High-Tech Communicator

Using Content to Nurture New Business from Existing Customers

When people think of content marketing, they generally target prospective customers. It can be easy to forget your best source of new business: existing customers.  After all, existing customers are already familiar with your services and the quality of your work. And they can always use reminding of the valuable products and services you offer.

But when you create your content marketing campaigns, it’s important to remember that you can’t necessarily use the same content for both prospects and customers. Customers expect you to know them and develop personalized materials for them. The good news is that it’s easier to ask customers what they’re looking for. The bad news is that if you don’t give them what they consider to be valuable content, you’ll annoy them.

Types of Content Appropriate for Existing Customers

In a previous life, I worked as the editor of a newsletter that went to my company’s existing customers and surveyed customer response to the articles. The following are some of the types of content that work best for marketing to existing customers:

Help customers get more out of the product—When I edited the customer newsletter, articles that provided tips on how customers could get the most out of their products were by far the most popular. Some of these articles were written by the Professional Services staff and provided tips or advice on how to perform a commonly requested function using the software. Other popular articles were from Support Services and addressed common questions or problems users had with the software. Customers also particularly appreciated articles about interesting ways existing customers were using the company’s product. These articles gave them new ideas on how they could use the product.   

Introduce new products or modules—Customers are interested in news from your company. But that news needs to be introduced in a manner that’s customer centric. In other words, customers are interest in “what’s in it for me.” These pieces should therefore talk about the customer challenge the new product or module addresses and how the new product solves that challenge.

Upgrades—Explain why existing customers should upgrade to a new version of your product. What new challenges does the upgrade address? Why did you make the changes you made?

Less well known capabilities—All customers are concerned with the ROI from their purchases. Often customers will start out using a portion of the product. Include articles that describe how users can expand their use of the product to gain additional benefits without spending more money.

Maintenance—Explain why customers should keep a maintenance or service agreement.

Events—Customers often like to communicate with vendors so that they can have input into the direction of the product. Notify customers of upcoming events, such as user groups, webinars, or conferences that you’ll be attending where they can meet with you in person.

Trends—Describe industry or technology trends in your market space and how they might impact customers.

By providing customers with valuable content that can help them improve their use of your product, and thereby improve their business, you can nurture your most valuable asset—your existing customers—so that you can cross sell, up sell and generate additional sales.

What types of content do you use to nurture new business from existing customers?

How to Choose Customers for Case Studies

Case studies are extremely powerful marketing tools. But how do you choose the right customers to profile for case studies to make the most of limited marketing dollars?

Here are some of the criteria companies use to identify the most strategic case studies:   

Star Power

If the customers you’re going after Fortune 500 companies, you’ll certainly want the legitimacy that having case studies from big name customers will provide. Certainly, I have plenty of clients chasing after these big names.

However, beware that these are the most difficult to line up and can result in wasted resources. Many large companies have policies that prohibit them from endorsing other vendors’ products—thus be prepared to expend much more time and effort finding big companies willing to do a case study. Even if a company says they do case studies, approvals may be withheld at the last minute, often with no explanation. This can result in wasted money for stories that are never approved. You can minimize (but never completely eliminate) this risk by determining in advance the company’s policy on case studies, who’s in charge of the project, and ask their permission before beginning the process.  

Target Industries

Often, customers are concerned about whether you understand their specific industry—whether that’s manufacturing, retail, or life sciences. Creating case studies about customers in all of the industries that constitute your target markets will ensure you have the right materials on hand to alleviate those concerns.   

Product Line

Clearly, you’ll want case studies for each product in your product line so you can demonstrate your success in delivering promised benefits for each product.

Geographic Area

Some companies target case studies geographically. For example, one client that markets to physicians  highlights customers practicing in each region of the country.  

ROI

ROI can be extremely difficult to quantify. In many cases, companies that want a lot of case studies will produce some that highlight qualitative benefits. Still, make sure that some of your case studies demonstrate strong quantifiable ROI. 

Momentum

In many cases, quality will be more important than quantity. If resources are an issue, you don’t really need dozens of case studies that illustrate the same point. It’s better to make sure you have at least one case study for each key product, target market, or other initiative. At the same time, some companies find it very important to demonstrate momentum and adoption in their marketplace. One way to meet these requirements is to create customer press releases; short and sweet descriptions about your new customers and why they’re choosing your products and release them on an ongoing basis over the wire services. 

Miscellaneous

Every once in awhile, I’ll come across a unique reason to create a case study or customer press release. For example, one company produced customer press releases and case studies specifically about customers who had come to them after defecting from their main competitor. This was an interesting exercise because no customer will allow you to directly say that they dumped a previous vendor in your favor.  What you can do is produce a standard case study or press release about these customers. And presumably, the sales rep can fill in the missing details in one-on-one conversations.

Another customer had come from a business that had evolved over time from a document printing company to one that automated document processes. A prize case study for them was one that covered the entire automated process, rather than individual automated capabilities.

Companies produce case studies for many reasons. When you’re looking for customers to profile, chose the ones that are most strategic for your business.

How does your organization select customers to profile with case studies?

 

The Age of Micro Targeting

In my recent series on buyer personas, I wrote about how some technology companies are beginning to employ buyer personas for use in targeting their marketing materials but are having trouble developing and using them. Technology companies have much more experience and success in targeting their marketing pieces to specific vertical industries. Today, I’m seeing companies increasingly targeting their marketing to much narrower niches within vertical niches.    

For example, a few years ago, I did a white paper that targeted retailers—but a single piece covered all retail markets from large department stores such as Macy’s to mom-and-pop grocers—even though my client knew that the concerns of these two markets were significantly different.

In contrast, just the other day, I spoke with a company that also targeted retailers. But this time, the company was looking to separately target lawn & garden and nursery retailers, independent pharmacies, hardware stores and seed stores for farms and ranches.

These are hardly isolated examples. In the healthcare industry, I recently targeted different pieces specifically to medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, large group medical practices, and OB/GYNs.

These examples demonstrate that technology companies do understand the importance of knowing and speaking very specifically to a tightly focused audience. While my recent series on buyer personas shows that many companies have even more to learn about their customers, this focus on highly targeted markets is a step in the right direction.

Here’s why I think micro targeting is such a positive trend:

• Different industries have different challenges. If you want your audience to think you understand (and can solve) their challenges, you need to be very specific in stating and addressing those challenges in your marketing materials.
• Even if the challenges are very similar, many customers want to know you can address people “just like me.” This is especially true in highly risk averse industries. For example, physicians have traditionally been very reluctant to adopt electronic health records. In recognition of this fact, one vendor went so far as to create case studies that targeted different specialties (e.g. obstetrics and gynecology, dermatology, pediatrics, etc.) in different geographic locations (e.g. the Pacific Northwest, the Southeast and so on).
• You can speak their language. Different industries use different jargon. If you want to appear to be an insider, you need to use that jargon.
• You can tailor your product benefits to your customers. That same product may provide different benefits to different audiences. The best marketing materials will adapt your messaging to the needs of the particular target market. For example, if your key messages are improving productivity, reducing costs and minimizing compliance risks, pieces targeting highly regulated industries such as financial services may spend more time emphasizing compliance while those targeting the construction sector might emphasize cost cutting.

Years ago, technology companies often spoke about their product features while neglecting to explain product benefits. Many (though hardly all) technology companies have come a long way since those bad old days of marketing. While companies can always do more, particularly in terms of using buyer personas, micro targeting is a giant step forward for technology marketing.

What are your experiences with micro targeting?