In a world where advertising is ubiquitous and audiences research products before making purchases, there’s no question that consumers have become skeptical of marketing material. In short, our potential buyers are much less susceptible to empty hype. 

Case studies are a valuable marketing tool for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that they offer the audience a source of quality and highly actionable information. However, the obvious drawback is that case studies require a far greater investment of your resources than a quick, flashy, and overtly subjective testimonial or review. So is the return on investment worth it? 

A good case study provides specific examples of your expertise that make it easier for your prospects, leads, and potential customers to build trust with your brand. They’re also a way for you to prove that you are confident in the work you can provide, giving your audience a better idea of what your products can do for them. 

Instead of the same old marketing content that your audience has seen a thousand times before, case studies are an opportunity to create a piece of marketing as unique to your brand as your products. 

What is a Case Study?

A case study is an analysis or retrospective on a specific challenge your business addressed for a client with clear, measurable results. It showcases your ability to help your customer base in a very real way that prospective buyers can judge for themselves and builds trust. 

Case studies are an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise with real-world examples.

In lieu of case studies, many businesses rely on testimonials because they are easier to write, but the downside is that they are also easy to fake (read: difficult for the audience to verify), not to mention extremely commonplace. However, telling the story of a named client that’s filled with specific examples and details that would be impossible to fake can be much more impactful. 

Of course, some clients prefer anonymity, which is their right. In such cases, you can still incorporate the data and story associated with the client by omitting identifiable details like names, locations, and so on. The data presented in a good case study gives prospects insight into your processes. This builds their trust in you, gives you more authority in their minds, and ultimately makes them more likely to convert. 

Types of Case Studies 

There are a number of different types of case studies that vary by discipline, including medicine and educational research. However, marketing case studies generally fit into one of three types: Explanatory, instrumental, or implementation. 

When used for your marketing campaigns, you will typically focus on implementation case studies since they're an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise with real-world examples. 

Components of an Effective Case Study 

While case studies don’t have to include every item on this list, this is definitely a situation where more is better. The more detail you can include, the more believable and effective a case study becomes. 

A potent case study includes: 

• Description of the problem  
• Client’s goal 
• Writer’s implementation 
• Results 
• Concluding findings 

For each of these, you should include specific examples as well as hard data to give as much credibility and legitimacy to your case study as possible. Ultimately, a case study recounts your journey as you overcame a challenge and achieved success, and effective stories recount with relevant examples rather than relying on broad generalizations. 

How to Write an Impactful Case Study 

The most effective and impactful case studies tell a story about a problem you overcame or a landmark you achieved for another client in order to convey the benefits that potential buyers may experience if they decide to engage with your brand. 

There are a few important steps and considerations to bear in mind as you construct case studies for your marketing campaigns. 

Write as You Go 

It’s incredibly difficult to write a case study in the retrospective because of the amount of documentation and resources you must go over. Additionally, you may find that the exact steps are taken or the problems you overcame have been partially (or even fully) forgotten. 

When presented with a unique challenge to overcome for a client, record as much information as possible throughout the process. Notes written with a case study in mind make the process of creating a case study much easier since you’ll have recorded all the relevant details. 

Another consideration is that writing case studies in real-time means your case studies will include more timely details. As a result, you’ll be able to show that you can compete with the current and contemporary market, which moves fast. After all, your customer base expects flexibility and skill—prove that you have them both! 

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Use Hard Data 

In truth, many people’s eyes begin to glaze as they’re inundated with platitudes and shallow testimonials. Although numbers that back up your claims aren't always necessary, quality data can take a good narrative to the next level. 

Data also gives you the opportunity to boil long, technical explanations into concise statistics with which to punctuate and emphasize your talking points. Datapoints like lead conversion percentage, bounce rate, time spent on a task, and website load times communicate value in a short-and-sweet manner and back up your claims with quantifiable facts. 

When the data can be visualized, even better. In addition to providing a visual representation of your data, using graphics to illustrate your growth breaks up your page layouts so they’re not just wall-to-wall text. 

Tell a Detailed Story 

The best case studies lay out the specific steps you took in such a way that a reader could, at least in theory, reproduce your results using your case study as a roadmap. 

Writers are told to show rather than tell, and the same applies here. You don’t need to tell leads that you helped a client because they know that’s what you do. Instead, tell them how you helped and what you did to make something seemingly impossible look easy. List specific steps, obstacles, and situations where you came in over budget or behind schedule, using those challenges as opportunities to demonstrate the expertise that makes you worth hiring. 

Readable and Relevant 

Case studies cover specific, challenging situations. The same unique challenge that made the situation a good choice for a case study presents a problem for your audience: they aren’t likely to encounter the same problem! 

As you experience more situations that make for good case studies, find variations in each situation. Broaden your appeal by highlighting your ability to adapt to difficult problems, which implies you can do the same for others. 

Since most case studies appear on websites or in online marketing, you should structure the study in such a way that your audience can read it naturally without being bored or overwhelmed by huge blocks of text. 

