Imagine you’re getting your kitchen remodeled and deciding between contractors. Who are you most likely to choose:
- The contractor with a public portfolio of work who offers to put you in touch with their past customers?
- Or the one who says: “Believe me, I’m good at kitchens”?
Unless you’re exceedingly trusting, you’re probably choosing the former. After all, you don’t want to make that kind of monetary investment on a whim.
Just like the contractors, you can’t just talk the talk — you need to prove to them that you’ve walked the walk.
Today, that’s become more important than ever in B2B markets. Customer success stories are one of the top drivers of conversions, according to Semrush research.
A good case study brings a valuable outside perspective to your sales efforts. It takes your value proposition from the theoretical realm (“We’re capable of X and Y”) into the real world (“We’ve done X and Y, and here’s how it turned out for Z”). And it gives your potential customers a peek behind the curtain at how you work to determine compatibility with how they work.
Here’s why you should add case studies to your sales and marketing strategy:
Case studies establish credibility. When you include a third-party view of your company, prospective customers can trust your claims about your products and services because it’s objective feedback from someone who has used them.
Case studies show that you understand pain points. Every customer starts as a prospect with a challenge. Prospects who read your case studies will see themselves in the highlighted customer and understand their journey. With a variety of case studies covering different but common pain points, you can hold up a mirror to just about any prospect on the pipeline, no matter their needs.
Case studies lend themselves to engaging storytelling. Storytelling is a part of the fabric of human existence. People tend to enjoy books and movies when they see themselves in the characters, and marketing is no different. A case study that sets the scene, creates “characters” and uses customer quotes as dialogue to drive the story forward will engage people far more than cold, clinical sales copy.
The process of creating a case study is valuable in itself. The final product will build trust with your prospects, but the process of creating it will reveal things you can use to improve not just your sales and marketing but also your business processes. Interviewing your customers is an opportunity to collect direct, honest and focused feedback that can drive everything from messaging to services. You could discover surprising benefits of your products or services, areas for improvement, differentiators from your competition and team members who deserve special recognition.
If you want those benefits, you’ll need to dedicate time and resources to doing this right. Here are a few tips:
Define clear goals. Know what you want to accomplish. For example, what are your business’s goals (market, service expansion, customer type, etc)? You can put together a relevant case study that your sales team can leverage with customers that fit those goals. Or maybe there’s a trade show coming up — you may want to gear your case study toward the attendees.
Pick a compelling success story. Ask your reps for their thoughts on which customers would make for a good story. Once you’ve chosen a customer to feature, have someone who has a relationship with them make the connection for you. Named case studies are always better than unnamed ones.
Be prepared. A case study usually has three sections: the customer’s challenges, the solutions your company offered and the results the customer experienced. Using this outline as a guide, come up with questions that will extract the information you hope to cover in each section. Be as thorough as possible; your customer is giving you time from their busy schedule. You need to make the most of it.
Keep it real. Keep it about the customer, not yourself. Let them tell your story and the case study will feel more authentic to your prospects. They want to see themselves in the story.
Case studies are my favorite sales and marketing content type. And they are one of the most underutilized sales assets in the distribution industry. But there’s nothing more powerful than the social proof that comes from a peer. Secure an edge with customer stories that can’t be replicated by the competition.
If you’ve never created a case study, test it out. Start with one a quarter. Let me know what you do. I’d love to hear about your experiences and the insights you gain from these conversations.
Lindsay Young is the president of 3 Aspens Media, a B2B content strategy and marketing content firm that works with distributors to translate their offline expertise – online. She has more than 20 years of experience leading and producing online and print content for publications and businesses. She leads a team of 12 writers, client success managers, designers, marketing specialists and strategists to produce content that helps companies translate their benefits to key decision-makers. She was previously the editor of Modern Distribution Management (mdm.com), a leading resource for wholesale distribution industry executives. Reach her at lindsay@3aspensmedia.com.