#announcements

Here are some other "featured customers" of theirs (again, I don't actually think Zoom is a customer...but looking into it) -- anyone else in this group on the list?

That’s a little sketchy. They’ve got to have a takedown process. Would be worth looking at their privacy policy. I guess it doesn’t actively hurt if the information is accurate, but especially adding logos and outdated stuff is a bad look and something they must have some sort of process to handle. If not, major yikes!!

it's the terms that are scarier to me than the privacy policy! https://www.featuredcustomers.com/terms basically...we have no responsibility or liability

🤯

@Megan Donaldson at Zoom are the "reviews" just scrapped from g2 or something?

We have used Featured Customers (paid & free) - You should be able to edit all the content on the free plan, I believe you are just limited to how many stories you can post on the free version. At least for us we had to manually add all the content - testimonials/case studies/customer videos. The fact that you're listed as Premium and have all that content makes me think someone is paying from my experience with the tool.

We're not actively using it to drive demand but our SEO team has asked to keep the listing for ranking purposes, so I haven't explored completely removing an account.

@Brelynn Shantz thanks for the perspective! Do you feel like you're getting any value other than SEO?

They reached out to us too. So weird they pulled all these case studies from our website, including ones that we deleted. We met with the rep twice and decided to just go with the free account but we’ll update the page ourselves

Not for paid but I don't think a free account hurts since you get to control all the content, someone would just need to manage it so you don't get a bunch of outdated stuff.

I really don't think our buyers are going here looking for reviews and I don't know how much weight they even hold since it's not a recognized platform in our target industry. We had paid to get access to their Badges/Press Release and remove competitor ads but we're not continuing with that.

Featured Customers has some really good organic keyword rankings which is why I think they want to keep it for SEO. But we're seeing lots of profile views but the content engagement is really low, couple reasons this could be but their analytics aren't detailed enough to know.

I'm not an SEO expert but I worried our legit reviews/case studies were competing for SEO rankings though since Featured Customers ranks so high. I've asked our team to look more into it so I can share if I ever get a better answer.

I was also recently pitched by them and wondering about them, too.

At first I dismissed them immediately because I hadn't come across them in search for our buyer terms. They had a good counter to that: "we are typically found through things like your company name and the word "references" or "testimonials" or "case studies." Sure enough, they do rank highly here...

"Their" content seems to be scraped from other sites. The references, testimonials or case studies seem to be from a vendor's site. The reviews seem to be an aggregate of multiple review sources @Evan Huck.

Their paid offering doesn't exactly give off warm and fuzzy vibes....

They "unlock" your content on their site.... When it's locked, they show 2 testimonials, case studies, and customer videos. When unlocked, they show all of that type of content that they gathered on your company.

They also remove competitors from your profile. A competitor can pay to be listed on your profile. As they pitched it, "62% of the prospects that come to your page, don’t see enough of your content, and are bouncing to one of the competitors listed." So they set it up to have the locked content cause friction that leads to (paid) competitor pages.

I'm currently working for a vendor (PartnerStack) who is in a very competitive space, Partner Relationship Management (PRM). One of our competitors is paying to list on the PartnerStack profile on Featured Customers.

As Featured Customers pitched it to me:

Partnerstack currently receives 175-300 views a month.
(Our competitor) as a free vendor received 200-300 views a month, (Our competitor) as a Premium Vendor receives 300-500 views a month. Once (Our competitor) began sponsoring Partnerstacks page the numbers moved to 375-725 views a month based on the bounce rate averages.

Other benefits they list:

• Ability to be in multiple categories which will further enhance visibility.
• Premium vendors are always at the top of each category:
• Linkback to your corporate website
• Real Time tracking within portal in terms of traffic coming to your FeaturedCustomers profile page
• Assigned dedicated Customer Success Manager. Their objective is to ensure that premium vendors are maximizing the platform and all of the benefits. They also will do automatic updates (No extra work on your end).
• Full Licensing rights to upcoming Customer Success Reports and Platform Achievement Awards. Award badge, social media graphic, and press release template provided. Ability to host the report behind your own wall or gate to utilize however you see fit.
Their pitch to us was 4-figures for the year.

We're not moving forward with it at this time.

@Joe Kevens and @Brelynn Shantz I never properly thanked you for all this info. SUPER helpful! Apparently we haven’t paid them since 2020, but they seem to be knocking on a lot of doors lately.