Writing a case study is one of the best marketing communication strategies to clearly describe the benefits of your product to your target customer. This is particularly true for B2B businesses. Here are our top tips for writing a compelling marketing case study that will drive sales. Contact us to ask about our case study templates.
The most important use for the marketing case study is to give your target customer a specific example of how your product or service has been used to solve a business problem that they share and can relate to.
Writing a case study is not about touting your product features, but about the customer problem, the solution, and finally the results. It can be nice to include some lessons learned also, so long as they don’t reflect poorly on your company or your product.
But case studies need to be written well to be effective.
When I was responsible for services sales and marketing for a major technology company, it was always a challenge to get good marketing case studies. Many of the case studies and customer success stories from corporate marketing never got used effectively. This experience is common across many businesses. But why?
Well, in my experience, the main reasons why case studies fail as sales and marketing tools are:
A marketing case study needs to be an effective presales tool. It should be used to drive conversation and interaction, not just be a glossy piece that gathers dust on your customer’s desk. In that interaction, credibility is key, and a weak case study can destroy the sales team’s credibility: if the customer has questions either the sales team or the case study itself need to be able to provide the next level detail either through links, references or speaker notes.
You want your case study to engage prospective customers and make them see themselves in that story. That is what makes a compelling marketing case study.
These are my top tips on writing a case study that will drive sales effectively: