[00:00:00] **Scott:**
Don’t try to boil the whole ocean at once. There are so many sites and businesses that say, “Okay, we’re gonna launch. We need a full menu of customer stories, and a full menu of recorded events and testimonials.”
This is a marathon. Your investors are gonna be rewarding you for getting customers quickly, but based on what you’ve learned from the advocates or the enthusiasts, start simple.
[00:00:32] **Sam:**
Alrighty folks, welcome to the State of Customer Storytelling podcast. I’m your host, Sam Shepler, from Testimonial Hero.
This is the show that is all about helping you, as a customer marketer, a B2B marketing leader, understand the most current practices and strategies related to all the things customer marketing and customer storytelling.
The State of Customer Storytelling podcast is brought to you by Testimonial Hero. Testimonial Hero helps over 300 B2B software companies easily create stunning video testimonials that close deals faster.
You can view examples and find out more at testimonialhero.com.
Today on the show we have Scott K. Wilder, Global head of Customer Engagement and Community at HubSpot. Scott currently advises early stage companies on customer advocacy and community.
Scott, welcome to the show.
[00:01:32] **Scott:**
Thank you, Sam. It’s great to be here. Thank you.
[00:01:41] **Sam:**
Good to have you here.
To kick things off, can you tell us why customer stories matter so much, particularly today in B2B? Why does customer storytelling and customer stories matter?
[00:02:10] **Scott:**
So, you know, you think about some of the data I’ve seen recently is, you know, 76% of purchases that are made the, the buyer or the decision maker really relies on. The kids or people they know to influence their decision. And when they’re reaching out to those folks, you know, somebody’s reaching out to me for advice about a product I’m probably gonna tell ‘em.
Yeah, it’s great. But I’m also gonna tell ‘em a story about how I use it. So stories are just a big part of who we are. And so I think from the customer per. It definitely enables them to feel more comfortable with their, their engagement, their purchase, et cetera. Right. It gives them that sense of comfort and trust from the company side, really humanizes the whole experience.
It humanizes the brand and in these customer stories, as well as you collect them, there’s a tremendous amount of insights that can come out. Right. You know, a lot of us go through the process of just capturing these stories. But if you listen to the language people use. Right. Tremendous insights in terms of how they talk about the product.
If I can go off on a tangent for a second, many years ago, I worked on a device by Sony. That was an internet device and they were insistent on, having us put it, having the device beyond night room night, room night tables. so people could really like see the internet or see the time from there. And so I went out and interviewed customers.
And was really funny and listening to stories, all these women started talking about how they would prefer the use of device in the kitchen for recipes. And then they had this certain way. They talked about it as well. Right? So we had Sony this corporation that said, look, we’re gonna go down this path for whatever reason.
But then it was the stories that I heard from the audiences that we wanted to reach. And those were the ones that really influenced not only how we market the product, but also other things.
[00:04:11] **Sam:**
I wanna click in on that humanizing the brand. Cause that’s such a good way to put it. And I think, you know, a lot of, I think a lot of people.
It’s very current. Right. You know, a lot of marketers, we’re all figuring, oh, like we need to further like humanize, you know, our brand. And you know, sometimes we say it and then we move on and you know, maybe it doesn’t happen, but I’d be curious, you know, what does that, you know, humanizing the brand, you know, mean to you?
[00:04:37] **Scott:**
Yeah, for me, it’s really understanding. how the customer talks about your product? What is the context they use your product in? What are the, you know, jobs or tasks they’re trying to accomplish? When I was at Intuit, we really tried to understand how a customer uses the product in their environment.
And we didn’t just look at, okay, there’s a screen and they’re on QuickBooks. We wanted to see what was around their computer, what kind of business problems they were trying to solve. We also asked them to talk about the product and talk about what it means to them, how they feel about it, whatever.
So in a nutshell, it’s understanding the words and phrases people use, and trying to incorporate that, that in your marketing programs, it’s understanding the context that people use it, right? It’s not just a credit card in your wallet. There’s this whole thing that people use. I call wallet your power pack, right?
