What is a Customer Case Study (and Why it’s so Important)?

It’s more than likely you’ve already read one (or more) customer case study when researching to buy a new product/service. It does, in fact, sound a lot more reliable to base your decision on someone else’s personal experience than just believing everything a brand has to say about their product/service.

Stop for a moment and think about the last time you made a purchase decision for a new work-related tool. Did you go online and research for information directly from the brand’s website or did you research for actual customer case studies?

Let’s take a look at what a Customer Case Study is, why it’s important and valuable tips to create a good and reliable one. 

So, What is a Customer Case Study?

Customer Case Study can be defined as:

A marketing strategy to show the opinions of people that have actually purchased and used the product/service a company offers. 

It actually works because users will research the company they’re willing to buy the product. And seeing how was the experience of someone that had already passed through this buying decision is a lot more powerful than any advertisement.

A customer case study goes way beyond simple testimonials, though. It’s a factual report of your product/service’s implementation and the results it really achieved. They’re an awesome way to show your prospective customers your product/service’s value through someone else’s words.

Why is a Customer Case Study so Valuable?

A case study revolves around showing people real-life examples of how your product/service satisfied your customer’s needs/solved his problems and ultimately helped them achieve their business goals.

Even though marketing methods evolve over time and new alternatives arise every day, the written customer case study remains a reliable, tested, and approved way to attract new customers. 

Among other content format alternatives, customer case studies remain firmly at the top three most influential information types for both small businesses and large enterprises.

The greatest thing about a customer case study is that, if you make it right, it allows you to highlight your successful experiences in a way that’s much more convincing, showing your potential customers all the reasons why they should choose to become actual customers.

Case studies can be interpreted as true statements of how your implementation process works – as well as how well it works. Again, going back to the “if you do it right” part, considering that your study’s documentation is comprehensive enough you may be more than able to convince your prospects about your product’s value while conveying all costs and benefits.

Customer case studies are very beneficial for both your sales team as well as external parties looking for information about specific implementations. Your salespeople can rely on the information on a customer case study to demonstrate to a prospective customer the actual benefits of a case that’s similar to theirs.

Tips to Create an Effective Case Study

You may not be able to reach everyone with a single customer case study – each experience is unique and will be more valuable to a specific group of potential customers but, the more studies you have, approaching different situations and needs, the larger the number of customers you’ll be able to reach.

That’s why it’s important to have a marketing strategy behind a case study creation. Some tips to create a good and reliable case study are:

• Which persona are you targeting? Have you already mapped your personas? If not, it’s an important step to reach the correct audience. If you have more than one persona, maybe creating one customer case study for each one will be more assertive. Different group of people may value a different benefit of your product.
• Which benefits do you want to enforce? This point is very important. To create a case that your audience will be emphatic it’s essential to sell benefits and not your product or features of your product. A benefit is based on the pain your customer has. So focus on the pain your product/service helps to solve and create a history around it.
• What are the results your customer achieved? Showing the before and after situations will bring value to your case study. Some people will only be convinced to buy when seeing real improvements. So show them metrics that your business allowed the customer achieving.  
• Build a story. Only telling how your customer is happy and how your company is good will make your audience bored and the story won’t be reliable enough. That’s why storytelling is super important. Describe the pain your customer was passing and then how your business helped them.

And, of course, you will need to manage this process in some way. Not only this one but managing all your Marketing and Sales efforts together is the best way to make all of them much more assertive. 

So take a look at how Pipefy can help you manage your MKT & Sales operations.