One of my big projects this year is to update and get new customer stories to promote through testimonials or application notes. These are stories about customers who use our products, have a good relationship with our company and are willing to let me use their name and application in a published note. As any small business marketer knows, this is not easy. Many customers, especially the more well-known ones, are reluctant to hand out their name for publication.
Well, I’m trying once again to come up with my angle when I see Home Depot’s new social media campaign “Real People, Real Stories” rolled out through a banner ad on My Yahoo. I’m sure they’re promoting in other places as well, but this is where I saw it. Similar to my Tellabs post, Home Depot is showing customer stories through graphics and video and are allowing you, their customer, to share your story about your experiences with their brand. Here’s the banner – when scrolled over, the banner expands, the video starts and a picture of their profiled customer pops up.
The landing page is equally as impressive as Tellabs’ landing page. One thing I noticed is that Home Depot is doing a good job of tracking statistics from the campaign. The URL contains “my_yahoo” so the landing page is set up specifically for people coming from Yahoo. They’ll be able to see how many hits they’re getting from each source and where the person goes after hitting the landing page. This is a well thought out campaign.
So, how does a small marketing budget compete? Just fine. The key component of this campaign is the customer story which is attainable for companies of any size. After writing an engaging account of the successful customer and how your product or service played a roll, you can find many ways to socialize the story.
Okay, so you don’t have the budget for streaming online video or a web interface that allows users to tell their story. No problem. Although I’m a fan of these new social media campaigns, ROI is yet to be determined on these. Home Depot is really going to have to push this to make it viral.
Ads on a niche search engine or news site, paid search ads, banner ads on focused industry sites, and a well-designed landing page showing off your new customer story has the capabilities for a very successful – and affordable – campaign.
evangelist – thanks for contributing with your thorough insight. The link you provided is packed with great information. As someone that markets towards engineers, I found many of the tips informative.
Thanks!
Pat