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Hit Your Spot

Digital Communication

Spotlighting a client provides opportunity to showcase your product, service or discuss a problem you solved.  It is also unique way to thank a customer and creates compelling content that can be shared or used in your email newsletter.  Using cross media, you can also determine if this type of content interests your customer base and new prospects.

Researching our last three spotlights (we wrote about printing to woodpaper in July), client stories have received approximately 20% of click activity. Room to grow, of course but enough data to tell us we should continue pursuing.

Interesting in tell more client stories and not sure where to start?  Here are some items we have learned.

Who is Your Contact?

Who is Your Contact?

Ask and You Shall Receive
You wrapped a project, snapped amazing photos and can’t wait to add to your website portfolio. And then you realize, you don’t even know who might be able to approve it. It may not even be the contact who accepted the order!

  • Is it the project manager?
  • Operations personnel?
  • Marketing department?

Recently, I took photos of a project.  The point of contact who secured permission for me to be there had to put me in touch with another department, who had to pass my contact info on …

Do some digging and make sure you connect with the right contact.

Pitch In
If you have them, share statistics such as open, click through rates and the size of your list. If you don’t, offer to highlight the client again in 6 – 12 months when you have additional data.

Even if a client jumps at the chance to be highlighted, there is always a degree of follow up.

For every spotlight we write, there are two to three that never happen.

Interesting project stories are leads even though there is no monetary exchange. Some might be cold and others warm – and not everyone agrees to be included.

In the words of Mark Cuban, “Every no gets me closer to a yes.”

You may apply this logic to your sales efforts.

It also applies to securing this type of content.

Hit Your Spot 1 Create Questionnaire 11 300x199

Use A Questionnaire to Collect Information

Ask Questions
Just secured your spotlight? Congratulations! Now what…

Remember, you are trying to tell a story. Collect as many details as possible.

We use a questionnaire that touches upon elements of the project (and is evolving – we just added three new questions to it).

 

Maybe some of these make sense:

  • How did they find your company?
  • How was the product or service used?
  • Did you solve a unique problem or challenge?
  • How was the overall experience?

These may not all apply but you get the idea…

Win Win
Now that you have collected the details, be sure it is mutually beneficial. No doubt you want to discuss how your services made an impact, but make a point of summarizing what the clients offer or their mission. Also:

  • Maybe the customer has a new menu item?
  • Or product or service they would like to mention?
  • Or an upcoming event they would like to promote?

You won’t make any of these the focus of the article, but a little plug never hurts.

Do you have any tips for writing about customers and services you have provided? Tell us more in the comments below; we’d love to hear from you! And if you are interested in our team talking about your project in an upcoming email blast, we would love to hear from you!

Jon Davis

Jon Davis is Cushing’s Marketing Manager. From blogging to online communications, Jon writes about client developments, environmental branding, and much more. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

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