Customer stories are your most important kind of content, but many marketing teams struggle to produce enough high-quality customer stories.
As Jamie Gier, CMO at Dexcare, explains, “If you want to consistently capture your customer stories, you have to make it a key OKR and a measurable goal for your marketing team.”
A study by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute found that customer stories ranked only fourth out of the twelve top content types of content production, behind blogs, videos, and webinars.
Customer stories can be neglected, despite their importance, because they are harder to create than other types of content. A marketing team has to find dedicated time with customers to capture their stories, and then work through the process of iterating comments and ultimately securing the customer’s approval.
By contrast, content like blogs, videos, and webinars can often be produced entirely in-house without external coordination. Given these challenges, how can marketing teams make sourcing and capturing customer stories a regular and manageable part of their operations?
Here are Jamie’s three strategies to integrate customer story capture into your marketing plan and processes.
1. Make It a OKR
Jamie emphasizes the importance of setting clear goals for customer story capture. At Dexcare, product marketers are responsible for generating a specific number of stories each month as part of their OKRs (Objective and Key Results).
“I ask my team to regularly follow and engage with their customers,” Jamie advises, “many customers share insights through podcasts, conference presentations, and media interviews. By actively monitoring these channels, marketers can identify ‘golden nuggets’ of information that can be transformed into stories.”
The OKR connects the day-to-day work of her product marketing team to create an expectation for tracking and capturing these nuggets that can feed into customer stories
2. Get Advisory Board Commitment
Another effective way to secure customer stories is through a formal customer advisory board.
Jamie describes this as a mutually beneficial arrangement: “It’s part of the give-get.” Advisory board members receive early access to product updates and sneak previews of new initiatives.
In return, they commit to supporting the business in several ways, including participating in capturing success stories.
This strategy ensures that marketing teams have a built-in group of engaged customers who are already aligned with the company’s goals. It also reinforces trust, as customers feel valued and invested in the organization’s success.
3. Leverage Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs)
Finally, Jamie highlights quarterly business reviews (QBRs) as another rich source of customer stories. “QBRs are where stories come from,” she explains. Marketing teams can partner with the Chief Customer Officer and account teams to be part of these reviews.
Even if marketers are only “a fly on the wall,” participating in QBRs provides invaluable insights. These sessions often reveal fresh data points, successes, and lessons learned that can be transformed into compelling stories.
Jamie notes that connecting these data points to broader narratives is key: “Contextualize the numbers through storytelling. It’s about the ‘so what,’ or what’s in it for the customer.”
Customer stories are essential for building trust and motivating buyers, yet they often fall by the wayside. Jamie Gier’s strategies — connecting OKRs to finding customer nuggets, securing advisory board commitments, and leveraging QBRs —offer a roadmap for making story capture a consistent part of marketing operations.