Case Study Benefits
One of the most powerful marketing tools is case studies. They allow you to share with prospective customers stories they care relate too, show your company's success, and help you build credibility. Case studies are more powerful in reaching your audience in many ways when written in the right way than any sales pitch, email campaign, or even newsletter.
Now there numerous benefits but below are three key reasons case studies could assist your business:
Case Studies Allow You to Build Trust
When you're able to impact a customer positively, why not share the story!
Why? Because when prospective customers are searching, they are looking for solutions and companies that can solve their problems, and sharing a similar story will help engage better.
Case studies allow you to build trust with customers by sharing valuable information. They show proof, overviews, and possibly testimonials that your sales and marketing teams can use to bolster your brand.
Case Studies Show the Capabilities of Your Company
A case study allows you to present a picture of success to the prospective customer through data and how your solution solved the problem at hand. For example, Client A saw a saving of 30% on data entry with our solution.
Case Studies Drive Leads Through Storytelling
When it comes to marketing storytelling, go hand in hand together. When content writers can encourage prospective customers by using emotional storytelling in their marketing campaigns, they quickly find their target audience more engaged with content being shared.
Bottomline case studies build customer confidence about your company and solution(s) on how you can solve their needs.
So how do you get customers to share their stories with you, and what do you have to do to encourage them?
Tips and Tricks on Getting Customers to Share Stories for Case Studies
Identify candidates for case studies by talking with your sales and technical team. These teams will more than likely have a good grasp on the clients who will probably say yes. If you have a team that is a little protective when it comes to sharing, you may have to do a little bit of explaining on the value of case studies.
Find the person within your team who has the strongest relationship with the customer to see if it's OK to produce a case study. Typically people and customers are no different will more than likely agree when they are comfortable with the person they know. But in some cases, there is a benefit to having a senior executive from your company ask if you're asking a customer's senior executive.
Case Studies are not always one-sided. Sometimes a case study can also be beneficial to the customer as well. Maybe your solution was able to help them improve capability or product that the customer can promote to their customers. Thus they may also be able to use the case study for industry recognition.
Offering an incentive to customers who are willing to agree to a case study. Ideally, the success story would start 3-6 months after the solution has gone live so that there are real, tangible results to write about.
Joint Case Studies with a Business Partner. Working with a business partner on a collective case study may help get the customer to say yes. There is also an opportunity to create two versions where one focuses on your companies' perspective and focuses on the business partner. This also gives you the option to share the costs.
Be flexible in what you ask and how you ask the customer to help with regards to the case study. The typical process involves a phone interview of 30-60 minutes, and the customer will need to review the case study and provide feedback on the changes they want. If the customer balks at spending this much time, ask if they are willing to try an alternative process. Case studies can be written with internal input only, but the customer will still need to review the copy.
Additional Suggestions:
Identify three candidates to approach. You're going to find not everyone is willing to say yes, or they may not be willing to do it at that time, or there are issues when it comes to the approval stage. By reaching out to three or more, you are increasing your "Yes."
Confirming who needs to sign off. Even that your primary contact may say yes, the company may have a process where the marketing or legal department has to agree or sign off on the final approval of the case study before publication. The last thing you want is you do all the hard work only to have the customer's corporate office deny the case study at the final stage because they don't allow case studies, for example.
Case Studies should be an ongoing task. You need to be continually creating case studies throughout the year. Now I am not saying necessarily every month unless you can handle that but continually bringing new fresh stories in the mix.
Contact us today at 617 256 6178 or click here to book a meeting to find out how you can turn one of your customers into a success story on your website.
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About the Author
Jon Rivers – Jon has been recognized as a pioneer within the partner channel as a digital marketing expert for his leadership in helping partners develop social brands, marketing strategies, and content to drive successful marketing campaigns.
Before starting Marketing Monarchs, Jon spent many years working in the Microsoft Dynamics ERP ecosystem system. Jon serves on various boards, including Directions North America, IAMCP (International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners), and CMA (Channel Marketing Alliance).
When Jon is not busy running Marketing Monarchs, you can find him Co-Hosting Leadership Goes Beyond, one of the fastest-growing virtual conferences for Leadership.
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