Writing a case study can be an effective way to communicate complex information. It is an in-depth analysis of a particular situation, event or individual, often used to inform business decisions. A well-written case study can help build credibility and trust with potential customers, as well as increase the likelihood that they will choose your products or services. It is important for businesses to understand how to write a case study correctly, so that they can make the most of this powerful marketing tool.
When you are comparing the products you might have a list of features, prices, coverage, business uses, personal uses and other such factors that are important to you. Using this tick sheet list can help to narrow down the search and to focus on just a couple of companies that offer the solution to your problem. When you have it down to just 2 or 3 products, and you can see that they al offer a similar solution but have some small yet distinct differences, how do you make that final choice?
Does it come down to price, service, support, or the features that they provide? It is a hard decision to make, and one that you will be stuck with for as long as the contract runs for, which in some cases could be years. You could be tied into a contract that you do not want to be, or you could be paying off the initial investment and when it is paid off, you are looking for a new solution. The ideal solution is one that you stay with for years and you quickly get back the investment paid for set up, training, and adapting your operations.
The analysis that you need to make your final decision is in the Case Study.
What is a Case Study?
If you have successfully supported customers with the same issues that the current prospect has, document it and prove that your solution works, and is directly linked to the specific concerns of the prospective customer.
A case study can be a video, a recorded interview, or a written document highlighting the features of your product and matching them to the needs of the customer, providing evidence that you have the experience and technology to resolve their concerns. Basically, evidence that you have done this before, and you know what you are doing.
Real-life experience and evidence that your product works and provides outstanding results.
Why are they important?
Businesses buy products that work, and that have evidence that they work. They ask for references, and they complete their due diligence before making a purchase, especially an expensive purchase. A Case Study provides that reassurance that the product that they are about to buy works, and that other companies use it.
You selling your product is ne thing, but a different company, one of your customers, selling your product for you, shows that they are impressed with your product and that it resolved their issues. A great case study helps to convert sales and helps to market your business to others.
What NOT to include in a case study
As with anything, if you know what makes is bad, you will know what makes it good. If you are presented with a bad case study, you are likely to keep on looking for a better one. If the case study is irrelevant for you and your business, the salesperson has not made much effort in getting to know you and understanding your situation and business.
A bad case study is full of numbers and data, but the reader does not know what they all mean and how they relate to their business. If it is not cohesive, and it is not easy to read, the customer is confused and lost in the detail. When a customer is confused, they will not purchase the product, and they do not know why your solution works.
A bad case study is not relevant to the reader, so you need to have multiple case studies available to match each different sector that you work with, or each major customer concern that you resolve. This might seem like a lot of work, but effort spent on this process will pay dividends in the long term.
A bad case study is a technical document that neither interests nor excites the reader. They could contain charts, data, graphs, numbers, and comparisons but how does that all relate to the business needs of this prospect? They are not persuasive and have no room for questions or back and forth communication.
This is a powerful tool in the right hands and written by the right team, so it is best to spend your time creating one that sells your product to the business and proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that your product is the one they should choose.
Key Points of a Case Study
There are 3 main parts that a successful case study should contain:
It is not too long
If you hand a prospect a dossier of 100 pages of words, numbers and charts, the prospect is not going to have the time or inclination to read it. It will sit on their desk and probably be used for scrap paper and notes when they need something to write on. The key question to ask yourself here is “How short can I make it?”. The shorter the document, the better. A good case study is concise, clear and conveys the message quickly and leaves no question unanswered. If you know what you are trying to say, say it, in as few words as possible.
It is detailed
Details matter, and linking those details to the product, their business and the business needs is vital. Writing a good case study means that you are selling your product and are explaining how your product got a customer to resolve a situation. It must contain detail of exactly how your product was the only thing that solved this situation for the client. It should describe the problem, detail how you got to fully understand the situation, and how your product got from A to B for this customer in resolving the situation. You could link to customer reviews, but they do not go into the necessary detail. The customer needs to be able to clearly visualize the problem, empathize with the situation and the people involved and feel confident that your product, your support, and your training got the situation resolved.
