Navigating Case Study Requests from Small Customers

·May 13, 2024 05:47 PM

Hi all - how do you respond when a happy, but very small, customer, reaches out and says that they'd love to work on a case study? I focus my case study efforts on big brands - I do not need a story from this customer and I do not have resources to work on a low priority brand - but I do not want to reject this customer. I'd love to ask them to leave us a review, but they really want the exposure on our website. I could maybe feature them on social media if they gave a really good review . . .Curious how others handle this.

13 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Lacey Butler
·
Could you offer that they do a lighter weight Q & A style post on your blog (you send them questions, they reply, you post on your blog and attribute them as a guest author)? Lighter weight for you and they get the exposure of being a guest author?
❤️1
Lacey Butler
·
(I’ve done this in past roles and it always went over well)
Lauren Stefano
·
Do you have any places where you use standalone quotes? A great quote would be much easier to execute and could work well on social, or potentially on your site if it fits your design.
Tim Jahn
·
I second the idea of a testimonial quote. A customer story can take many forms, and if you want to focus the big forms on bigger customers, a testimonial quote or review or blog post can be a low effort way for you to feature the customer, while giving them some promotion and exposure. Also, what’s the growth potential of the customer? Are they small today but could be a bigger brand advocate in the future?
Joel (Salesforce)
·
Could you offer to connect them with your content team and have them be an “expert” utilized for content creation instead of a success story? They’ll drop valuable things, I’m sure, in their posts and when promoting the pieces too.
💡1
❤️1
Joel (Salesforce)
·
Or your events team and record the session(s) so it’s all caught and get their approval afterwards?
Katlin Hess
·
Rebecca Grossman we run into this a lot at G2! I created this content "menu" and I usually direct them toward one of the lower lift things like a testimonial or a self-written customer guide blog.
🙌1
Katlin Hess
·
❤️7
Joel (Salesforce)
·
Love that you created a menu for folks to self-select from to work with G2, Katlin Hess!
Emily Cid
·
Katlin Hess that menu is so good!
1
Scott Stransky
·
Why not let them pen it themselves as a blog post? A first-person story could be even more relevant and impactful than a typical corporate style case study even if it’s from a small brand. And super bonus: they’re doing the heavy lifting.
👍1
Evan Huck
·
yea this is where having a low lift channel to create content/proof points from a big group of (smaller) customers at scale is helpful (frees you up to focus on the bigger brands w/o completely ignoring an interesting segment). Loved Katlin Hess's guide, and G2 itself would be a great easy option to send them to. A form/survey is another easy menu option ("great - submit your story here!"). It may not seem like an important story now - but over time, if you miss 100s of these (and this person reached out to you, think of the much larger iceberg of customers below the surface that are happy, but haven't reached out to you) - you hamper the size, diversity, and robustness of the library/arsenal of proof points you could build. 5-months from now an SMB AE could need this exact, specific proof points for another SMB prospect. So collect proactively/systematically from everyone when you have the opportunity. No, your CEO/CMO/PR/brand team will not be impressed, and this story is not going on your home page. But from an gtm enablement perspective, it is better to have and not need than not have down the road. Build the repository over time.
❤️4
Emily Amos
·
So many great ideas here!

Navigating Case Study Requests from Small Customers | CMAweekly Customer Marketing and Advocacy Slack

Lacey Butler
·
Could you offer that they do a lighter weight Q & A style post on your blog (you send them questions, they reply, you post on your blog and attribute them as a guest author)? Lighter weight for you and they get the exposure of being a guest author?
❤️1
Lacey Butler
·
(I’ve done this in past roles and it always went over well)
Lauren Stefano
·
Do you have any places where you use standalone quotes? A great quote would be much easier to execute and could work well on social, or potentially on your site if it fits your design.
Tim Jahn
·
I second the idea of a testimonial quote. A customer story can take many forms, and if you want to focus the big forms on bigger customers, a testimonial quote or review or blog post can be a low effort way for you to feature the customer, while giving them some promotion and exposure. Also, what’s the growth potential of the customer? Are they small today but could be a bigger brand advocate in the future?
Joel (Salesforce)
·
Could you offer to connect them with your content team and have them be an “expert” utilized for content creation instead of a success story? They’ll drop valuable things, I’m sure, in their posts and when promoting the pieces too.
💡1
❤️1
Joel (Salesforce)
·
Or your events team and record the session(s) so it’s all caught and get their approval afterwards?
Katlin Hess
·
Rebecca Grossman we run into this a lot at G2! I created this content "menu" and I usually direct them toward one of the lower lift things like a testimonial or a self-written customer guide blog.
🙌1
Katlin Hess
·
❤️7
Joel (Salesforce)
·
Love that you created a menu for folks to self-select from to work with G2, Katlin Hess!
Emily Cid
·
Katlin Hess that menu is so good!
1
Scott Stransky
·
Why not let them pen it themselves as a blog post? A first-person story could be even more relevant and impactful than a typical corporate style case study even if it’s from a small brand. And super bonus: they’re doing the heavy lifting.
👍1
Evan Huck
·
yea this is where having a low lift channel to create content/proof points from a big group of (smaller) customers at scale is helpful (frees you up to focus on the bigger brands w/o completely ignoring an interesting segment). Loved Katlin Hess's guide, and G2 itself would be a great easy option to send them to. A form/survey is another easy menu option ("great - submit your story here!"). It may not seem like an important story now - but over time, if you miss 100s of these (and this person reached out to you, think of the much larger iceberg of customers below the surface that are happy, but haven't reached out to you) - you hamper the size, diversity, and robustness of the library/arsenal of proof points you could build. 5-months from now an SMB AE could need this exact, specific proof points for another SMB prospect. So collect proactively/systematically from everyone when you have the opportunity. No, your CEO/CMO/PR/brand team will not be impressed, and this story is not going on your home page. But from an gtm enablement perspective, it is better to have and not need than not have down the road. Build the repository over time.
❤️4
Emily Amos
·
So many great ideas here!