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Ever feel like your best customer success stories are gathering dust? Joel Klettke joins us to talk about why client stories are marketing gold, how to actually get them, and how to use them without turning it into a massive production.
How to Create Customer Stories That Actually Convert
Whenever I talk to business owners about marketing, one thing that always strikes me is how many of them are sitting on goldmines of customer success—and doing absolutely nothing with it.
You’ve got happy clients. They’re seeing real results. But are you capturing those wins in a way that helps you land more clients just like them?
In my recent chat with Joel Klettke on the Agents of Change Podcast, we dove deep into why customer stories are so powerful and—more importantly—how you can start creating them without all the typical roadblocks.
Why Most Businesses Fail at Creating Customer Stories
Let’s be honest: most of us know we should be showcasing our customer success stories. So why aren’t we doing it?
Joel identified three main reasons businesses struggle with this:
- Competing priorities – Customer stories often become reactive (“We need these ASAP!”) rather than a proactive part of your marketing strategy
- Lack of process – It feels overwhelming when you don’t have a repeatable system
- Fear of asking – We worry about imposing on clients or fear they’ll say no
That third point really resonated with me. How many times have you hesitated to ask a happy client for a testimonial because you didn’t want to “bother them”?
The Simple Language Shift That Changes Everything
Here’s where Joel dropped one of his most powerful insights: how you ask makes all the difference.
“Even just the difference between saying ‘Would you be in a case study?’ and ‘Can we feature you?’ dramatically changes the opt-in rate,” Joel explained.
This simple reframing transforms your request from asking for a favor to offering an opportunity. You’re not imposing—you’re putting your client on a pedestal and giving them the spotlight.
Other language tweaks that boost participation:
- Ask “Would you be open-minded to…” instead of “Would you…”
- Specify exactly what you want to highlight: “We’d love to talk about the 50% lift you saw in conversions…”
- Assure them they’ll have approval: “Nothing goes live without your review and approval”
The 4-Step Process Anyone Can Follow
One of the most valuable parts of my conversation with Joel was his breakdown of a repeatable process for creating customer stories that doesn’t require specialized skills or a massive team:
Step 1: Strategic Selection
Before approaching any clients, clearly define:
- What business goals you’re trying to achieve
- Who you need to convince to reach those goals
- What types of stories would influence those specific people
This prevents you from collecting random testimonials that don’t serve your marketing strategy.
Step 2: The Perfect Ask
Once you’ve identified potential clients to feature:
- Make a specific request about what you’d like to highlight
- Create a simple “pitch packet” that explains the process and time commitment
- Share an example of previous customer stories (once you have one)
- Emphasize that they’ll have final approval on everything
Step 3: The Interview
Schedule a 30-minute interview and:
- Send prep questions ahead of time so they can gather any metrics
- Ask open-ended questions that turn them into storytellers
- Focus on questions like “What did that mean for you?” and “How did that feel?”
- Move quickly after the interview to send them a draft (speed is critical)
Step 4: Celebration and Distribution
When the story is complete:
- Notify the client when it goes live
- Make it easy for them to share it as well
- Repurpose the content across multiple channels (social, email, sales decks, etc.)
Measuring the ROI of Customer Stories
Many businesses struggle to track whether customer stories are actually working. Joel recommends evaluating them based on the specific channels where you use them:
- For social ads: Compare engagement rates to your other ad content
- For sales enablement: Track time-to-close and close rates when stories are used
- For content marketing: Look at assisted conversions (how many people viewed a story before converting)
“Customer stories shouldn’t be measured in isolation,” Joel explained. “They’re supporting assets across the entire buyer’s journey.”
The One Thing You Can Do Today
If you’re convinced but feeling overwhelmed, Joel offered this simple starting point:
“Take your happiest customer, look at what their story might be, and just make the ask. Draft 10 questions you could ask that would help turn them into a storyteller.”
Your first attempt doesn’t need to be perfect. You’ll learn more by doing than by endless planning.
