How to Write a Success Case Study?

The best way to convince customers that you have something unique to offer is to show your work. It may be that when reading this you are thinking about a portfolio and yes, it is always a good idea to have organized samples of work you have done before, however, it is not the only way to do it, sometimes a portfolio can feel very static. That’s why diversifying how you expose your work is important. One way to do this is through case studies. Big companies, like YouTube, do, look at their examples of success stories. There are many ways to do them, here I will explain how and give you two choices of case study template to produce yours to your liking. Let’s get started.

What is a success case study?

First, let’s talk a little bit about what a success case study is to clarify what needs to be in its structure and what it can be used for. The name comes from a research method widely used in medicine, sociology and psychology, referring to the type of research that was done on a group or individual that showed particular characteristics. You can learn more about this in this article: What is a case study?. Most of the questions are aimed at understanding under what conditions such a case occurred.

Let’s move this to the world of digital marketing: A marketing success case study is about telling a story about how you managed to meet a customer’s needs. This helps potential customers learn about your achievements and builds confidence in them. It’s like in review sites, people rely more on the experience of others than on what a company has to say about itself.

It’s very powerful what can tell a story. Human beings like narratives and not only in the field of fiction, we like to know what, how, when and who of all things. That’s why for a while now business storytelling has become so popular. If you haven’t heard of this I recommend that you read: What is Corporate Storytelling?

Success case studies are not the same but follow the same principle: tell the customer’s story, their problem, and how we were a solution. Having a typical story structure in mind is a good idea: the beginning, the middle, and the end. In the beginning, would be the client, in the middle their need is presented and in the end, we come as heroes to solve it. Although clear, this structure is applied in such a way that it is not a story but an exhibition, interview, or testimonial, let’s see the formats.

Possible formats

A success story can be presented in different multimedia formats and different structures. What do I mean? There are many ways to tell the same thing. You can tell your success story through an interview, maybe you prefer to do it with slides in a simple structure of few words, or maybe the best thing for you is an interview. If you decide to do so, you can put your stories in different media. You can do an interview and upload it as a podcast or animated video. It will all depend on your creativity. Here are some examples of ways you can put your case study:

• Text: you can have a dedicated page on your site to your success stories, you can make an ebook or a PDF presentation.
• Video: You can record interviews, or make exhibition videos with animations, testimonials or invite your clients to speak at a round table or seminar.
• Images: With graphics, data, or photographs you can show the success story.
• Podcast: If you have a regular program you can invite your customers to interviews or just talk about their experience with you.

On the other hand, regarding the structure to address each, later I will give you two options of case study template, one for an interview and another to present the case in writing. It’s up to you which way you decide to use it.

How to involve customers?

Usually, the case studies of success can be done without the need to contact the clients, after all, one is the owner of their own work. However, if you want the manager of the company to appear in a video or if you want to include textual quotes that endorse their satisfaction or photographs that belong to them, you will have to contact them. In addition, the videos and interviews with the present are very eye-catching and very convincing to potential customers.

To contact them you could send an email inviting several of your clients. In it, you must explain your project. It’s good to have it planned and designed earlier to give them as many details as they need. If you maintained a good relationship with them many may be encouraged to participate, and it will also serve as advertising for them.

Here’s an example of the email you could send them:

Dear Customers, Dear Customers,

I take this opportunity to greet you and to invite you to be part of a new project. To promote our work we are working on telling some of our success stories. For this reason, we would like to invite you to (here specify what you are asking of them: to appear in an interview, to send photos of your products in use in their companies, to send comments that you will use as textual quotes…).

We hope this experience will be as beneficial to us as it is to you. We will be happy to receive confirmation of your participation to start working.

Without further ado, we appreciate your attention.

Signature

That would be the template for establishing contact and engaging customers, but what about the success story itself? Here we go

Case Study Template: Interview

If you’re thinking of counting your success story as an interview, this template is for you. Remember that these are just some of the questions and the possible structure and that at the end of the day you decide what else you want to include and in which medium to present the case. On the other hand, for the interview, it is always important to send the questions as a script so that the interviewee can prepare, especially so that it can be presented in a very natural way and everything flows.

Here is the interview case study template:

Introduction

You: Good morning, today we are pleased to be with (name and position of customer representative). What could you tell us about your company?

Customer: (Here it is convenient for the customer to talk about the economic activity of the company, its products or services, its seniority, whether it is a national or international company, among other basic information).

Questions

• What trouble brought you to seek our help?
• What was your main concern?
• What solutions did we offer?
• How do we implement them?
• What was your degree of satisfaction with our performance?
• What benefits did you notice immediately?
• What benefits have you noticed in the long run?

Client: (in this section the client would be asked to recommend you, can list three simple reasons or your main values).

Final thank yous

You: Thank you for joining us today and for telling your story with us.

Farewell

You: With this, we say goodbye and hope that you are also ready for (here is a good idea to include a call to action related to the activity you are dedicated to, for example: “install the best solar panel systems with us”).

Case Study Template: Text

If you want a text for your case study, this template is for you. Remember that successful case studies that have text can include images, samples of “before and after” and that can then be reused to write video scripts, are quite versatile.

Here is the case study template for text:

Title: must be striking and allude to the work you did for your client.

Summary: here you must briefly tell what this case is about. For example: In our company, we do not fear at times, so when the company X hired us for And we got to work. We managed to make 1, 2, 3 thanks to a, b, c. Learn more here.

Present the customer: Here you must tell some basic business questions, for example: what economic activity they are engaged in, whether they are a national or international company, their seniority, the products and services they offer, perhaps even some of their mission and vision. For example Company X is a proudly Mexican packer. It has more than sixty years in the market, dedicated to offering packaging solutions for industrial transatlantic boats.

Pose the problem: This is the part in the statement in which states the company was at the time of contacting you. What was the state of the matter? What did they need from you? For example: When the company x contacted us it was because they needed solutions for 1, 2, 3. since the areas of a, b, c, had deficiencies by x, y, z.

The proposal: Here you will explain what you offered the client. This is the part where you claim to have analyzed the case and offered the most appropriate. You can write something like this: Given the conditions of a, b, c and the deficiencies shown, we offered the solutions x, y, z, which would solve the problems by 1, 2, 3.

The solutions implemented: Then comes the part where you talk concretely about the implementation, here you have to describe what happened when your proposal was launched: We went to the company X to install the solutions x, y, z, we used type 1 machinery. Being in place we saw that our solution was optimal for (reasons).

The results: Here we have to talk about what happened once the solutions were activated. For example, We immediately saw positive changes in the affected areas (list visible changes, be very descriptive).

To finish you can include photographs and graphics that help illustrate the story. Also, some quotes from a positive comment from your client would make a lot of impact.

Conclusions

Telling a success story is a great way to showcase your work and convince potential customers that you are their best choice. Writing isn’t hard when you have a case study template, so you can cover the most important things in your story step by step. Use these templates to inspire and showcase your work creatively and engagingly for potential customers.

How would you choose to tell your success stories? Tell us in the comments!

Originally published at https://wordstylers.com on September 1, 2021.