How to Showcase Success Stories in Gradual

# Gradual: How-To

# Gradual: Customer Showcase

# Format: Best Practices & Playbooks

# Theme: Community Building & DevRel

A step-by-step playbook for using Gradual to highlight customer success stories and turn them into engagement drivers across the community.

November 10, 2025

Joshua Zerkel

Customer success stories are often created for sales decks or marketing collateral, but their true power emerges when they are brought into the community. In community spaces, stories do more than provide proof—they spark conversations, inspire peers, and demonstrate how success is achievable in practice. Gradual offers tools to showcase these stories in ways that are dynamic, discoverable, and tied to engagement.

A playbook for showcasing success stories in Gradual

Step 1: Identify the right stories Choose stories that are relatable and actionable for your members. Focus on examples where the customer overcame a challenge or used a feature that others in the community can also apply.

Step 2: Create a success story asset Stories don’t have to be long-form PDFs. They can be highlight reels, short blog posts, or even clips from recorded events. Use accessible formats that fit naturally within community spaces.

Step 3: Use Gradual’s content hub Using Gradual's built-in content types like videos, blogs, resources, and so on, put your success stories into Gradual’s content library, tagging them with relevant themes (e.g., adoption, retention, cross-functional alignment). This ensures they remain searchable and tied to broader collections.

Step 4: Feature stories on your community's homepage Leverage Gradual’s homepage banners, ads, or content spotlights to make key stories visible. Rotate them to keep the community fresh and showcase a variety of voices.

Step 5: Connect to community discussions Pair each success story with a discussion thread. For example: “Here’s how [customer] improved adoption—what’s worked for you?” This shifts stories from one-way communication to interactive learning.

Step 6: Extend into events Invite customers featured in success stories to speak at events or AMAs. Use Gradual’s event hub to tie their sessions back to the original story, creating continuity across formats.

Step 7: Recognize and reward storytellers Celebrate the customers who share their stories in the discussion forum. Recognition, whether through badges, spotlights, or social amplification, encourages more members to contribute their own.

From start to finish

Imagine highlighting a success story about a customer increasing retention by adopting “golden features.” In Gradual, the story could be:

Posted in the content hub as a short article.

Featured on the homepage banner for visibility.

Paired with a discussion thread where peers exchange tips on feature adoption.

Followed up with a live event where the customer shares lessons directly.

Instead of one asset, the story becomes a multi-touch engagement path.

Why this matters for GTM

Success stories are not just marketing assets. In Gradual, they become:

For marketing: authentic narratives that extend campaigns.

For product: real-world examples of feature adoption.

For customer success: scalable proof points that inspire retention and expansion.

For community: conversation starters that build trust and connection.

Turning stories into shared learning

When success stories are integrated into Gradual, they move from static proof points to dynamic engagement drivers. By following a simple playbook, GTM leaders can ensure that every story becomes a catalyst for adoption, advocacy, and community growth.

Which customer success story in your organization could be the first to showcase in Gradual?

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