So it’s like, there’s, there’s more in your wallet to understanding the context of it. And then humanizing it. Another thing is like bringing those people to life, whether it’s through images, whether it’s through video, et cetera.
[00:05:43] **Sam:**
Hmm. And, you know, throughout your career, you know, you mentioned Intuit and, you know, I know you’ve also been at, you know, so many other really market leading companies, Adobe, Marketo, Google, Udacity, and, and more, how have you seen customer advocacy sort of evolve over, you know, the course of your career?
[00:06:08] **Scott:**
Yeah. So also, you know, I think that. It early in my career, which I didn’t even put it on my LinkedIn profile. I worked at American Express where I think credit card companies, financial institutions, airlines, they put a lot of energy into loyalty programs. And so for me, that’s partially the beginning of a lot of this stuff and thinking about like how you build out a loyalty program and I can go into some of the ways they were thinking about it.
But as I moved in more into the B2B tech world and worked along highway 1 0 1 in San Francisco, I found that a lot of these companies several years ago had these different initiatives. So for example, one group would be working on customer stories. Another would be working on a reference program.
Another would be working on testimonials. What I see customer advocacy doing is really tying all that together, taking a holistic approach to these programs. So there’s consistency in the programs. So you’re not reach so not everybody’s reaching out to the same customer, asking for the information, et cetera.
And it’s an exciting time because customer advocacy is also fueling what, what I would of the new, customer led growth movement as well. Right? So if customer led growth, You have advocacy, it’s the fuel, that’s driving it. And under advocacy, there are these pillars of, different types of engagement, testimonials reviews.
[00:07:31] **Sam:**
And tell me more about, you know, customer led growth. Cause that’s definitely, you know, something I’ve been hearing, you know, more often.
Yeah. How, how do you think, think about, you know, customer, customer leg growth And, what is the customer leg growth movement?
[00:07:47] **Scott:**
Well, I think when we wanna buy a product, we’re relying on our peers. We’re relying on, you know, other individuals, sometimes peers, sometimes we’ll call ‘em experts, influencers. Right. And so. Those people who are gonna recommend your product or give you advice about it, hopefully they’re using the product.
Right. And, I’m not gonna recommend a product I don’t know about. So I’m a customer and I’m gonna basically be giving recommendations. And so as a customer, I’m driving that whole, I’m kicking off that whole process, that whole journey that an individual will go a.
[00:08:23] **Sam:**
That makes a ton of sense. And you mentioned also the loyalty programs, I do want to touch on that as well. what do you think B2B marketers, you know, what do you think we can learn from, you know, maybe the best practices or the philosophies that drive these, you know, very effective of consumer loyalty programs.
[00:08:44] **Scott:**
Yeah. I mean, they’re definitely looking at, you know, when I worked at American Express, they were definitely thinking about the, the journey that an individual is gonna interact with your product, with your, with your company, not your product. I think that’s a really important thing, especially for larger companies that have multiple products.
When I got to American Express. They basically treated Joe Smith as a green card holder, a gold card holder and a platinum card or corporate card holder, right? Four, that person had four cards in his portfolio and had four different marketing programs. The insight. And again, this was a long time ago was that it’s one customer.
And so basically they kicked off the initiative of to try and make sure that all their programs are talking to that customer based on their tenure. Versus based on the product they have. And I think that one thing we can learn is interacting with customers based on their tenure, based on their touch points versus saying, I have product a and therefore I’m gonna talk to you all about product a,
[00:09:44] **Sam:**
Hmm. Yeah.
[00:09:45] **Scott:**
The other thing with, you know, these companies and financial institutions and credit card is they looked at the whole ecosystem of. How that individual, how that customers gonna interact with you, other brands that are so going express American Express would market not just. American Express customer, but they’d say, well, wait a minute, you also, you, you know, go on Delta airlines, you also go on American airlines.
