Five Things Your Next B2B Case Study Should Have

To make a mark in the market and be recognized as a valuable solution provider, businesses must be able to tell a clear story of how they are able to bring impact to their customers.

Enter the case study.

When executed properly, a case study has the power to paint a compelling picture that illustrates how a product or service can take a customer from their pain point to achieving their goals. Through a marriage of quotes, experiences, and narratives, they’ll firmly establish your company as a trusted voice in the industry.

Crafting the perfect case study is an art that takes years of practice. But to help kickstart your journey, here are some must-haves for all case studies.

Elements of a Good Case Study 

The fact that 89% of B2B marketers view case studies as crucial for securing leads means one thing: you have to take it seriously if you want to be competitive.

Here are the most important elements every case study needs:

1. A Captivating Story

Just like any piece of good fiction, a case study at its core is a story. It isn’t enough to slap on dry metrics and random quotes and hope for the best. They’re important, but alone, insufficient. You’ll need to create a unique story that not only showcases the capabilities of your solution but also forges an emotional connection with the reader.

You can do this by first focusing on the protagonist, in this case, your customer. Write about their situation, struggles, and pain points by using their quotes to create a bleak image of their prior experiences. Then, bring in the turning point: your product. This is where you’ll list out how it enabled the protagonist to change their experiences and detail their successes, driving the case study towards the conclusion that your product works.

2. A Good Understanding of Your Customer

But a story isn’t just about the plot from a bleak start to a triumphant finish. It’s about the characters; the people who experience it firsthand. Accordingly, a good case study is one that also understands its characters (i.e., customers).

To understand them, you’ll have to do your homework. As part of your research, talk to your customers to grasp their specific situations. Understand why they chose you and not a competitor and what their experiences were while implementing your solution. To do this, you’ll need to craft genuine yet thoughtful questions to drive a meaningful conversation that can lead to usable quotes and concrete examples.

Some of these could include:

• What was the problem the customer was experiencing before they purchased your product?
• How did the problem impact them? Did users complain? Or management? Was their job more difficult? How?
• Had they previously tried anything else to solve their problem? If so, what?
• What other solutions did they consider? Why did they choose your product?
• What did they find as a result of buying your product?
• What was their implementation experience like?

3. An Attractive Headline

A good headline, like a book title, should grab the attention of any reader and entice them to read the whole case study. Most readers will only take a glimpse at the headline before deciding to move on or continue, so to say it has an impact is an understatement.

The headline should get to the point while conveying all necessary bits of information. You should mention the name of your customer’s company, the product or service they used, the issues it solved, and the results that were achieved. Embellishing the headline with relevant facts or statistics can also be helpful here.

4. Other Forms of Media

While the written word forms the bulk of a case study, adding enticing visuals and other elements to the mix can boost engagement. A wall of dry text isn’t always going to connect with everyone, right?

You can consider all kinds of multimedia, such as the following:

• GIFs that demonstrate how to use a product
• Videos from your interviews with your customers (with their consent)
• Charts, graphs, and tables to add a visual element to your metrics
• Relevant images to break up the monotony of text

5. A Distribution Plan

You can have the greatest case study ever made or book ever written but if nobody knows about it, it’s all for nothing. Case studies are demanding in terms of time and money, so the last thing anyone wants is for it to be a waste of valuable resources.

This is why you need to have a plan to actively promote and share your case study. You can start by showcasing it on your website before branching out to popular social media platforms like Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook. You should also blast out a barrage of emails and mention it to future clients during the proposal stage to generate interest.

Conclusion

While creating a case study is essential with so many factors to consider, just starting one can seem overwhelming. You’ll need detailed research, outreach plans, and marketing strategies to succeed. Understandably, not everyone has the dedicated teams and resources needed to execute this, which is why you should consider leveraging Marketing as a Service (MaaS) capabilities.

At Brighttail, we specialize in delivering tailored solutions to tech companies in the B2B space. We have a proven track record of success, so get in touch and we’ll help elevate your company to the next level.