I received an interesting email from ConnectTV Asia, promoting their third annual conference about IPTV.
The event will be held in Beijing, China on Dec 6-7, 2011.

A quick look at their About page and the conference Agenda, reveals that “converged entertainment”, and converged TVs in particular, is a market that’s powering ahead in the Asia Pacific region.

What grabbed my attention were the case studies lined up as presentation items for the day one afternoon sessions:

I’d be very interested to learn how these case study presentations have been constructed. For instance, are they adapted from existing customer stories or created specifically for the conference presentation session?

It’s possible to take an existing case study and ‘re-purpose’ (today’s de rigeur marketing term for using your material in multiple formats, as appropriate) it as a series of blog posts, a feature article, as multiple tweets and, of course, as a presentation.

If you are planning to attend the case study sessions I’d like to know the plus and minus points of what was delivered.
At this stage I don’t know if the organizer plan to release any content once the event is finished.

- Mark ‘IT case study writer’ McClure

One of the ‘cold’ marketing searches I occasionally do is to find up-and-coming companies in my niche who could benefit from the tactical implementation of a content marketing strategy. (BlueMile Inc Marketing folks; if you’re reading here, please see the section all about your website near the end of this post…)

These are IT (networking) companies with solid products and services where technology-savvy customers are looking for (aka ‘demanding) ‘feature-rich’ solutions.

But the old rules of marketing, nay human psychology, still apply. Namely, that people will buy on emotions and justify with logic. This means even knowledgeable and level-headed b2b prospects will be partly swayed by emotional responses to the problem confronting them and to a vendor’s suggested solution.

Any marketing approach that ignores the prospect’s logical or emotional responses will dilute its sales effectiveness i.e. you won’t sell Jack!

For technology buyers and marketers it’s usually a given that the feature sets stand out strongly. I came from a computer networking geek background and long admired the bells and whistles that vendors built into their offerings. Even implementation manuals sometimes held a special place in my digital heart!

However, go two or three levels up the tech management org chart and any such attachment is mostly reduced to hacking away at the cells in a capex spreadsheet! For sure, the peer level managers on the business side will have little to no interest in technical features. They’re not even sure they ‘need’ IT these days…

Enter The Content Marketing Strategy

This is where things get real interesting because a content marketing strategy can help educate prospects on the proven solutions to the biggest problems they face in their business.

How is this done?

There are many tactical ways to reach/attract and educate your ideal prospects online e.g. regular blogging, audio podcasts, video, webinars, white papers and customer case studies are some of the popular tools being used.

Over time, the educational nature of the content marketing path can help nurture those prospects who begin to trust what you’re saying and proposing. This is ethical marketing and good for business.

Which brings me to one of the IT networking companies I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

BlueMile’s Web Site Has Plenty of Features…

Take a look at the BlueMile Inc Web Site.
They’re a Columbus, Ohio-based service provider with a range of technical solutions for local, national and international customers.

It’s all quite impressive and they’re doing a good job (remember they’re less than 50 people, if I recall correctly) at showing their technology options. Exactly the sort of thing I’d be checking out if I was interested in matching their capabilities against my requirements. In fact, my logical, network engineering mind would be hunting around for specs, data sheets, data center operational statistics etc.

From the perspective of a technology marketing writer the next steps are to add the business benefits into the case their website is making for doing business with them. (Of course, business is not won or lost solely on web site content. But it has a significant impact on prospects, especially those who are not yet looking for your solution. Just give it a year or two, however…)

Here are a number of ways to start doing this:

1- Turn the CEO’s whiteboard video sessions (Oct 2011 Update: the url links is broken) into a series of white papers, blog posts and even podcasts. The raw material is there ready to be re-purposed (my favorite content marketing buzz phrase at the moment!)

2- Start a blog or multiple blogs and use some of the staff featured in that fine home page staff photo to help come up with the content. Any good marketing writer will have an interviewing skill set they can draw on to extract the nuggets of wisdom and experience that form the core of useful posts.

3- Pick the key market you want more business from and create several customer case studies that show the business benefits and problems resolved or averted by choosing to partner with BlueMile Inc. (You’ll notice that BlueMile have started down the case study road by featuring some case studies from their partners. It’s only a matter of time, in my opinion, before they have a whole web page of their own.)

You might be wondering what sort of interest I have in this company. Well, go back and read the first paragraph of this post again. People do like to read constructive and positive things about themselves and their businesses. I know I certainly do.

And from checking freely available sources on the Internet, I suspect they are looking seriously at increasing their content marketing efforts. Carpes diem.

Anyway, regardless of where my horse comes in that particular ‘race’, there are probably marketing managers of other IT companies out there who will come across this very post. Yes, this blog does serve as one of my very own content marketing outposts

Feel free to contact me about all things white papers, case studies and a ton of other technical copywriting projects.

- Mark ‘technical marketing writer’ McClure

If you’re a technology marketing manager or business development manager in the computer networking industry, here’s a case study deal worth checking out.

For readers new to the blog, this is the second post in an occasional series about my participation in Casey Hibbard’s mentoring program for case study writers. (Post #1 is here.)

The program’s been on a short break for the US Thanksgiving holiday and that’s given me some time to catch up on homework assignments.

To be honest, I’ve let the homework slide a bit because I wanted to get this very special offer in place asap.

And so, without further ado…

The Customer Case Study Special Offer

The October and November slots are now closed but you can still lock in December’s two places.

For the full story on how to save up to $1000 on a case study for your business, just follow this link:

How To Get 50% Off Your Next Customer Case Study

- Mark ‘case study writer at large’ McClure

Are you confused about the differences between case studies, customer success stories and testimonials?

Then take a closer look at a leading computer networking company who are using all three on the same web page, combining style with substance…

… except for one minor oversight, which I’ll get to at the end.

Here’s Juniper Networks’ Case studies and Customer Quotes page.

I like how Juniper are building credibility through a variety of social proof mechanisms that feature the voices of their customers. This type of information is often much more powerful than any amount of presentations or data sheets that trumpet the vendor‘s solutions and ideas.

For example:

1- Notice the featured customer quote (or “testimonial” in the copywriter’s parlance) and the links to more quotes from three different market sectors.

2- There’s a “Read their stories” link at the bottom of the Tesla car image that takes the visitor to specific customer stories. (And look how Twitter, FaceBook and YouTube links are also visibly prominent below that. Juniper are making it easier for prospects to follow them across multiple social media channels.)

3- The bottom half of the page has links to specific case studies in the Enterprise, Service Provider and Public Sector marketplaces. All are freely downloadable and require no registration.

The Difference Between Customer Stories and Case Studies

I’ve noticed that companies often mix up these terms in descriptions of their marketing collateral, leading (I suspect) to some confused prospects.

However, Juniper avoids that trap and leaves the reader in no doubt that customer stories are brief overviews of a customer’s experience with their products and services. Whereas, case studies go into more detail on the problems, challenges and solution each customer met and overcame – with the help of Juniper Networks, naturally.

And That Minor Oversight by Juniper?

The Tesla customer success story (and 60 sec video) made me keen to know more about what Juniper did for them. And with my tech background (Cisco CCIE), I expected there would also be a Tesla case study to add some tech marketing horsepower to the success story’s bodywork.

Still, that’s a minor issue. Good job, Juniper.

- Mark ‘case study connoisseur’ McClure

PS- Special Offer for Information Technology Marketing Communications Managers –
Get 50% off a 2 page or 4 page case study.

Contact me for details.

Only two client slots per month available.
This offer also applies to 1 page customer success stories.