And so they’d figure out what those are other behaviors you have. And again, they would market to you incorporating all of them into their communications because they had an incredible way of tracking how you use your card. And so how does that translate into B2B world? You know, if I’m at a Marketo, for example, this is kind of before I went to Adobe, we knew that what other.
You’re a customer Marketo, but we also knew what other products in the Mar Marketo ecosystem or in the launch point partner program that you use. And I think that’s really important. You know, if we talk about an advocacy program, you know, it’d be great if we can partner with other companies and say that, you know, Sam is a customer of Adobe, be.
Sam is also using BHAs, which is Adobe product and other things that, you know, Adobe’s associated with. Adobe’s getting the NFTs now, all the, you know, all those things. And so all of a sudden, you know, helps you because Sam, you’re not gonna be bombarded by all these different people. You’re gonna have one holistic message now for smaller companies the way, instead of thinking about all these business partnerships, if you don’t have them.
Think about how you tie together, all these different touch points. Again, Sam is the customer, but I don’t want the support team to reach out to him. And then the acquisition team reach out to him. And so as you think about advocacy, like, or customer engagement to think about it holistically, in terms of your communications,
[00:11:40] **Sam:**
Such a good point and speaking of smaller companies and, you know, maybe, you know, startups who are growing quickly, but they’re not, you know, enterprise companies yet, what other, principles or, you know, perspective would you offer for the, these early stage companies who want to, you know, execute better on their customer advocacy?
[00:12:04] **Scott:**
Yeah, I think the first one is trying to identify, well, first one is your business objectives and what you’re trying to accomplish. But after that is, you know, a lot of these companies are wrestling with like, how do identify enthusiasts. And that’s where you can, you know, look at people. you know, I’ll take a company called, the ramp, right.
I, you know, I use them, and they do expense management, but you know, you go on Twitter and you see what people are writing about the ramp, right? So that’s a great opportunity for that company to reach out to those individuals on Twitter and see if they wanna be part of the program. A second tactic for identifying them is going into G2 and seeing who’s writing reviews about you.
A third tactic is, you know, who’s contacting you and asking questions either in your chat or your call center. So that’s helping you identify who these enthusiasts are. And the next thing is, is to partner with them. And co-design something that Intuit is really into co-design the program. So what I mean by that is figure out like, Should you start with a customer story.
Should you start with like an advocacy point system? You know, these individuals are gonna help guide you of what what’s influenced them when they used your product. They’re also gonna help you with the language. And I’m really big on how we talk to customers and using their language, not our language , with them.
So that’s just three ways. And I think the last thing is, you know, don’t try and boil the whole ocean at once. There’s so many sites and businesses that say, okay, we’re gonna launch. We need like a full menu of customer stories, full menu of recorded events and testimonials, you know, this is a marathon, right?
And I know your investors are gonna be rewarding you for getting customers quickly, but you know, based on what you’ve learned from the advocates that you’ve decided, or the enthusiasts is start simple. Maybe you start with customer stories, you know, I’m a big fan of what you’re trying to do with videos and videos are really easy to do.
You know, I mean, depending on, you know, how strict you wanna be about the look and feel of it, you know, you could identify 10 customers, ask them to get their phones out, ask them to ask three or four questions or ask them to answer three or four questions. Right. And then you can have 10 videos or 30 videos right away.
[00:14:21] **Sam:**
I love that phrase and it’s just, co-designing, you know, that’s such a powerful way to put it. And that’s something that we, you know, have a, could improve on a little bit. So I wanna kind of, you know, take this to opportunity to kind push on that and learn a few more things from you here. if I’m actually, you know, co-design, you know, our advocacy program, is it basically as.
You know, going to the customer instead of, you know, just asking, Hey, can you, can you do XYZ? It’s like, this is just like, so here’s our kind of menu of things that we, you know, we, we had in mind, we’re, we’re open to, you know, whatever, you know, would be valuable to you And it’s like, what would you want do first?
