Editorial
The Gist
- Create mutual value. Emphasize the benefits that customers gain from joining customer marketing campaigns, such as visibility and professional growth.
- Build trust carefully. Ensure trust by omitting sensitive details and bypassing legal hurdles when possible, keeping the customer’s comfort in mind.
- Stay persistent. Securing participation in customer marketing campaigns may take persistence; keep communication open and respectful to gain approvals.
Experienced marketers know that often the hardest part of their jobs isn’t creating the materials for customer marketing campaigns; it’s usually getting the approvals from customers to participate or be included in them. This has been compounded in the digital age, where company and executive names are easily searchable. It’s much harder to stay under the corporate radar.
Indeed, today it’s harder than ever for vendors to include their customers by name in a published case study, article, testimonial ad or video — or to recruit them to join your customer advisory board (CAB).
I’ve worked for companies that ranged from being aggressive with their customer marketing campaigns (even avoiding customer approvals outright) to those that were very fearful of involving their customers in them at all.
On the other hand, I’ve worked with clients who were supportive of including their names in customer marketing materials and others who shut down such efforts from the start.
What’s a marketer to do to earn their customers’ trust and support in being included in vendor marketing campaigns?
Here are six tips:
1. Showcase Mutual Benefits in Customer Marketing Campaigns
Marketers should communicate the value of participating in vendor marketing campaigns to their customers. This could involve showcasing thought leadership on tackling common industry challenges or highlighting their commitment to improving customers' businesses and daily lives, such as by protecting data or enhancing customer service.
Often, the customer will benefit personally by being included in an ad or joining a CAB. They get to grow their profile in the eyes of their peers, add to their resume and extend their network.
Related Article: 5 Necessities for a Successful Customer Advisory Board Program
2. Target Executive Stakeholders
When contacting companies to participate in your customer marketing campaigns, try to reach out to the highest-level person possible. Such people usually understand the big picture of how your solution is helping their customers, and they are often more eager and less shy about having their names associated with a company success story. They may have even already participated in such publicity efforts, and they may be considered the public face or “guru” of their company. Lower-level professionals often face more resistance from their own company when it comes to external publicity.
3. Avoid the Legal Department
As experienced marketers know, lawyers are often the anti-marketers. While I have worked with some great lawyers and respect their responsibilities, your customer legal department may deny approval of any and all customer marketing activities — often without looking at the materials or citing “company policy” as the reason.
I’ve even been told this after their executive agreed or after their company had participated in numerous other public press releases or articles. The solution is to try to get your customer to simply approve your marketing material directly, bypassing the need to go through their legal department.
4. Omit Competitive Secrets
One of the objections marketers may get when asking for customers to participate in a marketing campaign is that they don’t want to disclose company secrets to their competitors. Marketers simply have to agree not to include any material trade secrets in their marketing piece, and they must convey this to their subject.
It usually does the trick to talk about your solution at a high level without going into extended detail. Focus on the outcomes and customer benefits instead. On the flip side, if you encounter a customer that is very secretive about itself (common in industries such as IT security and defense), you may simply have to look elsewhere.
5. Be Persistent
While customer marketers should always be polite and professional in their communications with customers, gathering approval may involve some time and persistence. Approvals may take several emails and phone calls to obtain, and it may be necessary to phrase communications with campaign deadlines (i.e., “If we don’t hear back with any objections by the end of the month, would that mean there are no issues with the piece?”).
Talk to your boss about their appetite for pushing customers. They may agree that begging forgiveness may be preferred to asking for permission and getting nowhere.
Related Article: Customer Support: Definition, Importance and 5 Essential Strategies
6. As a Last Resort, Omit the Company Name
If you’ve gone through all these steps and are still waiting on an approval that never seems to come, you may just want to proceed by omitting the company name and making your piece anonymous. After all, the point of customer marketing campaigns is to illustrate your product’s benefits and outcomes; the actual company using it may not be critical to this message.
While including your customer by name is almost always better, the fallback of leaving out their name may be preferable to the alternative of not having the marketing piece at all.
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Building Trust for Effective Customer Marketing Campaigns
Including your customers in your marketing pieces is an ideal way to show real-world benefits and successes with your solutions. But doing so has its hurdles that can be difficult to overcome. Be honest and forthright, and proceed with integrity. Communicate to your superiors the roadblocks you are facing. While you may lose some customers’ approvals, those who do support your customer marketing campaigns will add depth, credibility and a little star power to your messaging.
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