Duncan Elder

Helping you build trust and stand out with better customer stories. Senior content writer at MailerLite. Runner with a 34.47 10k PB.

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@acadictive Nice to meet you!

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

Builders, founders, marketers

Let's connect!

Drop a link to what you're building.

I'll go first 👇

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@mattbell_au That's the one 👌

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

Everyone's talking about AI moats like data, distribution, networks, and speed.

But there's another I haven't seen mentioned: your customers.

Competitors can't copy the results people have achieved with your tool.

This gives you a big advantage when it comes to building trust, promoting your product, and driving conversions.

6 ways customers are a moat

1. Customers are an undeniable trust signal: Every happy customer adds to your reputation. A new competitor starts at zero.

2. They prove your promise: Anyone can claim to save time or cut costs. You can show exactly how a real company did it.

3. Their words convert: TrustRadius's 2025 B2B buyer survey found 77% of buyers checked user reviews before converting. You have a big advantage if you can showcase positive reviews.

4. You can learn from them: Through interviews, data, and product usage, you get a first hand view at what's important, helping you build features that matter.

5. They refer you: Happy customers bring in the next ones. Referrals are often the lowest cost, highest value customers you get.

6. And they pay you: Then there's the obvious benefit: having customers means you have revenue. This is money you can spend on building other moats.

The catch is that none of this works if those customers stay invisible.

A happy customer nobody hears about is just a line in your CRM.

The moat only forms when you capture their stories, show their results, and put them where buyers are deciding.

So while everyone else races to out-build each other, start collecting proof.

In a world where anything can be copied, your customers are the one thing that can't.

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@tecstoic I'd call it a start

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@tecstoic For sure! What you working on?

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@ForKeep_app Oh that's useful, I'm always trying to remember recipes from videos I've seen. Let me know when it's on Android 😅

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@di_decoded Nice, what you building?

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@SudJourney Cheers!

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@dhalishiva Hey, me too 🤝

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@martomads Which did you go with?

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@dantegaleazzi @RevenueCat @stedapp Awesome congrats!

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@dantegaleazzi Happy to!

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@BiskeyGames Nice to meet you!

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@solmatter_ Hey! Game looks beautiful, very distinctive

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@mattbell_au Nice, I love to see an ambitious goal 💪 followed you too

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@0xPaulvibe Great effort. SEO to email is unbeatable

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

Building my audience and website to share everything I know about creating customer stories that build trust and sell your product.

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

@Presciahq Yea and if you've solved their problem, they're far more likely to agree to it

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

Here are 7 easy ways to find customers for your first customer story.

It isn't always easy, especially when your program is new and you don't have any examples to show people.

With that in mind, these are the methods I usually recommend to get those first few stories.

1. Check social media mentions

People active on social media are typically happy to share their stories. They also often benefit from the exposure opportunity that a customer story brings.

Find these people by checking your social media mentions or searching for your brand on relevant tools.

2. Use existing relationships

Look to customers you already have a relationship with.

Speak to sales, customer support, success, or partnerships teams to discover if they know any customers who are likely to be a good fit.

3. Follow up after positive interactions

After a successful support ticket, have your support team check whether the customer is happy to be contacted about a customer story.

Be sure to provide these teams with information showing the types of customers you are looking for.

4. Check review platforms

Look at G2, Capterra or other platforms relevant to your industry to find people who have left positive reviews.

You can then either reach out directly if the platform allows it, or try to match these reviews with customers and reach out to them manually.

5. View industry communities

Check subreddits or other niche industry communities to find positive brand mentions. Then reach out to the people behind them to ask if they'd like to be featured in a customer story.

Increase your chances of success by first checking their customer profile to see if they're a good fit.

6. Look for passion for your brand

If none of the above work, look for any place where people are interacting with your brand. Look for blog post comments, email newsletter replies, survey responses or anywhere that shows a love of your brand and a willingness to promote you.

7. Cold outreach

Our final tip is to find suitable customers in your own data, then contact them directly to ask if they're interested.

There's plenty you can do to increase your chances of success, including highlighting the benefit to the customer, overcoming their fears, and identifying the right people (more on all these ideas in a future post).

If you have a lot of customers succeeding with your product, this is can be a super effective way to find opportunities, as long as you don't mind a lower success rate.

[Duncan Elder @Duncan_Elder]

Good tip for finding customer story clients on Reddit or X. Useful for telling the story of a successful migration

[Sniffington @sniffingtonHQ]

@Duncan_Elder One that's easy to miss: search X and Reddit for your product name next to "switched to" or "love". People already telling the story in public say yes fastest – they've written the first draft.