If you sell consumer products like skincare, sunglasses or video games, a celebrity endorsement can be a powerful thing.

In the B2B world, you can still tap a famous individual – but it’s not necessarily wise. Accenture recently had to drop its endorsement of Tiger Woods.

When selling B2B, Fortune 500 companies are usually the celebrities we want and need to endorse our products and services. Celebrity – whether it’s Lance Armstrong or IBM – carries a lot of prestige today.

"Today it’s more important than ever to associate your business, your product and yourself with celebrities – and even make yourself into a celebrity – to rise above the competition," states Jordan McAuley, author of Celebrity Leverage.

I recently read McAuley’s book and while it’s mainly focused on leveraging celebrity individuals, some of his ideas can help you get B2B endorsers on board:

Open the door

McAuley recommends starting out with a small request, which he calls the "foot in the door technique."

"When someone first complies with a small request, they are more likely to later comply with a larger request," McAuley states.

Personally, I’ve seen that work well for companies trying to get their biggest customers to publicly share their story. Start with a testimonial or reference call before approaching them about a case study, press release or speaking opportunity. Ease them into a deeper relationship.

Know your endorser well

If you sell consumer products, you have to know if celebrities have children or about their lifestyle habits in order to target effectively.

In B2B endorsements, homework is just as important. If you want to feature a customer, know what their current goals and challenges are as company. Then approach them with a pitch that ties perfectly into a message they WANT to communicate publicy. Align your goals with theirs and it’s a much easier sell.

Set up a velvet rope

Exclusive nightclubs create an air of limitation as if only the rich, famous and beautiful are granted entry.

You can do the same in B2B marketing. Limit access to a program, event or promotion by numbers or by timeframe.

For example, limit a special event or webinar to a small number of participants. Or, give your audience a hard deadline by which to sign up for a special offer.

Many people don’t act without a sense of urgency or exclusivity.

What have you found effective in getting "celebrity" endorsements for your business or industry?

I have a confession. I’m bad at math.

Writers and marketers out there, I know some of you are with me. We were the spelling bee champions, the honors English students and the school newspaper editors.

But algebra was not our thing. Sure, there were some kids talented at both, at which I’m always amazed.

After elementary school, my attitude become one of, "I’ll never use this stuff. I’m going to be a writer!"

Well, here I am in a career mostly about writing and I’m Googling my math questions, or instant messaging a quick story problem to my computer science/math husband.

If you are a mathlete, then stop reading here, or forward this to your "word" friends.

Persnickety Percentages
Customer case studies are about documenting results, showing that actual customers experienced the benefits that marketing and sales promised.

Whether you’re a marketer, business owner or writer producing case studies, there are likely times when you have to do the math on your own. It’s fairly rare that featured customers come ready with all their numbers worked out about how your solution made a difference.

So what do you need to know? Percentages!

In case studies, it’s all about the before and after. How much did the customer reduce costs? How much time are they saving? By what percent did their sales grow?

Percents are sometimes the fallback approach when you can’t name actual dollar figures. Customers will let you mention percentages instead, so you have to know how to calculate them.

Percentages can be easy if you’re going one direction with them, but not other directions.

Fortunately, I found a handy guide for the math-challenged among us. This page gives you a simple formula no matter which number you’re missing and how to do your calculations. There are even problems to test yourself.

Love it. It’s easier than Mrs. Swafford’s approach in 6th grade. (They probably learn this in 3rd grade now.)

Bookmark the page. I know I have. You simply have to do the math in this job sometimes.

Just today, I needed to determine what percent 1752 is of 1,807,125. Can you?

How do you make the most of a customer’s success story? What if you can’t name a customer? How do new FTC rules affect case studies?

Get answers to these questions and others on a 25-minute podcast where RainToday.com interviewed Casey Hibbard, "Using Case Studies to Build Trust and Facilitate Sales."

• Ways to use your customer case studies

• How many and how often to create case studies
• What makes a successful case study
• What if you can’t name customers?
• Examples of professional services firms using case studies successfully
• Why you shouldn’t make people register to access cases
• How to ease customer permissions and approvals
• What the new FTC rules mean for endorsements

Listen here. It’s only available to non-members of RainToday.com until Feb. 24.

As buyers, we need help making decisions. There are just too many options.

My last post revealed my own decision anxiety, multiplied when there are no customer reviews or success stories for me to rely on.

From personal experience, reviews help us make decisions faster and feel more confident about them.

But what’s the difference between customer feedback a la Amazon or eBay compared to vendor-produced case studies and success stories? And how can companies benefit from both?

Customer Reviews
Smart companies today ask you for your feedback. They email you after a purchase requesting that you follow a link and "rate and review" the product or service.

• Feedback is raw, real, unpolished information right from customers.
• Customers are free to share their negative experiences.
• Any grammar errors or typos are still there, adding to the authenticity.
• It’s free-form, so customers talk about what is important to them, usually without any prompting questions.
• As a short review, it only takes a few minutes.
• There may be a shortage of free-form reviews on higher-end solutions (i.e. $1 million ERP software implementation).
• That content isn’t leveraged beyond showing up on review sites.
• Cheap or free for vendors.

