Want to significantly improve your sales? Want to strengthen customer loyalty? Want to tell your brand story in a way that is credible and inspiring? To achieve all of that, you need one of the most powerful instruments in your marketing toolbox: the case study.
Case studies are our seal of quality. We share with prospective clients the successful processes we have led, processes we can implement for them too. But instead of simply showing off our achievements, we do it in a more pleasant way — one that delivers real value and lets the prospect learn from our experience.
Yes, we have a track record of success. We have done this once, twice, and probably many more times. We are specialists, and we are proud to present the clients who recommend us. Some are large, well-known companies; others are smaller businesses, much like yours. Of course you can try to do everything on your own, though that is rarely the wisest route. Working with a partner who has already walked the path is usually the better choice.
Whether it appears as text on a website, as a video, or as a talk on a conference stage, the case study is an important and highly effective component of the sales process. In practice it hands us at least five valuable assets that help close the deal.
1. Proven experience
Nobody wants to be the guinea pig. A case study tells the story of our proven experience in the field. We have been through these processes so many times that they have become part of our battle record. That is why it is worth describing what we actually do and what works best, grounded in real experience rather than theory. Case studies are facts from the field — success stories, step by step. They are very hard to argue with.
2. Building reputation
A good case study is always built on the experience of a real client. In effect it is a letter of recommendation. If the client is a large market leader, that is not only a financial upgrade for our business — it is a brand upgrade too. Suppose we are a supplier to Apple. Anyone who understands that we work with a company of that calibre learns a great deal about the quality of our service and product. In a sense, the case study borrows the brand equity of the client we served and lets us enjoy it.
If the client is smaller, that works beautifully as well. It is at eye level, and we are effectively telling prospects: look, we work with businesses like yours, we understand your world.
3. Reinforcing confidence
The more detailed the case study, the more confidence it creates — the feeling that you are in good hands. It shows that we master the details, that we ran into constraints and found solutions. It shows that we are flexible and creative. The bottom line: it tells the story of a win. It makes prospects believe in us and believe that we can deliver what we promise.
4. A seal of quality
The case study is a highly effective sales tool. It is used widely, but often dishonestly. As a result many customers have developed a defence mechanism and are slow to believe every case study they come across on websites and in advertising channels. The most credible way to produce a case study that breaks through that wall is to combine it with testimonials from past clients. If we can film clients on camera describing how good our product or service is, that is the strongest seal of quality we can obtain. People rarely lie on camera on someone else’s behalf.
5. Customer loyalty
A client who takes part in our case study, especially one who appears in it personally, becomes a loyal client who feels they are getting full value for their money. This is a client who values us professionally and feels how much we invested in them. More importantly, they want to contribute to our success — not with money, but with their good name, which is worth far more.
It is therefore worth talking to the client and asking them to share your joint experience across marketing channels: websites, social networks, even as part of a presentation they give at a conference. All of these presentations tie the client to us and strengthen their loyalty. Most importantly, we become part of their success story.
A worked example: how community drove a 30% lift in organic traffic
To close, here is the case study of «Urban Brides» — Israel’s leading wedding website, with more than two million page views and thirty thousand users a year. Given that Israel records roughly forty thousand weddings annually, the scale of activity on the site speaks for itself.
Tal Maor Zingerman writes:
«Urban Brides» went live in 2010 as a small niche blog and became a phenomenon that profoundly influenced the entire Israeli wedding industry. I plead guilty: it all happened because of the preparations for my own wedding and the wish to plan it a little differently — a wish that was far from obvious somewhere back in the prehistory before Instagram and Pinterest.
Over the years the site became a strong brand. It is rare to find a bride in Israel (or a bride’s mother, or a bride’s sister, or a groom, or a groom’s mother) who does not know it. The site holds thousands of articles about organising and planning a wedding, alongside a marketplace of hundreds of recommended, leading suppliers.
Today community is a buzzword, but a decade ago it happened authentically and entirely intuitively. What actually turned «Urban Brides» into more than a website? What turned it into a phenomenon, a brand, something so many brides have loved over the years?
The community.
The format of the community changed over the years. It started as a wedding forum on a portal, moved offline into meet-ups, came back online and settled into a Facebook group — but the essence stayed the same. Even today the site does not operate in a vacuum: it was born, and continues to live, for its community.
The «Urban Brides» Facebook group is highly active and contains, at any given moment, thousands of brides who are planning their wedding right now. We are strict about keeping the group to members who are actively planning a wedding rather than those who have already married — otherwise a community has no meaning in a market whose audience turns over so quickly.
About three years ago we decided to strengthen the link between the community and the site, and launched an internal content programme called «every question gets an article». We realised there was a tight connection between the conversation among group members and the traffic reaching the site from the group. Through careful monitoring of that conversation we produced dozens of articles that answered the precise needs of the women in the group.
This past September the project brought 10,000 visits to the site. In the Israeli wedding industry that is a very large volume of traffic. Most importantly, it is a niche, precise, well-segmented audience — every site owner’s dream.
How do you apply this method in your own community?
Broadly, the secret is to provide a precise answer in the form of relevant content connected to the community’s subject, and to distribute that content to the community sensitively and pleasantly. Listen to the questions being asked, turn the recurring ones into content, and bring the content back to the place where the question was raised.
Turning proof into trust
A case study is an important and essential marketing tool for your business, so it matters that you know how to build one in the most credible and effective way. A case study is social proof, and a strong brand knows how to use it. When it is embedded in a broader digital strategy it stops being just another piece of content and becomes an engine of trust.
Want us to write your success story? Talk to Rainz and we will turn your results into proof your prospects can believe.