The Case Study: 12 Ways to Spotlight Your Company’s Success
Many of us learned how to solve whodunit-style murder mysteries when we played the game “Clue” or perhaps we attended a three-act, whodunit-style play where we imagined ourselves as a Nancy Drew-or Sherlock Holmes-type detective. When thrust into a real-life mystery of twists, turns, suspense, and conflicts, did you secretly try to solve it?
In the same way that a whodunit-style mystery follows a plot of a three-act play, so too, does an engaging case study. Act one describes the challenges. Act two builds tension with rising action where there seems to be no resolution to the dilemma. In act three, there’s a sigh of relief as tension resolves with a resolution that clarifies the connection, the problem, investigation, and the outcome.
Case studies have long been a learning staple in universities as a highly recognized teaching tool for management students. The lessons involve learning how to solve a real-life conflict through research, analysis, and reasoning. Case studies are highly investigative and they can be lengthy and intense. In the age of shorter attention spans, a short and sweet case study in marketing and sales is far more palatable to the reader. From a business perspective, a streamlined one-pager is the way to go to promote your products and services while gaining public trust as a thought leader in your area of expertise.
What is a case study?
A case study is an informative, emotional story about your company’s value-added products or services as told through the voice of the customer. As the story unfolds, it usually depicts a turbulent situation or pain point that the customer experienced. The customer approaches your company to help with the challenge because you work with customers in the same industries that they serve. Deep research into the situation reveals the best solution, and thanks to your team of experts, you solved their nagging problem! To your credit, you should be shouting it from the rooftops, but you don’t have to─because a one-page case study does it for you!
The case study format follows a story-line format as described in our provided graphic. There’s an intriguing customer dilemma to be solved. The customer tells a laudable story. The story has a flair for being relevant today, and the main people involved (per the customer’s recount) produce the facts that educate your audience of future customers. A one-page case study is a compelling representation of your company’s successes. Chances are that the customer you helped is so enamored with you that they’re more than willing to provide personal details so you can capture it in writing or video.
A simple customer testimony can’t sufficiently satisfy the effectiveness of what a case study provides. Sharing the customer experience in a case study evokes a powerful connection to your brand. Whether in printed pictorial color, video, or by another digital means, an animated account is far superior to a lackluster, run-of-the-mill testimonial, which is absent of the finer details.
Leveraging brand awareness is very important in penetrating a crowded market. Good stories describing a customer experience have credibility. As part of your customer relationship management effort, a one-page case study is an impressive, creative way in which your marketing department can promote your brand. It’s versatile, and the feasibility for using it in multiple marketing channels makes it highly popular for promoting your firm as a thought leader in your industry.
A glowing thought leadership case study, which portrays a target-specific customer in a niche market, will transport similar customers with relatable problems into the story, as it vividly unfolds from beginning to end─until the dilemma is solved. Surely, they’ll want to learn more about how your company can solve their problem too!
In the fast-moving world of business, a one-page case study is a memorable and influential piece of thought leadership that your prospective customers will appreciate. In the graphic below, I’ve laid out a simple format to follow when creating your case studies.
Why is thought leadership content in case studies,
so valuable to your company?
- Thought leadership content in case studies is unique to your company because the depth and breath of your knowledge is difficult for competitors to copy. A viewpoint that few neither possess nor can express in vivid detail is a highly valuable brand asset.
- Thought leadership content in case studies is a great differentiator because your expertise is rare, ubiquitous, and credible. Rare expertise that’s difficult to replicate is a valuable brand asset.
- Thought leadership content in case studies bolsters your brand identity. As a notable authority in your industry, there’s a natural curiosity to ask your advice. By extension, there’s a natural inclination to learn more about your company’s products and services. As your brand creates trust in the mind of a consumer, it drives sales and creates brand loyalty. Customer retention over many years is a highly valuable asset.
- Thought leadership content in case studies establishes your company as influential, pioneering, and innovative. A renowned brand reputation is a highly valuable asset.
After you’ve interviewed your satisfied customers and they’ve signed an agreement allowing use of their stories in your promotional effort, it’s time to leverage their case study stories across the most popular marketing channels where your customers gather.