Cause like, I guess from my perspective, I’m always, I, I can sometimes am, you know, conscious of like, all right, well, like we really, we want to get them to do say like a video testimonial eventually. So maybe we ask for that sooner, but like, you know, if we ask them for a G2 review, maybe we have to wait, you know, two months to ask them for the video testimonial.
Ultimately, you know, the real answer is, you know, it’s, you have to do what’s best for the customer and, so I guess the question is like, yeah, tell me more like the specifics, like how can I do a better job? Co-designing my advocacy program.
[00:15:40] **Scott:**
There’s a discipline called ethnography, which is kind of a anthropo anthropological approach to some of this. and I don’t wanna sound like I’m in the, faculty lounge, throwing out these terms. But, so I think some of the things to do is first, you know, when you identify these individuals is understand how they learn about your products or about similar products, you know, asking them where go, right.
They might go. To LinkedIn or they might go to Twitter, they might go to both. you know, the second thing is understanding, when they go to your site or they interact with your product, like what, what resonates with them the most? Right. So you’re gonna have to ask a lot of questions around like the five whys.
Well, if they say your site resonates the most well, why? And they might say, well, there’s lot of information. Well, why? And eventually you’ll. You know, whether it’s, again, is it a story? Is it a text based story or a video day story? It’s also good to ask them what other companies are doing well. and then I, you know, I’m gonna go back and talk about like really listen to how they talk, talk about your products.
So you wanna ask those questions? I wouldn’t, I mean, to be honest, I wouldn’t lead with the menu mean that’s what we, we do, with all our surveys. I would use that as kind of like a, the second step. Because at first you wanna make sure, what’s spontaneous. What’s top of mind for them.
What’s, you know, what’s gonna come out for them. Sometimes one thing I’ve learned in my previous job was that, depending on how you structure the survey and depending on where the survey is offered, you can influence their decisions. What do I mean by that? If I, the same. Off our knowledge base website and off our community.
And then I ask the question, which one influences you more. I can tell you that the people who are at the knowledge base page are gonna say the knowledge base and the people who are at the community. Right. So it’s really important to, to kind of think about that as well, And you might wanna try different ways. another thing I would, which doesn’t directly answer your question, but I get at as well as in these stories is you, wanna understand how your customers. How these people that you’re talking to are relatable for your customers? there’s a really good book called, putting stories to work.
I, and I really recommend it for everybody. And they make a point about how our B2B approach to customer stories is a little broken. and they kind of have a formulaic approach of saying like, okay, so you, in these stories, you’re. And so it’s really important to understand why Bob is like, you, right?
So even before you get to the problem that Bob is trying to solve, somehow when you’re putting together these programs and you’ve collected all this information, trying to figure out why Bob is like your customers so they can relate to them. And the next thing is, Bob has an issue, right? And it could be a business problem.
It could be whatever. And so it’s important to flesh out why Bob’s not feeling good about the, like, why he’s not feeling good because he encountered this and that’s something you can pull out when you’re interviews, testimonials or whatever. And then Bob finds a solution and he’s better. so that’s kind of, kind of it, and you know, what’s interesting is again, a lounge, if.
Stories are put together, right? It’s a little bit like that, you know, in terms of, you know, creating this, like this common link between them, between the reader and the, the storyteller in the beginning. Right? So there’s a whole like kind of rhythm of this. So long-winded answer to your question here is I start with questions, but open ended questions about where they go.
What language, how they listen to, how they talk about the product, which websites they use, ask them, who does it well, who doesn’t do it well and why? And then you can, you know, lead in with kind of, if you’re not getting the answer to your questions, like, you know, here’s, here’s the menu.
[00:19:38] **Sam:**
That makes a ton of sense. and that, I think that’s a super, you know, actionable takeaway that, you know, I know that’s the change I can make today. And hopefully for folks listening, as well, shifting to the mediums and the different, you know, content types, how do you think about, you know, the different mediums and formats of.