Videos, pictures, diagrams, and charts are useful here to help to bring the visualization to life.
Sell the Dream
Tell the story including a beginning, middle and end. Show the problem, discuss the solution, and conclude with positive outcomes of the situation now. The problem needs to be a real-life problem and the better that the company is known, the more powerful the story is. Your product is the sword that wins the fight, the customer is the hero of the story swinging that sword. The hero of the story should always be the customer, not you. You are selling your product, in a humble way, emphasizing the success of other people using it, creating the desire of this new client to be a hero too.
You want the reader to finish the story, so it must be compelling and interesting. You want them to resonate with the hero, and then become the hero using your product to win business and the support of their staff. They are the hero of their company; you are simply one of the many tools that they use to get there.
11 Tips on Who to Use for your Case Study
The Case study is a detailed document that will take some time to write, and needs to be good, so you need to allocate planning time into the process too. You want your case studies to be perfect, to generate leads, to convert prospects and to be used for years to come, so you need to plan carefully and write them well.
Be accurate
A good case study is directly linked to the type of company that is receiving it, so if your business works mainly with small businesses, but has one or 2 Enterprises, then do not write a case study about enterprise level experience, and give it to a small company. A Small company needs to know how you will help them, and they are on a tighter budget than a bigger enterprise. The case study must be relevant.
If you make statistical claims, be sure to back them up with actual evidence and make sure that the statistics are relevant to the target audience. If a company in a sector has a high turnover, or a high churn rate, do not use those statistics for a company in a different sector that has a low churn rate and retains their customers for a long time.
The statistics that you can base your case study on must be relevant to the size of the company, the sector that the company is in, the types of customers that will use your service and the budget that the company has. You must choose your case study company carefully.
Businesses will look at the numbers that you can provide, and back up with evidence. You must display numbers that are relevant and interesting for the prospect.
How much money have you saved a company by them using your product? This number will off-set the cost of getting set up.
How much has the company grown since using your product? This could be in added staff, increased savings, or increased profits. If your product has directly resulted in some statistic successes these need to be discussed, but then if they are too good to be true, or they are only relevant to one specific company, or one specific time and place, then they can not be replicated. Some companies grew faster during the pandemic, but now that the pandemic is over, their growth has slowed significantly, so think about the external factors involved in the company’s success.
Will people know the brand?
If your business has helped Amazon make more profits, that will be more valuable than if your company has helped Donald & Sons from Doncaster high street. The bigger the company and the more well know that the company is, the greater impact it will have on your prospect. If you are supporting a big brand, that adds value and credibility to your product. You should get their permission to shout about it and to add them in to the Case Study, especially if the prospect is a big company too, or in the same sector.
The Prospect is a typical customer.
If you work with other companies of similar stature, in a similar sector and of a similar size, that will also help the prospect to see that you have the experience that they are looking for. If you can clearly demonstrate that a company that is like the prospect has achieved great results using your product, it is more likely to resonate with the prospect, and they are more likely to empathize with them. Creating that link and showing it clearly, will help your case study convert the deal.
Now you have your target
Once you know who you will be using in your case study you need to get their approval and buy in to the process. You know the kind of company that you want to use, and you know that they are a successful company. They are successful partly because of your solution, they have made money, grown as a business and some of their success is due to your product. They know you and know your product, so you would think that it is an easy phone call to make. It isn’t.
Pick up the phone and call them, explain what you are doing and why you are doing it and be honest throughout the process. This case study could be good marketing for them as well as for you, so it is a partnership where both sides gain.
Using the phone to call them is more personal than an email, and since they are an existing customer, they are likely to answer and at least speak to you. You could offer them a sweetener if they participate, like money off next months bill, an extra month for free, or a feature of your product that they usually pay for, for a reduced price or even free.
You are talking to someone who is knowledgeable about your product and services and who has had a good experience of working with you. You want that good experience to continue, so you must be respectful, polite and honest about the transaction.
Clarity wins business.
Be clear about what you want to do and why you want to do it, but more importantly about how it will happen. If it will take up too much time and effort, they are less likely to say yes. If it is an hour, in their offices, of set questions and a documented process, they are more likely to agree.
