Medical Device Link.

Originally Published September 1999

ADVERTISING, DISTRIBUTION, & SALES

Expert Witnesses

For medical technology companies, cultivating customer stories can offer a big boost to marketing communications programs.

Kirsten Mortensen

Corporations use product publicity in many ways. One way is reactively. This approach is characterized by using a limited set of publicity tools—primarily news releases—to address specific communications needs. A trade show comes up, so the company puts together a press kit. Some sort of problem becomes public, so the company develops a standby statement that can be used in fielding any inquiries that might come in from the press.

But for companies that are looking to maximize the effectiveness of their marketing communications, product publicity programs can do much more. In fact, a broad and active program of this type can be a powerful asset to a company's marketing communications. Product publicity can help marketing executives to shape the market's perception of their company and its products and services. It can influence the industry's influencers, and it can bend the trajectory of market trends in a way that supports the company's most critical marketing objectives.

One way that product publicity can accomplish these objectives is by leveraging media as a networking infrastructure and passing messages about the company's strengths over that infrastructure to the people who are most ready to hear them. Product publicity at its elegant and effective best does all this and more—but only if the company lays the essential groundwork. And part of that groundwork is the cultivation of key customers: the people whose stories will illustrate the benefits of working with the company's products.

An Underutilized Marketing Resource

It is sometimes said that a happy customer tells, on average, one other person about his or her experience—but that an unhappy customer tells an average of 10. Whether that wisdom is true or overly pessimistic, a program that spreads positive customer feedback will reverse any such negative trend. A program that leverages customer relationships will ensure that customers' positive stories are told and retold—and eventually passed along to prospects who count themselves among the colleagues of the company's customers.

For medical technology firms, using customer stories in a marketing communications program can offer a number of advantages. First, customer stories carry considerable weight, especially in technical markets where sales cycles are long and where buying decisions are complicated and involve multiple parties and bureaucratic buy-in. Obviously, customer stories are more credible than vendors' claims. It's simple human nature to put more faith in the testimony of a peer than in that of a salesperson.

In addition, customer stories add solidity to information about the use of a company's product. It's one thing to provide prospects with a sales sheet that tells them how the company's technology will boost productivity and slash labor costs. But such feature-benefit descriptions are not only take-it-on-faith promises, they are also abstractions. It's exponentially more powerful to describe how someone in the industry has already used the technology to increase output by 12% with 1.75 fewer FTEs.

Customer stories also attract attention. Much marketing communications collateral can be dry and overwhelmingly technical, particularly in industries such as the medical device market. But customer stories exert the pull of human interest. Simply put, we like to read how others solve the problems that we face in our jobs. So, to borrow an advertising metric, customer stories are an effective way to increase the number of impressions that prospective customers receive about a product.

And finally, customer stories lend themselves to a number of different media venues (see sidebar above). In many cases, they can form the basis of application stories for submission to industry trade journals. If someone in the organization or its public relations agency has cultivated relationships with journal editors—and understands how to offer stories without compromising that relationship—this can be a very cost-effective way to spread information about the company's products.

Quoting customers in product news releases helps enliven them; it also provides releases with a user-based perspective—ideal for reaching the intended audience. Another option is to self-publish customer-based stories. Placing customer stories on the company's Web site or using them in sales handouts produced by desktop publishing can be effective marketing communications tactics. Companies can also pull quotes from customer stories for uses that are more purely promotional, such as using them in ad copy.

Preparation Is Key

Customer stories can greatly strengthen a company's marketing communications presence. So what's the best way to mine this resource? It isn't enough to sit back and wait for customers to volunteer their positive experiences to the company's marketing staff. Companies should establish an active program to solicit and track down those stories. Soliciting stories will result in the company having more potential stories in the queue. And the more potential stories it has, the more options the company will have for putting them to use. Following are some suggestions for activities that companies can perform to prime the customer-based story pump.

Begin at the Beginning. Like any marketing initiative, a program to develop customer stories requires support from many different people. Sales reps, for example, are a key resource for identifying potential stories. If the company staffs a service help desk, its personnel represent another story source.

The company's program will also affect to some degree its product managers and marketing management and staff. Thus, the company's first step should be to set and communicate the objectives of the program. Everyone in the company should know that collecting customer stories is now a corporate priority. Personnel in charge of the program should develop and distribute communications materials to explain what the program is and how it will benefit the company.

If the program objectives are clear and the reasons for instituting a customer story program are communicated, the program is more likely to receive the follow-through it will need to succeed.

Spotting Potential Stories. It's important that everyone in the company knows about the customer story program. But some staffers will need more in-depth knowledge of program needs. These employees, including sales staff and anyone else who has one-on-one contact with customers, must be able to spot stories that have real potential as well as gather the pertinent information needed to move on them. Elements they should be on the lookout for include the following.

Newsworthiness. One of the most effective ways to use customer stories is to place them in industry trade publications. To do that, each story needs an angle with journalistic merit. But even stories that are used in other ways, such as Web site content, will work better if they are fresh, different, and exciting. Company staff, therefore, need to watch for stories that represent industry "firsts." Customers who are somehow unique also represent special opportunities, as do customers who display industry leadership.

While the newsworthiness of a story may sometimes relate directly to a customer's use of the product, staff shouldn't limit the company's prospects to such story lines. A hospital that is performing leading-edge research to battle a deadly disease, for example, might be the perfect subject for a story that mentions a company's contribution to the hospital's overall productivity or financial health—even if the company's products don't figure directly in the hospital's research.

It's also good to look for stories that leverage trends in consumer media. Right now, for example, women's health issues command top attention in newspaper articles and television broadcasts. So any story that has a women's health angle is worth at least a second look.

