sauce to the foodservice market. With the use of success stories on how leading chefs at culinary institutions and restaurants use Kikkoman in their recipes, they were able to attract interest from chefs nationwide. In fact, many chefs called them about wanting to be in their advertisements. Now that’s success when your prospect becomes so engaged with your success stories they want to help you promote your product!
IBM uses success stories to promote its customized technology services. One of these stories involves how Mizrahi Tefahot Bank–one of Israel’s largest banking groups–was able to use IBM’s integrated risk management solution to quickly assess the risk of every customer and to seize the right opportunities and remain competitive in the banking industry. As a result, the bank reduced by 99 percent the time to market new financial offerings. This is one of many case studies IBM uses to show its prospects how its services can better their businesses.
Alfresco provides enterprise content management systems for other businesses. One of its success stories involves KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. KLM needed a central location to store, share and manage documents for its worldwide employees. The case study shows that KLM chose Alfresco because it had the ability to scale and meet KLM’s large install base without creating additional complexity to its IT infrastructure. After a three month pilot test, Alfresco provided evidence that its solution was effective. As a result KLM expressed eagerness for Alfresco to fully integrate the solution throughout their company. This is one of several success stories Alfresco shares with prospects to build credibility and trust and ultimately close new deals.
What’s Next for You?
Now that you know a little more about the benefits of success stories, it's time to consider using success stories to promote your business. There are probably more success stories than you may realize. Just talk with your customers!
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