Customer stories, you know, specific on the marketing side, not as much the research side, but like, you know, the video, you know, third party review sites. And of course, you know, classic, you know, there’s written case studies and, you know, maybe there’s even more, I mean, arguably reference calls, you know, even though they’re not external could, could buy, possibly be included in there.
[00:20:20] **Scott:**
Mm-hmm . Yeah. So I think of, you know, customer stories or customer success stories. I mean, we’re trying to, those are, you know, most of the time on your own property, your own site. I tend to think of things as like your, own versus not owned, platforms. And, you know, at the end of the day, you wanna show that person’s success with your, your product. and a testimonial is kind of like a, a shorter version, quick, quick Tibit of it, quick snapshot. and then, you know, the reviews they tend to be, on third party sites like G2. and those are interesting because it’s. Somewhat of a neutral ground. I think it is a neutral ground, where they can, You know, highlight the good, the bad, and some of the challenges of the product.
I say somewhat neutral, because it’s really important that, if you’re paying or rewarding, you know, people to write a review that you acknowledge, that someone acknowledges that, you know, right up front. When I worked at Udacity, we actually had the person posting the review. You know, we did a campaign, but in the review we said, by the way, I received a gift certificate it for this.
So being as. Again, customer stories and testimonials tend to be on your own platform reviews on other platforms. And then, you know, you probably everybody who has slack these days, if you look at the left hand side, there’s probably like 10 different slack channels that you’re part of. And so that’s a non-owned property where, you know, somebody can, you know, talk about and praise you, praise your product and are really thinking about like, how does that fit into the, the advocacy mix?
[00:21:59] **Sam:**
Yeah. And, and that, that’s a, I think a perfect segue to, talk more about communities and, I know that’s something you’re, you’re, passionate about. Yeah.
Tell me more like, yeah. How do communities, how are, communities and advocacy kind of just kind of blending together and overlapping these days?
[00:22:15] **Scott:**
Yeah. it’s a great question. So when I was at HubSpot, we definitely, integrated both of them and looked at the advocacy program. that’s something that was hosted on the community. Christina, who did a great job running the program, she used to say, I’m, you know, I’m running the program, but you’re selling me real estate on your community platform.
I think historically we’ve treated advocates and champion and advocates and community champions is kind of like two separate are things. And more and more companies are realizing that there’s a, a big Venn diagram that overlapping these individuals, the folks who your power users or Allstar or champions in your community who are answering.
Most of the questions tend to be very similar to the folks who are, advocating your product on properties and social media. And then also I think historically communities, you know, they they’ve tried to, like, they probably were farther along in the maturity model of, hosting an experience or having user generated content for different personas, like, the partner versus the developer, the admin or, or practitioner. and we’ll see more and more of these advocacy programs as they evolve. Break down their audience into these very similar segmentations. So you don’t wanna be talking to your developer here in community land and doing something similar in advocacy land. You want it all to be one holistic experience. And so a second trend will be like having one unified, gamification or point system or batching system.
There’s a few companies that are doing that. don’t put me on the spot and ask me, but not many, right. We’re still trying. They’re still kind of treated treated differently, but I think that will change in the next year.
[00:24:06] **Sam:**
That that’s interesting. And so I guess, would it be fair to say that like historically speaking, a lot of what is kind of advocacy was ha has been happening just more siloed. And then, now that we kind of have, you know, this term. You know, customer advocacy and that’s, you know, now we actually have, you know, more and more companies have this specific role, you know, customer, you know, advocacy, you know, manager or, you know, customer, sometimes it’s customer marketing, you know, director of customer marketing.
I guess, yeah. tell me a little bit more about that. Like has like the simply just like clarifying it and like the language evolving, like. is that one of the things that’s like driving this like Renaissance? Cause I know we’ve seen like, just like the marketing. Hi, the hiring for customer advocacy and customer marketers is like one of the fastest growing jobs right now.
