End-to-End Client Story Management Takes Work Off Marketing Director’s Plate

Courtney Casey and I met as members of an IT industry marketing peer group in 2016. We started working together when Courtney needed someone to fill in for a few months while she looked for a new marketer for her team at Accent Computer Solutions. Six years later we were still working together, the last two years being for VC3, the company that acquired Accent.

Client success stories were always a part of the work I did in my role as Courtney’s outsourced content marketing strategist and writer. From rewriting existing stories so they followed a clearer narrative form to providing end-to-end management of new stories, Courtney trusted me to interact with her clients in a professional way, ask the right questions, and turn their experiences into marketing assets her team could use to build credibility and nurture trust.

A Conversation with Courtney Casey, Director of Marketing Operations at VC3

Where do you use client stories and testimonials?

Everywhere and anywhere! My favorite places are on our website’s services pages, emails when they're related to a campaign or initiative we're doing, and on one-pagers so prospects can reference what the client said about that service.

Has your opinion on the importance of client stories changed as AI has come on the scene?

I have always thought client stories were important, but now the Internet sees it as more important too. Search engines and AI search are making your brand more important, so those stories become more critical for a different reason. Before AI, I knew I needed client stories at some point along the buyer journey for social proof. Now I think it's important for the entry point. We need to have them in order for prospects to find us.

How valuable has your client success story library been over time?

We consistently go back to it anytime we're developing messaging for campaigns around different products or services. We look back to see what somebody said and what words they used. That helps us make sure we're using the right language and gives us a bank of quotes for social proof.

What stood out about my process from start to finish?

The end-to-end management was super helpful. You took the client story process off my plate. Once there was the introduction, it was done. But what really stood out was that you didn't just deliver the story and walk away. You gave us the value of having all those quotes and social posts as a bank of assets we could use.

What gave you confidence to let me work directly with your clients?

I could tell from your presence and the way that you interact with people that the questions you ask put them at ease and put them in a comfortable environment, which is exactly what you need when you're trying to get someone to open up. Then over time it became, “I trust Lori, therefore it's going to be fine.”

Were there any surprise benefits beyond the published stories?

One thing that is underappreciated about client success stories is the ability to share some of the quotes that you're not going to use for the exact case study with the teams who work on that account and say "these are the things that they said about you." That really boosts morale.

What problem does having a trusted resource for client stories solve for you?

It solves the problem of getting back quickly to a client who is interested. There's often a resourcing challenge with responding quickly and delivering the work. Having somebody who is trusted to do client stories and deliver good work—that's the part that gives me one less thing to think about.

How do you think about ROI for something that's hard to measure?

That's so tough. If somebody pressed me to say, do they matter and can you prove it? I can't always show direct attribution, but somewhere in their subconscious they saw that we had this client, and that helped push us forward. We know those factors play into the decisions we all make.

You can't say it didn't help along the way. If we took stories away, I think we would see a decline. It's like cybersecurity or vitamins—you can't prove that it worked because things didn't happen. But I just know it did.

What's it like to work with me?

Lori always delivers. Working with you was like an extension of my team. I knew there was going to be an open line of communication where I would know the status of what we were working on. I didn't have to think about it in the best way possible. I just knew I was going to get an excellent result, which is what you want in a great working relationship.