Why is building case studies important? What business value do case studies provide? 

Case studies are uniquely versatile – case studies are the rare asset that can be leveraged across the entire buyer’s journey. You end up with incredible bang for your buck compared to other content because they’re repurposed in so many ways. Few other assets can be used for lead generation, nurturing those leads, upselling, cross-selling, etc. Their value crosses functions, from marketing to sales to CS. They counter objections, illustrate use cases, and demonstrate value practically and credibly.

Case studies are the ultimate differentiator – your competitors can copy much of what you do: they can steal your branding and messaging, they can steal your features, they can steal your design style. The one thing nobody can take from you is the experience and results that you create for clients. Being able to record and share customer success is a unique edge and moat that you can build to say you have the most proof, the best proof, and the most detailed proof of the value you provide. 

Your customers will always be better at advocating for your business than you – case studies represent the lived experience of your customers. The way customers describe their pain points and their outcomes will always be more compelling to a skeptical prospect than the marketing message you float into the world, because it’s validated, verifiable, and credible.

Set the foundation

How do you begin to build your case study standard operating procedures? What plans or procedures do you need to make?

Go in with the mindset that case studies are a team sport – case studies cannot live in one department. Your case study Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) shouldn’t just be a guide to execution, they should align the different teams on the goals and formats, and customer touchpoints.

First, outline your strategy – first, answer: “Why are we creating SOPs for case studies?” That will inform the answers to the following questions:

• Who are we going after?
• What types of stories do we need to tell to support our business and revenue goals?
• What formats are we going to use?
• What channels will we deploy case studies on?

Then, assign accountability for different parts of the process – for example marketing might be responsible for producing the case studies, but sales or CS might be responsible for approaching customers. Identify who will make the ask and when. Ensure that these expectations are set clearly to maximize the odds of success. You want to ensure that when a story surfaces, people know who to take it to.

Build a central source of truth for templates – you should have an open and central location for your case study collateral so that your organization knows how you’ll tell the stories you’re building. 

Build a plan to capture customer stories proactively – you want Sales to be capturing customer stories upfront so that you have a rich library of choices to refer to, and so they’re thinking about what compelling stories they can flag for case study creation.

Who’s responsible for case studies? What roles do marketing, CS, and sales play in developing and using case studies?

Marketing leads the conversation – they’re tasked with leading production and it’s their responsibility to get the rest of the teams in line, champion case study creation, and hold contributors accountable to their case study assignments. 

Strategic conversations should be collaborative – a successful case study program depends on diverse teams to nominate candidates, make asks, etc. and as such, marketing should not unilaterally decide the formats and stories you’ll create. They should approach the program with a collaborative spirit and facilitate conversations with Sales, CS, leadership, etc. to get feedback on the types of stories they would benefit from and get buy-in so that the involved teams are engaged with execution. 

Distribute responsibilities according to how functions relate to clients – ultimately, responsibilities at each stage of case study creation should be assigned to the teams and individuals whose relationship with the customer equips them with what’s required for the task. 

Usually, sales and CS take on portions of case study execution:

• Sales can help you identify and capture good stories – they have the first view on what brought someone to your company, what they were looking for, and why they chose you. Sales can capture these in a document and share them with customers.
• CSMs or AEs typically have the familiarity required to make the ask – they’ll have the most discussions with clients and they’re usually the most appropriate function to make the ask. If you don’t have their buy-in and marketing swings in from nowhere to make an ask, the client might not feel an obligation, motivation, or desire to help.

What are the different kinds of stories you should consider for case studies? How do you identify what stories you need?

First, carefully consider where you’re going and what stories will get you there – what objections are you seeing? What goals do you have? Do you want to penetrate a specific market or audience? 

There are many different story archetypes to consider, including:

• Switcher – why someone switched from a competitor to you, and how that went. It’s even better if they leave and come back.
• Upgrader – why a company decided to go to premium and how it benefited them.
• Disambiguator – clearly demonstrate or explain a use case your audience might not know about.
• Buying Board – appeal to someone who has veto power in the decision process but isn’t an end user (e.g. compliance).
• Skeptic – a client who asked hard questions and almost didn’t convert (and how you addressed them).
• Problem solver – a client where things didn’t go as expected and you turned it around to a win.

