Case Studies (also known as success stories and impact stories, depending on your field and goals) are an excellent way to build trust with prospective customers by providing them with an intimate look into how your product, service, or practice has worked for someone else.
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Why are case studies important in marketing and donor communications?
Pop Quiz:
- You’re a customer deciding which is the best vendor for a very expensive new system. All specs being roughly equal, which intuitively feels more ‘comfortable’:
- the system you’ve only heard about from the vendor?
- the systems that a colleague uses in her business, to great success?
- You’re evaluating grant proposals, and can only fund one. All else being roughly equal, which do you think has the best chance of success, if funded:
- the organization who discusses the potential success they hope to achieve?
- the organization who shows three relevant project case studies with positive outcomes, detailing how that success was achieved and how they expect to duplicate it?
If you’re like 79% of B2B buyers, you probably chose option ‘B’ in each case. Why?
Social proof, and the confidence it inspires in your brand and what you have to offer.
Tough choices, big expenses, complicated systems – especially those that have costly impacts if things don’t work out – are inherently uncomfortable.
In a perfect world, we’d have 30 days to use every product or service before making our final decision. But that isn’t always practical. The next best option is knowing someone else who used it and was happy with the results. This is social proof.
And interestingly, even though we don’t know the subject of the case study personally, case studies provide that same boost to our comfort level.
Case studies help increase trust and comfort by:
- Providing powerful social proof that your product, project, or service does what you say it will do.
- Demonstrating your expertise, positioning your organization as a trusted resource and market leader.
- Providing real-world examples and information in a way your prospects can easily identify with.
- Educating prospects on the value and benefits of your product or service.
What is a case study?
First, there are MANY types of case studies.
Rather than getting deep into the weeds on the myriad types, for the sake of this discussion, let’s corral them into two main groups:
- Case studies that provide a prospective customer with confidence and trust in the message you’re presenting to them.
- Case studies that help others to understand a process or practice.
We’ll talk mostly about the first group here, but our basic facts apply to both types.
A case study is a detailed story about how the subject of the story (think: your satisfied customer or client, successful beneficiary, or innovative project team) was able to accomplish a goal or achieve an outcome because of the product, service, or intervention that your case study profiles.
Case studies describe the challenge or problem that your customer needed to overcome, how they approached and resolved it (hint: this is where your contribution comes in), and the positive outcome(s) they achieved as a result.
In the marketing world, this might detail how your customer’s business improved or costs decreased after they implemented your system.
In the development world, the story might demonstrate how a community was able to influence local policy decisions after participating in your capacity building project.
For a training curriculum or field manual, you might want the detailed break-down of a project or practice, including both what made it successful, and also roadblocks that it hit.
What isn’t a case study?
Case studies are not sales pitches. And they aren’t data dumps.
Like all good content marketing tools, case studies differ from straight sales copy in that they focus on the customer and the solution that customer is seeking, and they provide value for the reader rather than pitching the product or service you want to sell.
Case studies also differ from testimonials, in that case studies aren’t just kudos or recommendations, but rather an exploration of what changed because of your product or service, how, and what impacts that had on the problem your customer was seeking to resolve.
What should a case study contain?
PRO TIP: A case study is, above all else, a story.
And a compelling customer story isn’t about statistics, nor is it, primarily, about your product.
It’s about a person.
A hero, if you will.
The hero of your case study is the customer, beneficiary, community, client, or team who has benefited from your product or service. This hero looks an awful lot like the prospect you’re trying to reach, or the target your prospective donor is interested in reaching.
A good story takes your hero on a journey. Like this:
- Our Hero has a problem or need. A challenge she has to find a solution for.
- She attempts to resolve issues through business as usual, but the results are just not what she needs.
- So, she embarks on a journey to discover new approach.
- SUCCESS! Our valiant hero overcomes the odds and resolves the problem – by finding your solution.
- And returning triumphant, tells your future customer all about her quest, the glorious solution she found, and what she has accomplished because of it.