Describing your customers’ buyer’s journey in succinct, swift, and riveting content removes any complexity because it’s a quick read. Masterfully created thought leadership content, finely designed and branded in exquisite color, will entice curious customers who will want to learn more about how you’ve established yourself as a brand leader.
Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing can design and write fabulous case studies for video, audio, or for printed marketing and sales collateral. If you want to attract a specific type of customer from niche markets, we can help. All you have to do is contact us: info@savvyswan.com. We look forward to working with you.
You’ve finished your case study─here’s 12 ways
to promote it!
- Place a one-page case study link on your home page for downloading; employ calls to action (CTAs) to generate leads.
- Highlight one-page case studies on a dedicated tab as a website landing page. Be sure to employ CTAs to garner leads.
- Display a link to case studies below your email signature for social media and promotional efforts.
- Provide a visually appealing one-page case study as a printed piece of sales collateral, similar to a statement of work (SOW) type proposal. Each time you respond to RFIs, RFPs, or RFQs, you should include a relevant case study that matches the professional work to which you are responding.
- Google bolsters pages that include video. Upload a case study video to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Utilize audio clips as a podcast in new employee onboarding, revealing a story-line of rising and falling action, and concluding with the customer dilemma resolved. For video, make sure you hire professional actors if you can’t get your customer to enact their story. Video and audio mediums are effective in dramatizing an authentic story-line as a zippy commercial-type alternative to reading. Video and audio are also fantastic for teaching new employees about your company’s brand, products, services, and real-life solutions.
- Insert a one-page case study link into your blogs and marketing campaigns. Be sure to include the CTAs.
- Revive and repurpose your one-page case studies from the past; make them relevant today so that they’ll go viral in your social media posts. Take case studies that occurred only in print and turn them into video, audio, or presentations. Trends are often repeated or revived, and everything old can be made new again!
- Create a “patron promotion piece” in your company’s e-newsletter by highlighting a customer problem that you solved. Your customer will appreciate the extra publicity they’ve received from your extensive distribution list. Simultaneously, from the voice of the customer, it’s a subtle way to tout your company’s achievements without having to state it yourself.
- Get a little extra mileage out of the company’s case study links. Ask your employees to share them in their social media channels, such as LinkedIn.
- Maximize marketing reach with pop-up ads using Google and Facebook. Embed CTAs, which are important for sales.
- Social media apps like Facebook Messenger and What’s App are highly influential and hugely popular of late. Customers like them because they are quick, direct ways of interacting. If your customers endorse them, you should too. Messaging apps have been trending up in popularity and have become standard in business communications. To sell more products, use messaging apps to insert your one-page case study links for customer inquiries.
- Facebook Marketplace is often not thought of as a place to advertise goods and services. Many of their listings are dedicated to “used goods,” but many companies that do not engage in used goods, find the platform to be beneficial for advertising. You can brand your company’s photo or graphic advertisements for goods and services and include a link within your ad description that leads to your one-page case studies. Locally, the ad is free, and you can boost it for a fee to increase the radius of people viewing it.
Personalization and value-driven content is a top trend in 2021. What is more personalized than a true-to-life case study that integrates emotional resonance into a story as captured through the customer’s eyes? What better way to showcase the personal care you provided to a customer, than by alleviating their pain point with a good solution?
People are in a hurry. They are looking for snackable, value-driven content, not a full-course meal. A skim-and-scan case study or, alternatively, pithy video and audio, are value-driven content that are germane to our current world, which moves like the speed of light.
Your customers are your influencers. A compelling, bona fide customer account of how you solved their dilemma will bolster your brand and prove that your products or services are worth exploring.
If you’re interested in learning more about case study preparation, feel free to contact Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing.
By Patti Kondel, CEO, Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing, MBA from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and MA from Emerson College, Boston. Patti is a business and marketing specialist, brand booster, lover of the arts, yoga practitioner, content creator, and cookie connoisseur—the sweet variety—and for marketing consumption, Internet cookies too! Let me help you trumpet your business to the world! Contact me today!
Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing is available for business opportunities around the globe. We also welcome related news, contributing article submissions, and helpful blog tip posts from our kindred community. If interested in submitting compatible content, please email info@savvyswan.com.