Case studies are powerful assets used to solicit business, and marketing professionals rely on the tool to tell stories about customer successes. According to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProf’s recent research study, B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends, 71% of B2B content marketers use case studies and 64% of them rate them as an effective tactic. We encourage our clients to use case studies to highlight the value of their products/services and explain how a customer’s business has been impacted by their solution.
To get started, we suggest soliciting input from sales, product marketing, and customer service for a breadth of feedback regarding the potential success story. After internal data is collected and initial analysis made, build an outline to serve as the foundation for the case study before you meet with the customer. Develop a specific list of questions for internal and customer interviews and consider asking open ended questions that draw out expanded questions versus questions that elicit a “yes” or “no” response.
Following the interviews and information gathering, you are ready to tell the story. Be sure to write about someone that your customers can relate to, tell the story from start to finish, and include specific metrics (i.e., don’t write “doubled visits to website” but instead consider “increased visits to website from 3,000 to 6,000 in a two month period”). To get started, use this outline to map out the direction of your case study:
| SAMPLE CASE STUDY OUTLINE TITLE: What was the customer issue/problem?Subtitle: What did we do to help or what were the results? About The Company: Insert Customer Company Name Here
Customer company boilerplate message goes here.
What Was the Opportunity/Challenge? Subtitle: Describe the opportunity in bold statement that explains the issue or problem that needed to be addressed.
What Was Our Solution? Subtitle: Describe the solution and explain how it created a positive impact on the customer’s business.
What Did We Do? Subtitle: Provide detailed information in terms of what the product/service did specifically to solve the problem.
What Were the Results? Subtitle: Provide results/metrics/KPIs and explain how your product/service impacted the customer’s business. Include a quote or testimonial from the key person involved with the project or a member of senior management that is appropriate to the business problem (i.e., for a marketing services case study we would interview a VP Marketing/CMO and for a software product case study we would interview a CTO/VP Technology). |
Remember, a case study is intended to explain how a customer used your products/services to overcome a specific problem or improve business. Stay focused on the customer success aspect of the story versus writing a lot of marketing copy touting your product solution. Your case study should clearly illustrate proven solutions told by a third party to serve as a testimonial for your business. Including direct quotes from your customer can help to achieve this.
Need help writing a case study or with your marketing strategy? Contact Launch Marketing today! Be sure to follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to keep up with the latest B2B marketing tips and trends.
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