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Let's face it: case studies matter more than ever in B2B marketing. Recent research shows that 80% of B2B buyers look at case studies while researching purchases—making them one of the most powerful tools for winning new business. But here's the challenge: while most companies know they need customer stories, many struggle to create them consistently and effectively.
"I actually don't love the words case study because I think it's a bit dated and I think it's become so diluted from the academic world and it conjures up this bias of like, well there's this one very specific format," Klettke explains. The first step to improvement? Start thinking about customer stories that capture real transformation. This shift in mindset opens up possibilities for creating varied, channel-specific content that resonates with different audience segments throughout their journey.
The Infrastructure Problem: Why Most Companies Struggle
The biggest barrier to creating effective customer stories isn't a lack of success stories—it's a lack of infrastructure. Most companies, regardless of size, don't have dedicated programs or clear accountability for customer story creation. Instead, they rely on a reactive approach where marketing is tasked with producing case studies on demand, without the necessary foundation for success.
Think of it like telling one player on a basketball team to "just go do a dunk" without any supporting plays or team coordination. Just as in basketball, customer stories require teamwork and strategy to execute effectively.
The most successful companies treat customer stories as the natural byproduct of strong customer relationships rather than isolated tasks. They build systems that make these stories inevitable, not occasional.
Building Your Customer Story Foundation
The key to transitioning from ad-hoc to always-on is developing a strong Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). Here's what your SOP should include:
- Clear Accountability Table
- Who owns each step in the process
- Dependencies between teams
- Target timelines for each phase
- Success Criteria
- Mutually agreed-upon metrics that constitute a "win"
- Eliminates internal friction about when a story is ready to pursue
- Templates and Frameworks
- Standardized formats for making the ask
- Communication templates for follow-up
- Delivery formats for different channels and uses
- Strategic Priority Documentation
- Current focus areas for story collection
- Quarterly or annual goals
- Target industries or use cases
Strategic Story Selection: Beyond Sales Requests
As Joel Klettke explains, "no smart marketer sits down and goes, okay, I think I just need a blog post about anything. You've got to have some sort of overarching strategy that ties up and rolls up into business KPIs. That's why you're doing it. Otherwise you're just making noise and bashing a keyboard." Consider these strategic approaches:
- Switcher Stories: Target customers who've moved from specific competitors to showcase your competitive advantages
- Disambiguation Stories: Focus on explaining your value to new market segments
- Multi-Perspective Narratives: Capture different stakeholder viewpoints within the same organization to appeal to various decision-makers
Instead of reactively responding to every request, build a proactive story pipeline aligned with your organization's strategic goals. This approach ensures you're not just creating content—you're creating assets that drive business results.
Securing Customer Participation: The Art of the Ask
Success in securing customer participation starts long before you make the request. Here are key principles for increasing your success rate:
- Language Matters
- As Klettke notes, "Response rate positive response rate between an email that says will you be in a case study and an email that says can we feature you is Remarkable those are two very different asks."
- Be specific about what you want to highlight
- Frame it as an opportunity, not a favor
- Set Clear Expectations
- Specify the time commitment (e.g., "30-minute interview")
- Guarantee review rights ("Nothing goes live without your approval")
- Outline the process step by step
- Build Trust
- Show examples of similar stories
- Involve company leadership when appropriate
- Make the approval process transparent and efficient
- Speed is Critical
- Move quickly once you get approval
- Keep momentum through the review process
- Don't let stories die on the approval vine
Maximizing Story Impact
"People publish these things once and forget about them and it's like driving a Ferrari only on Sundays. Like you bought the thing, you made the investment, use it," Klettke points out. Here's how to maximize their impact:
- Plan for Multiple Formats
- Capture core content that can be repurposed
- Consider video during initial planning
- Get approval for the longest form first, then create shorter versions
- Think Channel-First
- Website deep-dives
- Sales one-sheets
- Social media snippets
- Email nurture content
- Keep Stories Fresh
- Regularly review and update existing stories
- Look for new angles in existing customer relationships
- Monitor for changing market conditions that might affect relevance
The Competitive Edge of Customer Stories
"The companies who are going to win are going be the companies who realize, they can steal our features, they can poach our people, they can copy our design, they can mimic our messaging, the one thing they can't take away from us that are ours to lose are our advocates, our customer stories," explains Klettke.
The companies that will win are those that make customer advocacy a strategic priority. But remember: a poorly told customer story benefits no one. Focus on authentic narratives that put the customer's transformation at the center.
By building the right infrastructure, taking a strategic approach to story selection, and maximizing the impact of each story, you can create a sustainable engine for generating compelling customer stories that drive growth.
The time to prioritize customer stories is now. Start by documenting your process, opening dialogues with other teams, and treating these stories as the valuable assets they are. Your future pipeline will thank you.
