Writing them can often be seen as an arduous task for a lot of businesses mainly down to a large investment in both time and cost. It’s no different for us at Wider; a well thought out case study can take us days to write, create, review and finally publish.
If you can dedicate time on a regular basis to publish your best work, we believe it’s a task worth doing; they are possibly one of the single most beneficial ways to elevate your content marketing strategy and contribute to long term business growth.
Here, we want to share some of our tips to help you create a compelling case study to show case the work you are most proud of:
It’s important that you do your homework here; a good case study is more than just choosing a client or project and telling a story. Ideally you want to choose a client that has experienced great results as a direct consequence of your work. This will be beneficial when they offer you a testimonial as part of the case study; they’ll be far more likely to convey the value they received from you and with a degree of enthusiasm.
Speaking to your client from the very start of the project about featuring them as a case study is a good idea. Of course, some clients will shy away from participating, but many clients will feel honoured to be asked; this can lead to on-going positive relationships, increased visibility for them, plus you’re more likely to glean some good information from them about why they needed the work from you in the first place.
A few lines spoken directly from the client provides great social proof, validates your work and adds credibility to your case study. We all know that a clients’ word means far more than our own. It will also give your case study the personal touch and be more relatable to a potential new client.
Including keywords in the title and copy of your case study will help with search engine optimisation (SEO) when Google crawls your site and ranks it on its search results. Important keywords to include are those related to the services and products you provide.
Numbers and statistics can add credibility to a case study, which is something words can’t always do. Use these to document your process and of course the results your work achieved.
Using good imagery, photos and even short videos can really help set the tone of your case study, whilst adding depth to what you’re communicating. Images of your final work are good, but equally are photos of you carrying out the work, machinery or equipment used during the process and photos of your client using the end service or product. During this stage focus on how you want to be perceived by your visuals.
The lay out of your case study plays an important role. Although there’s no one right way to do this, your service or product will depict how you present your work, with both visuals and text. Even if your case study is more visual than text focused, the lay out is important and relative to how your ideal prospect will engage and relate to you.
We recommend keeping the structure of your case study simple, try using these key headers:
Title – Keep it short and compelling
About – An introduction to the project you carried out
Client – An introduction to the client and what they do
The Challenges – describe the client’s challenges before using your service or product and what they set out to achieve from working with you.
Our Approach – describe your process and how you solved their challenge
Supporting client testimonial – choose a powerful quotation directly from the client to support what you’ve described above.
Supporting visuals – Choose engaging imagery, photographs or short videos to validate your text.
Case studies are a wonderful way to show the world your best work and hopefully engage some potential new clients along the way. By following our seven top tips, we think you stand to maximize your chances of communicating your work in the best possible way.
We’d love to hear how your business showcases the work that makes you most proud. Do you follow a process to case study your work? Are your case studies generating the results you need?
