9 Proven Ways to Create a Successful Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy

Sam Shepler 0:00
Most prospects are in denial that they have a problem. As sellers, our prospects are in denial that they even have a problem to begin with. No glowing endorsement is going to matter to them until we get them to have it have admit they have a problem. Right. So that's, that's why with a testimonial, the before, part of it is talking about the problem. And the challenges, and then the after is like how it was solved in the results. And so yeah, it's very critical to establish that before otherwise, no one's gonna care. Because if I don't, if I don't believe that I have that problem as a buyer. There's no fertile ground for the results to really, you know, impress me and have an impact when those results land.

Vinay Koshy 0:46
Hi, and welcome to the predictable b2b success podcast. I'm Vinay Koshy. On this podcast, we interview people beyond b2b brands who aren't necessarily famous, but do work in the trenches and share their strategies and secrets as they progress along the journey of expanding their influence and making their businesses grow predictably. Now, let's dive into the podcast. A customer driven marketing strategy is one that focuses on building loyalty by addressing a customer's needs in every aspect of their buying journey, is a strategy that focuses on targeting a specific set of customers, retain them by meeting their needs, and using metrics to measure their satisfaction. I guess there's a firm believer in using customer driven marketing strategies or what he prefers to call customer led marketing strategies. using video, he's gotten quite a bit of experience in the process. Here's what I know about him. He is a filmmaker, and entrepreneur with nine years of experience in the b2b video marketing space. He is currently the CEO of testimonial hero, which is used by over 100 clients worldwide. testimonial hero is a global b2b video testimonial creation service, whose mission is to make world class customer storytelling. effortless. So b2b revenue teams can establish trust faster with new prospects, accelerate the buyer journey, and drive more revenue. Sam Shepler Welcome to the podcast.

Sam Shepler 2:17
Thanks, Vinay. It's great to be here.

Vinay Koshy 2:19
Pleasure to have you, Sam. I'm a little curious, you've obviously had a lot of experience in the video space, but what would you say is your personal area of strength?

Sam Shepler 2:32
Personally, for me, I think as a guess, as an entrepreneur, I guess just my personality, I think it's kind of connecting the dots around like trends, socially, culturally, technology trends, and then how it all relates to video basically, to solve to fundamentally solve problems. Right, that, I guess that that's, I think that's, you know, fairly common, I think, for a lot of entrepreneurs is like, we all got to connect the dots. And I just love that, for me, I love like the, the kind of the intellectual challenge, like I love problem solving, and ultimately figuring out, you know, new ways to create different types of videos, which is, of course, what we, what we did that what we did, and what we do at testimonial hero with kind of pushing into new boundaries around customer video,

Vinay Koshy 3:21
certainly. And what would you say that air strength is something that businesses don't know. But

Sam Shepler 3:29
yeah, so I think it's my belief that the best way to you know communicate value and you know, b2b sales and marketing is through the voice of customers. So there's nothing that is as credible as when you can kind of communicate a message through a customer. And I think there's a kind of common and a bit outdated, kind of a feeling that Oh, like customer case studies and video testimonials and social proof are really techniques that we as marketers use at the bottom of the funnel to ultimately close the deal, when that's just a small part of the value. And ultimately, the more you can include, the more you can communicate through the voice of customers throughout the whole buyer journey, the better and your message will be received and the faster that buyer journey will be. As ultimately, like that's, that's what we all want as b2b revenue leaders is to is to close deals faster, and it's my view that any message that comes from you, that's that's okay. But any message that comes from a customer that's that's, that's better. So it's like the real question is like, how can we think beyond just this very basics, which is like a 92nd video testimonial to think about, like micro content and having customers actually answer frequently asked questions and just like, all of these different forms of video content and then just pepper them Throughout the whole buyer journey and just help ultimately just reduce friction and have those deals close faster.

Vinay Koshy 5:06
Certainly excellent. Talking to you offline, we were talking about what I was referring to as customer driven Matthew strategies, but you said, customer led marketing strategies is probably the terminology that you use is do you see a difference between the two? Or is it just semantics?