The Business Case for Customer Stories
Perhaps the most compelling argument Joel made was around competitive advantage:
“In software, how many different CRMs are there? At some point, everyone’s got every feature. They can steal your messaging, they can steal your features, they can steal your branding. The one thing they can’t take away from you is the ROI, the proof, the experience you’ve created for customers.”
In a world where competitors can copy almost everything about your business, your customer relationships and results remain uniquely yours.
Ready to Start Collecting Your Customer Stories?
Here’s my challenge to you: Identify one happy client this week and ask if you can feature them in a customer story. Use Joel’s language tips and process to guide you.
Remember, as Joel put it: “If you’ve created a really positive experience and great outcomes for that client, they’re yours to lose.”
Your best customers are already advocates—you just need to give them a platform to share their story.
Spinning Customer Stories into Marketing Gold Episode Transcript
Rich: My next guest is a sought-after consultant, veteran copywriter, and accidental entrepreneur. He built and sold Case Study Buddy, a boutique agency trusted by Zoom, Meta, and Shopify to help them capture, share, and turn customer stories into revenue.
These days, he’s advising B2B brands on conversion and customer marketing while building Calm Dads, a newsletter and soon to launch podcast that helps fathers become the proactive and positive parents they want to be.
Today we’re going to be talking about the power of customer stories with Joel Klettke. Joel, welcome to the podcast.
Joel: Yeah, thank you. Excited to talk.
Rich: Alright. So I am curious, how did you decide to create an agency all about case studies, and then why did you turn around and sell it?
Joel: Throughout my career I’ve learned mostly by doing, and especially in the early going on, saying ‘yes’ to things that are new or in your wheelhouse, but maybe you just haven’t done that yet.
And so I’ve been focusing on the conversion side of things for a few years. I’d just wrapped up a project for a company called, WP Engine. And on the back end of that project, someone who was involved in that said, “Hey, I advised this company called, Pingboard, they need a customer story. Is that something you do” And I thought, yeah, for you, sure. I can give it a shot.
And so it was through that initial project. I don’t ever do anything by halves, really. If I’m going to do something, I’m going to try to do it the best I can do. And so I dug in, and I researched, and I looked around and I got a handful of takeaways.
Number one, these are really hard. There’s a lot of different disciplines. There’s a lot of different things to consider. There’s a lot of different skills you need to bring to bear, whether it’s interviewing or writing or if you’re doing video filming or that kind of thing. Okay, these are pretty hard.
Number two, everybody needs them. It doesn’t matter big, small, I’ve worked with multi-billion-dollar companies, I’ve worked with mom and pops. Everybody benefits when you can share your proof, and especially when you can share that through the lens of someone who’s made a decision someone else is debating and gotten the result they want. Okay they’re tough to do, but everybody needs them.
And then I think the third big thing was, even though they’re tough to do, there’s a repeatable process here. If I can really dial in some efficiency, if I can really nail these steps, then I could do this at scale and I could teach other people to do it, and it could be something that could grow beyond me.
And at the time, I’d previously tried having a team-based business. I got punched in the face repeatedly by the lessons I learned on that front. So as my second goal, I really thought, okay, I can see there was a repeat process here. And so that all added up to, okay, surely someone else has done this. And when I surveyed the landscape, the answer was no.
There was a couple people who, kind of, Casey Hibbard sort of specialized, she’s the OG Queen Bee. But that was really, it was either an add-on service or just one more thing agencies tried to do. And I thought, why not me? I’ll start a focus company here. I originally did it off the side of my desk, brought in a great partner in Jen a short ways in, and that was the origin of it. I realized anytime something’s hard but everybody needs it, there’s some potential money to be made.
I sold it because after eight plus years of grinding away at that and some amazing clients and so much learning, I’d gotten to a point personally in life where I just wasn’t happy and the joy indicator on my dashboard was just out. The market had turned, things were really challenging. There’s a lot of different things we were contending with personally, both myself and the other founder and within the business. And so it got to this point where, is the juice for us worth the squeeze anymore? And ultimately, the answer for both of us was ‘no’.
