Do you produce case studies for your B2B tech company?

If you don’t, you really should. They’re effective, shareable pieces of content.

If you do – you may have been doing them all wrong if you’re not incorporating a customer testimonial into them.

Customer and client testimonials are pure gold in the world of B2B marketing. In fact, customer testimonials have the highest effectiveness rating for all types of content marketing.

Why is this? Because anything coming from you, the business, is going to be taken as a sales pitch. When the vote of confidence comes from another customer, the trust factor goes up ten notches.

When that testimonial comes wrapped in a case study – you’ve got pure gold on your hands. You have the opportunity to tell a story about how your business helped someone, and an opportunity to showcase that glowing review.

Here is a very easy, 5-step tutorial on how to write a case study that gets results.

 

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1. Client/customer/relationship background

The first section of your case study should give a little bit of background. This can be background on the client or customer, or this can be background on how your relationship to the client/customer came about.

2. Challenge

This section should describe what the problem was. What challenge were you helping the client overcome? What problem did the customer have that they needed solved?

3. Solution

This section should detail what you did to solve the challenge for the customer. What product of yours did the customer buy? What service did the client get from you? If you helped the customer choose their solution, share how and why you guided them toward that particular solution.

4. Results

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. What did your solution do for the client? What was the ultimate benefit to them? Share that story here in the Results section. Did the customer save money by switching to your product? Did the client save time by using your service? How much?

Most importantly, in this section you should include a customer testimonial. Don’t just tell your audience what results your customer got with your product or service – let the customer tell them.

Ask your customer for a quote (in fact, if you want a higher chance of actually getting that quote, offer to write the first draft for them to approve or tweak), double-check with them that it’s okay to use it in your public marketing material, and slap that gold right in the Results section of your case study.

5. Call to action

Your call to action (CTA) can be subtle or bold – but the bolder it is, the more it will feel like a sales pitch. So consider your end goal when making this decision.

An example of a subtle CTA would be a footer at the bottom of the case study with your contact information.

An example of a bold CTA would be, “Want these results for YOUR business? Contact Frank for more information about our office widgets today at 555-555-5555 or xyz@widgetcorp.net.”

Wrapping Up

Case studies don’t have to be ten pages long. They can be short and sweet. The point isn’t to give potential customers some weekend reading, it’s to prove that your product or service does what you say it does. The best way to do that is to tell the story in a case study and include a customer quote.

 

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