[00:24:58] **Scott:**
Yeah, LinkedIn recently posted that it was number three on its list. number three, in terms of like hot professions, customer marketing.
[00:25:06] **Sam:**
Mm-hmm
[00:25:07] **Scott:**
So I think a lot of it is, you know, being around the block for a few years, and having some gray airs is a lot of communities started in customer support and customer support is not really thinking about advocacy.
So that’s one thing. and along those lines, since it’s moved into marketing, marketing is thinking about advocacy. the second thing is I do think companies are doing a better job working cross functionally. Right. And so when you’re working cross-functionally you can, you know, if advocacy starts in customer marketing or starts in customer success, you can partner with guide, educate whatever word you wanna use.
Other parts of the organization. you know, and think about beta testers, for example, right. They are kind of buried in the, the product team. So as we work cross functionally, you know, and one company I worked with when I was consulting once is we literally drew, I had the product. Team and their customer success, customer support.
And I said, go, everybody, go to the whiteboard and draw your own circles. Then draw the three names of your top customers. And there, and there was overlap. Like there like you saw a few names appearing in all the circles. Now I got lucky early on to be aware of this because when I was at into it, the move, the community team to a different group every six months, So.
So when I was with the product team, I said, wow, like the, the beta testers are really similar to the people answering questions, or you know, in Google’s case, you know, that Google has this huge, AdWords community of small agencies, And, everybody who wants to promote AdWords or talk about AdWords is reach you out to these same small agencies.
I mean, there’s hundreds of thousands of them, but they’re all, you know, looking at the top of the pyramid.
[00:26:55] **Sam:**
Absolutely. And, earlier you gave a, some really good tips on, you know, for folks that are, who were just getting started in their advocacy journey. You know, start with aligning with the business problems and don’t try to boil the ocean at once. you know, it’s, it’s absolutely a marathon on a sprint. What other kinda, tips or perspective could you share with someone who’s like in the position where like they realize now, you know, the importance of advocacy they’re starting to put their program and strategy in.
[00:27:27] **Scott:**
Yeah, I would consider, you know, depends on budget, but consider like investing in tools, or platforms to track advocacy, because you don’t wanna find yourself. and I have found myself in this shoe, these shoes is. with multiple Google sheets, trying to stitch all this behavior together. Right. and it’s just hard to keep track of all your advocates.
Then it’s also hard to identify trends and patterns. so I think one key thing is, you know, look at some of the options out there to, track these programs. and that’s like from a tracking and data perspective, but it also helps from an automation perspective in terms of like trigger programs, you know, take a page from, you know, Marketo or HubSpot in terms of being automation in terms of its automation. And say like, you know, is there a tool that can help me, the one person show, you know, communicate with all these advocates? you know, even if you have only a hundred advocates or you have a 10 advocates, well, that’s still a lot of people You wanna, you do wanna get person with these people.
Hopefully if nobody from HR is listening, You do wanna get personal. and so, you know, saying, Hey, Sam, and then everything else is the same in the email is not personal. You know, I think another thing too, which, if you’re a company hiring somebody is hire somebody, who’s a member of the group or tribe of the, or advocates that you’re trying to market to. What I mean by that is, I think you’ll get there wherever there is faster. If You have somebody who’s already a member of that group, a and Marketo, Liz who was on the team with me, she was so close with our, our champions, our, this was a community use case, but community champion, but she, she was one of them.
Right. And so what she said, she had that credibility and that trust. And she was able to communicate with them. You know, I, I love HR people, but I’m not an HR person, so you probably will not see me go, you know, necessarily work for company, where a marketing to HR people every day. Like it’s, I would tell the company there’s better people to do that. in other company, I talk to just, this morning they’re developing advocacy in the FinTech space. And they ask me, you know, how important is it? Somebody knows the product it’s, it’s important. They know the product, they know the, they know the industry. They’re able to talk the language and they are, you know, a accountant or they’re like an.