And so that meant, okay, how do we take this thing we’ve worked so hard, and the team has worked so hard to build together, how do we do it justice? How do we let it continue on in its own way? And so we’d had conversations in the past at different times about selling or merging or different things. Sam Shepler, testimonial hero, somebody I respected, a competitor, someone who pushes you to do better. And so they were interested, and they were growing, and so we sold to them. And our clients made the switch and they’ve continued running with it.
So it was a long and exciting journey, and I learned an incredible amount over that period. And at the end of the day, I don’t regret the journey at all. But I’m also very happy not to be moving on and doing some new things.
Rich: Nice. Very cool. Obviously you see the benefits of customer stories when it comes to marketing. Spell out for us, why do you think these are so valuable?
Joel: I think number one, there’s no claim you can make that a customer can’t make better than you can on your behalf. It’s one thing to say, “we care about customers”, or “we’re really good at this” or “we’re great at driving these results”. It’s one thing for you to say it. It’s another thing for someone else to validate and affirm it, and to do that by sharing their experience and going on the record and being willing to basically tell others who are debating that decision or considering multiple vendors why they chose you and why that paid off.
And that’s something you can’t replicate in any other way. You can’t do that on your own in a blog post. You can make great claims on a sales page, and you can write really compelling copy, and that’s also what I’ve been in the business of. But it’s always going to be stronger when it’s supported by customers and their experiences.
I think the other thing is, as different industries get more and more saturated, especially industries where things can be pretty ubiquitous. In software, how many different CRMs are there? At some point, everyone’s got every feature and they can steal your messaging, they can steal your features, they can steal your branding. The one thing they can’t take away from you is the ROI, the proof, the experience you’ve created for customers.
And that can be said for everything from something as sophisticated as software, all the way right down to the really in the weeds, tough businesses like trades, right? Plumbing and all of that. If you can deliver a better customer experience and get people to talk about it, you can win. And so being able to get these and get people willing to go on the record, being able to capture these, being able to tell a really good story in a really compelling way. They’re all massive advantages.
And then the other thing is, especially in tough markets where you’re trying to do as much as you can with as little budget as possible, very few assets can be used in as many ways across the entire buyer’s journey as a customer story. You can use them in acquisition and in ads and in generating interest. You can use them in education and demonstrating value in different areas of your service that maybe people aren’t aware of. You can use them to close deals. You can also use them to generate repeat business or to upsell into something new. There’s so much utility. And done well, no other asset, I think, can be used as many ways, in as many formats, for as long as they can. A story can be evergreen for as long as you still offer the same service in the same way. So it’s a huge number of benefits that make these worth investing in, even though they’re really challenging to do.
Rich: And I was going to say, so I’m sold, and I can tell how passionate you are about it. And yet you were able to carve out a place in the marketplace, literally just collecting customer stories for other brands. So why is it that so many businesses are so bad at collecting their own customer stories?
Joel: I think number one, it’s just the old excuse, but it’s available and a busyness. There’s so many other initiatives, and companies tend to be very good at planning for other things, but customer stories tend to be a very reactive thing where it’s kind of, “Oh shoot, we should really have these and who can we ask?” And then you try to go to your database and so it’s often very reactive. It’s not something that’s being built proactively, which is what we always try to get customers thinking about is how can we make this an inevitable byproduct of how you do business instead of this five-alarm fire.
So I think number one, there’s competing priorities. I think number two, because there’s so many different disciplines just to get the thing done, it can paralyze, especially founders or businesses who don’t have huge teams working for them. Okay, well I need someone to ask, and then I need a writer or a videographer, and how do I get that done? And then how do I interview? And so that can be a little bit paralyzing if it all feels so big.
