Hannah Swinson

Case studies are so important when it comes to driving B2B sales. In fact, in a recent survey of SaaS companies, almost 2 in 5 said that case studies were the most effective form of marketing when it came to increasing sales. In the same survey, nearly a quarter (24%) said that in a recession, they would prioritise producing more case studies to help drive sales.    

 

And yet, B2B businesses struggle when it comes to writing case studies. “You wouldn’t have a clue what you were buying if you read our case studies,” one prospect recently told us.   

 

Our top tips for getting is right:

  1. Start with the pain: What problem have you solved for your customer? What was their pain? All case studies should lead with this. Leading with your customers' pain will resonate more with prospects, who may also share that pain, than leading with your solution and what you do. 
  2. Make sure you capture data before and after your solution: Using data is a well-known rule for writing case studies, but one area where case studies fall down is that they only capture customer data after your solution was implemented. This means it's impossible to track progress. It sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how many businesses fail to do this!
  3. Keep it short: Let's be honest, we've all been there: selling company x sends a link to their 'relevant' case study, and the first thing you do is scroll through the page to see how long it is. If it's longer than one side of a PDF, most of us are closing the page and doing something else. The moral of the story - keep your case studies short and to the point. Focus on how you helped your customer overcome their toothache.
  4. Don't use jargon: Case studies are designed to generate interest amongst your prospects, and this won't happen if you use jargon and technical language that they won't understand. Use the case study to outline how you have helped solve the business challenge; the technical detail can go further down the customer journey.
  5. Multimedia is king: It is a well-known fact that video content grabs the audience's attention far more than the written word. So, where possible, use video for case studies. Get your customer on camera talking about how you helped them to solve their problem.
  6. Give journalists exclusives: A journalist's job is to provide animation to a story. No matter how good your in-house content writer may be, a journalist will do it better. Offering a new case study to a tier-1 publication will not only provide journalistic animation to your customer story, but it will also alert new audiences to the story and provide third-party credibility and validation. Think journalist first! 

 

Getting case studies right is an essential step for B2B businesses. Having a catalogue of diverse case studies can help your sales team drive prospects through every stage of your sales funnel.   

 

Check out some of our recent customer case studies here.