Sam Shepler 5:26
Yeah, I think it's mostly semantics. And I think we are, we're, we're kind of playing around with different terms. And we're always thinking about, of course, like, how to kind of build the right category and all that just like all marketers are, but I think the main thing is coming back to customer driven marketing or customer lead marketing, I like, at the moment, I like customer lead marketing, because it speaks to like, you lead with your, your messaging with your customers, and you make your customers really an active participant in, in telling that story. So that to me, is is why I like customer lead, because it just implies, like customers are leading the way and really communicating on your behalf.

Vinay Koshy 6:13
Okay, certainly. And deep, I totally get the point to consistently see the value of something that I've tried to incorporate myself in trying to give that voice or incorporate that voice of the customer. What would you say though, is the best way to identify customers that really speak to your product or service without being too hypee? Or salesy but certainly provide value in the message that they're delivering?

Sam Shepler 6:44
Yeah, it's a great question. I think even stepping back further, it's, I guess the question is, it depends on depends on your different verticals that you sell to. And ideally, you the best thing to do is have customer stories for every single buyer persona that you sell to, right. So like, if you if you're selling to higher ed, you want a higher ed video, higher ed, customer video content, if you're sitting then if you also sell to manufacturing, you're going to want that manufacturing content as well, that manufacturing video testimonial. But the manufacturing video testimonial doesn't work so well with selling to the higher end, right. So. So I think the step before you even identify which customers my what we always work with our our clients to do is figure out what your main verticals are? And also like, what your, your strategy is, and are you trying to break into new markets? And if so, what which customer stories do you need to support those initiatives, once you sort of have a good high level feeling around that, I think it's extremely helpful to especially if you're on the marketing side, involve your sales team in that conversation involved, especially involve the customer success team as well. Because often as marketers, we don't actually, you know, know who the best customer we may mean, it depends on you know, the tools you use and what, what you've set up. But like many times, sales or customer success typically has the best feeling for who the happiest customers are, who the customers are, are that have had the most success. So, so that is my biggest piece of advice is make sure and partner with sales partner with success. And that is really you need that cross functional approach to identify the best stories

Vinay Koshy 8:38
Certainly, and I assume that in identifying the best stories you also want to know a fair bit about the customer and the journey, their experience with your product and service how or which, which we didn't tell, at least in my mind, an ongoing investment in in the customer and certainly their interest as well. Given how busy we all are with all that we need to do for our own businesses. How would you recommend we prioritize and invest that amount of time and energy into our best customers?

Sam Shepler 9:14
Yeah, I think in terms of I always think of what customers do you want to attract more of so so when in the shortest answer I'd say figure out who that who that customer is that you that fits your your ideal customer profile, and then try to get video testimonial from them. And that's just going to go into attract more like customers because it's so for video testimonials to really work. It's all about a customer prospect seeing themselves in the story that's being told, right? So it's like, yeah, we want to show a prospect who's watching that and say, Wow, okay, I I have that exact same problem. They product x, you know, or consultant x or agency x, solve this, I have that exact same problem and they, and then the problem was solved and like, Okay, I'm gonna go talk to that company. So that is I think super key.

Vinay Koshy 10:14
Okay, and in knowing your customers and suddenly eliciting that story or message, would you recommend that it should take more of the format of a story? Or is it? What was your experience with using x y Zed product? I guess what I'm asking is what should be the nature of the message? What is it that we're really aiming for in making the ask of a customer?

Sam Shepler 10:42
Right, yeah. So I mean, for a there's I think there's different types of customer video content and for a testimonial, because I think at the highest level, there's like customer video content. And then there's testimonials. There's maybe objection, crushers, there's advertisements, there's and then there's other other different use cases. But for a testimonial, the the simplest orient? That's a great question is it's a before and after store. So you want to establish the because no one prospects don't actually, this is a really, really key point. Most prospects are in denial that they have a problem. Yeah, as, as sellers were, our prospects are in denial that they even have a problem to begin with. No glowing endorsement is going to matter to them. Until we get them to have it have a bit they have a problem. Right. So that's, that's why with a testimonial, the before, part of it is talking about the problem. And the challenges, and then the after is like how it was solved in the results. And so yeah, it's very critical to establish, you know, before otherwise, no one's gonna care. Because if I don't, if I don't believe that I have that problem as a buyer, I'm not gonna there's no fertile ground for the results to really, you know, impress me and have an impact when those results land suddenly.