Finally, be cautious of relying too heavily on the same customer or handful of customers. Recycling a good customer in a couple of different venues often makes sense. But most times, it's better to look for fresh applications of your company's products.

Data. Another element that company reps should watch for is whether customers document how they use the company's products—and how those products affect the customers' staff, overhead, and productivity. Customers who capture data showing the impact of equipment they purchase can be an extremely valuable product publicity resource.

PR Savvy. It's a good idea to flag customers who are themselves savvy about public relations (PR). PR-savvy customers welcome opportunities to publicize their equipment purchases. They are not publicity shy; from the top down, their organizations are comfortable with all aspects of media relations.

Furthermore, such customers tend to be those that are most enthusiastic and confident in their buying decisions. Often, they view their relationships with a particular company as an asset. They seek ways to leverage the relationship in their marketing communications, because their choice of the company's state-of-the-art technology demonstrates their leadership and responsiveness to market changes.

Throughout any company are employees who become extremely familiar with its customers and how they use its products. If these employees master the process of screening customers for their product publicity potential, the company will be well on its way to collecting a worthwhile database of potential customer stories.

Yes, but Can They Talk?

While some customers will embrace publicity opportunities, others will not. Particularly in the healthcare industry, customers may have good reasons to avoid letting a product manufacturer publish their stories. Depending on the circumstances, these may be temporary roadblocks or true dead ends. Potential concerns include the following.

Professional Credibility. Some healthcare professionals are highly sensitive to situations where they may appear to endorse particular products. Professionals who rely on corporate funding for their research projects, for instance, sometimes take great pains to avoid playing favorites among industry vendors. Some healthcare professionals also feel that the appearance of product endorsement will compromise their independence.

Organizational Policy. In other cases, the individual who bought a company's product might be willing to participate in joint publicity, but management is not. The user's institution may even have a policy that forbids such activities. Or there may be management-level disagreements about whether buying the company's product was the right thing to do—and until the dust settles, nobody dares give his or her blessing to a publicity project.

Fear of the Unknown. Other times, customers may express reluctance to participate in joint publicity opportunities because they have never done product publicity and don't know what the company is really asking. They may be concerned that the program will burden them with extra work or that the project will result in unsolicited inquiries from the press or from the company's sales prospects.

Fortunately, in many cases, customer reluctance can be addressed by incorporating the following elements into the customer-story product publicity program.

Give Customers Complete Control over Copy. Assure customers that they will be able to review and sign off on anything prepared about them for publication. Let them know that they can edit anything they are uncomfortable with, and that the project will be scrapped if they change their minds and decide not to proceed.

Distinguish News from Ad Copy. Make sure that writers approach stories journalistically, not like sales copy. This tip is particularly important if the company intends to submit customer stories for publication in industry trades. Journal editors dislike stories that read like brochure copy. Stories should be based in fact; any product benefits described should be substantiated with data or, minimally, with anecdotes that the customer is comfortable telling. Stories written to this standard won't read like endorsements, and so are more likely to win customer support.

Assist with Copy Review. Offer to assist in administering all copy review requirements. Sometimes, customers need a written description of the program to present to their management or their organization's PR department before they agree to a joint publicity opportunity. Other times, customers could use some help distributing copy to people who need to okay articles before they're finalized.

Do It Yourself. Don't ask customers to write articles. Have the company's staff write them or contract with an agency. And when it comes time to finalize copy, make it easy for customers to get their changes incorporated. This requires some flexibility because some customers will prefer to receive articles electronically, while others will only accept hard copy that they can mark up. Either way, accommodate each customer's preference.

Explain the Process Up Front. Don't take it for granted that the customer knows how product publicity works. Address any questions about the process, and make sure that the customer knows he or she will control the copy and its use, and that the company will minimize any investment of time on the customer's part.

The Information Chain

A story begins when a sales rep learns that a customer plans to use the company's product in a unique way, is amenable to some joint publicity, and will share data showing the expected benefits of the product. Now comes the next step: capturing and sharing this information. This may require setting up a new process or modifying existing programs to track customer information. Either way, it's critical that enough information be captured to ensure that the company's PR agency or marketing communications staff can, at a glance, determine how to best leverage that customer's story.

It's also important to establish ownership of this process. Collecting this type of information will never be a rep's top priority—selling is. So the company should put its agency or a marketing staff person in charge. Let them periodically query reps, by voice mail or e-mail, to solicit customer information. Then centralize the tracking of that information so that no customer story falls through the cracks.

Customer Signoff

The last critical piece of any customer-based product publicity program is ensuring that the company has the rights to use the material. Our agency has two categories of a release form that we require our clients' customers to sign when we work with them to develop stories. The first type obtains permission to submit a customer story to a trade journal or to use a quote from the customer in a news release. The other is for situations where the intended use is more promotional in nature, such as quoting the customer in a sales brochure. Companies should use appropriate legal assistance to develop comparable documents for their product publicity programs. Copies of the signed release forms should be kept on file along with copies of the finalized stories.

Conclusion

A customer-based product publicity program can work hard for medical product companies, helping to spread the word about the benefits of using the firm's products or services. But like any marketing communications initiative, it takes planning and effort to maximize results. It's a good idea to integrate the program with other marketing efforts from the moment that a new product or enhancement is ready for beta testing. And it's essential for the company to cultivate the necessary skills—or contract with someone who has them—to take the raw material of customer applications and develop compelling stories about what its products can do.

Companies that commit to realizing the potential publicity that a product can generate will find each customer story offers a powerful marketing communications tool.

Kirsten Mortensen is a writer for Creative Communications Services/PR (Carlsbad, CA).

Illustration by Tim Teebken

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