I think there is definitely an art to getting it done as well. I think it’s easy to screw up. For example, we saw a huge difference in just how a request would be worded to a customer and whether or not they’d take part. The reflex for most people is to send an email. It could be really nice. Usually it’s way too long, because when we’re nervous we tend to say too much. But to send email saying, “Would you be in a case study…?” On and on. Even just the difference between saying, “Would you be in a case study” and “Can we feature you?” – the opt-in rate is dramatically different. But unless you’ve had time to sit back and think about it and prioritize it, it’s easy to get discouraged really early on.
And then the last thing I would say is there’s often this paralysis of, it could always be better. There’s always this thought of, for a lot of industries I could ask now, but then what if their account is better in 10 months’ time? Or I could ask now, they’ve only just gotten through the implementation, and should I wait? And so it gets pushed and it gets pushed and it gets pushed, and then the moments passed.
And now you’ve got to try to again, retroactively go back and discover who’s had what, when, and who do we ask. And so I think it really comes down to fear, a lack of process and then a lack of resources sometimes in terms of how to get it done. And that’s why a specialized service like ours could do what we did. But that doesn’t mean you have to go out and hire someone like us. There are things that anybody can do to help themselves out in getting some interest in moving things down the road.
Rich: Joel, one of the things that I’ve run into when talking to clients about getting testimonials or case studies or whatever, is the fear that I don’t want to put our clients’ names on the website or our marketing material for fear they’re going to be stolen by the competitors. Did you ever run into that as a concern?
Joel: Yeah, I find it funny because these are your happy clients. They’re thrilled. If you’re putting them on the site and they’re not happy, what are you doing to some degree? And so they’re yours to lose. And the reality is, you can lose them a myriad ways.
You can drop the ball on your service or contract. You can go out of business. There’s lots of other things. Yes, I understand the reservation, we don’t want people seeing who we serve and they could go after them. But if you’ve created this really positive experience and these really great outcomes for that client, they’re yours to lose. If you’ve created this loyalty, this great outcome, then if they do leave and try someone else and the experience is miserable, who are they going to come back to? And so while I understand it, I think it gets overblown. I think there is a lot of fear. Again, people, especially founders, can be terrified to ask anything of customers. Oh, we don’t want to take their time. We don’t want to put them on the spot. I’m nervous they’ll say ‘no’.
And I think it’s like dating. If you can think back to when you’re in Junior high school, there’s this nervousness of, what if I ask and they say ‘no’. And we can’t. We tend to catastrophize, and really at the end of the day, it’s like the worst thing they can say is, ‘no’, they’re not going to hate you. The relationship’s not suddenly going to go sour.
So I think at the end of the day, we block our own shots a lot because we feel like it’s an imposition, when really it should be an opportunity to make them look great primarily, and you look great. It should be a celebration of a relationship and if you’ve done great work for a client. And most importantly, if you’ve been proactive about building a relationship, we’re talking about the result is not an alien thing. If you’ve built a relationship where you’ve checked in and shown them, we care about the ROI or the KPI or whatever it is we’re responsible for driving. We care about you as a person, and what we’re making possible for you beyond just what’s possible for the company. I think people would get a lot more “yes’s” than they anticipate, and they lose a lot less clients than they anticipate by sharing the great work that they’re doing.
And to sum up this thought, people say what if we share a client’s understanding and they get stolen? I say, what if you don’t, and you don’t get the clients you might’ve had you put it out there. I’m almost more scared of that second reality where you keep it to yourself, and in turn, you don’t grow like you could have.
Rich: Joel, you seem like a master of reframing situations in a different light and letting it click for people. I’m wondering, it sounds like we’re going from imposing on our clients and maybe potentially putting the relationship at risk, and you’re saying no, you’re putting them on a pedestal and you’re giving them the spotlight.
Can you talk to us a little bit about what other things we might say or do to get that client buy-in, where all of a sudden they realize this is a real opportunity for their brand as well?
