I think this is a step that marketers don't often necessarily think about.
I think it's happening more, but it's like you've got this whole webinar,
you can turn this into a downloadable PDF.
Absolutely. Why wouldn't you?
So this is one that that we did with 3CLogic
And we've done with, with other, customers.
And it's really seen a lot of success there.
Hello marketers,
listeners, leaders, all those out there in the world tuning in today.
Thanks for joining us.
I'm Janet Mesh, CEO of Aimtal and this is Called to Action.
In each episode, we are going to analyze
and discuss the latest trends, tactics, and hot takes in B2B marketing.
So we also conclude every episode with one call to action.
So that means an actionable steps you can take to your own business
with your team and implement and try something new.
This episode though, we're taking you a little bit different.
My co-host and I, Tucker, we're testing, you know, we have some longer form
content, or we talk for way too long about all things marketing.
But we're content on shorter format, so definitely let us know what you think.
And this one, I will it will be a little bit more tactical.
We'll definitely share some strategic direction and insights,
but using this to kind of share a little bit more behind the scenes
of what we actually do for clients and the success that they've had.
So with that, Tucker, do you want to share
kind of what we're going to focus on of our overall topic for today's episode?
Absolutely. Janet. Yeah, happy to be here. Today.
We are going to talk about how to drive visibility and awareness using customer
stories and customer marketing campaigns, a theme very near and dear to my heart.
You know, there's yeah,
if you're not talking to customers, then that's step one.
Okay. Yeah, I know exactly.
And I was thinking about kind of like, you know, three questions I often get from
from marketers, like, how can we generate awareness?
One, two.
How can we run an actual campaign?
Like what's the basis behind,
you know, a real, fully integrated campaign we should run?
And then something else we often hear is, oh, we have all these great customers.
What what can we do with that?
We know we need to do something, but what can we
actually do with these customers and how can we leverage those?
So the answer to all three, just a bit of a spoiler
alert, is fully integrated customer marketing campaigns.
So that's why we'll be taking a look at today,
kind of poking around, understanding how that works, the why behind it,
and how you can actually leverage and deploy customer marketing campaigns.
Yeah, I think another term maybe people don't understand,
like integrated campaign.
It would be the similar the omnichannel campaign is another term
getting, flown around in the industry.
So pretty much one on the same,
they're all mean, the same thing that you're across multiple channels.
You're not only just focusing on, you know, one, I mean, it's
showing up in a where your audience is across, multiple platforms and channels.
Exactly.
I feel like every five years there's a new term for the same thing.
It was like omni channel and then integrated.
So I feel like we need to figure out what the holistic is coming out now too.
So I would say they're all pretty much the same.
Do things in coordination?
Yes. Coordinated across your different channels?
Yeah, I think so. Completely agree.
So yeah, before we dive into the campaign proper, though, Janet,
I'd be curious to hear from you.
Like, why are we focusing on customer stories specifically?
Why why is there you know, we're talking about B2B.
So business and business marketing businesses working with other businesses.
But at the end of the day, it's still human to human like.
It's humans working with humans.
We're not
at the point where we've built all these AI agents that can just work together
on our behalf.
So with
that, you know, humans, we are social people.
We we want we need to understand.
And we're going to trust something if someone else has made done it
or tried it or said that this works.
So really that's that's the core of it is like showing that social proof.
And also like, you know, in this industry,
like these purchase decisions aren't, you know, a flash in the pan,
even I mean, in some cases, you know, there are some products and platforms
that, you know, with the SAS model can be pretty manageable at the same time,
if you're, you know, implementing
a new CRM system, it's a it's a pretty massive commitment.
And you have a lot of people involved in the buying committee who,
you know, are going to participate and make sure that they feel like that
they're represented and that it's going to be a good investment for the company.
So really, that's where,
you know, making sure that that is considered.
And if you're hearing that other customers, especially in your industry,
have done that or have had success with your product or even your services,
then you're just, you know, really helping to facilitate that social proof
make it pretty clear, like, hey, we do have expertise in this,
any other thing is that like kind of when it comes down to it, like people,
you know,
if someone's going in and advocating internal,
I think that's like a very emotional part of this to you.
You have to think of that like, what are people protecting or not?
