Any business can proclaim that it’s great at what it does. But since everyone can say it—and most do—it doesn’t carry any weight with prospective clients or customers. If, however, you use real examples of how you used your products or services to solve someone’s problem, it’s much more compelling. Case studies are a powerful way to do this. So, we’ve put together some tips for writing case studies to help you create strong content that boosts your brand authority and consumer confidence.
What Exactly Is a Case Study?
Basically, a case study is a description of a challenge or problem a brand faced, followed by a description of how it was successfully met or solved. They can be short and general or long and in-depth. Factors affecting the appropriate length and depth include your industry, the depth of research your target market performs leading up to a purchasing decision, the complexity of the problem and solution, and so on.
The idea is to show how your brand’s products or services made life better for particular clients or customers. By demonstrating your ability to provide effective solutions with real-world examples and data, you instill confidence in potential buyers.
You can see examples of relatively short case studies in our portfolio. There, we describe the basic challenges we were looking at when we created websites for some of our clients, as well as how we met them.
Below are some tips for writing case studies that help sell your brand.
Tips for Writing Case Studies
- Be selective about which clients you write case studies about. Choose those that have impressive results you can highlight. It’s also beneficial when you can show off creative problem solving on your part. And it’s nice when you can talk about serving brands that are well known.
- Always ask for permission from the client to write a case study that features their brand. Point out that it offers them some brand exposure and a backlink to their website.
- Have a skilled or professional writer create your case studies, and make sure they’re competently edited. They should have proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation, and be clear, concise, and easy to follow.
- Before you even start writing, precisely define the original challenge or problem you helped your client overcome. Then, identify your client’s objective. And then, outline how you helped your client reach this goal. Having a clear understanding of these major elements should guide creation of the case study.
- If it’s more than just a few short paragraphs, break up the case study with subheadings that give it structure and make it easier to scan and digest.
- Ask for quotes from the client you’re writing about. If you’re writing a more in-depth case study, consider conducting an actual interview (doing it by email is often convenient for everyone involved). Try to get them to be detailed and specific about the results you helped them achieve. This is much more compelling than testimonial-style comments that just say things like, “They were really helpful!” or “Everyone was so nice!” or “They really helped turn things around!” Case studies should have specific information—including numbers when possible.
- Tie your client’s individual challenge or problem to a more general pain point that others in your target market experience.
- When possible, include information about the client’s decision-making process that led to their working with your brand.
- Explain with specifics how and why your solution worked for the client. Elaborate on how your client benefits from the solution (e.g., lower costs, greater efficiency, higher productivity, improved quality).
- One you have a few case studies written, create a dedicated page for them on your brand’s website.
