What makes a case study great isn’t the medium or format. You can tell a story in video, infographics, audiograms, social posts, or in an old-fashioned PDF.
What the story does need to be great is these 6 things:
- It’s relevant to you reader
In a survey of 619 B2B buyers, sellers, and marketers, 4 of the top 5 most important factors considered when reviewing customer evidence were related to relevance.
In other words, the most important thing to your case study readers is whether the story is relevant to their role, company size, use case, and industry. So make sure all that information is easy to see at a glance and reiterated where appropriate.
- The facts are easy to find
If your reader can’t easily figure out if the case study is relevant to them, you’ll lose them.
So whatever information your reader needs to know, give it to them at the top of the case study. This can be simple, like the table of pertinent facts in the image below:
- It’s credible
In the same survey I mentioned above, another important factor that makes customer evidence credible is when it’s “backed by actual data.”
Nothing kills credibility like a spotless story about how your customer absolutely crushed it as soon as they hired you.
If that’s what happened, fine, but you need to break down how. Though as Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
Otherwise, be honest in your customer stories. As of August 14th, it’s the law.
- There’s tension
Tension is what grabs and maintains your reader’s attention.
Tension engages readers because they are interested in what will happen next. It’s the anticipation of the unknown that drives readers forward.
Three ways you can create tension:
- Open loops: Withhold part of the story to raise a question in your reader’s mind.
- Use internal conflict: Find and tell stories about your customer’s internal challenges. Think: the uncertainty or fear they felt before, during, and/or after using your product.
- Highlight competing priorities: Great stories have characters with competing priorities. And businesses often have internal buying teams with different priorities; highlight them.
- It frames the problem and pokes at the pain
When you highlight the pain your buyers have, they’re more likely to pay attention. When you show you understand why that pain exists by framing the problem, they’re more likely to trust you.
Here’s an example:
When he hit 60 properties, Smith hired his first leasing agent. After his unit count doubled, tripled, and climbed north of 200 properties, he hired another agent. Soon, even 2 leasing agents wasn’t enough. They ended each day burnt out after a full day crisscrossing around town. And still, Smith knew he needed a way to show properties more often if he was going to get them leased up.
- The customer is the hero
Most customer stories cast the customer as a side character and the product as the hero.
This is a mistake. It’s easier for readers to remember what someone did with a product than what a product’s feature does.
How to avoid falling into this trap in your case studies:
Don’t make your product the subject of the sentence unless you’re describing a specific feature set or capability. In all other scenarios, the customer (not your product/service) should be the subject.