5 Reasons to Start Writing Case Studies Today

You know case studies are one of the best ways to showcase your company’s strengths, so why are they always on the back burner?

Yes, we know, case studies can be very time consuming. You have to get the sales team to provide customers, get those customers to agree to participate, prepare specific questions, set up and conduct an interview, write the case study (or record it if you’re doing a video case study), get internal and external approval, and so on. It can be a long process. BUT IT’S WORTH IT. I don’t write in all caps a lot, so you know I’m serious. They are a vital part of your content marketing program.

Let’s take a quick look at what case studies can do for your company:

1. Provide credibility. It can be difficult to get customers to admit they have a problem. If you’ve done a good job of solving their problem, and they’re willing to talk about the benefits and results your products or services brought to their company, it shows other companies that your company is worth talking to.
2. Show results. The goal of a case study is demonstrate measureable results. If your company has helped a customer trim costs by 15 percent or increase productivity by 20 percent, that’s something to crow about.
3. Tell a good story. Customers can relate to stories. If all they are seeing on your website is buy, buy, buy, that’s not as effective as telling them a story about why other customers have bought your product.
4. Demonstrate a competitive edge and gain valuable competitor insight. Your customers may be switching over to your products from those of your competitors. If you are consistently hearing the same thing from customers about why they made the switch, that’s a boon to your sales team, who can now tout the specific benefits where your company beats out its competitors. If your customer is willing to tell who they switched from, who they evaluated and more, don’t be afraid to use that (in a subtle way) in your case study.
5. An opportunity to repurpose. You know we’re big fans of content repurposing, and case studies are prime candidates for repurposing. Pull key quotes as testimonials. Ask to do a quick video interview based on the highlights on the case study and use it on your site and across your social media channels. Create a SlideShare and have your salespeople to add to it to their signatures or in the collateral they send to prospects. Offer it as a contributed article or blog to a third-party website.

Sold on the idea and ready to implement  a case study program as a content marketing tool? Our free step-by-step guide How to Create a Killer Case Study Program can walk you through the process step by step.