Joel: Yeah, I think we need to pull it apart on a few different levels. Number one, the personal level. Realize that your point of contact – surprise – is a human who wants to look good and who wants to look smart, and who wants people to know that they’re capable and make good decisions.
And that’s why the carnal sin of so many customer stories is making the customer look like an idiot. And that’s why people can be afraid to do it, is what’s going to be said. And I don’t want to look like the damsel dude in distress and I don’t want you coming in and taking credit for the things that I did.
And so one of the things that you can do when you make the ask is, so often asks are totally vague. “Would you be in a customer success story?” “Would you be in a case study.” “Would you be willing to be interviewed?” And instead, what we can do is get specific and say, “We’re really proud of X result that you are seeing”, or “We can see that you’re doing really well over there. We’d love to explore that.” Start with something specific to them in complimentary.
And the next thing you can do is be even more specific and say, “Would you be open-minded to being in a customer story about X, Y, and Z?” Be specific. Because now when you make the ask, rather than getting a blanket ‘yes’ or a blanket ‘no’, it changes the conversation because they can agree to or object to something specific. If you say,“We’d love to talk about…”
Just using, let’s say digital marketing as an example, “We’d love to talk about this campaign and the 50% lift you saw on this ad series. Would you be open-minded to talking about that?” And they can either say, “yes, that sounds great”, and you’ve given them a metric in the context, they know what’s going to be shared. Or they could say, “you know what, I actually don’t have permission to talk about that.” But now, instead of just shutting down, you can come back and say, “Okay, if we anonymized the result or if we focused elsewhere, would you be open to it then?”
And if you’re listening keenly here, you might have noticed I’ve said a couple times instead just saying, “would you be open to”, I’ve said, “would you be open-minded to.” That’s another small, little thing with language you can do. People want to be open-minded. We want to identify as somebody who is open-minded to things. So again, small, little phrasing like that can actually make a difference to whether or not they opt in.
I think the other big thing that you can do, and we advise this for all of our clients, was make sure they know they have power. Make sure they know nothing goes live without your review and approval. You’ll have a chance to see a draft. We’ll make any edits you want, and nothing goes live without your approval. Now I have agency. I get the chance to say, “I like that”, “I don’t like that”, “Can we adjust this?” “Can we change that?” You’ve given me a voice in my own story, which is critical.
Another thing. Two things that you can send to a customer who might be on the fence or when you make the ask. One is, we called it a ‘pitch packet’, and it’s a simple one-sheet and it just does these things. Number one, thanks them for even considering. Number two, makes two very important claims. Number one, nothing goes live without your approval. And number two, it’s going to take a very short amount of time. All that’s involved is an interview and a whatever. And then lays out the process in a little bit more detail. A couple quick bullets on, here’s what it looks like and this is what to expect.
So when you can approach customers with what feels like a well thought out plan, that gives them a voice, that gives them agency, and when you can show them that there’s some thinking behind it, they’re more likely to opt in.
The second thing you can send along is a sample. If you’ve already done a great story, especially if it’s beautifully designed, kick that along with it. That way they can see how you’ve presented others, how you’ve made them look great, how you’ve helped them to stand out in their role, at their job, in their business. And that can help getting by on as well. So on a personal level, those two things can help.
On a business level, the other thing that you can do is if there are benefits back to them, if you do plan to share it with a particular audience, if you do plan to highlight particular initiatives that make them stand out in their industry, you can highlight those things and you can say, “These are some of the things we plan to include. Our goal is to make your business look as great as possible”.
And again, having a sample of something you’ve put together in the past. As soon as you get your first one, make it beautifully designed and make it as complimentary to the customer as possible. And that can grease the skids as well. Because it takes all of the ambiguity and fear out of the equation and lets them know, “hey you’re going to look good and there’s going to be something in it for you.”
Rich: You talked about this a little bit, but I am curious about the process. So once we get the buy-in from the client, what does their time requirement look like? And is this just an interview we do either in person or via Zoom or whatever it may be? And then how do we take that and package into something that yes, shines a spotlight on the client, but also is beneficial to our business?