Vendor Case Studies & Success Stories
Case studies and success stories, produced by the vendor company, formally capture a customer’s experience.

• Vendors reach out to their most successful customers, so no negative stories.
• Prospective customers see them as more slick or "commercial" than raw feedback.
• Customers agree to share their story formally and publicly.
• Formal interviews draw out specific aspects of the customer’s experience.
• The story format engages readers in a different way, taking the audience through challenge, solution and resolution – allowing prospects to better see themselves in those stories.
• Results are measured – to the extent possible.
• Once approved, the content can be used in various formats – press releases, stand-alone testimonials, award applications, etc.
• Takes more money and time.

In today’s buying climate, you need these customer experiences to help buyers. What do you choose?

Both. Ideally, your prospective customers can find free-form feedback on the web AND review more formalized, comprehensive, measurable stories about customer experiences.

Customers today benefit from both. The first provides more AUTHENTICITY and the second much-desired DETAIL – both critical pieces of a buying decision.

In fact, make both a part of your marketing plan:

• Give happy customers links to online feedback sites.
• Approach those same happy customers about documenting their stories more extensively in print, audio or video.
• Send prospects to sites with customer feedback (hopefully it’s good!) and to stories on your website.

Regardless of what mix you choose, always ensure that you give prospects access to other customers’ experiences. You can help them get past indecision.

What’s your take? What do prospects gain from free-form feedback versus vendor stories?

All week, I’ve been mulling over a few purchase decisions – comparing specs, prices and especially reading online reviews from other buyers that have gone before me.

Not the impulsive type, my research was going well until one of the purchases on my list hit a wall – NO customer reviews or success stories.

If you’re like me, you’ve grown very accustomed to having real feedback from other buyers on anything from a $10 book to a $20,000 car. A lot is riding on each purchase: a big investment of time in the first case and a chunk of change and safety for the latter.

We’ve come to rely on these "Citizen Marketers" (coined by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba) as our compass for making decisions. Without it, we can feel lost in the woods.

So what’s really going on when a buyer can’t get her hands on other customer experiences?

We make decisions more slowly – or not at all

This week I’m investigating new video cameras and hotels for a spring vacation. Sites like Amazon.com, TripAdvisor, and stories/testimonials on actual websites of hotels and bed and breakfasts have all pushed me closer to buying.

With that rich information, I am MUCH closer to making a decision.

Yet for a business product I’m considering, no such customer feedback is available. So instead, I put off that decision for now.

We buy less confidently

What’s really behind it? I’m just not confident enough in the business product to move ahead. Maybe it’s a fabulous product, but I’m going to need more than the company’s sales copy to help me decide.

I don’t think I’m alone. Buyers today are very accustomed to having that level of information to support their purchases.

Think about it. Are your buyers hesitating without customer feedback? What can you do to change that?

Whether it’s suggesting happy customers post on review sites or capturing the details in case studies or success stories, HELP prospective customers buy faster and more confidently.

And now, I have a few purchases to make…

What was the last significant purchase you made, and how influential was real customer feedback?

Next week: The differences between review sites and vendor-produced case studies and success stories.

Most of us – for better or worse – have had a fast-food hamburger. It usually arrives in paper, often drippy and with an already soggy bun. The burger gets the job done, but not memorably.

Compare that to eating the hamburger at an upscale restaurant. The menu talks about "grass-fed" beef, "artisanal" bread and maybe a house-made aioli mayonnaise. Then, someone slides it gingerly in front of you on a modern square plate with toppings on the side that look fresh from the farmer’s market.

They’re completely different experiences – and all in the presentation.

Customer case studies and success stories are just as subject to packaging and presentation. You can lay out just the facts, or you can tell a STORY.

Volvo Construction Equipment gets it. They know they’re not just selling construction equipment. In the story below, they’re selling better, cheaper road maintenance.

The packaging: an intriguing, well-written customer success story. Volvo tells the tale of a rural Alabama county’s plight after receiving 12 inches of rain in a single day.

What does Volvo do right?

Feature-story format – The tale takes the form of an engaging feature story like you’d see in a magazine. It doesn’t go traditional by blocking text into Challenge-Solution-Results sections.

Strong writing – The writing is specific and sets the scene about the toll of the heavy rain.

Authentic quotes – The quotes sound genuinely spoken by the guys in the field using the equipment, which adds authenticity with the audience.

Clear results – Volvo highlights measurable and anecdotal results.

If Volvo can make a tractor sound interesting, then there’s hope for whatever your product or service is. 

Whatever you’re selling, you can wrap your customer’s story in cheap paper or present it elegantly.

In sales and marketing, it’s the ultimate question. How do you get the right information in front of a prospect at the right time?

It’s especially tricky now that customers self-direct their learning online.

As you grow your stable of customer case studies and success stories, organize them so that a prospect can find exactly the type of story of interest to him.

That usually means sorting – and enabling search of – your stories by industry, type of solution, product and maybe geographic location.

Here are a couple of examples.