If it is a video, make sure that they get a copy of the video and they get some input into the edit. If it is a written piece, make sure that they get to read it before it is published, and they agree with the content. The more convenient and less expensive the process is, the more likely it is to be a success.
If it can be done in a video call, with screen sharing and call recording, that is even better, and it also could demonstrate your product, if your product is in communications. You could structure the video so that your product and their product are in the screen and get airtime and advertising space.
When you are phoning your client, make sure that it is from a number that they recongise and have used before. You know these people, they pay you, so there is a relationship manager somewhere dealing with them regularly, so get them to help as well.
You could take them out to lunch or book a nice meal after the interview is completed, so that you can laugh and talk about the process after. This goes a long way to building and maintaining the good relationship that you have.
Teamwork makes the interview work.
When you have your case study client, you need to know their business better than they know it, from the ground up. You need to speak to everyone who has had any involvement with that account. The salesperson that got them on board will have useful information, their client manager, the relationship team, customer service team and the technical support team that might have dealt with some problems for them. Anyone who has had any interaction with that company should have some useful insight. You need to know what they do, how they do it and what problems they have overcome in their business, and how you and your team helped them.
When you have the insights from your company, approach people in their company who have interactions with your product and who use it on a regular basis. This is likely to be the operational team but could be anyone from a part time customer service representative to the operational director. The CEO of the company is likely to do the final interview and needs to help you sell your product, so you need to know that person and what they like about their business. What is the CEOs journey in business and in the life cycle of your product?
Statistics could be from filed accounts, profit margins, sales teams, marketing campaigns, or any source that shows that the company is growing, and in part, due to your product. Get the statistics, all numbers could be useful.
Why, what, who, where and how?
The use of direct questions gets direct answers, the use of open-ended questions gathers more data and allows people to talk freely about their experience of you and your product. Plan your questions carefully and always around how they use your product and what is good, bad and could be better. Allowing the conversation to flow freely, allows people to think and speak, even if it is negative, it is a great learning tool. An unplanned interview might go off on tangents, but those tangents will contain valuable insights into your product and services.
Keep your eye on the goal.
The goal is to win the new client, so who in the case study can help you to do that? Will it be the CEO of the company that uses your product less than their teams? Or will it be a lower-level member of staff that uses your product every day and knows how it works and how it has made their life easier? When you write a case study it needs to be aimed at the decision makers, but it must contain real life experience. You need to make the finance team know that they are not wasting money and you need to reassure the operational team that using your product will help them. Getting insights from people at all levels will help build your narrative.
What do you want?
When you have your goal in your sights, make sure that you highlight the 3 or 4 key points that you want to make. More than that drags the presentation out too long, less than that makes it look like you do not have many benefits. You want to be concise. You want to be direct. You want to be brief but to the point and engaging. Get the story told without losing anyone’s interest. You want to show the quality and added value of your product quickly leaving nothing unsaid. Identifying 3 or 4 key points and sticking to those will help you to really focus on the benefits of your product.
Key points could be how long it took from signing the contract to having the team using the product. If training takes a long time, it takes longer to get a return on investment.
Did it impact on productivity? Did it make people’s jobs happier and less stressful and therefore more productive?
Did your product drive sales, and if so, what kind of volume of sales? Did it save the company money? Maybe your product means that they need fewer staff members, and they could save money elsewhere, those savings go towards the bottom line of the company.
How will it be received?
CEOs of companies can be bombarded with emails and PDFs, they can be punch-drunk on PowerPoints and they can have sales pitches thrust down their throat. You want to be different, and better than the rest, so choose the format that you will deliver your case study carefully and keep in mind that you need to stand out. Make it memorable and different.
Case studies do not have to be a lecture or a seminar, they can be interactive and drive engagement, the users can pick up your product and feel it, play with it and use it. The more engaging you make it, the more that the CEO feels a part of the product and feels part of the process. If they reach for our product and like how it feels they are much more likely to use it.
Which format of presentation will make the audience engage with it better?
Reports are good but are a bit boring.
Videos can be watched, and people can switch off during the pitch.