Joel: Yeah, this was the whole business model of Case Study Buddy. So to give you the repeatable bits, the things that you know for a founder or a small team. I think number one, the process looks like this. You make the ask and you make that ask specific. And you get the buy-in and they agree to be featured.
Now, how long it takes you will depend on how good you are at it. But you should be targeting all in to take an hour, two hours maximum of the person’s time. That’s inclusive of the interview and reviewing a draft. We always said, we’d love to have you on a 30 minute-ish interview, depending on what the output was. If we were filming video, webcam video or like this, then it would be a little bit longer so we could make sure that we got the clips and stuff we needed. But a 30 minute-ish interview, and then you’ll be sent a draft that you have an opportunity to review. And so that’s key is you get the buy-in. You schedule that interview.
Before they come to the interview, we would make sure that they came primed and ready to share. So again, we’d repeat, these are the things we’re hoping to talk about. These are the metrics we either have or we’d like you to come with. Because if you leave it up to customers to articulate their win, they might have specifics, they might not have a clue. We’re wildly optimistic about how closely people pay attention to their numbers and their outcomes. So when you prime them a little bit, you don’t have to give them the entire script. You don’t want them to come feeling wooden. But letting them know these are the things we’re hoping to discuss, the metrics we’d love to share. But make sure that they can clear that with anyone else they need to, and they come prepared.
Your interview, again, half hour. You need to go in with a plan. You need to be a good interviewer or at least be committed to becoming one. The goal is to turn your interviewee into a storyteller. It’s not an interrogation, it’s not read 10 questions off a list and then sit back and wait for them to respond. It’s having a conversation that you are in charge of steering and knowing when to shut up as well. Which is something that sometimes I’m bad at on podcast. But giving that a natural flow to turn them into a storyteller.
Specifics. They’re asking questions like, “What did that mean for you?” “What did that mean for your boss?” “What can you do now or do better because of X, Y, and Z?” “How did that feel?” That’s a question that gets back into that storytelling or can you give me an example of a time when X or Y… Again, these are storytelling questions as opposed to yes/no questions.
Depending on what you’re creating on the backend, again, there’s lots of process we could get into on things like video. I’m going to steer clear of that for now. But the next thing you need to do is take the transcript from that interview, and now strategically go in and say, okay, what’s the core story that not only captures what they achieve, but also supports our business case? What are we trying to do with this? Are we trying to enter a new market? Are we trying to showcase particular service or feature that should shape your interview? And that should shape the output as well.
So you take that transcript, and you now go and write whatever it is you’re putting together. And that might be a one sheet for sales. In a sales scenario, that might be a 1,500-word deep dive if you’re having it live on the site. That’s one of the key things you want to think about is where will this live? How much appetite for information will the people who see it have, and tailor that accordingly.
Because a story can turn into everything from a soundbite. A quote that you just put on social media or your site as a quick bit of proof, all the way through down to that deep dive, longer written piece. So you want to have kind of a plan for where you’ll use this and what formats will make sense for that. You want to make sure that you move as quickly as possible, so the time between when the interview ends and when that person sees a first draft, you need to prioritize speed above pretty much everything else other than accuracy.
You need to move as quickly as possible to get them a draft. You want to give them a window to review 48 hours, and make sure you’re following up. And then from there, would move into design, get ready to go, and then you want to have a bit of a celebration when it goes live. You don’t just want to drop it into the ether and thank you very much we’re not even going to tell you when this goes out.
When it goes live, let your client know so they can share it and celebrate it and all of that. But the story that you tell and the interview you run should be rooted in your goals for your business and the story they actually have. The overlap of those two things. You can’t force a story that doesn’t exist. You lose when you don’t have a plan for what story you want to get in the first place. So you should go in with a bit of a strategy and plan for that and where it will be used and how you’ll make efficient use of the time.