Choose stories at the cross-section of your goals and what customers ask for – the stories you tell should both help you hit business goals, and address the questions, objections, and interests of your prospects. When you find what lives at that cross-section, you have a clear roadmap for the types of stories you want to target. 

Avoid the stories you don’t want to replicate – if you started selling into one audience and now you’ve moved into a different vertical, you shouldn’t replicate those stories. If you no longer offer a feature, you don’t want to replicate those stories in your case studies.

Align on goals

What type of customers make for the best case studies? How should you think about selecting customers? 

Good customers for case studies are: 

• Happy – are they happy and excited to be working with you?
• Relevant – do they have a strong story that’s relevant to your cross-section of goals and customer needs? 
• Recent – the closer to the win that you capture the story, the richer the detail, the more compelling the quotes, and the stronger the recollection. A customer who onboarded five years ago will have a hard time telling their selection and onboarding story, and the decision makers might not be around anymore.

Don’t ask until you’re certain they’ve had a strong experience – the customer needs to have been with you long enough to achieve a result they feel confident sharing. You can still ask for an implementation story soon after it happens, but your ask needs to be specific. If you just ask them, “Want to be in a case study?” the newly implemented customer will feel it’s too early to assess their success.

Don’t get hung up on name-brand logos – marketers tend to go for the sexiest logos, but those might not be the stories that hit home with your customer base. Those stories might not even be the ones that your ideal customers relate to because they don’t have the same resources, team, or buying power. It’s great to show you can do great work for an enormous household brand, but it doesn’t prove you can do great work for them. Stories from small logos can be richer, more detailed, and more compelling for the market you serve. Large companies also have legal departments that fill cruise ships, so the friction you’ll face will be much higher.

How do you set targets or KPIs for your case study building program? 

Be brutally honest about the win rate you can achieve – if you have 10 clients, you need to be honest about your relationship with them and whether you can realistically capture all of them. The odds are low that you can.

Story coverage is more important than raw quantity – don’t fixate on story count, start by thinking about the types of stories and crossing story coverage gaps off your list in different verticals or topics. If leadership, sales, and CS sign off on a list of stories that would provide value, track your progress through it. 

You can track metrics relevant to how you want the case studies to perform:

• Tie case studies to assisted revenue conversion
• Benchmark and compare the performance of case study ads to non-case study ads
• Track case study performance in cold outreach messaging
• Report social ad metrics like impressions, likes, and clicks

Don’t just look at directly attributable revenue – the value of a case study goes beyond direct conversions—people don’t just look at one and click ‘buy.’ Case studies are one of many pieces of content that meaningfully influence a sale. Don’t measure success solely by whether or not you see a direct and immediate sales response; bear in mind that they contribute to a broader ecosystem of sales content. It might be more accurate to look at quotes from sales to gauge customer response to case studies. 

Engage clients

How should you ask customers to participate in a case study? What should the ask look like? When in the customer lifecycle should you ask?

Whoever is most familiar with the customer makes the ask – you want whoever the client is friendliest with to make the ask; the name that shows up in their inbox, should be familiar to the customer: 

• Usually, CS makes the ask – typically, CS has the closest relationship with established customers and they make the ask
• In early-stage companies, your founder might ask – the founder might be the face of the company and the one with the closest relationships with your clients. If so, they can ask for case studies

When possible, ask live – giving the ask on a video/phone call or at an event allows you to gauge the customer’s response, talk through expectations, and set the groundwork with a friendly face. If necessary, there’s nothing wrong with an email, you do lose some of the rich context and the ability to tackle objections of a live ask, but sending the ask in an email is still a very viable way forward..

There are a few things you need to be clear about in your ask: 

• Be specific about why you chose them – communicate why you’re asking them and not the next customer down the line. 
• Be specific about the commitment – the more specificity you can provide, the more you can destroy customer question marks, fear, and worry. Tell them about the ideal timeline, when you want to publish, etc. 
• Make it clear what’s in it for the customer – if there is some sort of incentive, tell them. But don’t lead the ask with the incentive, you don’t want it to be transactional.
• Keep the ask short, specific, direct, and personal – you can obliterate fear and develop comfort by laying out what’s in it for them, and what’s in front of them. 
• Be complimentary – make it clear that you won’t present them as a damsel in distress, but will highlight the great work they’re doing and how your solution is helping. 

Be ready to answer questions in a timely and clear manner  – you can’t cram everything into one email or one discussion, so prepare to answer the questions that will inevitably arise about length, publishing, editing, etc. You don’t want to waffle when faced with these, prove that there’s a plan.

