
Inbound marketing is all about demonstrating your expertise by creating and sharing valuable information to your prospects. And one of the most powerful ways to demonstrate that expertise, especially for companies in the B2B space, is using real-life, relevant case studies your target audience will relate to.
Case studies show what you’re capable of under the same types of conditions and expectations your target experiences; in that way they serve as compelling peer reviews of your capabilities, approach, product, service and people.
Even though a case study is essentially just the telling of a story, it can be a little tricky to put together – what details do you include? Which details aren’t important? What kinds of metrics should you provide? What’s too much info and what’s not enough?
When creating your own case studies (your library should include at least 3), they should all present the same types of information:
Your view of the situation, the development of the solution and the process of reaching it are as important as results because they demonstrate how you think and respond – critical in most every vendor’s selection process.
Below are some questions to ask yourself as you outline information for each of the four categories. You may find yourself coming up with additional relevant questions and answers – as long as they help demonstrate your expertise, include them!
This section gives you the opportunity to outline the situation your customer was in and the challenge they faced; it also allows you to talk about the related challenges you faced as a result.
This section gives you the chance to highlight the reasons you were chosen for the project.
Avoid talking about price if that’s the primary reason you were chosen. Focus instead on what you can do better than anyone – and anyone can lower their price if they really want a project.
Here’s where you’ll identify how you evaluated and solved the customer’s challenge. What’s important here is demonstrating that you weren’t selected based on price alone or because you were able to deliver on the required date; this is a chance to show the power of how you think and act.
This is The Big Payoff: what impact your solution had on your customer’s business. You’ll enhance your credibility if you present results in a goal-to-outcome comparison that connects what the customer needed and how you addressed it spot-on.
Simply answering the questions in these four categories will give you 90% of what you need to construct a compelling case study. What you need to do at this point is write the story. This is simply a matter of taking all of your answers and adding detail where you’d like to go into more depth (as long as it’s relevant to the prospect), rewording to ensure that each sentence leads into the next, and adding appropriate lead-ins where necessary.
Next, make your case study really powerful by adding a quote from the customer. Having that added stamp of approval and confirmation that you performed as you claim makes the piece more interesting and believable. Some of your customers may be leery about (or prohibited from) providing their name or even the name of the company. You can easily get around this by using their title only, and identifying the company in general terms, such as “a large food manufacturer” or "industry-leading financial software company".
Want some more help creating great case studies? We’ve got a template for that!
Topics: Content Marketing