[00:30:01] **Sam:**
Yeah, I love that. It’s such a good, there’s no better way to be able to understand, what’s gonna resonate then, you know, if you, you have someone on your team, that’s like a part of that tribe. It’s, it’s such, such a key point, but often, often overlooked, wrapping up here with just a, you know, a final question or two, you’ve seen the evolution of, you know, customer stories and, and customer advocacy really, you know, happen.
I’m curious what you think about the future and, how things are, you know, continuing to evolve. What do you think, you perhaps the future holds, you know, if you were going to kind of, you know, get your proverbial crystal ball out.
[00:30:42] **Scott:**
So I think these stories will continue to evolve. And what I mean by that is, I think, text base is important, but we’ll see more videos, more shorter videos. I think there’ll be more like a narrative put together an experience. I think there’ll be more of focused on like the practitioner as much is the company.
Right. I think we’re all in this right now, trying to figure out like how we improve our craft, how we improve our career. and so I think in these stories about how I use the product, say how I use HubSpot or Marketo, that’s gonna be a key element in it. I think we’ll see more video as I talked about. I have this belief that, can I end, can I end with a with a story?
[00:31:27] **Sam:**
Absolutely.
[00:31:28] **Scott:**
Yeah. So, you know, an architect in, in America designs, a. Gets built and they kind of that’s it in Japan, when an architect designs a building, they feel some responsibility for the building’s wellbeing over time and how it looks. and I once hung out with a bunch of architects in Japan and I was, they took me on a field trip to look at a building that they had worked on or did they had initially, and I asked them about it.
I said, we go back every year just to see how the building. It portrays itself or how, how it looks. And I think there’s an opportunity for just to make customer stories a more evergreen experience, definitely labor intensive, but we’ll figure that out. and then also you can tie that to adding, you know, adding to the, the individual story over time of how they’re using your product, right?
So Sam, you might be using, you know, Salesforce, but. How you use it today and how you use it in 12 months is gonna be completely different, you know, it’s gonna evolve. And so I think video will make that easy to add to those stories. So I, I think that we’ll become more like when we design these programs more like, architects, Japanese architects, than just kind of a one and done launch the, a story and see how it.
[00:32:52] **Sam:**
I love that. And I mean, that’s such a, you know, perfect and, you know, beautiful example and just the kind of the care and the intentionality and the attention to detail, you know, that, I think that that example. Exemplifies is, is fantastic. Scott, this has been, this has been awesome. Where can folks who, wanna connect with you?
Where can they learn more about you or get in touch?
[00:33:21] **Scott:**
Yes, you can always find me on LinkedIn. Scott K welder, and, or you can find me at Scott partner economy com.
[00:33:30] **Sam:**
Fantastic. Thanks so much, Scott.
[00:33:32] **Scott:**
Sam. Thank you. It’s great seeing you.
[00:33:38] **Sam:**
Alrighty, folks. That was a fantastic episode with Scott K. Wilder. A ton of really good takeaways in that one.
Some of the biggest ones were this idea of the customer-led growth movement, and that advocacy is really the fuel for that. Also, humanizing a brand, and why that is so powerful.
Learnings from Scott’s time at American Express and talking to the customer in a holistic way based on their actual tenure, not just the product, or the products, and having much more holistic interactions. We touched on a lot of great stuff about how to get started with advocacy, particularly with smaller companies.
One of my favorite takeaways from this episode, by far, was this phrase of “co-designing.” The idea that you can, and should, co-design your advocacy program, rather than going top down on the customer and say, “Hey, here’s our advocacy program.” It’s well-meaning, but take some time to think about it and have a conversation; take a ethnographic approach to it and co-design it.
At the same time, realize that you don’t have to boil the ocean all at once. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Those are just some of my favorite takeaways from this episode. Definitely give Scott a follow on LinkedIn.
If you were listening and you have recommendations for guests, shoot me an email. My email is Sam@TestimonialHero.com.
This has been the State of Customer Storytelling, and we’ll see you in the next episode.
