Case Studies: How to Get (and Retain) Prospective Clients’ Attention

Prospective customers are interested in case studies if they are relevant to their needs, specific in terms of industry/sector/role, and backed up with measurable facts.

Case studies that are general, vague, and lack measurable data are ignored.

Construction Case Study template

Case Studies: Getting Attention

As a case study writer, what challenges do you need to overcome to write better, more persuasive, case studies?

#1 Relevance

Your purpose is to engage and inform. Identify a case study that will interest a specific type of customer, then provide them with the relevant material.

#2 Specific Target customers

Your case study needs to focus on a specific role, sector, use case or scenario. Don’t be all things to all people.

The more you can focus your study, the greater it will resonate with the target reader. Likewise, if you take a wide, broad cat-all approach, your material will be too generic, too safe and overlooked.

#3 Proof Points

How can you prove that your product works? What stats do you have to back up what you’re saying?

Use proof points to demonstrate that you:

• Reduced a cost, overhead, expense
• Increased productivity, sales numbers, or other metric
• Risk control. Describe how you minimized risk, which may be hard to quantify but will interest the reader.
• This allows you to create the link between the original underlying problem, the feature or service your provided, and the benefit it provided.

To get (and retain) prospective clients’ attention, follow these steps:

• Relevant — Identify a specific target audience, use case, or business scenario. Consider the roles in an organisation and write for that person. Consult persona if this helps.
• Storytelling — Use storytelling techniques to develop an interesting narrative the resonates with the reader.
• Quantifiable Results — Describe the specific outcome, the benefit that was realized for your customer. Describe the before and after processes. Provide data, stats, and figures to put things in context for the reader.
• Benefits — Link your product to the business benefit. Demonstrate how this occurred. Again, be as specific as possible. Avoid using ‘the solution’ to describe everything you implemented.
• Quotes — Include quotes using the everyday language that captures the customer’s enthusiasm. Avoid clichés and other safe corporate speak.

Remember: A case study is evidence that your product/service has resolved a customer’s problem, backed up with quantifiable results. If framed correctly, it builds trust with someone not familiar with your product and encourages them to learn more.

Case Study Templates (19 x MS Word)