Case studies can help companies win business. We’re in a demand-generation, deal-closing economy and good customer evidence is the laser-guided bomb of marketing.
As Writer-in-chief at Articulate Marketing, I write many case studies for different technology companies, including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and others. Here are ten tips that will help you write and use great case studies.
- Go for the story, not the name. Most marketing people lust after the hero case study with big brand recognition. The reality is that these guys rarely want to give case studies and, if they do, they rewrite everything and take a long time to approve it. Better to find the willing customer with a good story. When it comes to PR, the most successful case studies I’ve written have been about unknown, niche companies with a great spokesperson and a neat angle.
- Find a champion and build rapport. Case studies can’t be written by committee. You need to find a champion for your case study inside the target company. Ideally, s/he has the authority to approve it too. I prefer to make first contact with this person, interview them, get their feedback and their signoff so that every contact builds a friendly, one-to-one relationship between me, the writer, and them, representing the company. Too many cooks etc.
- Real interviews with real people. The foundation of a good case study is a good interview. I like to interview my client’s account manager and the most senior guy at the target company who is willing to become a case study champion. Sometimes, because I work in tech, I need a techie interview as well to get the facts right.
- Use case studies to support sales. If a case study has a good story – “our client cut costs by 25%” – use it to show potential customers how they can do the same. Arrange case studies on your website by benefit or topic rather than company name so that sales people can find the right story when they need it.
- Keep them short. Nobody has time to read a four-page, 1,000 word case study. I recommend 500 word case studies and, ideally, you want a 50-100 microcontent version to go on the website and to use as a verbal summary in a sales pitch. A PowerPoint ‘wincard’ version is also helpful for sales. Each version needs to be written for its medium – web copy is not the same as printed copy or PowerPoint text.
- Make them interesting. A case study is an article. It has to earn the reader’s interest and attention. Write good headlines and strong ledes. Use good, powerful quotations (not frankenquotes). Avoid hype, clichés, jargon and corporate BS. Think very hard about what a potential customer wants to know about a case study. Use the conventions of a newspaper article, not a corporate press release.
- Be specific. Holly Buchanan makes this point very clearly on her blog. Details matter. Not only do they make the case study more credible, they answer the reader’s questions.
- Set them free. Most of my big clients have central case study databases. They have strict formats and guidelines for case studies and big agencies to enforce them. This is fine and I can work with that but it often seems that these controls limit the impact and spread of case studies. Good case studies should ripple quickly through company websites, social networking, intranets and into the hands of sales peoples and customers by as many routes as possible. If no knows about the case study or it tries to be all things to all people, it will likely fail.
- Use short legal agreements. One or two pages at most and they should include a clear mechanism that allows the target company to stop being a case study on request (they never do) and to reassure them that they will get to approve the case study text before it is used. A case study release should reassure a candidate not frighten them off.
- Speed is everything. Case studies have a short half life. Technology moves on. Companies change. Ideally, a good case study should take a week from first contact to approval. If it takes longer, it increases the risk that the case study champion will lose interest. It should be a crescendo not an endless low humming.
Related posts on this blog:
- The fall and rise of the case study
- How to interview someone
- When case studies go wrong
- 62 ways to improve your press releases
- Better briefs for writers
- And on my company site, How to work with writers
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This is going to get mentioned in my talk tomorrow at Think Visibility.. awesome! Especially tip #1, that’s a biggie.
Matthew: Great stuff, as always, but I have one caveat: case study opportunities are few and far between, so sometimes you have to take whatever you get. It is not easy to find a customer who has a) Experienced documented, measurable success, and b) Is willing to do the interview, with b) being the especially tricky part.
Because the number of candidates for case studies is relatively small (I’d guess at 2% tops), you may have to settle for less-than-ideal candidates. Nonetheless, there is always a good story there, even if you have to couch it as a “chooser” story, explaining why the customer chose your product and their plans to implement it.
I know you have done a lot of work with Microsoft, which given its worldwide marketing dominance, can select from a relatively large number of case study candidates. Smaller outfits and start-ups have to work a lot harder to find quality case study fodder, yet need them desperately for “proof of concept” validation.
Bruce
Hi Bruce – nice to hear from you again. Actually, everyone struggles to find case study candidates. In many cases, I have to run campaigns to recruit them and do some cold calling myself. In other cases, I have to work with sales people as far upstream in the sales process as possible to line up suitable candidates. As with writing, the personal touch is important in recruitment but that’s the subject of another article!