So I guess an example would be like,
I think a lot of people probably will consider if you're part
of that buying community, like, are you the one going to advocate
for purchasing something but you don't want your,
you know, maybe like your job to be on the line or something?
Like it can be pretty intense, you know, like you don't want to be the one
that makes the mistake or feels like, you kind of invented the wrong solution.
So that's why I think also considering like, that's why buying
cycles are so long, because it does take a lot of analysis
and time, to convince folks internally.
But we've
definitely seen when we incorporate the customer voice
into our clients marketing, that really helps to kind of shorten
those conversations, bring that social proof
and, really give those like pretty concrete examples.
Really, at the end of the day, it just still works.
Totally. Yeah.
I feel like the only other analogy I would say.
Tucker, I'm curious of you.
Like, do you, when you go out to a restaurant, like,
what's one of the first things you do before you like go to the restaurant?
Probably go on Yelp and say, look up.
Exactly. Yeah, totally.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like exactly like you're looking at here,
you know, you're going to go check out what the maybe their menu is
and their social media and their pictures, but then you really get like the truth
of the situation
through the customers who love to review and and talking about the experience.
That's a great point. That's 100% what I do every time. Like
a little bit.
And then therefore, am I going to have a good time, right?
Or like someone recommended like, oh, you got to go check out that place.
Like you're going to miss out.
So it's kind of that what we're saying here is like it's kind of the same,
the same thing. But just. Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
I kind of think of your own like kind of day to day experience as a consumer.
It applies in business and, and yeah, I mean I love that.
Love that. Yeah.
So I can't do you have any other thing anything else to add?
I'm just like kind of why customer stories.
And then you can kind of bring us into the example we have to share
how we turn this into a campaign. Tucker. But I love to hear your why.
You have a different one three on the spot a little bit.
No, I like that.
I it's funny, your your description made me think about the term social proof.
And I feel like
ever since I learned the term, it immediately always felt like a buzzword.
And like I get I know what it means.
But when you actually think about the two words
proof, like oh, proof that a word like I want,
I want proof,
especially what you're saying, where there's jobs on the line,
it's like these people, the buyer needs to show proof
to their buying committee, which might be ten, maybe even 15.
Oh yeah, especially a big company. So they need proof.
And it's social, right?
It's other people, other companies that I know.
It's like, oh, social proof. This actually makes a lot of sense.
And I thinking about it that way. It's like
as you
said, other people want to know that it works beforehand
so that then they can go back to their team and be like, we have proof,
you know, this works.
So yeah, I just think that's a great way of putting it and thinking about it.
Let's share. Get right into it.
Kind of how we, we think about this for clients.
And we have an example, campaign that we ran
that was very successful and actually turned
into kind of a whole program that we did for them of, yes.
Not even just a campaign, but I actually ran up into a program
that we're doing pretty consistently of quarterly campaign.
Right. Tucker. So, exactly.
I want you to walk us through that.
Walk us through.
Yeah.
It's almost now I'm thinking it's kind of like a
we had kind of a social proof campaign engine we were running.
Yeah.
What we're talking about is fully integrated customer
marketing campaigns or social proof campaigns.
We're going to look at one
that was run by Aimtal for your, 3Clogic and three sale.
Logic is a service. Now, partner.
For those of you who know service now, it's a very crowded space for partners.
There's a lot of technology partners,
consulting partners, and they're all trying to stand out.
So a big question was, okay, well, how can we help the three see logic stand out?
And receiving a technology partner
and AI powered contact center solution that's purpose built for service.
Now, they had a ton of great customers and have a ton of great customers worldwide.
They've done a great job and continue to do so.
Growing their brand, growing their business.
One customer they had with Nissan, a very well known brand,
and you might not know three C logic.
But you certainly know Nissan.
So you know the talk with three theological as well.
How do we tell this story
of how three C logic supported Nissan to leverage service?
Now specifically
streamlining global air operations with both service down three C logic.
So let's take a look at, how we did that.
So what we've got here
is, yeah, the the kind of outline of our customer campaign.
And you talked about earlier, Janna, when we were saying that the omnichannel
or integrated or holistic, but this is an example of how you can take
one customer story and repurpose it for many different channels
and many different content formats, and ultimately many different stages
of the funnel, all using that one same customer story, but in different ways
to kind of attract customers, convert them and move them down the funnel.
Also, just plug real quick, if you want the deep dive
of how to use video as like the centerpiece of your campaigns,
I mean, we're going to talk about it right now, but even further, like really
in the weeds of exactly how and why to do that, we have another episode
all about video marketing and repurposing your content that way.
So we'll link it in the show notes.
Great plug. Great plug. Yeah. Right.
Absolutely.
I think and I think what we've touched on there and a great place
to start here is with any integrated campaign.
And I mean, you know, there's the bastion.
You kind of need something to anchor the entire ground.
Right.
And obviously we're talking about a customer story,
but I think a great anchor and even entry point, there
is a webinar with a customer.
And I guess just to flip it
back to you, Jen, and not to put you on the spot, but,
do you want to share a little bit about like,
why kind of a webinar is a great format to start with,
especially with a customer, just to tease out that customer story?
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, I think it in a way it's a bit of a lower effort
for the customer to come on and like speak to their experience.
Yeah.
It also really like
spotlights, like their thought leadership and their success in the industry.
It's not just about like
your company, it's about their company and how they're growing and excelling.
Like for Nissan, like the topic was like how Nissan Nissan
streamlined global air operations with service sound really logic.
So that's just really showing that they're like a leader in that space.
And and you know, they're a car company, but like they're going to be like, no,
we actually we've really structured things in a way to support our people.
And that's really important for a large organization.
Any company, of course.
So, I think then, I mean, what we're going to get into
is that you can then take that webinar, you kind of,
you know, build out the programing, bring them on, but then it just becomes
a ton of content that you can share across channels.
So, as you can see here, and what we're gonna talk was like, we promoted em.
We did it.
You have to do promotion via email.
Really like sharing.
And it's not just be like this webinar or attend this webinar.
I think that's like we're in the got creative, right?
And saying like,
obviously we want to drive registrations for the webinar,
but also use that as an opportunity to maybe
like share different types of content, like maybe showing the speaker
or sharing a little bit of their story on social before the webinar to get
a little bit more engaged, instead of just being like, sign up here.
It's like you really to provide the value. Like what?
What am I going to get from this? What am I going to learn?
Why should I show up?
And then after the webinar, which you can talk through, Tucker,
is like it just turns into a ton of content for email,
like nurturing the leads.
Just kind of resharing it just kind of especially
what I like about it is that that customer story just becomes
part of your overall, like messaging and marketing,
and it allows to just be very consistent in what you're saying.
And not as hopefully not as confusing to your audience.
Or if you have, this is a really good place to
if you have several audience segments, then you can target it better too.
But these types of webinars actually.
Oh yeah. Wow.
You touched on so many great things.
But I think just going back to what you said kind of at the jump
is like with a customer webinar, you basically
it allows you to get your customer in the room with someone from your team
and just talk and kind of hash it out.
And obviously there's structure
you behind there, but it's a little bit loose in that.
You just allow people
to have a natural conversation about the problem they were facing,
how they leveraged your company's solution or consulting services,
and then the results that they were able to drive.
So having that webinar be the first piece is great.
And as you touched on already, okay, we've got a bit of a campaign here.
We're doing things like email,
and organic social on LinkedIn to promote the webinar.
And the second thing I love that you said too, is, you know, gone
are the days of just being like webinars happening attended.
We yeah to the why right.
Right. Yeah.
Like share a little bit of the story.
Not like too much but give some teasers.
Like everyone doesn't need to just be like the webinar graphic, but like honestly
visioning it like in show like the the guest and like share their story
in a carousel
on LinkedIn for example, like like swipe through and get a little bit of like
the context of the company and what they're doing
and how they're kind of leading in their industry.
And when I say in the company, I'm saying the customer, it's like,
put the focus on the customer. That's the point.
Exactly, exactly.
Okay.
So we've talked about we've got the webinar and you do a campaign.
Part of the first part of the campaign
is kind of both preparing the webinar and then also the promotion of it.
So get gearing up, getting
driving as many registrations to the live webinar as you can.
So that's kind of just the beginning.
So after we have the webinar, what's great is that then
if we're doing our integrated kind of repurposing strategy,
we can repurpose this and produce an on demand,
YouTube video or an on demand webinar
that you can put on your website and you can, you know, share throughout.
And this is now you have, an evergreen asset
that, you know, all the people who weren't able to attend your hour
is most of the people, they can access it any time, and you've immediately
got an asset that can be shared, and tell that story for you.
So this is just another piece that I think is one thing I want to touch on.
Actually, real quick on that with the on demand webinar.
I think we get this question a lot from clients.
It's like, well, should be gated or un gated.
And what that means is, like we're saying to put it on YouTube off of the webinar.
And we do recommend that because I, we found that like,
even if you open it up and give access to it pretty much for free,
it's much better because you're increasing your visibility and chances
pretty much for it to, like organically rank on YouTube
and Google for more discoverability of your brand and content.
I find that we haven't found as much like
the benefits of that outweigh maybe a couple leads coming in
after the webinar, if that makes sense of like people registering afterward.
And I think a lot of people register because they want to get the recording
and watch it later.
So you're just it just helps to kind of land and expand further.
I think also, usually people are finding you in different channels.
So as we're saying, as many channels as you can be to be aware, invisible
and show up in those places where people are searching the better.
Totally.
And I've even seen places where, like, I remember having this conversation
with, with a customer a while back where they're like,
you know, we kind of landed on, well, what if we do both?
Like, let's put the on demand webinar on you, right?
That's also works better than blogs, but on your website you can still get it.
And I don't think that's like nefarious.
I think it's depending on the channel.
If they're on your website, you still want to use it as a lead magnet.
You can do it there, but you're also capturing the SEO traffic, as you said.
So yeah, I think that just, you know, great strategies all around.
That brings us to the next point.
I actually want to talk about the next area where we repurpose the content.
Absolutely.
So I think this is a big a big transition here. Right.
It's like you've got a webinar, you've promoted it.
You now you have an on demand asset, but then you can convert
that video into a downloadable written, designed case study.
So what we're looking at here is that same customer story,
but it's now, a beautifully designed, PDF that,
you know, your sales team can share as kind of a leave behind after a sales call.
It's also something that you can and should absolutely make available
on your website.
Again, can be dated,
could not be, definitely sharing it through different channels.
But having now you've got basically a video asset
and a more designed branded asset that you can share.
So this is really key.
And I think this is a step that marketers don't often necessarily think about.
I think it's happening more, but it's like you've got this whole webinar,
you can turn this into a downloadable PDF.
Absolutely. Why wouldn't you?
So this is one that, that we did with through logic.
And we've done with, with other, customers and has really seen a lot of
success there.
Yeah.
And of course, once you have this downloadable case study, absolutely.
You want to put it on the website, you want to have a landing page,
and again, it's that's kind of a strategy conversation
you would have with your team about do we get it or not.
But certainly then using it for nurture.
We haven't even said the nurture word yet, but that's a huge piece.
That's not just attracting new leads.
I would say the majority of the B2B cycle is nurturing the leads you have, right?
Right.
These are the kind of assets where you can put it in an email and,
you know, share it out with people.
And the other thing we haven't even talked about
is the back end of tracking and lead scoring.
But everything we're talking about here gets assigned a score.
Do you have a call action episode about that?
Attribution? Yes.
Yes. So how it's changing.
That's a very important part to 100%.
But if you have all the leads.
But to your point, like if you have them already in your CRM,
then yeah, you can and you can track,
like their activity if you have all your everything set up properly. So.
Right, right.
And I think historically here what we saw was, you know, yes,
a lot of new leads came in here.
But the ability to use this to engage
existing leads and nurture existing leads was just as key, if not more.
And the final piece here too is okay.
We've got an on demand webinar asset.
We've now got a, designed branded case study asset.
Both of these are now lead magnets that you can use to generate
leads and nurture existing leads, promoting them on
organic, social, but also in ads as well.
So I mean, if we go back here, it's
like we've had a live webinar, we've promoted it via email and social.
We've turned it into an on demand webinar.
We turned that into a downloadable case study.
We promoted both on the website and landing pages.
We use them in email nurture.
We put them in ads and social. Right.
That's an integrated campaign for you.