Vinay Koshy 12:07
Okay, so pretty much as a story format, how would we know that the story is going to really resonate with our customers? Because correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe most people have a natural storytelling gift, so to speak. So how will we go about ensuring that we're able to craft and edit if you will, into something that is usable? And will resonate with intended audience?

Sam Shepler 12:38
Absolutely, it's great question. I think, you know, that's honestly, why a lot of customers of work with us, right, because because we we help figure that strategy out, we figure out the right questions to ask to get the right content, and then our video editing team edits it. But so yeah, I think that's that's one thing, good questions, you know, get good answers as from the podcast, right? The the the the better question you get you Will you ask the better answer you get, or the more interesting answer you get, right. So so that's step one is thinking about what are the and you only have, you have a limited amount of time with the customer, and you don't really often, you know, get a chance to retake it, because you're doing your customers doing your favor. So you want to make the most of it. So step one. And this is part of our process is like, beginning with the end in mind. So like, what is the first thing you have to figure out? What is the perfect testimonial video sound like? What are the two or three absolute key messages that a prospect should have a prospect who's watching this should take away after viewing it, what do the perfect quotes sound like? And then once we have that vision of the end, and we do this, but anyone, anyone can do this. And this is just what I recommend, like So figure out what you want at the end. And then write the questions that will elicit those responses, those building blocks to the story. And then of course, the more artful you can edit it. That's that's really when you can condense it, because the when I speak about editing, we don't want to obviously change the story. But we do want to condense it, that is the most important role editing plays, because b2b buyers, there, there's a lot of noise, we need to get them they need to get it quickly. So it's like, that's the chat, the real big thing of is editing in taking that 20 minute interview and taking that whole story into the perfect 90 seconds.

Vinay Koshy 14:39
Okay, so fit really quite short. But if I am to understand this correctly, you're asking questions of the customer that would elicit the story, but how do you ensure that they actually being able to deliver value or highlight value in In their experience, or certainly talk about outcomes that they've achieved quite often, at least in my experience, it tends to get a little blurry because your product or service might be one of a few that they would be employing to achieve a particular outcome. And to separate things can be a bit of a difficult process or challenge, at least mentally, especially in a short timeframe if they haven't been given much time to think about it.

Sam Shepler 15:28
Absolutely, yeah. It's a great question. I think part of there's a couple angles, part of it is synching up with them the customer in advance and finding some common ground around like, what you want to emphasize and in doing a, you know, 30 minute, you know, call just kind of talking through the interview questions. And then before, you know, conducting the actual interview and saying, here's this is basically we often asked like, dude, all these questions look good. And here's what we were thinking with this question. Does that does that align with what what you're what you're feeling as well? The other thing is like, yeah, many times it you might not be able to tie, especially with services or agencies, or consulting, when if it's with with the SAS products, which are the majority of our customers, like, often, yeah, you can tie a metric to the outcome. But with b2b services, it might be harder. I don't think that in and of itself is a huge issue, because there's other things that that you can talk about in the testimonial. That really, the question is what like, well, what is your value proposition? What are your differentiators? And how do you reinforce that with the testimonial? So yeah, I think that ultimately, coming back to what we talked about in the beginning, the customer, the voice of the customer is just another medium for content and all of your content should support your in align with your key message or strategic narrative. So then the question is, how do we just get the what the customer is saying to just even add further impact to that strategic narrative at the highest level?

Vinay Koshy 17:10
Okay, so if I understand this correctly, you the client that you're working with, should really be clear as to their USP, the unique selling point, which you are then looking to reinforce by your testimonial, that'd be correct.

