I recently spoke to Andrew Nicoletta, Senior Manager of Content Marketing at ServiceTitan, and Cecilia Li, Content Marketing Manager at NexHealth, about content marketing strategies when you’re targeting small businesses.
ServiceTitan serves home service businesses while NexHealth works with private healthcare practices.
Listen to the full interview for insights into content budgets, rolling out initiatives, and more. And we talked A LOT about creating content are customer stories.
Here are a few highlights about how to get more value out of content featuring customers when travel is involved.
1. Line Up Several Shoots or Interviews in One Location
NexHealth will line up several case studies in one place to make a trip worthwhile.
Initially, her team was using local production companies to film and edit, but they found that the editing process could take a long time. By lining up multiple customer stories in one place, it made it more financially viable to fly out an in-house team.
They also film with several pieces of content in mind:
“Besides just a case study, we usually chop. all the raw footage up into different segments to maximize other channels. Can we do a short one-minute bite for social media and use it for a month? Can we add some different text overlay and make it suitable for TikTok? So those are the things that we think about before we go in for each case study.”
2. Offer Your Customers Content They Can Use in Return
If you are filming in person, some businesses may have to shut down in order to collaborate for case studies, so make it worth their time. Sometimes a discount on your services or platform will work or financial compensation for their time. But for other companies, offering them digital assets they can use is just as valuable.
“Branding is important, but they don't know how to build that brand,” Cecilia explains of some of NexHealth’s customers. “They probably have their office manager help them with a marketing task and things like that. So we try to give back to them in that way. Sort of like helping them film a photo shoot when we're there or helping them create a brand video.”
Bonus tip: Use social platforms in different ways. For instance, NexHealth doesn’t see as much organic engagement on their own content on Instagram, but Cecilia and her team have found that it’s a great place to initiate conversations with prospects by commenting on their content and starting DMs.
3. Create Content That Centers Your Customers, Not Just Your Business
Some of ServiceTitan’s top performing customer-based content features their customers, not their own platform. Their Shop Tours videos in which ServiceTitan customers give a behind-the-scenes look at their shops, are incredibly popular earning 5- and 6-figure views.
4. Have the Campaign Strategy Nailed Before Asking for a Travel Budget
Andrew makes sure that his team knows exactly how they’d use the content from a customer before requesting the funds to make it happen: “Whether it's a geo-focused campaign, if there's radio, how your email team's gonna leverage that, and so on.”
Andrew emphasized making sure you know the primary promotion or distribution channel you’re pursuing, as well as how you plan on reusing content in the future.
This podcast is brought to you by Prism B2B, a marketing consultancy specializing in multimedia and multichannel content strategies. Email [email protected] to be considered as a guest for this podcast or to learn more about Prism.
Content Strategies to Target SMBs