Learn the art of presenting the company’s successes with compelling customer case studies. I’ll explain why it is important to have a great case study and give you some tips on how to do case studies of customers.
Why Case Studies Are Useful
A customer case study builds trust with your buyers. The first thing a buyer does when considering a purchase is to ask their network or conduct research online.
Your buyers in the B2B sectors hire other people to solve their problems. This means that they need to trust you before they can hire you.
A customer case study is a perfect way to show the facts. It provides them with the proof that you are a reliable partner and supplier who has helped other customers successfully.
Therefore, it is also one of the areas that need attention when it comes to creating the perfect website for inbound marketing. It attracts buyers and helps them with their buying journey.
Another aspect of building trust lies in helping your buyers identify with the other customers in your case study. This way, it makes a bigger impact. By describing the customer’s challenges and problems, others will be able to resonate with them if they are facing similar situations.
Case Studies Advantages
A case study is based on real data and results, and it helps you build authority in the industry. You will become a more trusted voice for your audience if you can showcase compelling customer case studies.
There are other benefits as well. By creating a good customer case study, you share the knowledge about the case internally.
You can help more employees gain insight into your customers and how the company works to help them. It creates a greater commitment to the organization.
You also have enormous opportunities to promote the customer case studies, in many different formats and platforms, to build a brand in your market. And if you can get the customer to do the same, you will be able to create a stronger effect.
Before I go into how you should go about creating a good customer case study, I wanted to make it clear that it is possible for you to do it on your own.
It is also possible to create case studies that look different – not everyone needs to follow the same template. But there are certain aspects in a case study that are important to include for it to be as beneficial as possible. I’ll address them in this article.
Which Customer Case Should You Choose?
- The right thing to do is to choose a successful customer case. The customer must be satisfied, and you should have a positive result to show. This is a prerequisite for it to be a public customer case study.
- If you have several of these to choose from, then pick a case with a customer who represents your ideal customer. These are the ones who you want to have more of in your business. The more your target group recognizes themselves in the customer case study, the more trust they will have in you.
- You can choose a customer who is part of a particular industry that is a priority for you to focus on. The fact that the customer sees that you have an understanding of their particular industry creates a great advantage for you.
- You can also choose the customer who has the strongest brand and the reputation in terms of the sales or size of the organization.
How To Do Case Studies Of Customers
Ideally, you should conduct an interview with several people who have been involved in the case:
- A representative from your company who was involved in the case (a project manager, a customer manager, or someone similar)
- The decision-maker on the customer side who hired your company as a supplier
By interviewing several people, you get more content to build your customer case study.
Conducting the interview orally is preferable because you can adapt your questions for case studies based on the insights that come with their answers. Alternatively, you can send out a form or sample template that your interviewees can fill out.
How To Get The Customer Involved
Here are some tips on how to write an email to get the customer involved in the case study:
- Compliment them and explain why you want to feature them in the case study. If the customer had a positive experience, they are generally happy to talk about it. They would be proud of how well the project turned out. Giving them compliments makes them more willing to spend their time on the case study.
- Be concise and include your questions for case studies so they can see them before they approve them. This way, it is clear to them as to what it is they are committing.
- Write about what they can get out of it. Their brand gets free publicity, and they get a good case to share internally to inspire the rest of the organization.
How To Write Case Studies Of Customers
In addition to the text-based content, you need to include:
- The company’s (i.e., the customer’s) logo and URL to the website.
- A picture of the contact person.
- A quote from the contact person that you can highlight.
- A suitable image from the project environment. It can be an authentic image from the project, but it needs to be of good quality. Otherwise, it lowers the experience of the customer case study. It is better to use a generic picture to give a sense of what the project was about. You can also use something to show what the company has contributed from a big picture perspective.
- Links to products or services used in the project.
- Any external links that are relevant, such as an article on the customer’s website about the project.
- Results. This is the most important part of proving that your solution was of great benefit to the customer. ROI is a strong value to communicate, but it can be difficult to achieve in all projects. It is often possible to convey the results in the form of an estimate. It does not have to be exact, but it must of course be true.
Despite case study templates and preparations, it can be challenging to get all the aspects that are mentioned above. However, it is possible to create a great case study without all of them being involved. But every aspect helps to build trust, so try to include as much as possible.