The Case for Case Studies

Everyone knows that the best sort of sales leads are recommendations – referrals from satisfied customers who have experienced your business and are happy to tell others just how great your organisation is. The trouble is, no matter how enthusiastic these ‘brand ambassadors’ might be, simply hoping they will remember to refer you – if and when they have the opportunity to do so, is not much of a sales strategy. There is however a really easy way you can take control, using the strong relationships you’ve developed, and the projects you’ve successfully delivered, to proactively leverage further sales opportunities – by capturing your success stories as case studies. Case studies are a powerful way to showcase your projects, the customers you work with and the results you get for them. They have a number of advantages which make them particularly effective:

• Versatile: Case studies can be used in both digital and hard copy formats - use them to support a wide range of sales and marketing activities including: 
• New business presentations 
• Direct mail 
• Events 

 

• Dynamic: Because a case study brings your business to life through a real-life story, it is far more emotive than a list of products or services can ever be! 

• Independent endorsement: A third party endorsement is an extremely powerful validation of your expertise, and vital for converting a prospect into a customer. 

What should a case study look like? 
While there are no strict rules, most case studies will follow a similar format with regards to content. Here are some guidelines for a typical structure:

• Your customer: Briefly introduce your customer, explaining a little about who they are, what they do, and the position they hold within their market sector. 

• The challenge: Set out the story of the challenge your customer faced, and the ‘hurt’ their business was feeling before they made the decision to engage you. 

• The result: Detail the outcome you were instrumental in bringing about, and explain how your customer’s position has improved. The more evidence you can introduce to qualify how successful the outcome was the better. If possible, express results as real, specific measura
• bl – ‘an X £ saving’ or ‘an X % improvement’ for example. 

• Customer testimonial: Your case study should finish with a short testimonial from your customer, summarizing how pleased they are with the work you did. It’s important to attribute this to a senior person and to include their name and job title. 

Keep your case study reasonably short – no more than 1 or 2 sides of A4 as a guide (though the format you use is up to you), and make use of good imagery to support the words you use.

If you’re not already using them, consider adding case studies to your sales and marketing collateral. Each time you deliver a project that highlights a different aspect of your offering, or a new market sector, get into the habit of capturing the appropriate words and images – drop them into your template to keep your portfolio of case studies fresh and right up to date.

Lingerie, eCigarettes, Coffee & Cash Machines: What’s the link?

No, it’s not the ingredients for a great night out or the title of a long-lost Ian Dury album. This seemingly disparate list is actually just a selection of some of the topics I have written about in the last few months. I could have included Cloud Computing, Live events, Apprenticeship schemes - and bespoke hats to name just a few others.

So what’s my point? I’m not listing these things to brag about the diversity of the projects I get to work on, I am simply using them to illustrate that you don’t have to be an expert on a particular subject to draft a persuasive marketing communication about it. I certainly would not profess to have anything more than a superficial level of knowledge in most of these areas, (with the exception of live events). I think you’d agree that it would be pretty odd if I did have a career path that somehow managed to encompass all of these things.

If you’re writing a marketing communication piece for your business, you will - I hope - have an in-depth understanding of your topic, but should you decide to outsource your copywriting, you don’t necessarily have to search out and engage a writer who is an industry expert.

With a thorough briefing, a good writer should be able to create marketing and sales focused content around virtually any subject. Whatever the business sector and selected medium, your communication will have clearly defined objectives – most likely, to inform, promote or sell. The techniques for weaving these key messages into copy and driving the reader towards the outcome you want will be the same whatever the product or service in question. Of course, a certain level of understanding will need to be acquired by the writer at the briefing stage. It will be the writer’s responsibility to ask the right questions and ensure they have all the information they need to undertake the project. A written brief will be helpful for reference, but in my own experience, I don’t think there is really any substitute for including a face to face meeting as part of the briefing process – even if it takes place virtually, via Skype.

If your communication is directed at an audience with limited knowledge of the subject, I would argue that using a ‘non expert’ writer can actually be an advantage. Typically, the end-user you are communicating with will be far more interested in the benefits your product or service will bring, than they will be in the detail of how it works. Coming fresh to a topic with no preconceptions, a writer will bring a different perspective, asking questions which as an authority on your subject you may easily overlook – but which to your audience may be fundamental.