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Hi all. I am in need of some inspiration and ideas. We’re challenged (and pressured) with getting our larger brand customers to engage in video projects and case studies, and the customer regularly cites compliance issues, not having time to participate, not seeing the value in the activity in general, etc. We also don’t necessarily have any of these things written into MSAs and are very limited in terms of how we incentivize something like this. I’d love to hear of any successes in how you’ve been able to navigate these kinds of challenges. And if you don’t want to share any of this publicly, please DM me. Thank you!
Finding ways to reduce the friction is important. For a large brand, asking them to do a case-study is a large lift and implies a bunch of back-and-forth, legal/compliance review, PR sanitization/review -- which isn't super fun.
One example to reduce friction, give individual advocates opportunities to tell their story outside of the corporate umbrella - two ideas there:
• enable them to be anonymous
• feature them in more of a podcast/thought leadership format where it's not an implied endorsement where they need to get approval
e.g. if you're selling cybersecurity to big banks like JPMorgan - it's very tough to get any sort of corporate approved story (yes of course we want it - not arguing that) - so you have to go to the next best options for presenting that story. But don't just throw a story away b/c you can't get it in the traditional named glossy format.
Appreciate it, Evan. Good thoughts, as always.
The thing I’ve seen work the best is Evan’s second bullet - have them talk in a community webinar, a podcast, or something else informal and not “case study”-esque!
Example topic: how they built XYZ (thing related to but not specific to your product).
From there you often get great metrics and can easily repurpose things into evergreen content.
Hi Cindy! I only focus on Enterprise, so here's a few thoughts:
1. Conversations about publicity / marketing needs to start early - is your deal desk / proposals team / sales team enabled with materials that speak to the value of publicity and logo rights when negotiating contracts?
a. Include things like how many times customers have been featured in tier 1 publications, number of impression etc
b. Speak to how content is great for brand building and reputation
2. Enable your enterprise post sales team with materials they can use during renewals, QBR's etc to start discussions around advocacy
3. When I pitch to Enterprise customers, I immediately present an outline of a work back schedule, expected time commitments, a draft of our Enterprise release form, and a list of partners on my side who are readily available to review red lines, meet with their comms team if necessary etc. I've found this to be super helpful with Ent customers, because then they can go back to their teams with a clear understanding of what's needed.
4. Finally (and arguably the most effective) leverage executive sponsors. Sometimes the sales teams don't hold enough weight, and you may want to try and leverage people in your C-suite or leadership team that have the relationships with the people who can give the go ahead on content.
My 2 cents - I have a really hard time getting the case study, but a long line of participants for my customer of the month video series. It doesn't feel like a case study, but it will now populate some real estate on our case studies page in the next month or so.
You may want to have the customers introduce you to their internal marketing teams. Sometimes it's easier to talk marketer to marketer and develop some kind of co-branding or give and take with that team, rather than letting your customer contact be the one responsible for trying to get the "yes".
We've also build a case study requirement into our CAB membership. So customers that joint the CAB are obligated to do a case study during their 2 year cohort membership.