Question and answer, sessions with interactive play and practical uses involve people more in the sales process.
Omnichannel presentations including a bit of everything can be messy but can also have much more flow and people are more engaged. If you consider people’s attention spans are around 5 minutes, having a few minutes of reports, some time spent on a video, some time spent looking at numbers and some extra time spare to play with the product, using all the different methods of delivery will engage the audience more and keep them focused.
Breaking it down
Once you have gathered all the data to build your case study and you know exactly how it will be delivered, let’s put it together.
Introduction.
Setting the story and introducing the business that you will be talking about helps to set the scene. They should be a known company with a familiar situation that people can immediately empathise with. Explain ho they are, what they do and provide some engaging information or anecdotes.
What is the problem?
Products fix problems, so what is their problem that you fixed? Give the holistic view, showing not only what the problem was, but how it impacted on the whole business.
Top-down products
From the top down, what is your product and how did it directly affect the problem? The closer that you can connect your product to the problem here the better your presentation will be.
The knockout punch
What happened to the business once they were using your product? Use the mountain of data that you have gathered, the interviews and comments the information and your detailed research to show that your product helped this company achieve these amazing results.
Evidence
If there is evidence of this, such as profit margins, adverts, hiring new staff, entering a new market, international growth, or whatever the evidence can be, show it and shout about it. Make it clear and concise but be sure to back it up.
Final Tips
We are nearly there, and your amazing case study is almost ready for presentation. If you follow these final few tips, your case study will be one to be proud of and even if it doesn’t win this deal, it will win the next one.
Speak the same language
When you work in a sector you are used to jargon, abbreviations and acronyms. Your words, letters and symbols might not be understood by everyone, so speak plainly and accurately. Your words and the meanings that you attribute to your words might be different to how the receiver hears them, so keep it simple.
Subject lines matter
Just as in emails, the title, or the subject line matters. It is the first thing they will see and the last thing they will remember. It is the top of the agenda and the title page on the handout you will give them to take away. Spend time making the title a good one.
Review, edit, analyse and practice.
Go over your case study, looking for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, or lines that are just there for fluff or to bulk out the word count! Speak it through to someone and see if the flow is there, be critical, and get the help of a critical friend who can rip it apart. Remember, the key is to make it as short as possible!
Pictures reduce word count
Pages of writing can be hard to read. Pictures break up the display and the content and can say more than words. If you are looking to reduce your word count, add in pictures, charts, graphs, even a funny image of a cartoon using your product or a marketing gimmick that works.
That is what he said
Words spoken by someone with authority carry weight. Adding in a famous quote or even a quote from the CEO of the company that is using the product and enjoying it adds value. If it is relevant! Getting quotes from users, managers and C-level’s adds value to your case study.
Give a copy
You want the prospect to take away your presentation and re-read it and note on it when you are done, you want them to be thinking about it for a while, before deciding in your favour. Give them a handout, print a copy for them, if it is a video, give them copies of the recording. When writing it, make the important stuff stand out. Bullet points, numbers or bold font should permeate the presentation where important information needs to be displayed to the reader.
What Happens Next?
What is the call to action? What is the best way to speak to you? What are the next steps? If the next step is to sign a contract, have it ready, give them a copy to allow them time to read it. If it is simply to have a follow up meeting, have your calendar open to check your availability. If it is simply to contact you if they have questions or want to proceed, make sure that you are connected on Linked In, they have your email and mobile phone number. If you have a holiday planned, be sure to block out that time in your diary, it is embarrassing to book an appointment and then must cancel it for something that you know is coming up!
The Final Piece of the Puzzle
Now you have the formula for a great case study, use it, again and again. You need case studies for different companies, different sectors, and different sizes of businesses that you work for. An advert can help, social media presence and blogs can assist, having a great FAQ page adds value and reduces questions, but having great and relevant case studies converts sales.
If you can write a great case study, you are a valuable member of the team, and it is a great addition to your CV. If you have people singing your praises, and those of the company that you represent, and you know how to deliver those messages to others, you, and your company, will have success.
As the late, great Winston Churchill once said: “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once, then come back and hit it again, then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack”.
