Your sales team has a hot lead. Awesome. Here’s the catch: This lead wants to know how your other customers have benefitted from using your company. Here’s where case studies come in.
We can never emphasize this enough: Case studies are an indispensable resource. A successful customer case study can help your sales team close new deals and help move prospects further into the marketing funnel by showcasing what customers experienced when using your company’s services or goods. Here are the five essential “must-haves” in order to create successful case studies.
- Emphasize readability.
When you look at a website, how much do you actually read? Chances are you don't start off by reading entire articles or case studies. Instead, you skim over a page or read the highlights to figure out if it's worth taking the time out of your day to read. Your potential customers are doing the same thing. Increase readability by including short paragraphs and bullet points that incorporate the challenge and top results, so readers immediately understand what they’re reviewing.
- Include visual appeal.
While visual appeal may not be at the top of your priority list, it can play a major role in the success of your case study. When case studies fail to include pull quotes, videos and other eye-catching details, they don't draw prospects in like they could. Prospective customers are more likely to engage with a case study that uses both appealing design and content to clearly guide and educate them through the company’s value proposition.
These visually appealing aspects may be what encourages a potential customer to learn more about your company.
- Keep it concise.
Your happy customers may have a lot to say about the return on investment from doing business with you. While this is good, you want to condense their praise into an easy-to-read and focused case study. Most people looking at your website aren't going to take the time to read a novel about how well your business performed. Instead, they want to see quick examples of success they can read in little to no time.
- Showcase the benefits.
While it may seem obvious, a successful case study will showcase how your company helped a customer. Whether you helped a small business save money or provided it with an alternative way to retain new markets , the benefit of your business and the impact you made on their business should be the core of the case study. Highlighting how you can help provide an ROI better than a competitor, for example, makes your service standout.
- Speak to a target.
You may be tempted to create a general customer case study to ensure you seem more appealing to a wider range of potential clients. However, most people aren't going to be drawn to your company by generalities. Instead, they want to see how your product can play an industry-specific role. This means you need to develop buyer personas based on sales intel and create case studies targeted to a specific type of customer.
When you take the time to make a customer case study, you expect to attract new clients to your business. However, for it to be successful, you need to be sure it is being created correctly.
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