A while ago, I was looking through marketing material produced by one of my clients. Let me call them Company X.
The brochures, fact sheets, news releases and web pages had lots of photos of their clients’ products. There were photos of machinery, assembly lines, fork-lift trucks, ships, tools – lots of hardware. There were people in the photos too – stock photos of happy business people and consumers. You know the type of thing I mean.
There was one obvious omission. Their customers.
Yes, they featured the things that their customers designed, made, shipped, recycled…
But they didn’t show the people who did it.
The actual people in their customer base who had decided to be a customer of Company X and use what they provide.
If you’re deciding whether to become the customer of a company, you want to know if their other customers are like you. You want to know whether you ‘fit’. So it would be helpful to know what those people are like who have gone before you in making that decision whether to become a customer.
When producing marketing collateral, try to feature your customers. The real people. In fact, go further than featuring them, turn them into heroes. Show the brave, wonderful things they’re doing with your products and services. Put them on a pedestal. Shine a spotlight on their personal achievements, accomplished with what you’ve provided to them.
That will help explain what you do to potential customers in a human, immediately understandable way. And when people are turned into heroes in your marketing, they not only become great ambassadors for you, but it helps their careers along too. And they’ll love you for that.