Listing success stories or case studies on your Web site is an excellent way to let prospects know that you have had great results with clients. These stories/studies also tell in greater detail exactly how you work with a client, which can give a prospect a better idea of what they too could expect and how to gain value from working with you.
Label them “Success Stories,” “Project Profiles” or “Customer Successes” on your Web site. You can write these cases yourself, interview the client, hire a writer, or have the client write something up. Use keywords in the stories to boost your search engine rankings. An audio interview is especially impressive. By the way, customer success stories are a supplement to testimonials, not a substitute.
Here are some examples of companies using Success Stories and Case Studies on their sites:
Novell Software company has a section on their site called Success Stories ~ Here’s an excerpt from one: “As a nationally ranked business school, Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business requires a state-of-the-art IT infrastructure. With Novell® Open Enterprise Server running SUSE® Linux Enterprise, the business school consolidated servers by 90 percent and cut implementation time for new applications by 50 percent. “To read the rest of this story visit: http://www.novell.com/success/georgetown_mcdonough.html.
See how Thunderbird School of Global Managment has helped clients address their customers’ challenges, allowing them to unlock and unleash their full global business potential in their Customer Success Stories Section of their Website.
Stewarts Signs (America’s Premier Sign Co.) has a section called Customer Success Stories and Stewarts Signs in the News. The first Story in this section talk about how a Church was demolished by Hurricane Rita but the sign was still there: “If you want to know the truth, I would have much rather lost the church sign than the roof”, exclaims Jo Ann Richards, property chairman of First Christian Church of hurricane-ravaged Port Arthur, Texas. “Standing inside our church the morning after, all we could see was sky”.
Amazon Herb Co. has testimonial and pictures of it’s clients. Here’s one: I love Pure Camu.™ I drank it one day when I had to rake leaves, but didn’t really feel up to it. I told myself I would do half the yard, and then finish the rest the next day. After drinking Pure Camu™, I raked the entire yard that afternoon. I was amazed how much energy I had!”
House Values is making good use of their customer successes with full-page stories and photos.
Use the testimonials given by your clients and customers and ask them to expand on their comments. Create a customer feedback form on your site or encourage them to email you when they want to share their stories of how your product helped them, changed their lives, made something better and more. Use excerpts of the stories for your testimonial section and the full version in your customer success stories section. Audio and video stories are especially powerful. Adding pictures increased the credibility and interest in the story by at least 50%.
Tell us how you use your customers successes to attract attention, prospects and close more sales.