That’s a lot. It’s hard to condense eight years of learning, but those are the highlights and things to be thinking about.
Rich: I think that’s really helpful. Do you find this approach works for both B2B and B2C? And if it does, are there different approaches that you suggest businesses take depending on what section of the business world they’re in?
Joel: Yeah. B2B can be a lot. We specialize in B2B, that was where we really focused. In B2B, you need to anticipate a lot more roadblocks because your point of contact may not be the person who can rubber stamp and say, “yep, this can go live”. And so what they share may need to clear legal or PR or their own marketing team, and you should plan for that. And so that’s where being as proactive as possible when you make the ask, and asking things like, “Hey, who else will need to sign off on this? We’d love to help you. Make sure that you can get buy-in you need.”
That’s why things like a pitch pack, for example, are valuable because you’re not leaving it up to your point of contact to evangelize internally to do these things. “Hey, I’ve been asked to do this, and here’s what’s involved, and here’s what they want to talk about.” If you lay that out, your chances of success are so much better.
With B2C, typically the friction is much less because you’re direct to the buyer. There are some products in B2C that just don’t make any sense really to have long form stories about. If you sell bubble gum, I don’t think there’s a particularly huge market for long form case studies on that. But there is still, if it’s a business to consumer service, again, the same thing applies. What is our strategy?
And there are small considerations like, B2B you can usually interview them during company time. They’re at their desk, they’re working. It’s maybe part of their job. B2C, if they’re at a different job, you may have to plan to interview them after hours or when it might be more convenient, or because you’re maybe not dealing with the same kind of legal constraints as a whole company. Maybe you can incentivize them a little bit differently, “Can we get you a $20 gift card for a coffee, or something like that, in exchange for your time”, and that kind of thing. But the same process applies. It’s still always going to be best if a story is what you want.
It’s always going to be best to interview them rather than send them a list of questions or an asynchronous tool. You’ll always get, in my experience, a better story by actually talking to people. And it doesn’t, if you can be in person, great. We didn’t do a whole lot of in-person interviews other than when we were filming on location. So something like we’re doing right now is totally fine. But you do want to try to get that person live and in person, because then you can ask follow-up questions and make them feel good and affirm them in their answers and all of that.
Rich: Have you ever discovered a way to measure the ROI or effectiveness of using customer stories and marketing?
Joel: Yeah, it really depends on how you use them. Because there’s that whole, like it gets attributed to Einstein, where he says, “If you measure a fish’s ability to climb a tree, it’s a huge failure.” I think there’s a danger with customer stories in that people want to do this one-to-one, where they read the story, and they bought the thing. And that’s just not really how people make decisions, number one. And it’s not really, in all context, the role of a customer story.
And so we would always encourage clients to look at what are the barometers and metrics for the channel you’re using. For example, if you’re going to use it in social ads, let’s say you’re going to have a carousel on LinkedIn, we’ll compare it to your other LinkedIn ads in terms of views and click through, and ultimately, maybe conversion.
I think if you’re going to look at it as part of your content marketing and your content marketing suite, again, if you’re using a tool that allows you to track assisted conversions or how many people viewed at least one story before booking a demo or booking a consult or whatever, do that and track those sort of assisted conversions.
If you’re using it in email outreach, cold outreach, you’ll want to look at clicks, and opens, and positive response rates, when these are included, when they’re not included. If you are fortunate to be in a position to have a sales team, then you can do some squishy but meaningful, “Hey people, what’s your confidence to close right now on the average account? What’s your time to close on the average account? Okay, great. We’re going to arm you with some customer stories and when you use those, I want you to start rating your confidence level that will close and tracking time to close. Do they close more quickly? Are you more confident that they will close?”
So it really depends on the scenario, the channel where you’re using them. I think the one thing I would not do is put it on your site. Do have a call to action on every story you put out there. But don’t just look at, oh people didn’t click ‘try now’ or whatever, right from this story. Because realistically, it’s one touch point of however many other touch points. It’s a supporting asset.
