Case studies are the stories that inspire future business. Don't waste time writing poor-quality case studies that don’t help the reader or support the sales process. This article explains how to write effective case studies.
Why case studies matter
According to a study by Demand Gen Report, 79% of B2B buyers considered case studies crucial in their decision-making process.
This makes sense, given today’s buyer journey. People looking for goods and services have many options. Each provider makes bigger, bolder claims than the last. Search tool, comparison sites and analysts like Gartner have largely eroded information asymmetry and, indeed, may give buyers an information advantage.
As the pressure to deliver excellent results and a strong return on investment (ROI) grows, buyers have no time to waste making the wrong decision.
In this context, case studies are very powerful marketing and sales assets:
- Credibility and trust
- Storytelling around specific use cases
- Proof of real-world results
- Demonstrating ROI
What is a case study?
For people just getting to know your business, case studies provide a brief, relevant overview of what your product or service offers. Case studies are the final push for those who are further down the funnel, providing them with a story they can relate to. For your existing customers, case studies are a chance to exhibit their success.
With an excellent case study, you showcase the value of your product or service in a more tangible way. You can check out some of Articulate's own case studies on this page here.
At Articulate Marketing, we’ve written many case studies for different technology companies, including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and others. So, we've learned a thing or two about writing them well.
Watch the case studies webinar
Before you go on to read our article, why not check out this video? It's a webinar we did back in 2020 that was all about building better case studies. You can view the recording and slides below:
How to get better case studies by Articulate Marketing.
Why are case studies important?
Search Engine Watch found that 72% of consumers will take action only after reading a positive review. So for Articulate Marketing, working with our clients to develop valuable case studies is vital, regular work. (For example, we have written hundreds of case studies for big tech companies over the last decade.)
First and foremost, case studies tell a story. So, you’ll need a customer case study champion – someone who’s been successfully using your product or service.
Your prospects don’t want a rejigged press release or a list of facts – they want a story they can relate to. Don't just write the story you want to hear. Write the story they tell. This could be how they used your solution to reach new markets, save time and money on paperwork, or increase productivity without an increase in personnel. Whatever it is, make sure this personal, person-led story drives the case study.
How to write a case study
- Do your groundwork. Understand the product or service being sold and research the companies on both sides of the deal. This can be as simple as reading the ‘About Us’ section on a company website or news page. You need some context for the deal you’re writing about.
- Get some background. Try to reach the person who was on the ground and made the deal. Ask them to tell you what happened from their perspective. This will help ensure you don’t waste the client’s time with obvious questions.
- Interview the right person. The real story will come from the people involved in procurement, implementation and customer relations. Avoid interviewing marketing or PR people, as they will likely tell you a repackaged version of the story. Instead, you want the real customer. A champion of your product. Ideally, they will have the authority to approve it, too. At Articulate, we prefer to start our contact with this person, interview them, and get their feedback and signoff. This way, every interaction builds a friendly, one-to-one relationship between us, the writer, and the person representing the client.
- Find the story. As we’ve already mentioned, the story is the crux of the case study. There has to be a story: a struggle before, a journey to improve, and a benefit in the present. This doesn’t always have to be about profits. It might be improved employee retention or a new business model. The focus is on what matters most to the person you interview. Figures and statistics help sell it, of course, but the real value is in the business benefit.
- Create a template. Armed with a basic story, you can start to build a structure. Most case studies fall into the following template: company biography, challenge, process and benefits. Remember that structures are there to emphasise the story, not restrict it. Be flexible with headings and sections to make the story flow.
- Clean it up. Don’t use too many marketing phrases or clichéd product explanations—keep it human. However, make sure you refer to products correctly and types of implementation or acquisition in the right way. Accuracy matters.
- Cut your copy. A case study shouldn’t be longer than 500-750 words. Any more and people won’t read it. Cut out repetition, shorten quotes, and ensure everything you write plays a vital role in the story.
- Go for the story, not the name. Most marketing people lust after the hero case study that features a big brand name for that all-important recognition factor. The reality is that these businesses rarely want to give case studies. If they do, they will rewrite everything and take a long time to approve it. It’s better to find a willing customer with an excellent story to tell. When it comes to PR, the most successful case studies we’ve written have been about lesser-known, niche companies with a great spokesperson and a neat angle.
- Use case studies to support sales. If a case study has a good story – for example, ‘our client cut costs by 25 percent’ – use it to show potential customers how they can do the same. Arrange case studies on your website by benefit or topic rather than the company name so that salespeople can find the right story when they need it.
