Tips for writing exceptional marketing case studies

Regardless of how small or big your company is, positive customer reviews and testimonials are invaluable for your business. A great way to show off your products or services is through high-quality marketing case studies.

How? You may ask…

Well, the answer is rather simple. A good case study can show your potential customers real-life examples of the benefits of your brand. This, in turn, can create serious value for your business.

But what do you need to conduct stellar case studies? And how should you move forward with your interviews to extract the value you need? Read more below to find out.

Creating exceptional case studies:

The best way to guarantee that your case study is exceptional and valuable is by conducting the right interviews. How can you do that?

1. Take time to understand your audience

One of the biggest mistakes you can do is to conduct interviews without a deep understanding of your intended audience.

You need to ask questions such as:

• Is my aim to build general brand awareness or do I want to generate more leads?
• Do I want to reach a broad audience to establish my business as an industry thought leader or do I want a more specific audience?

Answering these questions will help you determine the kind of audience you are writing for. This will help you develop a roadmap of how you want to proceed in regards to the type of information you will share based on your audience’s needs.

2. Conduct a pre-interview research

When you set out to interview someone for your case study, spend time researching the interviewee, his role, his organization etc. The more you dig deeper into this information, the easier it will be for you to ask the right questions and elicit richer and more useful answers.

3. Openly communicate with the interviewee

Nervous or anxious interviewees can really affect the quality of your case study. This is why it is very important that you sent the interviewee’s mind at ease. Talk to him/her ahead of time and make sure they fully understand what the interview is about. Moreover, send them a list of the questions you intend to ask ahead of time so they can be well prepared to respond to them.

4. Give room for the interviewee to talk

This interview is not about you. So take a deep breath, slow down, pump the brakes and allow the interviewee to talk. When tempted to follow up an answer with another question, resist the urge to interrupt. Moreover, avoid trying to steer the conversation one way or the other. Let the interviewee speak naturally and comfortably.

5. Ask open-ended questions

Asking open-ended is a great way to get the dialogue moving and cover every angle. Make it a point to ask more of those and less of simple yes-no answers. Also, rephrase questions that result in single word responses to encourage the interviewee to share with you more information.

6. A great example of putting case studies in action is like what we did on our homepage, check this out and observe the sequence of our content that makes our application so interesting.

Bonus tip: Remember to show the human side of your brand by having fun with your interviews.

How do you create compelling marketing case studies? What insights and tips can you share with us about this topic? We look forward to your comments below.