Sam Shepler 17:25
That's absolutely correct. Although the nice thing is, even if they're not, they're going to get a great testimonial. Anyways, and because in sometimes people think that they're there, depending on you know, the maturity of the business, especially with a startup, a startup might think, Oh, this is our USP. And then they ask their customer, they get a great testimonial, but it's actually a little bit different. And there's huge value, like many times like, we've had our our customers tell us, wow, like, thanks to doing this testimonial, I actually learned so much about how our customers view our product and evolved our positioning. So yeah, in a perfect world, especially for a mature company. Absolutely. But I think it's certainly not a requirement. And there's a lot of kind of just fortuitous, like, as long as you have a happy customer, you're gonna get a great testimonial, might even learn something new that you didn't even realize and in the process, certainly,

Vinay Koshy 18:25
okay, how would you say, and I am assuming, you've gone through this process yourself with Testimonial Hero? How would you say you've been able to utilize that feedback to improve your offering?

Sam Shepler 18:39
Definitely, yeah, I think for one, it's, you're able to draw just kind of conclusions and just understand, like, what are the commonalities, and that customers really value. Like for us, like, we realized that something that just kept coming up again, and again, was ease of use and just how easy it was and like people were so surprised how easy it was to do something that is can be there's a lot of, you know, pieces to it producing a customer video, there's a lot of pieces, but we have we had and we have a really easy process. And then once people we realized that that's what people appreciated. We just kind of started pushing that even more in terms of our messaging. So yeah, I think it's, it's just, it's a great opportunity to just get that customer research that you ultimately also can turn into that super, super valuable sales and marketing content.

Vinay Koshy 19:33
Okay. So you are you seeing that you take their feedback and kind of listed and when you see the same or similar sort of requests coming through time and again, then you go right, this may be something that we need to offer always at pretty much done on a gut gut feel.

Sam Shepler 19:53
Yeah, I think I mean, it's, it's interesting. It depends how much time you have with the customer because like, I'm not advocating that, that someone turn their customer research into completely into testimonials, because I think the customer research is there, the questions are even a little bit different. But I think it's more like for to have this like there will be I think customer research isn't the main goal of, of customer video content. And I think the main goal of customer video content is to drive revenue. But for sure, like I've seen it time and time again, there are just fortuitous learnings.

Vinay Koshy 20:34
Excellent. And I know you work a lot with clients to to get their clients on to video testimonials. I'm assuming though that not all of your clients, clients are very willing, at least initially to give up their time and energy to someone but they don't know is essentially a third party who wants to grab some sort of testimonial or conversation. How do you approach this? I mean, I'm assuming that your client will give you a bit of a warm intro. But what's your experience been like with that? Is that enough? Or have you really had to spend time crafting your outreach? Yeah, find success?

Sam Shepler 21:12
Yeah, it's a great question for us. So we always, typically, how it works is we help our customers behind the scenes to make that ask. So they actually make the ask, we recommend that comes from the person that the testifying customer has the best relationship with. Right, right. So So typically, often it's from their account manager, or their the person who sold the deal. And because of that, that's also pretty common. And then once the customer in the key things for getting a Yes, because you're right, it's there's a couple things in terms of how do you actually get people to agree for one, just at the highest level, it's good to ask, like, how can I make this a two way exchange of value, right, so it's not just my customer doing me a favor, they actually get some value out of it. One of the ways is, is just honestly like the best testimonials also make make the customer that's being featured the hero of the story. And even to an extent they make that individual that's talking the hero of his story. So it's really great industry recognition and peer recognition opportunities. And we often suggest our customers reach out to people and say, like, hey, like, you're doing an awesome, you're we want to hold you up as an example of best practices in your industry. And you're absolutely crushing it in this area, like let's capture the story. And like, it's good to end also effective to make it about them. It's not ultimately they are the hero of the story. And people are generally, of course, like way more receptive to that. And also, when another key thing is when when you reach out, you want to kind of answer any of their like, immediate, like questions. It's like, how long will this take? And well, I get it, you know, chance to review it prior. So we usually say like, would you be open to sharing your experiences, it'll only take 30 minutes. And that's what it takes, if it's a remote testimonial, and you'll get to review everything else prior if you're open to that I can share some more information. So that's sort of like addresses a lot of the potential objections that someone might have. And most people have 30 minutes that they could slot in at least a couple of weeks. And and yeah, so once that they once the customer has actually gotten the agreement. That's when they introduce us so so we're not really convincing them as a third party, then they say great, they say, Okay, awesome, kid, this is our partner, our video testimonial partner, testimonial hero, and they are going to make this seamless for you. And then our customers, they see seed, but that's when we basically take it from there.

