Thanks to Irene Yam, who helps global brands create Customer Advisory Boards, for contributing this post. You can learn more about her work here.
A Customer Advisory Board aims to develop trust and mutual benefit with your most strategic customers. After a CAB, customers often reciprocate and take the time to get the internal approvals necessary to publicly endorse your business. When trust is built between the executive team and the board members, the CAB customer wants to reciprocate by being a public reference. Remember, getting this kind of approval is difficult for your customer. Sometimes, they have to call in favors or nudge their leadership to sign off.
You can collect videos from your CAB at a few key points in the process of recruiting and hosting these events that will help you get a deeper understanding of your member and capture great public facing marketing content.
Pre-CAB Video Survey
When you’re in the nomination stage, you’re trying to get a feel for the candidate. You want to know how articulate they are. Before any call with a prospective CAB customer, I recommend searching to see if they’ve filmed any videos in the past as a part of the vetting process.
After you’ve formed your Customer Advisory Board, use Vocal Video or a web conference app to film your customer’s CAB bio video. Vocal Video has a welcoming user interface where you can set up a CAB template within minutes, accessible to anyone, anywhere.
I like a two-step process. First, ask the executive team at your company to film short videos. Then, share you executive's videos with the CAB members, and ask them to record their own videos. The CAB members then get a sense of the value of the content by watching your company’s executive videos - and that the videos won’t take that much time. Customers will quickly see that these aren’t overly produced, high-end launch videos, so they’ll feel more comfortable filming one.
Watching these videos before the CAB will help the board prepare. The customers will be more enthusiastic and ready for the event. Asking members to film a video is a great way to boost your virtual or physical CAB experience.
Vocal Video has a Pre-CAB Video Survey Template that you can use to get started immediately.
Example Questions for Pre-CAB Video Survey
Post-CAB Video
After the CAB, everyone is making their way home from a physical CAB or joining another video conference. Often, the person in charge of the CAB immediately sends out a post-event survey. I prefer to call each board member instead to get a few lines of personalized feedback and insights. It’s also a great time to follow up and ensure you’ve answered your CAB customers’ questions.
During this call, I also ask for the following:
- A marketing reference: If you have Vocal Video, terrific, you can send them a link to record customer reference video on that platform (using a template). Alternatively you can get video testimonials via Zoom, but it’s not as slick, has to be scheduled, and you’ll likely need someone with video experience to edit the video conference file.
- Approval to promote them as thought leaders: This allows you to give back to your CAB customers by building their personal brand. Ask the customer if they’d like to be promoted as a CAB member on LinkedIn or the social media platform you use, and ask them to film a short video about their experience. This can be a great way for your CAB members to share their personal expertise before getting officially approved to be a public reference on behalf of your company.
Vocal Video has a Thought Leadership Video Template that’s perfect for capturing a video from this new way of featuring your CAB member as a thought leader - at the time they're most invigorated from the recent meeting. All you have to do is work with your CAB member and social media team to establish how they’ll amplify your board member’s personal brand after the videos is created.
We live in a digital world that craves authenticity. Capturing customer videos before and after the CAB will help boost trust in your CAB network and deliver value video assets to your sales and marketing teams.