About Case Studies
The case study has been a central construct of ’solution’ providers for many years now but is often done badly. There are a number of reasons why this happens:
- They are poorly written and far too often come across as a sales pitch. Who has time to write these things? It typically falls to a salesperson because they have the most time (hmm, really?) but don’t have the skills or experience to create the piece.
- Too many people get involved in the review process, adding their opinions and grammatical pedantry until the case study is useless.
- They are too long and wordy, prospects just don’t read them.
- It comes across as too factual and irrelevant to the audience, too introverted.
- Creating a case study takes a long time, and is all too often rushed.
The function and audience get lost in the process of writing. Ask yourself what the purpose of the document is: who is going to read it, what stage they are at in their decision-making process, what they want to do (and what you want them to do) next?
Whilst the value of a case study differs from business to business, in my experience it confirms interest and builds trust provided it is relevant to the audience: there’s no point in showing what a great job you did building a garden wall if your prospect needs a fence.
This case study is not going to generate interest, it’s going to build trust. Or at least some.
If your deliverable is project-based, and your client agrees to it, why not create a blog instead? This conveys much more openness, builds a lot more trust and demonstrates to the prospect how you interacted with the client and overcame problems along the way. If you can get the client to post to the blog too, even better.
There’s no hard and fast rule to creating a case study, no painting by numbers. The way you communicate throughout your sales and marketing process is completely dependent on your business and most importantly, your customer.