So look at where you’re using it, how you’re using it. Benchmark against other variations and types of campaigns and see, does it outperform in terms of lead quality, lead quantity, time to close and all of that. So there’s lots of different ways to look at it. You just have to be really intentional about it.
Rich: Joel, if somebody’s listening today and you sold them on the power of client or customer stories, and they’ve never done it before or never made it a priority before, what’s one thing that they could start with that would get them on the right path?
Joel: I think the first thing, a simple exercise of sitting down and you do a little bit of a gap analysis. Number one, what are our business goals for the next quarter or the next year? And just ignore the story part for now, but it might be, we want to grow by X percent, or we want to reach this type of customer, or we want to enter this type of market.
Take stock of your business goals and then ask yourself the question, okay, who do we need to convince if we want to move these? Who do we need to reach? And just give yourself a little profile of, alright, this is the type of person or company that we need to reach. Okay, great. If that’s our goal and that’s who we need to influence, what types of stories would help us get there?
And that will give you a meaningful strategy towards, if that’s the type of story we need, who do we need to ask? Who do we have in our customer base? Who would fit this type of story? That’s where I would start more than anything else, because at least it’s easy to get a team of any size or even yourself aligned around this is what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, what we’re looking for.
If that’s too complex and we want to dial it back even further. And if you have one happy customer, just one, a small thing you could do right now is put together, just as a practice, put together a little profile of that account. What’s a win? What would you like to talk about with them? And then just make an ask. Send a message to them just saying, “Hey, we are brand new to doing customer stories. We would love for you to be our first one. We’d love to talk about this part of our relationship. We’re going to do everything we can to keep this as short of process as possible for you. Would you be open-minded to taking part?” That’s a great place to start because you will learn more by doing than you ever will just by theorizing.
So if you’re paralyzed by that whole strategy setting, little mini exercise, take a happy customer, look at what their story as you know it might be, or what you want to discover, and just make the ask. And if they say ‘yes’, great. Wonderful. Okay. Draft 10 questions you could ask that would help you turn them into a storyteller and capture that.
And because usually your happiest customers, the first ones that come to mind are often the most forgiving. Maybe they’ve been with you the longest, maybe they’re your rock solid advocates. They’ll be willing to put up with a little bit more as you kind of learn the ropes, they might even be excited to help you do that. But just start. Don’t sit back and wait for the perfect story, the perfect process. Done is very much better than perfect here, and you’ll learn as you go.
Rich: Great advice. And two options, depending on where you are. Joel, this has been fantastic. If people want to learn more about you and your work, where can we send them online?
Joel: Yeah, probably the best place is LinkedIn. I have a pretty unique name. I’m the only Joel Klettke on the planet, far as I know. So feel free to connect with me there.
I don’t always respond quickly, but I do always respond. So if you send me a message, it may not be same day. I’m always happy to chat. And I have been on lots of great podcasts like this one, sharing ideas and processes. You can find a lot of them on YouTube, and some that go into different niche aspects of what we’ve covered on here.
Just searching my name on YouTube is another great place to go, but LinkedIn is mostly where I where I share things these days. And the, depending on when this episode drops, within a few months I hope to have my personal site updated as well. So that’ll just be joelklettke.com or in the interim, businesscasualcopywriting.com is another place you can get ahold of me.
Rich: Awesome. And those will all be in the show notes. Joel, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.
Joel: Yeah, thank you.
Show Notes:
Joel Klettke is a veteran copywriter, conversion consultant, and founded Case Study Buddy, aimed at helping businesses create and leverage customer success stories. Connect with him on LinkedIn, and check out the valuable content he’s sharing on YouTube.
Rich Brooks is the President of flyte new media, a web design & digital marketing agency in Portland, Maine, and founder of the Agents of Change. He’s passionate about helping small businesses grow online and has put his 25+ years of experience into the book, The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing.