See a photo of Casey, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, and Part 3.
Q: Success-Story Marketing, which you define as “the act of leveraging the stories of satisfied customers — in any form and any way–for promotional purposes,” is the centerpiece of your book. How did you initially come to discover the effectiveness of Success-Story Marketing?
A: I had been writing and managing customer case studies for a year or so before I truly understood their power. As it turns out, I needed to hear stories about the effectiveness of these case studies for it to click for me! Such is the power of story.
After creating and managing a number of customer case studies for a client, a software company, word got back to me about a very specific success with one of the case studies in particular — featuring one branch of a nationwide mortgage company. The mortgage company was saving a significant amount of money by using the software, and improving customer service, and that was documented in the case study.
From there, the software company approached the national contacts for
this mortgage company with the case study in hand. Sharing the success of a single branch led the national folks to recommend that branches adopt the software, leading to numerous new deals.
After 10 years in this field, I have now heard many anecdotes about how customer stories helped land media coverage, win an industry award, get people to sign up for a webinar, donate to a worthy cause, and so on. It’s an approach that just about any organization can leverage to communicate with their audiences.