Vinay Koshy 23:53
Okay, so I'm assuming a lot of this conversation would be happening either via phone or email before you come into onto the scene, so to speak. And it starts with a discovery or a pre interview chat before the actual recording. Would that be the process?

Sam Shepler 24:12
Yeah, I think it depends. And honestly, like, I'm, I'm so removed from the nitty gritty of the process these days. My team is always improving and evolving the process. But yeah, I think it depends. We've certainly done it both ways. And it kind of depends on like, mostly, it's some, you know, customers are more transactional, like smaller software subscribers, like there might not need to be a pre call huge enterprise customers that it's a very close relationship, and there's an account manager. Yeah, they might want to do a call. So it's somewhat situational, depending on that, that sort of dynamic,

Vinay Koshy 24:51
Certainly, excellent. Would you say that in a sense you in your role, curating the experiences of your Close customers?

Sam Shepler 25:02
Yeah, I think Well, actually, I guess it Yeah, potentially I think if if that means if I take that to mean, we are curating the some of the success they've had. And then yes, I think, obviously, there's positive experiences, there's, there's negative experiences that customers have with with any product. And yeah, we certainly I think that would be fair to say we're helping, you know, curate those experiences, I think, to even specify it even further. I think we're curating content, you know, from the voice of the customer that would be interesting and valuable to prospective buyers. Because ultimately, we people, people engage with us when they want to better communicate value and their further offering and then ultimately, reduce friction in the sales process and in close deals faster. So yeah, absolutely.

Vinay Koshy 25:58
Could you give us an example of perhaps a client that used these videos in order to accelerate the sales cycle and examples of where they've used it?

Sam Shepler 26:12
Absolutely. So I think so one, one example, I think for every, every time that we create a video, we don't just create a one size fits all. So we'll usually create a standard 92 seconds to Two Minute version, then we'll create a 30 to 45 second version, and then we'll create a 15 second version. So if even starting at the very top of the funnel, we have customers who have a ton of success, using those 15 second versions, to even just at the awareness stage, to basically as ads right to get people on their site, then the 45 second version, that is a good length for driving a conversion. On a landing page, you You're still early on in the buyers journey, you probably don't want to watch like a super long video, but 45 seconds is a good length. And then in terms of the 92nd to 122nd videos, ultimately, those can be used anywhere, but we think that they go extremely, and we see the venues like on customers pages, primarily some home pages as well, but absolutely by individual sales reps to kind of keep deals moving. Because it's like one of the most common things and we obviously do this ourselves as well is like if you if you need a fault, if a deal start start, it starts to slow down. But you can either there's a lot of things you can do and like, it's not very effective to just like, send one of those, like just checking in emails and like it doesn't really add any value, right. But it also doesn't enhance the credibility, right? So like, but what you can do instead is like, be like, follow up in that. Hi there, Mr. or Mrs. prospect, I wanted to share this example featuring company acts just like you, you know, have a look about how they're and you ideally, it's the same exact, you know, org title as you're selling to, if you're selling to a director of marketers have a look at their how their Director of Marketing marketer achieved x with us recently, like you took share a new video case study with them. Right. So yeah, I mean, and then ultimately, that's obviously at the more of the one on one basis further down the funnel. So yeah, I think it's, it all comes back to this idea that that anything is more credible, coming from a customer and micro, you can create micro content and slice and dice your longer interviews and use them at different lengths where people have different attention spans the whole buyer journey.

Vinay Koshy 28:45
Certainly. Okay. How would you say that a client is able to measure the effectiveness of using video content, whether it be on a customer page as you were putting it? And that might be a good question to ask the customer page? Are you referring to like a pricing page or blog posts? Or what exactly do you mean? Yeah, I

Sam Shepler 29:09
Actually just more like here, like, like customers page I'm referring to actually like our customers or sometimes it's like company x slash customers. And usually, it's the the main page where a lot of their you know, have a big logo rack, customer list, customer case study. So it's kind of like the pillar page for all of their social proof, basically.

