Are you wondering how to write the perfect case study?
A case study is a true story of how one of your customers solved their issues using your product/service. It has everything a good story has: a beginning, a middle, and an end. It shows how your customer (the protagonist) overcame obstacles and achieved their goals with the help of you or your company (the hero of the story).
Your target audience will be able to read this story and relate to it. They’ll want to achieve similar results for themselves, therefore they’ll purchase your product or service. Case studies are a form of content that are highly-effective in boosting conversions because they show social proof, position your brand as authoritative, and explain how problems are solved.
But, if you want to increase sales, your case study needs to be good — really good.
So, here’s how to write the perfect case study to boost sales.
Pick a Good Case Study Subject
No matter how well you write a case study, it won’t be effective if you don’t pick a good case study subject in the first place.
A good case study subject should be relatable to your target audience and they should have experienced positive results that you can quantify from using your product/service. Don’t choose a case study subject who loves your product but is still in progress and doesn’t have any results to share yet.
So, how do you find awesome case study subjects? First, you can ask your sales team or your customer support team if they know of any customers who would be willing to participate. You can also just ask your customers yourself. Consider creating an online survey or email marketing campaign to allow customers to share their stories with you. Most of your happy customers would be thrilled to be featured on your website.
Gather the Information
As previously mentioned, a good case study has a beginning, middle, and an ending. You can’t just tell readers the end result without sharing how the case study subject got there and what they were struggling with before finding your company. So, after you’ve chosen the perfect case study subject, now it’s time to gather the information you need to create the full story.
The type of information you should be gathering from your case study subject includes:
- What does your subject do? What industry are they in?
- What problems were they having that needed to be solved?
- Did they switch to your product from a competitor?
- Why did they choose your product/service to help them solve their problem?
- How did your product/service help them?
- What is the end result? What benefits did they get?
Don’t forget to ask for real data. You need numbers in your case study to really impress your target audience. For instance, if they used your product/service to boost sales, did their sales increase by 20%, 30%, 40%? Be sure to get those numbers from your case study subject.
Write the Case Study
After you’ve gathered all of the important information you need, it’s time to actually write the case study. When we create case studies at OptinMonster, we keep them pretty simple.
The format goes something like this:
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Brief Introduction:
We typically include a very short introduction outlining the problem, the solution, and the results.
Meet the Case Study Subject:
This is a section to get to know the case study subject; what they do, what problems they were having, what goals they had, and so on.
How They Used Our Product:
We explain step-by-step how our product helped the case study subject solve their problems which includes real numbers to back up the claims.
Conclusion/Summary:
At the end, we reiterate the results (repeating those real numbers) and summarize the entire story in just a few sentences.
You don’t need to add unnecessary details, adverbs, or adjectives to a case study, you want the narrative and the language to be streamlined.
Don’t forget to improve readability by adding headers, bulleted lists, and bold and italicized text.
Design Your Case Study
A great case study isn’t just about the words you write, it also needs to look great. Whether your case study is going to be posted on your blog or it’ll be a PDF version available for download, you need to add images, charts, graphs, videos, and other visual content.
Visual content keeps users interested and engaged. In fact, according to Hubspot, when people hear or read information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.
For instance, at OptinMonster we regularly post case studies on our blog. The image below is from our case study on Singularity University, they generated 967 new leads from one optin. In the case study we include many screenshots as well as an image of the optin that got the company such amazing results. We also create a featured image for the post to grab the attention of users and get them to click.
So, be sure to include eye-catching images in your case studies. A well-designed case study will be much more effective than plain text.
Start Writing More Persuasive Case Studies
With these tips for how to write the perfect case study, you can drive traffic to your website and easily convert website visitors into customers once they arrive. When you let your customers share their own stories with your audience, it’s much more relatable, believable, and effective. So, get out there and start writing more persuasive case studies.