As I mentioned in the last post, potential customers are used to ignoring your marketing and advertising. While testimonials are a great way to communicate that customers are happy with you, they leave out the hard facts. How do you communicate product or service benefits that your potential customers can trust? How do you show potential customers that you have a track record of delivering results? You have to present the facts of your business through the lens of one of your loyal customers.
You have to build a narrative around your customer experiences by capturing the journey they take with your business. The best case studies primarily tell the story of your customer and how they were positively affected by your product or service. When done right, it sends a very powerful message about the value that you offer through your business.
What makes for a great case study?
1. Introduce your customer: Begin with your customer’s story. Introduce your customer’s business and the problem they faced before being introduced to your business.
2. Talk about the discovery process: Did they try any other solutions, or try your competition first? Why didn’t that fit their needs? Talk about how they found your business and what caused them to realize your business was the answer to their initial problem.
3. Introduce your solution: How did your business fix the problem? Feel free to brag about the effectiveness of your business here but remember that you are primarily telling the story of your customer and their experience. How did your business save the day in this specific instance? Include obstacles your business had to overcome in providing a solution, if any.
4. Detail the results: What are the most compelling results you have to demonstrate in this case? How do they relate to the initial challenge your customer faced? Here is where your customer story concludes with results. You can include a before and after, show increased sales, quantify customer savings, and/or ROI.
Whether you use video, audio, or text to communicate your case study don’t lose sight of your customer experience and you will send the right message every time.
Click here to view an example of a boomtime customer case study.