Your Customers to You: Don’t Try to Be a Hero
Sometimes I have a client come to me, and they want to do a case study. And the conversation goes something like this…
Client: Hey Bill, we’d like to do a case study.
Bill: That sounds great! Case studies can be really powerful marketing tools. What’s the story about?
Client: Well, it’s about Client X. They were struggling with this problem and we came in and saved the day for them.
Bill: Hmm. Yeah, that’s not a great story.
Do you see what happened? The story starts out focused on the customer, but they’re quickly relegated to the role of the Damsel in Distress. My client swoops in and rescues the damsel.
Your customers don’t want to hear about how you’ll come in and save the day for them. They want to come in and save the day for themselves.
They want to be the hero of their own story.
9 Keys to Killer Case Studies — With Examples
That’s human nature. We all want to hear about ourselves. We want to be empowered. We want to fix our own problems.
When you make your company the hero of the story, the spotlight is on you. There’s a scent of smugness in the air, and the hero starts to look like a vainglorious Tony Stark or Captain Amazing (from Mystery Men. If you have 13-year-old boys, this is a must-see movie!). Your customer merely becomes a convenient prop in the storyline so the hero can show off.
And so, your case studies — and really, all of your marketing content — should be telling stories about how your customers save the day. They just happen to use you as their vehicle to do it.
Speaking of vehicles…
You Are the Delorean of Solutions
Okay, so what does that look like, exactly? Well, it looks a lot like Back to the Future, actually.
Back to the Future is the story of a bratty kid who saves his family and fixes a broken timeline. He also happens to break the timeline — which maybe makes him the villain as well as the hero? Anyway. He uses a Delorean time machine to do it.
Now, the Delorean is very cool. In fact, in the history of time machines, there has never been one that could even compete with the Delorean for coolness. As Doc Brown says, “If you’re going to build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?”
There is no Back to the Future movie without that time machine. The kid is interchangeable, but the Delorean is the foundation of the story. And yet. The story isn’t about the Delorean — it’s about the kid.
Marty is the hero, and at the end of the day the time machine is just a tool.
And you are that tool. Your customer is Marty McFly, and you are the Delorean.
Create Content That Keeps ‘Em Coming Back for More
Make Much of Your Customer
It’s really hard to take a backseat and shine the spotlight (or headlight in this case) on someone else. Especially when the story is supposed to help you grow your business. You’ve got a product to sell, and there’s pressure to boost your numbers every quarter. So naturally you want to make your marketing content all about you.
That’s why this lesson is so hard for companies to embrace. But it’s critical to the success of your marketing strategy.
Let me say it again: if you want your marketing content to be successful, you need to make your customer the hero of the story.
Must-read: Unmasking the Next Superhero of B2B Marketing: Comic Books!
Don’t try to be the hero. Just be a tool — but the awesomest tool in the history of tools!
Hopefully this framework can help you keep your customer in the spotlight whenever you’re writing case studies or telling any kind of story about your product or service.
It’s not about you. It’s about how your customer became a hero by using you.