Anyone who enters PR firm agency life quickly hears peers prodding clients for reference-able customers. They prod for “customer traction” press releases, and case studies that they can ship to target journalists. There is this idea – seldom challenged – that a blueprint of how one customer uses your product will attract publicity, which will attract other customers and so on.
I’d argue that the product / service is what attracts customers, far more than superficial arm-waving.
Every day the “customer win” press releases that I see (especially from the other research co’s that we compete with) have some of the most breathless commentary about the incredible chasm their solution helped their customer cross. Like so much hot air, these things often lack any real authenticity or substance, and the throwaway customer quote is so clearly contrived by the vendor that it’s rendered useless. There are moments where we see things in PR that make us sort of embarrassed for the profession. Today I saw one competitor list out “companies that rely on our solution” (as if the research solution were that customer’s sole lifeline to prosperity).
I’m just saying, every customer that we have won so far took their own free trial, did their own due diligence, and decided that it helped them conduct their business. And I’m sure as hell not going to bother any of them to testify on our behalf about our supposed awesomeness (if they feel so inclined they can do it on their own terms, in their own forums). #1, I don’t think it’s their responsibility (they already paid us, so they shouldn’t have to do anything else but use our product… if anything, they should complain that we are taking so long to get the other cool new stuff we’re working on released). #2, I’d rather spend the time (required to get their quote and put out some lame customer win announcement) trying to make our product better. We think our product is good at some stuff, but we have much higher expectations for where we are taking it, and we certainly aren’t interested in posing on some platform like we just won a bodybuilding contest.
The more I engage our target customers, the more I’m noticing that some of the highest revenue companies in the tech industry do not stoop to produce embarrassing rhetoric about how awesome they are. No breathless fodder about how revolutionary their product is or how visionary their spokespersons are. For many, they don’t even list a single customer on their web site.
Their customers they earn by the merits of their product. And their competitors literally have no clues to seeing where they are getting the most traction.
Could that be a clue for the rest of us, that breathless arm-waving and self-promotion is now passe in tech marketing and PR?