And I think what we're looking at too, is,
again, those questions at the beginning, how do we leverage these customer stories?
How can we do a campaign that uses all the channels?
This is how and I think I'm curious to hear what you think, Jenna,
but I think when you have one single customer story, that's your anchor
for a campaign, even from an operation standpoint, it becomes so much easier
to do all this stuff.
You don't have to build anything from scratch.
You've got something to go off of.
It just it's just awesome
in that it's it's not like your brand talking about your brand all the time.
Yes, yes, like place no one loves.
No one loves the person at the party.
That just doesn't stop talking about themselves, right?
Right.
Oh, you're bringing in those folks
who trust you and like you and already have had success.
So you know much better experience and comes back to that.
Yeah, the trust factor really in the day.
So I guess just to recap all this because we had a lot of talk or like
how like we had a lot of like area.
So how do you look at this and how does it fit into like every stage of the funnel?
Because you talked about lead generation nurturing to conversion.
Like it's pretty much just it's a it's holistic and across
channels, but also like the life cycle of a lead.
So curious for you to kind of just recap that of the start to finish briefly
if you can. Sure.
So what I would say is most marketers and even sales folks
that I've talked to don't think of a customer story
as a driving force for an entire campaign across the funnel.
They think of it as a one off, right?
They're like, oh, we have it.
We'll just put it on our website or oh, we can share with prospects
that we talked to.
What we have here is basically the idea that you can use customer stories
to activate buyers at every stage of the journey across the entire funnel.
So, you know, we've got a chart here
where we're looking at everything from prospects to customers, right?
There's different tactics and different strategies
you want to employ for those buyers
that each stage they're at as they move through the funnel.
And all we're saying here is that you can truly use customer stories in each place.
And we just gave a bunch of examples.
But, you know, there's even more we didn't talk about retargeting ads
and how it might make sense, especially maybe if you're doing an ABM strategy,
to retarget folks with a customer story that are midway down the funnel
so that they can get that social proof that moves the needle.
Sales enablement, we
we talked about a little bit, but having customer stories that,
teams can use that trade shows they know or on a
sit on a call like, we want to be able to speak to it
like, hey, we did this in the other thing, right?
Put it right in the sales deck. You know, like, yeah.
Huge. Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I think that is just to say we're very passionate about using customer
stories as kind of the, the driving vehicle across the entire funnel.
Not the only thing you need to do, but it's a great way to really build
successful campaigns that everybody can kind of rally around,
including sales, too, because I think they brought in the customer.
They're excited about it, too.
It's a great way to unify marketing sales.
Another thing
for sure.
Yeah.
Awesome. Thanks, Tucker. Good stuff.
Of course.
I guess we got to close it out with our one call to action to the audience.
And I think we hit them with a lot of good things.
But what's your what would be your number one,
takeaway for those listening in today?
Yeah.
You know, in the spirit of starting small, I would
I would challenge listeners if you have a customer story already,
you know, trying to take the action of thinking what's one way
I can repurpose it into another channel that would help nurture prospects?
Just one. Just start with one.
That would be my, my call to action for folks.
What about you, Janet?
I like it.
I think if you don't have a customer story, my local action would be
go identify those customers.
Meet with your sales team.
If you don't have, you know, a couple from Friendly's that you can,
email today, but I don't know, you know, reach out to 1 or 2,
you see if they're interested in proposed, like, pitch it, pitch it to them.
See, if they would like, you know, everyone wants visibility
and to be promoting their expertise and their services.
So thank you. Don't have a cause. You have a customer. Sorry.
Do you have a tiger side?
If you don't go talk to your customer, get them to at least jump on a video
or on a call that you can then turn that into some content for your audience.
Love it.
Awesome.
Well thank you, Tucker, as always, for joining me to drop all that knowledge.
We hope that you enjoyed today's episode.
A little bit of a shorter format.
Very kind of wanting to share
a little bit more of behind the scenes of how we think about and do these things.
So if you've enjoyed the call to action,
please, you know, definitely like subscribe, share with your network.
And let us know if you're any other topics or things that you're seeing
that's working well or that you'd like us to research and kind of, dive into,
we would love to do that.
So, please let us know. And thanks for tuning in.