Why build an army of customer advocates?
You’re a founder of a tech startup. You’ve spent months — even years — developing your product. You’ve believed in your vision, worked all hours of the day and night creating, iterating and perfecting your product. You’ve likely waded through mountains of pizzas with your team, built a million decks for prospects and investors, mulled over messaging, got your first customers on board, your website’s up and running, and you’re finally ready to introduce the rest of the world to your brainchild. It’s the leader in XXX, it’s world-leading in fact, it’s a unique solution, it’s best-in-class, it’s the most powerful…No, it’s really not.
If your product is as amazing you say it is…prove it
Yes, it may sound harsh, but a problem many founders face is the fact they think their product is the best thing since sliced bread. No one could possibly have a better product. And it’s easy to understand this mindset. As a founder, it’s your vision, your company, your team, your product , your baby— you live and breath it all. But the reality is every vendor, in every industry all over the world can blow their own trumpet and say: “I am the most awesome — ever” — it’s in their best interests to. Everyone is “the leading provider of XXX”, “the leader in XXX, “the best-in-class XXX”, “the world-first”, and the list goes on.
Take the phrase “leader in enterprise collaboration”. Google this term and Microsoft, Jive, Intralinks, Asana, IBM and more all appear. That’s at least five companies all claiming to be a leader in the same space — so who is? What is this claim based on? So, how can you make your company stand out? One of the most powerful ways to differentiate yourself is with your customers
Fact — “how” and “why” is more interesting than “what”
As a business, you’re targeting specific audiences. Whether it’s CTOs, heads of innovation, project managers, whoever, these audiences want to know how your technology is going to help them. What problem does it solve? The best way you can prove the value of your offering to someone else is by showcasing how it has helped other people and organisations. Provide cold, hard evidence of how your technology has helped a company overcome a challenge, how it has benefited them and the ROI. Your customers have selected your product over your competitors’ and prospects want to know why. Real-life customer stories provide prospects with the comfort factor. Rather than taking a risk and investing some of their precious budget in a virtually unknown supplier (no one ever got fired for buying IBM / Microsoft / Cisco / insert well-known global brand here), your customers provide prospects with the comfort factor. They’re now suddenly going to be investing in something that their peers are already using.
Think about your own purchasing patterns
Are you more likely to buy a product having seen an advert paid for, designed and messaged by the vendor or based on customer reviews, recommendations and independent articles?
As soon as you’re able to, you need to start building an army of customer advocates ready to go into battle for you. You want to be able to put your customers forward for press interviews, analyst briefings, prospect calls and speaking slots at events. Your site should include logos, quotes, videos and case studies. So, how do you get started? Stay tuned for my post on building your customer marketing programme.