Unlike a fiction story, though, case studies are built on research, interviews, and, whenever possible, specific, measurable data about the benefit your customer got from using your product.
Unlike a white paper, that may propose several options, case studies usually do highlight the specific impact your product has had. But case studies still present the case for your product objectively, and often even touch on some challenges in addition to just the benefits – always emphasizing how those challenges were overcome, of course.
How can you use case studies in your marketing?
Case studies belong on your website
Start with your homepage
Your homepage may be the only page your visitors ever see, so it’s prime real estate for capturing their attention and offering social proof. Case studies are powerful tools for building credibility, inspiring trust and confidence, and encouraging prospects to dig deeper into you website.
But don’t stop at your homepage!
As you build a library of case studies, designate a page on your site to house them, making it easy for people visiting your site to find all the inspiration they need to understand and connect with your products.
And definitely pull out juicy bits of content from these studies to spice up your other web pages: a testimonial quote here, a fabulous infographic there, and you’ve grown the value of your case study across your whole site.
Social media + social proof: a winning combination.
Just like the other pages on your own site, your social media channels can benefit from links to your case studies or snippets from them.
Have a great customer or beneficiary quote? Tweet that out with a link to the study.
Does your case study have a fantastic image you can share on Facebook or LinkedIn with a thank you to the profiled client? Or with a sentence or two summing up the findings of the study?
Use case studies to support your other content and marketing campaigns.
The most effective content serves many purposes, and case studies are certainly no exception.
Each of your case studies can provide the backbone of blog posts, videos, and podcasts, even webinars, and they contain fabulous fodder for website and sales copy blurbs. And each of those pieces of content, in turn, can link back to your case study.
Pro Tip: Increase your prospects’ engagement with your site by including a call to action at the end of your blog post or video, where they can download the full study.
Or, you might consider compiling several good case studies into an Ebook or a training manual.
Pull quotes and insights from a case study to highlight and support your any of your marketing messaging.
Combine quotes and insights from several case studies to provide a well-rounded view of what your product or service has to offer – in real-world terms.
An abridgement from a case study can do double duty as a testimonial.
Use case studies to, well, make your case, in proposals, white papers, and other content.
We’ve talked about building trust by adding social proof. Case studies aren’t the only content that benefits from social proof, but they are a simple way to collect it.
Folding relevant case studies into white papers, premium content offers, and guides, is a low-cost way to repurpose the high-quality social proof and impact evidence you’ve already produced, getting more mileage out of each content marketing dollar spent, and helping prospects see your solution fitting perfectly into their problem.
Case stories in a grant proposal make the same point as your data and statements, but may be more likely to capture your reviewers’ attention and build credibility.
Enrich sales meetings, presentations, podcasts, videos, and more.
Whether you’re getting ready for a short call to answer a prospective client’s questions or presenting a TED Talk on your revolutionary new practice and its world-shaking impact, case studies can be a good place to start building in connections and social proof.
Give your audience a real person to root for, and help them see themselves in what you do.
Add case studies to your other sales activities
Email marketing generates a fantastic return on investment; improve that even more by adding the power of case studies to your email campaigns.
Or perhaps your field relies heavily on face-to-face sales? Include case studies in your brochures and sales packets. Empower your sales team with powerful stories of how your product or service demonstrably, adds value.
Customer concerns or objections to overcome? Offer a real-life example, in the form of a success story, of how you’ve already solved that problem for a similar customer.
And, of course, use case studies to train staff and scale up good practices.
Trust is easier to build when your content – and your marketing overall – focuses on the value your product or service brings to customers, not the product itself, or even reams of data about it.
Case studies, customer stories, impact stories, help your staff live in the successful project, understand what built that success, and bring the theory and the data into focus for your prospective customer in a way that he or she can connect with.
How about you?
How are you using case studies in your marketing or training processes?
I’d love to hear your case study thoughts in the comments or via the links below.
Have questions about how to use case studies to attract and interest clients? Let’s talk!