A case study is a study about a real customer’s story where you helped them overcome specific problems with the help of your product or service. It demonstrates your ability to solve the customer’s problem. With great case studies, you can show how you satisfy your customers’ needs in real life. It highlights your successes and would persuade a prospect to become your customer. Case studies can vary in length and focus on several details from the initial challenge to applied solutions.
Case studies are essential because it:
- Helps prospects better understand what you do
- Focuses on the problems of your targeted customers and how you can solve them
- Increases your brand awareness and credibility
It is vital to ask yourself whether the case studies you put up on your website are valuable and compelling enough. To make things easier, here are some useful tips for writing a convincing case study:
- Write about someone that your targeted customer can relate to: If your targeted customer is from the education industry, consider making case studies about your university customers. If your ideal customer is from the automobile industry, your case studies should be about auto parts and accessories manufacturers. Once your targeted customer has read your case studies, they should feel that you:
- Are comfortable in their industry
- Know their industry’s particular needs
- Know how to ensure their industry-targeted results
- Tell a story: Tell a story your customers would like to read. Ensure that it has a beginning, middle, and end by adding the supporting facts that can be funny, interesting, or unique and will keep your reader engaged. It will help the reader know the customer in the case study, including who the customer is and what exactly they do, the customer’s goals, needs, and how you helped the customer reach their goals and satisfy those needs. It would be great if you follow up with the customer and update the case studies to show the long-term benefits that your service/product delivers to your customer.
- Try different mediums for case study: Making use of different media can help you promote your final piece on various channels. It means if a written post on your website gets featured in a Facebook post, you can post an infographic case study on Pinterest, and also post a video case study on YouTube.
- Draw customers with result-focused headlines: Including main content in your case study helps attract prospective customers’ interest. A headline with a quantifiable result will quickly grab their attention.
- Follow an easy-to-follow format: Most readers will go through your case study to find the critical parts that can relate to them. They don’t prefer huge chunks of information. So, ensure that you use good content formatting elements like you do in blog posts, articles, etc. on your website including:
- Headers
- Images
- Bolded and Italicized text
- Bulleted lists
It increases your page SEO and also helps your readers.
- Use different formats: As said earlier, people would like to read stories, but not every time your case study needs to be a story. You could try different formats like an interview wherein your clients answer the questions about the needs, goals, what they do and how you met them. This format has the benefit that it is more relatable for your ideal customer than publishing a story.
- Make your customer review the case study: After you complete the case study, you will need your customer to review it. When you send it, highlight the particular areas for them they want to look at, and add all the images and screenshots you want to use, so that you will get your entire content reviewed and approved at once. If you wish, you can draft a specific quote to get reviewed and approved, so that you can use that and its attribution on your website or in a news release in the future.
- Create the final document: It is time to make sure that your document contains all the vital elements that is necessary for a convincing and compelling case study. The content should be reviewed and approved by your customer and all images and screenshots you have put in your case study should communicate the customer’s challenge, goals, solution, implementation, and results.
- Make them easy to find: It is not enough to just make great case studies. To reach your audience, ensure that your case studies are organized and easy to find. A few instances are you can add your case studies in Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Business Hub, etc.
Case studies are vital for businesses as these tell people how your product or service has been used successfully by customers. Make sure that people who read your case studies feel that your products or services will work for them as well. For healthcare website design, rely on an provider that can help you include compelling case studies that let your prospects better understand you and your services.