Vinay Koshy 29:33
Okay, and in terms of being able to track the effectiveness of or conversions with these pieces of content, how do you use it and what would you recommend to clients?

Sam Shepler 29:46
Yeah, I think it's one of those things where you can get as advanced and sophisticated as you're you're willing to write and to be honest, I don't think most people work. Some people do but like a lot of people don't really track it. And they just kind of have it anecdotal feeling that that they know it's working because it's helping it's influencing pipeline. It's it's helping deals close. So that's, that's like the biggest often when I ask what will actually, let's just even pause for a second, like the fact that any sales in sales marketing content is being used effectively in the sales process is is quite rare. I think 80% of our content that is created by a marketing is like, goes unused by sales. So I think there's just utilization is, is a huge, no one's gonna keep using things that that aren't working. So like, when I often when I ask my ask our customers, like, oh has the video? How are the customer videos working? There's a really common responses like they're working great sales loves them, they're using them, you know, they're influencing deals, they're helped, they helped us win this deal. And they want more of them like, but like they don't they don't necessarily like attribute like exact dollar values to them. Could that be done? Absolutely. Like there's, especially with new technology out there. You could use implement lead scoring, based on how, what percentage of the video that someone watched? And it's really, it's up to you? Do you have the resources? Do you have the bandwidth? Do you have the technical chops and the appetite to get really technical with your video hosting player, like a video or Wistia and integrate that with your marketing automation platform? You know, I think as it stands now, I don't think there's a lot of doubt. And like, there's not like no one is skeptical, in my experience about the value of video testimonials. So, you know, thankfully for us, it's not that big of an issue. And But yeah, I think in the future, as measurement just gets easier and easier. We will see more measurement naturally, for sure.

Vinay Koshy 32:00
We've talked a fair bit about how to go about crafting a customer led marketing, strategy and process. What would you say from your experience some of the mistakes, though, that you're seeing customers who are trying to attempt similar sorts of things make?

Sam Shepler 32:18
Yeah, I think it's a great question. I think I, I think the biggest and maybe it's not a mistake, but I think it's maybe a missed opportunity is thinking, you know, very tactically, and then missing the big strategic opportunity. And what I mean by that is thinking that testimonials are video testimonials are just something that you use the bottom of the funnel, where the opportunity, as I sort of mentioned earlier, as well as like, customer content, voice of the customer, from the very all the way throughout the funnel just in different

Vinay Koshy 32:56
formats. And for listeners, I think they would know the effectiveness of video itself. And and it's only in terms of engagement, and the ability to convert. But thinking about this from a revenue or sales perspective, I would imagine this could also be used on winback campaigns to further retention and lifetime value. So I can see a lot of potential in these types of content. Where would you say though? This would evolve over time?

Sam Shepler 33:29
Yeah, no, I totally agree with that win back campaigns and expansions and such, I think in terms of where I see customer video content, evolving over time, definitely more full funnel as opposed to just being that sort of like bottom of the funnel asset. And then also, I see it evolving. Well, as I think generally speaking, you're now used to be sales, sales teams, marketing teams, and they used to be VP of sales and VP of Marketing. And now we have like the chief revenue officer, who role in this idea of revenue teams in revenue leaders thinking, you know, more holistically about customer success, sales and Mark Yeah, I think I see it being I see customer content and customer lead marketing being a more kind of cross functional holistic strategy for especially for companies who think as a revenue team and not as just a siloed series of departments for sure.

Vinay Koshy 34:33
So putting this another way, would you say that this is also a way of facilitating the development of networks in that in in showing in capturing these customer stories or testimonials, you essentially creating a piece of content that would allow you to tap into their respective networks and thereby draw more of A customer base to your product or service?

Sam Shepler 35:04
Yeah, I think for sure, I think that's definitely an angle of it. And I think maybe even for us, there is a bit of a network effect on our end, because we will create, we will create the customer testimonial video, we come in contact with our customers customer in that process. So several times, many times we actually end up networking with our customers customer, and then they have such a good experience, they become our customer as well. So I would say yeah, for certainly for us personally, there has absolutely been very significant, you know, positive network effects in our business. So

Vinay Koshy 35:47
excellent. Sam, is there an aspect of customer led marketing using video that you feel we haven't quite covered? But should highlight?

Sam Shepler 35:59
Yeah, I think there's two two little ones I think are worth well. Oh, yeah, there's a couple. I think, in terms of the main use cases, we really talked about, you know, video testimonials, a lot, which I would define is like, a before and after story, typically, in there. That's the most common form of customer customer led marketing and customer video content. Another, you know, great use case is I think, you know, what is like anything for sales enablement, which is a good example we call is like, objection crusher video. So like, instead of being a comprehensive before and after story, with a nice story arc, it's more of like, a video that you send, that's specifically meant to crush a specific objection. And you use it at a very specific time. And it's typically manual, right? So like someone's like, if you're, you have an objection and and someone says, I don't know, like the implementation process for using your new software. Just seems I can't handle this right now. I've got too much on my plate, then you send that objection crusher video about how effortless and seamless the implementation process is. Right. So so and that's not a before and after story. It's it's just an objection Crusher, it's just sales enablement. I think another thing worth noting is just using customers for actual kind of like content marketing, so like you could create, while you're creating your while you're doing your customer interviews, you could ask your customer a question like, how are you? What's your biggest challenge right now in industry? x? And do you have any tips for other cxos? Who, how to how to address that. So like, and then you kind of can use that content and that's great content marketing. It's not an endorsement like a testimonial is it's I mean, it's an implicit endorsement, but it's, it's, it's, it doesn't mention your product, it's just valuable and good insights. So like making your customers like actually a part of that. I think that again, customer led marketing. That's that's a perfect example thinking beyond just just the traditional endorsement testimonial

Vinay Koshy 38:12
Sam. If you were listening to this episode, what would you say is your top takeaway?

Unknown Speaker 38:22
Yeah, I'd say I think if I were listening to this episode, I would say my top takeaway is that there is an opportunity for the best revenue leaders to think about customer video content and customer led marketing as more as a strategy and much more broadly than just checking the box of social proof right? We all know that social proof is important and it is but the opportunity even beyond social proof is actually leveraging customers to communicate on your behalf in very creative and effective ways way beyond the standard check the box approach and and yeah, there's just so many opportunities to get creative with it. We've talked about so many of them so yeah, I guess there's one takeaway I want someone to have it's that well first of all, start small if you don't have any video testimonials start with that right? Like that's that's the first step I mean, if all of your testimonials are you know written, you don't have any video testimonials yet, or any customer video content at all start with just video testimonials. But then eventually you can make cuts of those testimonials that are objection crushers, you can make content marketing versions, so yeah, they the it's sort of a it's a spectrum and progression, and there's a lot of opportunity to get more advanced and the more you can involve customers, voice of the customer in your in your marketing, the more credibility your messaging will have and the more ultimately like the easier will be to you know, make an impact and achieve your goals.

Vinay Koshy 39:59
Terrific, Sam, if listeners were curious and wanted to connect with you or to find out more, where would you recommend they head to?

Sam Shepler 40:10
Absolutely. So my email is a great way to get in touch with me. It's my email is just Sam at testimonial. hero.com. And then yeah, I think our website testimonial hero.com is the best way to find out more about us view examples. We have some free guides around 15 best interview questions to ask and a BB video testimonial. So that definitely recommend people to Yeah, that's a great place to learn more about us.

Vinay Koshy 40:40
Excellent. Sam, thank you so much for doing this. Appreciate it.

Sam Shepler 40:43
Absolutely. Yeah, Vinay. It's been my pleasure, and I hope we have a chance to do it again sometime.

Vinay Koshy 40:48
If you enjoyed this episode of The predictable b2b success podcast, I would love your support, head on over to the Apple podcasts app and give us a rating. And as always, you can catch every episode of The predictable b2b success podcast on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for tuning in.