You can break up each page of your case study with 

• Short paragraphs 
• Headers 
• Images 
• Bullet lists 
• Quotations 
• Bolded text 

However, don’t include visual elements only because they sound good on paper for marketing. If a visual element doesn’t make sense for your particular case study, then you shouldn’t use it. Apply the same careful consideration to the case study’s format as the content, and then experiment to find what works best for you. 

It’s also important to tailor your case study to your target market. Given who will be viewing your case study, what information does it make the most sense to include?

For example, if you run an interior design agency, then it makes sense to include pictures in the case study itself, such as before-and-afters showing a particular space in which you’ve applied a unique solution, so your leads are better able to see the benefits that you’re offering. On the other hand, if you’re a business consultant, then it makes more sense to rely on data, such as conversion rates and year-over-year revenue growth. 

Structuring Your Case Study

There's room to be creative and challenge convention when it comes to many forms of marketing content. In fact, some have seen impressive results from breaking what are widely considered to be established rules.

(A prime example of rule-breaking in marketing is Burger King's Whopper Detour campaign. Burger King designed the campaign in a way that would leverage the fact that Mcdonald's has twice as many locations as Burger King. Consumers were instructed to head to the nearest Mcdonald's location and download the Burger King app in order to purchase a Whopper sandwich for just 1 cent. The Whopper Detour campaign committed at least three marketing faux pas—namely referencing a competitor by name, encouraging consumers to visit a competitor, highlighting a stat that portrays a competitor as more successful or ubiquitous—yet the award-winning campaign was a huge success.)

A good case study will focus on the ways that your business was uniquely equipped to handle the challenge.

Compared to other forms of marketing content, case studies don't leave quite as much room for creativity. That's because a case study needs to check certain boxes before it can be effective as a case study.

While you can add other things to strengthen your case study, the bare minimum to be included in a quality case study includes (1) the introduction, (2) the challenge, (3) the solution, (4) the benefits of the solution, and (5) the results.

The bulk of the case study will usually be focused on the challenge, solution, and benefits sections. Or if you prefer a solutions-focused frame of reference, we can look at these sections as the before (the challenge), during (the solution), and after (the benefits).

Introduction

The introduction may seem pretty self-explanatory, but in a case study, the introduction actually has a few important functions. Perhaps most importantly, the purpose of the introduction is to introduce your company and to give some context to the remainder of the case study. This can include a brief history of your company, broad information concerning your industry and market, and maybe even your team.

Don't go into too much detail regarding the challenge or solution. In the introduction, you're just setting the stage.

Challenge (Before)

In the challenge section, you really lay out the problem that you faced. Typically, you should include as much information and detail about the issue or problem; your readers should come away from this with a solid understanding of both the actual problem and the circumstances that led to the problem in the first place.

Solution (During)

Probably the most important section in a case study, the solution recounts how you solved the problem outlined in the challenge section. When possible, you should try to break the solution down according to the steps that were taken, allowing you to really dig into how you solved the problem.

Additionally, a good case study will focus primarily on the ways that your specific business or brand was uniquely equipped to handle the challenge in this particular way, whether because of the products/services you offer or because of some other factor or resource that's unique to your company.

Benefits (After)

While it may seem redundant, the benefits section takes a closer look at what you outlined in the solution section. It's helpful to think of the benefits section as like a Q&A section in which you're answering questions that your readers are likely to have, such as:

• How did you know that the solution you employed was the right solution? When did you realize that you were on the right track?
• What were the benefits—immediate, long-term, or both—of your solution?

Results

Having employed your solution and observed its benefits, the results section recounts how the situation has translated to improvement(s) for your company. Depending on the scenario, you may answer questions like:

• Did you observe a boost in sales or a decrease in your operating costs?
• Has your revenue been affected?
• Have you employed any long-term changes as a result of the situation?

Closing Thoughts

As we wrap things up, let's end things with some final tips, considerations, and reflections.

If you're planning on making your case study available online—and what's the point of making a case study if it's not accessible online?—then keep in mind that you'll still need to incorporate some SEO. Of course, you don't have to go quite as far with the optimization as you might with blog content, but you'll want to make sure that you're using some relevant keywords in the earlier pages of the case study.

There's no denying that the contents of your case study are the most important thing. However, you should still make sure your case study looks good. If you don't have a graphic designer on your team, don't be afraid to browse Fiverr for a freelancer who can put your content together into an eye-catching document.

In spite of common misconceptions, case studies don't have to be extremely long. It's possible to create a condensed case study that boils down all the essential information into a document just a couple of pages long. (There's a case study for the BrightEdge platform that's literally just two pages!)

Get Custom Marketing Strategy & Guidance for Your Company

Ultimately, a case study shows that you’re confident in the work you’ve done and will celebrate the times when you’ve helped a client achieve a major victory. Of course, if you haven’t done them before, and want them to have the right impact, it can be hard to get started. 

Alan + Company is here to help. Drawing on decades of cumulative expertise on our team, we can create a custom marketing strategy tailored to your company or brand. If you're ready to take your company to the next level, contact us today with some of the best case study examples and guidance on the market.