Ep.10 – How to Create an Amazing B2B Case Study

The Sales Way

How Do You Write a B2B Case Study?

Link to a FREE guide on creating B2B case studies: https://contemsa.com/sales-hub/closing/case-study/

This week, we’re looking at case studies – why we need them and how to create an amazing case study for your brand. A case study is your product’s story – it’s the story of how your product is helping organizations to achieve success – how it delivers success, who helped them to achieve that success, what results that success delivered, and so on. It should take prospects on a journey from where the customer started in their business, through to where they ended up as a result of purchasing your product or service.

Humans learn through storytelling – in fact, marketing and selling is all about telling good stories: stories that show how a product will help you to supercharge your business, stories about how you can help customers overcome their biggest commercial challenges, and stories about how you will help your clients to achieve phenomenal results. And stories are so important – in fact, nearly 80% of people say they want brands to tell stories in their marketing. Plus, storytelling can make marketing messages up to 22 times more memorable than just presenting facts. That’s a huge opportunity for any marketer!

But many of us aren’t telling good customer stories. And the best way to tell customer stories is with case studies – it’s a chance to tell your prospects and wider industry about how you helped a customer to achieve success by working with you or purchasing your product. We’re going to take a look at why case studies are so important and what makes a good customer case study. For a detailed overview of how to create great B2B case studies, take a look at the links in the episode notes where we have a free guide on case studies.

So why should we even care about case studies?

• Case studies reassure potential customers – by showing prospects how other organizations have achieved success by working with you. It reassures potential customers to know that other clients, especially well-recognised brands, have trusted you and achieved good business results.
• They help to show customers a solution to their problem – by demonstrating how another customer, in a similar situation, overcame a particular challenge.
• Case studies show you’ve been there, done that, and wrote the case study to prove it – in other words, it’s a written record that you have actually delivered this product or service successfully.
• Case studies can help you win against the competition – by showing why a customer chose you instead of the competition, and what the results were.
• They provide an opportunity to talk about your product – without just droning on and on about product features. Perhaps your invoicing software is the most user-friendly in the market – well, show that by referencing that fact in a case study.
• One good customer story can create lots of additional content – if you turn that case study into a video, a presentation, a blog post, some PR, and lots of social media posts.

So, now we’ve covered why case studies are so important, let’s look at how to actually create one. So what goes into a good case study? There are a few key elements you need, and here’s an overview of each area you need to include in your next case study:

Step 1: Explain who your customer is and why we’re going to want to hear about them. Tell your case study readers who the customer is and why they’re so darn interesting that you decided to feature them. Are they world-class in what they do? Do they serve amazing customers? Do they build phenomenal products?

Well tell us about it!

Step 2: Provide a foundation for the case study to build upon. Start at the beginning – what did the customer’s life look like before you came into it and swept your them off their feet with your amazing products and services?

Step 3: Talk about what your customer was struggling with before you came and solved all their problems.

Step 4: Show readers why they decided on you. Give some insight into the customer’s thought process in the run up to choosing you as a supplier/vendor/partner.

Why did they choose you? Why didn’t they choose the competition? What was special about you?

Step 6: Talk a little about the product or service you delivered. The key is in the ‘little’. Don’t go on and on about your product – but reference it where relevant. Pepper your case study with little nuggets of detail about your product.

Step7: Show the results your customer achieved. This is the critical part of your case study. At the heart of it all, prospective customers are wanting to know what other customers achieved by working with you – what did it lead to, what business results, what increase in sales, what decrease in problems, and the rest.

And finally, think about what wider business impact your product or service had on your customer’s organization – not just the direct impact of the product (i.e. invoicing software can help speed up invoice processing – but that also helps with making the company more productive as a whole).

So, we’ve gone into lots of detail there about case studies – remember we have a FREE guide on creating B2B case studies, over in the Sales Hub at contemsa.com, and you can also find downloadable case study templates and supporting documents over on our website.

We’d really appreciate a subscribe or rating over on iTunes (or wherever you listen to The Sales Way) if you’re enjoying it – help us get the word out to more Sales Enablement and B2B Sales leaders!

Research cited in the podcast: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2015/06/22/infographic-80-people-want-brands-tell-stories https://www.quantifiedcommunications.com/blog/storytelling-22-times-more-memorable

Case Study Templates: https://contemsa.com/case-study-template/ # Episode Notes

Notes go here

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