Major software company SAS organizes its customer successes by industry, solution, technology, country, alphabetically, and with a "Search All" capability. If they have a particular case study, the searcher will find it with this thorough approach.

Oracle organizes theirs in a similar way, by applications, technology, services, industry and alphabetical.

Both companies also feature a few of their best stories on the search page for quicker access.

Such a search function may be too much for organizations with a handful of case studies. If so, create a list of your stories by headline and include a few descriptive words about industry, product, type of solution, location or anything else relevant to your audience.

Put yourself in the searcher’s chair and make it as easy as possible.

Have you seen any great examples of how companies organize their stories online?

During the NFL playoffs, referees’ calls can ultimately decide a win or loss.

Their job is to know the rules and make sure that players follow them. But sometimes their calls inspire boos from the coaches, players and fans.

Freelance copwriters are not unlike referees.

On a project, writers are often in the role of referee – enforcing STYLE rules.

Depending on the types of projects you work on, anywhere from two to maybe 8 people may be reviewing your thoughtfully written copy.

There’s at least one marketing manager, if not more, and perhaps a PR or sales person. Then there’s maybe a product manager.

If you work on customer case studies, an additional three to four people at the customer’s organization may review your story.

Chances are, there will be differences of opinion about whether "website" is one word or two, whether titles should be capitalized or whether a comma goes before the last "and."

To solve these differences – and maintain consistency across all communications – you need a set of rules.

And if you’re the writer, be the editorial style referee.

But how do you do so diplomatically?

Throw the book at ‘em

Newspapers and magazines have long followed style guidelines, whether Associated Press style, Chicago Manual of Style or their own versions. Companies need such guidelines as well for all their communications.

Freelance writers should usually follow the style of the companies they write for, unless those companies have no specific style guidelines.

If the organization doesn’t have its own editorial guidelines, bring your own style. When you send first drafts to your contacts, let them know that you follow style X.

When questions come up during the editing process, simply refer to the specific style guidelines as your reasoning for doing something like leaving out that extra comma before the last "and" in a sentence.

Company-created style

Several companies I’ve written for over the years have had their own style guidelines. They set down in writing exactly how they want certain aspects of their copy to go.

In many cases, their style is a hyrbrid. They mostly follow a standard style guide but have modifications for their communications.

Learn and follow those guidelines closely.

Earn your stripes

As you merge edits from multiple reviewers, make sure that the copy follows the established style. If someone makes changes that conflict with those rules, just let them know you follow company style.

It’s like saying, these are the rules we play by on our turf.

It can be hard to be a ref, but it’s part of the writer’s job.

Have you ever been boo-ed for refereeing edits?

Today’s corporate executives don’t want a sales pitch. They want valuable content that helps them solve their business problems.

White papers – a sibling to the customer case study – do just that.

A September 2009 survey by Eccolo Media backs that up. In the study, which polled 501 executives involved in B2B technology purchases, 84% rated white papers as moderately to extremely influential in purchasing decisions.

If you’re a marketer who is under the gun to produce quality leads in 2010, you’ll want to check out the upcoming White Paper Success Summit 2010, put on by my friend Michael Stelzner, author of Writing White Papers.

The completely virtual 2010 Summit starts Tuesday, February 2 and runs through Wednesday, February 24.

Tomorrow, Jan. 21, is actually the last day to get the summit at the early-bird rate.

In addition to himself, Mike has brought together an all-star team of white paper experts, including Bob Bly (The White Paper Marketing Handbook), Brian Carroll (Lead Generation for the Complex Sale), Jonathan Kantor (Crafting White Paper 2.0), Roger C. Parker (White Paper Design That Sells), Joe Pulizzi (Get Content, Get Customers), John Jantsch (Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide), Jill Konrath (Selling to Big Companies), Ardath Albee (eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale) and Gordon Graham, to mention just a few.

"Without costly ads or fancy designs, white papers are saving businesses by establishing thought leadership, attracting steady streams of quality leads and helping businesses close deals," says Stelzner. "Once a white paper is done, it can continue to reliably deliver leads for months or years to come."

No need to book pricey hotel reservations, pack a bag and trudge off to the airport to attend this conference. You can relax and enjoy the online Summit from a comfortable chair in your home or office. The sessions are spread over an entire month so you can fit them into your schedule.

Learn how to generate a steady stream of leads with white papers.

Get more information or register for the Summit.

(Disclaimer: I am an affiliate for this event, but I only promote events that I truly believe are valuable to my audience – and this is one of the best.)

PowerPoint gets a really bad rap. It seems indispensible in business presentations, yet it can be so darn boring.

That’s because most presenters do it the same way – a virtual storm of bullet points with a few photos slid in.

But maybe there’s help – and hope – in PowerPoint 2010.

In her recent blog post, Paula Tesch of Duarte shows us the new cinematic capabilities of PowerPoint 2010. Duarte Design’s Five Rules for Presentations gives practical presentation tips – and does so using the new PowerPoint.

Pretty impressive! It’s hard to believe this is PowerPoint.

I still wonder how difficult it is to use the tool to create something so dynamic. But I’m excited about its storytelling possibilities.