1. Web sites: Your site is often a buyer’s first impression of your company. Start building the relationship on a foundation of credibility by highlighting your successes right from the homepage and anywhere on the site where you talk about the benefits of your solutions.

2. Newsletters: Run customer success stories in newsletters that go to prospects, customers, employees, and partners.

3. Blogs: When making a point in a blog post, use a customer success story as an example.

4. Direct marketing: Highlight a customer’s success in a mailer, either as a full story or an overview, to prospects and customers.

5. Email: Capture the attention of prospects and customers by using a compelling customer story in an email campaign, or as a one-off to a hot lead.

6. Advertising: Showcase a customer’s success story as an advertisement in a key industry publication or online.

7. Webinars: Feature a successful customer on a webinar for prospects or customers.

8. Live events: Invite customers to tell their stories at industry conferences or other events.

9. Training sales reps: Integrate customer successes into sales training to educate and excite reps about the value that your company’s products and services deliver for customers.

10. PowerPoint presentations: Add slides into sales presentations, summarizing a couple of customer successes.

11. Sales letters: Get the attention of busy prospects by kicking off a sales letter with a concise customer success story.

12. Sales conversations: People listen more closely when someone starts telling a story. Engage prospects in live or phone conversations with a relevant example of a successful customer.

13. Voice mail: When leaving a voice mail for a prospect, mention a specific result a customer experienced. Mention another key result in the next voice mail.

14. Proposals: Include a couple of customer stories in a proposal for new business.

15. Venture-capital proposals/presentations: Emphasize customer success stories when making your case for investment capital or loans.

16. Case-study booklets: Create booklets that highlight several of your key customer success stories.

17. Press releases: Catch the attention of busy editors with a “story press release,” one that recounts the success of a specific customer.

18. Pitching stories to the media: Make an email or phone pitch to a targeted media contact with a compelling customer success story as the angle.

19. Contributed articles: Submit an article featuring a customer’s success to a publication or website targeted to your audience.

20. Industry-awards submissions: Include full or summarized customer success stories with awards applications.

21. New-employee orientation: Use customer success stories to educate new employees about the organization’s value to those it serves, and keep telling employees those stories.

22. Fundraising appeals/grant proposals: Nonprofits can weave success stories into every printed, verbal, or other appeal for support.

23. Annual reports: Bring life to an annual report by showcasing the people and companies behind the numbers.

24. Online communities: When engaging in conversation in online communities, reference a successful customer’s results when it’s relevant to the conversation.

25. On-hold message: Play audio of a customer telling his or her story on your phone-s on-hold message. As callers wait, they’ll learn about the value your company delivers.

By Casey Hibbard of Compelling Cases and author of Stories That Sell: Turn Satisfied Customers into Your Most Powerful Sales and Marketing Asset