What do I include in a Case Study?

What to include in a Case Study is an important consideration to move your prospects along their buying journey with you. You don’t want to miss any essential ingredients that are going to help prospects self-qualify.

10 Essential ingredients for Case Studies

1. First of all Case Studies need a strong headline, featuring a stand-out result or benefit your work has helped obtain.
2. Next they need a compelling narrative arc. Problem – solution – outcome is a typical structure for Case Studies.
3. You also want to position your customer, outlining the nature of their organisation, with some background information and statistics. These can be provided in call-out boxes in the Case Study lay-out.
4. Case Studies need to be genuine, authentic and attributable to a real person in a real company which has participated in a real project with you. So you need to include the name, position and company of your customer.
5. Ideally they are presented in the customer’s voice, conveying their genuine thoughts, emotions and responses to your work. So you need to include strong quotes from your customer too. These can be used as testimonials, along with any words of recommendation – see below.
6. Of course tangible results and benefits are important too. This includes where ‘trusted partner’ status has been achieved and you have repeat orders and contracts with this customer.
7. Photos and imagery work well, and if there’s some good video footage from the Case Study interview this can be edited and used within the piece also.
8. Often my clients have their own graphic design team who deal with this.
9. If you don’t have such resource, talk to Case Study Writer about how to create your Case Study template in keeping with your branding and visual identity. We can help.
10. Words of recommendation are powerful. They are more testimonial fodder.

The cherry on top…

Your perspective on what your customer is achieving as a result of your work is a nice touch in the narrative too. Perhaps your appreciation for their vision and courage, or whatever it is that you perceive gives them particular competitive advantage.