“B2B small business marketers say case studies and in-person events are the most effective tactics they use,” – Content Marketing Institute
With increasing competition companies are facing the daunting challenge of earning the trust prospective customers and retaining the trust of existing ones. The fact is that with easy access to so much information, customers want to be sure that your company can consistently deliver on the promises made through your brand and offerings. Even though your company would be spending loads on promotion and marketing that ‘screams’ about the top quality and best ever customer service of your company, for customers those are becoming mere words. To win customers over, your company would need solid evidence of these claims – customer case studies allow your company to demonstrate the efficacy and use of the products and brand as described by customers who have benefited from them. Customer case studies are now becoming an indispensable part of the marketing process.
Customer case studies prove to be effective since they are not just testimonials offered by happy customers but provide statistics and live examples of how your company’s brand and products helped the customers. Well-written and detailed customer case studies can prove to be very persuasive and have a deep positive impact on the mind-set of the target customer base. These studies prove to the prospective customers that your brand and offerings have been extremely successful and would be able to veer the business of the prospective customer towards your company.
Does your company use customer case studies for ‘promoting’ itself? How do you choose the customers to be included in the study? Ensure that the customer (s) that you choose is able to chronicle the stages of use and show measurable results of your products. It would be critical to remember that when engaging with the customers for data, the ‘interviews’ must be thorough and comprehensive and the questions must always be open-ended such that the customers can respond beyond yes or no. Solicit responses that clearly indicate how your products and offerings have contributed to their success and profits. Customer case studies read even more convincingly if there are actual customer quotes about the product.
As mentioned, your marketing and sales teams would get a major boost if they were supported by some such customer case studies. It would prudent to ‘interview’ customers who would be able to provide detailed, comprehensive and fact based information. Customers that would have in-depth knowledge of your products and or services would be able to provide substantially useful information for prospective customers on their use and efficacy. Customers that have had unprecedented successes post using your products would also make highly enthusiastic contributors to the customer case studies. The customers that were able to benefit from your products even though they did not think it possible would be great examples for the ‘doubters’ amongst the target audience. In addition, companies irrespective of size, that were able to increase their credibility, repute and customer base by using your company’s products would also make great success ‘stories’ and powerful contributors to the customer case studies. Lastly, but perhaps most effective, would be those customers who moved away from competition and towards your company post using the products and services that you offered.
These are but a few examples of customers that would make excellent ‘stories’ for captivating and convincing customer case studies. Once you know the kind of customers you should aim to speak with, it would behove your company to know how to be able to get in touch with them. A senior person from the company could either call or send an email outlining the desire to put together customer case studies and the help your company would need from them. This forms the path with the ‘prospective candidates’ and will allow them to respond to you with details on the authorization and timelines they would need to work with in order to be part of the ‘study’. Once they are able to commit to participate, your company would be in a better position to define expectations, timelines to be granted interviews and how the studies would be used. As pointed out earlier, the actual questions and format of interview should be such that the questions point the persons being spoken to in the ‘right’ direction. The questions should elicit clearly defined answers, facts, statistics and ideally the chronology listing out when the products were used and from when they began to prove efficacious for the customer. The customer being spoken to should be able to clearly define what their company’s goals are, the issues they faced prior to using your company’s products, what made them begin to use your company’s products, how much better your offerings have proved against those of your competitors, what are the significant improvements and benefits the customer has seen post ‘switching’ to your company’s products and other such ‘leading’ questions.
The effort that is put into customer case studies would be futile if they don’t throw up the data that you seek. You would need to design multiple questionnaires depending on the industry that your target customer is from. You want to ensure that your prospective customer can perceive your company as being competitive about the industry they operate in. The customer case studies should be precise indicators that your company understands the needs and challenges of the prospective customer’s industry and be able to provide solutions to these issues.
Customer case studies are like any other content that a company releases. The more customized the information, the greater the trust would be and prospective customers from varied industries would be able to believe that your company’s products would prove beneficial for them too.
Ensure that the customer case studies you publish make for interesting and engaging reading. The studies should clearly mention upfront details of the customers covered therein – the company, what they do, the goals the company has, the needs and challenges the company was facing and how your products and offerings help them achieve their goals and gain more profits for them. This brief introduction would entice the prospective customers to find out more and ensure that they read the customer case studies from start to finish – almost like an interesting story. The rest of the study must also be in an interesting and engaging format with highlights and bulleted points so that the person reading it is able to read it in its entirety. These formatting aspects will engage even the busiest and non-readers to give the customer case studies complete attention leading to brighter chances of ‘converting’ non-customers to customers.
Just like with any aspect of business and any data figures, customer case studies need to be continually updated. They would lose their relevance after a while unless your company can provide consistent data on the long term benefits of the products for the customers. This would provide valuable data to prospective customers to prove that not only their immediate goals and needs will be taken care of but also long term expectations will be met.
As discussed many times in the past, each customer is different and the way they understand the experience things would not be the same as others. Hence for different customer case studies it would good to try different formats of the questionnaires and in the final release of the study. Verbatim quotes and ‘the customer story’ as told by them would add that extra edge to the study and would be more relatable to the customers being approached. The final customer case studies could also be published either as text, or presented through a video, narrated through audio or even put forth in highly engaging presentation format.
Communicating and learning more about your existing and prospective customers will keep your company attuned to their needs and allow you to understand what customers appreciate and how your products and services have found value for different sets of customers. Use this knowledge to highlight your company’s strengths in the form of customer case studies and be ready to gain profits for your company.
