The magic behind case studies

By Angela Bensemann

Many of my clients regularly use case studies to promote their organisation, to highlight their successes and to show support for other parties involved in their work.

Case studies help shine a spotlight on what you’ve been working on, build trust and strengthen relationships. How can a simple case study deliver on all that you might ask? Easy! Here’s some of the benefits to using case studies to get your message across.

Showcasing a successful project, event, product or promotion helps build trust

A case study allows you to delve into the detail and give people a chance to experience what it’s actually like to work with you. You can cleverly weave in the process, the challenges, the triumphs and the learnings. This helps build trust by showing others how you work and what goes on behind the scenes.

Let someone else tell your customers, clients, or community about the great job you’ve been doing

Why? Because there is real power and authenticity in hearing about what you do through a third party. Sure, you could just tell people how awesome you are, but it’s just not the same as hearing about it from someone who was there and experienced working with you. A case study is a way of hearing about what happened from different voices offering different perspectives. Not only does this help to build trust, it gives you more credibility.

Engage with your clients through storytelling

Simply having your clients leave a review or write a testimonial is never as effective as a case study. It’s not terribly interesting, neither is it very engaging. Case studies tell the story of the customer. It’s this use of storytelling that strengthens your brand, makes you more relatable and allows your audience to see how you dealt with challenges, solved problems and fulfilled your clients’ needs at every stage of the journey.

Strengthen your relationships by working on the case study together

A case study can be an awesome opportunity to partner up with your client or community to jointly tell a story. A by-product of this is strengthening your relationships. By saying something like, “We think the work we did here with you was awesome for your community – what do you think? Would you like to take part in telling the story of what we achieved together?”

Use of imagery

And don’t forget, whatever format you choose for your case study, a picture tells a thousand words

You might choose to do a video case study, or a word-based article on your website or social media channels. You might put together an interactive presentation or you might even produce a podcast. Whatever you choose to do imagery and/or video footage is an important component – yes even for the podcast – after all you still need to promote it. Good quality images and footage add weight to your case study and are an easy in for those that are time poor and want to form an impression from the images. Your clients may make a decision on watching/reading or listening to the full case study based on the imagery. This is the realm of first impressions, and they really do count.

Photo courtesy of Park Troopers on Unsplash.