- And content marketing, too. Take snippets from your case studies and use them as social media assets. Weave relevant quotes into your blog posts. Feature testimonials and reviews in your downloadable assets. Discuss successful results on podcasts. Let your social proof do some of the talking when it comes to your content and marketing materials.
- Be specific. Details matter. Not only do they make the case study more credible, they answer the reader’s questions.
- Speed is everything. Case studies have a short half-life. Technology moves on. Companies change. Ideally, a good case study should take a week from first contact to approval. If it takes longer, it increases the risk that the case study champion will lose interest. Aim for a crescendo, not an endless low humming.
What do you do when a case study goes wrong?
You will put a lot of time and effort into your case studies. Sometimes, being so deeply involved in this process doesn’t enable you to be objective about the quality of your work. We are fortunate enough at Articulate to work on a lot of case studies for our clients, and there are a few things we’ve learned to look for when determining whether a case study works or not. Here are a few ‘red flag’ characteristics to look out for when reviewing your case studies:
- They are lifeless. You get little sense of person or place.
- They are too formulaic: problem, solution, benefits.
- There is no story. There is no feeling of tension, suspense, or progress.
- The results are hard to measure.
Having been through the process, the problems lie in how they are created. Here are some things to be wary of.
- Too many cooks. Some of the case studies we write get reviewed and edited by at least seven people on the client side. This is like taking a new shirt and washing it seven times before you can wear it – it’s hardly going to feel like new after that!
- Too many steps. We had a tracking spreadsheet for one client that included 11 discrete steps in finalising a case study. Each one required a few emails, some uploads, some checking and, of course, some cost. That’s a lot when you put it all together.
- Overzealous brand policing. Typical feedback includes: ‘You can't say that in a case study, it's too informal.’ OR ‘All headlines must be ten words long but can't mention the customer or product by name.’
- One-size-fits-all. There’s no sense of different audiences and different media. What works online for a customer is different from what works by email for a journalist.
- Overloaded content. Typically, clients want 500-word case studies, but they also want them freighted with a paragraph about the product, a paragraph about the reseller who implemented it, a paragraph about the customer and then details of the problem and the benefits. It's too crowded in there.
- Unrealistic expectations. A marketing manager's dream is that every case study ends with this sentence: ‘Because we installed Widgetiser 3.0, my company saved £2m in three months and increased sales by 128 percent’. Unfortunately, the real world doesn't generate statistics like that. But there’s still power in the results you actually can achieve.
What to do with your finished case study
So, you’ve written a case study, got it approved and it’s live on the website. Now what? Well that’s the (sort of) easy part over. Next, comes the hard part – getting it out there, letting it be seen and generally making a fuss of the wee thing.
- Remember the audience. We wrote some case studies for an ecommerce company. They were 1,000 words long but we were only allowed to mention the product in one paragraph. The rest of the piece had to be a story designed to appeal to the company's target audience. In terms of PR coverage, these case studies were - by far - the most successful we have worked on. Why? Because journalists could see the point and people actually wanted to read them.
- New delivery media. What about a customer evidence blog? How about turning the source interview into a five-minute video? Perhaps combine three or four case studies in a particular sector, say accounting, into a single feature article about technology in that sector. What about the Q&A format? Put the interview up on YouTube?
- One case study, multiple presentations. The source interview and research don't change, but perhaps you could write a traditional case study, a bullet point summary for the web, a killer quote for an email newsletter, and a longer, more journalistic story for PR purposes. The incremental cost of the extra writing is marginal compared to the cost of going through the process to produce the basic case study. Twice the content for just 50 percent more money.
- Build a database. We use Notion as an extranet to allow everyone involved - client and agency - to access our work. This means that past case studies are always available and searchable for our use, even if that’s just for referral for formatting future content.
- Build in measurability. Too often, people seem to think that the end of the process is getting the case study signed off and uploaded to a central customer evidence website. That is only the beginning. It must be possible to build in more measurability. We work with Hubspot, which offers a boatload of analytics tools so you can track visitors who view your case study, showing where they came from and if they clicked on a CTA or contact page.
Your case study strategy doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to be effective. Utilising just ten percent of the advice we’ve given above will help you improve your case studies. At Articulate, we eat, sleep, and breathe case studies because we’ve seen first-hand just how powerful they can be for business. So don’t be afraid to reach out for some advice.