The purpose of case studies in marketing
When it comes to marketing your business, especially in a B2B market, you can post, blog, or email about all the great things you can do. Still, you need to back up all these fantastic claims—showing evidence that you can meet a client’s expectations. You can do this by showing past examples of work you have already done for someone else.
Potential clients can see real-world examples of you solving a problem. Therefore, during the decision process, they are not just relying on what you have to say about yourself but are able to relate their pain points to what other businesses have needed help with or projects they have completed. This is where case studies come in.
Case studies are short overviews of past work you have carried out for a client, highlighting what you did, why, and how.
So, what is the correct process for creating and sharing a case study?
How to create a case study
When creating a case study, you need to decide what you want to write about. Don’t try to go through all the work you have ever done but focus on one particular area, problem or project. You don’t want to bombard readers with too much information at once.
The best way to showcase your real-world example is by telling a story… a love story. So, like any good romance story, start at the beginning with a meet-cute.
(Oxford Languages: Meet-Cute (Noun) an amusing or charming first encounter between two characters that leads to the development of a romantic relationship between them).
Let people know how you met and answer questions like:
- What was the problem that needed fixing?
- What was the knowledge gap?
- What did they want you to provide?
- What was the ideal outcome?
This is the brief from the client.
Once you have set out the problem, you need to solve it and show your workings along the way. Go through the step-by-step process you underwent to meet their brief, highlighting what you did and why. But back this up with proof…Show videos, images, graphs and statistics to back up your claims.
After all the hard work is done, it’s time to conclude the story and everyone loves a fairy-tale ending. Detail the project results and if you managed to meet the brief. When we create a case study, we love to focus on numbers. This can be how much ROI (Return-on-Investment) a client made or the £ value of leads we created for them.
We then wrap up each study with feedback from the client. A simple quote would do! This just adds validity to the case study and proves that you were dealing with real people.
Finally, add a little section on how someone can get in touch. This is a sales piece, after all!
Top Tip: If the project was carried out by someone not writing the study, then spend some time interviewing those involved.
Presentation!
Do you want to know the difference between a good case study and a great case study?
Once you have a straightforward narrative, you can work on creating a way to present the information. Many businesses, including us here at Marketing Managed (Bacon Marketing), choose to produce a PDF document. (You can always present a study as a podcast, infographic or video if you prefer).
However, when we say presentation, we also mean style. Your case study should be visually pleasing and easy to read. Like any marketing material, it needs to stick to your branding, both in terms of imagery but tone of voice. This document should be YOU.
Most studies tend to be very word-heavy, but you should find a way to break up content while staying relevant to your topic. Again, we suggest you do this through videos, images, graphs and statistics. Try to keep it fresh, exciting and straight to the point.
Let’s look at some examples to help you out!
Here’s one we made earlier. We like to practise what we preach, so we thought we would show some of our past examples:
- We created a case study for the video production company, Five on a Bike. We helped the Five on a Bike team to approach potential new clients and convert their leads with the help of a care package. Full link to study here: (https://marketingmanaged.agency/five-on-a-bike-case-study)
- This is a case study for one of our clients, Mahr. They were struggling under the weight of too much data, from too many sources that spanned back over a decade, making it hard for the team to make informed decisions. We helped the Mahr team to wrangle their data and identify £4.5 million in potential revenue. Full link to study here: https://marketingmanaged.agency/mahr-case-study-data-wrangling
- This case study is for Cool Content. They wanted us to review their website from both the user experience point of view and conversion optimisation. We helped the Cool Content team to improve their website user experience and conversions. Full link to study here: https://marketingmanaged.agency/cool-content-case-study-website-critique
We would spend some time showing off all our own case studies, but we find that would be a little biased. So, here is a little look at a great case study from Vicon.
Vicon is the global leader in motion capture systems for any application: life sciences, media and entertainment, location-based virtual reality, and engineering. The case study we are about to look at is about motion capture in Space Jam 2.
Full link to study here:
The case studies they create are downloadable PDFs but presented in the style of a magazine.
Instantly this comes across as an informative newsletter. The study is done through an interview-style presentation of information through quotes. Instead of showing a report filled with stats, they tell an engaging narrative. They have turned a formal case study and traditional thought leadership piece into a collaboration piece with two key speakers offering their experience throughout the project. This gives the vibe that the reader is involved in a conversation.
All this information is backup through visually stimulating but relevant images. Luckily for them, the process of creating motion capture for Space Jam is an exciting topic to start with and comes with a lot of useful source materials for images and stills.
The information is so clean, easy to follow and enjoyable to read. They follow the pattern of brief, process and results but don’t spend too much time on each. The stages are also clearly broken up through subheadings. For instance, instead of just highlighting the issues and how they helped solve the problem, Vicon uses innovative headings to reinforce their point, such as ‘The Knowledge Gap’ to instantly show why they were brought on (to bring knowledge and experience to the table).
Plus, with only 1 page of information, the reader is not bombarded with lots of content all at once, improving the overall experience.
Unfortunately, they don’t include any information on how to contact their team based on this case study.
How to share a case study
So, you have created a case study? Now what? You share it, of course! Ideally, it would be best if you shared this on your website in the news or blog section. You can then use this to link on other platforms, including social media and emails. Try to get this out to all your avenues and share it with as many people as possible.
You can then break down this study into smaller versions that fit specific platforms, for example, several social posts, a podcast, a video, a newsletter or even taking this to the press. One case study can provide enough content for weeks’ worth of posts (make sure to post other topics in between).
As this is a collaborative study you can even ask people who worked on the projects, including the businesses you worked with to share with their followers on their socials.
However, as this is a sales tool that shows your work for past clients, you should add this to your sales pack or onboarding pack. Send this out to sales leads who are looking for similar help.
Need help with your case studies?
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