How do you incentivize case study creation, or make it easier for case studies to happen?

The best original approaches make a compelling case without an incentive – then you can use an incentive as a fallback if you have to. A lot of customers will participate because they believe in your product, their story, and that you will present them and their work in a great light. Don’t agonize over getting incentives perfect: if you’re thoughtful and methodical you’re already ahead of the vast majority who go with the wind and blast off requests.

Ways to incentivize case study creation for your customer include: 

• Offering a discount – if your LTV is $30K, you shouldn’t have reservations about offering a discount that might equate to $3K on the year. There is no hard and fast rule or expectation—it might be 5%-10%. But most of our clients offer no monetary incentive. 
• Amplifying a powerful story to customers – putting the customer in a great light in the post provides visibility. The customer wants to know they’re taking part in something legitimate, well-planned, and beautifully designed and presented. If you have a sample, sending it can help disambiguate fear. SEO types might value a link back to their sight—which is the lowest form of incentive but some people really respond to that.
• A thank you – oftentimes, a simple thank you and show of gratitude will suffice. You can send a $25-$50 gift card after the interview. This is a nice, affordable, and tangible way to say thank you.

Ways to incentivize case study creation for your team include:

• Offering a Spiff for Sales teams – offering a small incentive to sales for successfully surfacing customer stories will spur their involvement. It doesn’t have to be large, but some teams offer up to $5K for a successful nomination.
• Reinforcing the importance of case studies – create internal leaderboards and emphasize acknowledging those that contributed to stories. Build a culture that emphasizes case study creation. 
• Celebrating stories going live – show sales and CS that something will come out the other side of the process that makes their life easier.
• If it’s on the calendar, it gets remembered – turn case study referrals into events where people share the wins they’ve had.

Be aware of laws around incentives and disclaimers – in the United States, the FTC mandates that if you incentivize a story, you need to disclose that in the story itself. In some industries, anti-bribery laws may apply to potential incentives. 

Prep for production

What case study form factors work well? Can/should you tell the same case study in multiple formats?

Most companies start with short, long, and video content – this is a great starting point. You have a sharp one-sheet piece; a longer 1,000-1,500 word written piece with a lot of detail; and a video putting the customer in the spotlight and communicating their excitement visually. 

Rather than drowning in form factors, aim at business goals – there are over 100 different ways that you can deploy a case study. Think in terms of core assets and supporting assets. 

Leverage a single case study in a variety of different formats – for example, Lever (the applicant tracking system) uses narrative pieces, then (at times) a one-sheet is handed to sales for sales enablement or cold outreach, and audiograms can complement that and be deployed in different environments. 

How should you collect the customer information and stories for case studies? 

Anchor in proactive storytelling – capture the story as it’s happening so that you’re not reliant on memory down the road. Don’t fixate on the means of collecting customer information, fixate on the fact that this is something you should do. 

Capture relevant information in customer questionnaires – get deeper than an NPS score or a feedback survey, and structure questionnaires to surface powerful stories from your customer base.

Build a central repository for stories – whether that’s a CRM, a client Wiki, or just a shared space for documenting goals, and have a location where notes get captured through the customer experience as it evolves. Most companies don’t do this, because it relies on participation from sales and CS to make it happen. 

Start with an interview of whoever’s closest to the customer – before you get on a customer interview, do a 15-minute internal interview with the employee that knows the customer best. It’s the most basic and effective means of getting background on the customer. 

When a customer agrees to do a case study, set up a 30-45 minute interview – the amount of time depends upon the depth of the story and your relationship with the customer. Set up an interview with a way to record (e.g. a recorded Zoom meeting). 

Tailor your interview to the customer story you’re telling – don’t use a standard question set and hope to get wonderful stories out of it. Many online posts give the best interview questions for a customer, but these should only serve as inspiration to build on. The customer is only giving you 30-45 minutes to capture the story, so don’t waste time going wide. Go deep. 

For example, I’ve seen some great questions used, like:

• What can you do now, or do better because of X?
• When you first evaluated X, what were your concerns? How did those concerns play out in the relationship?
• How has using X changed your day-to-day? Your month? Your forecasts for the year?

You don’t have to publish every interview you do – you can easily interview a client at the point of the win, and come back to it in six months to expand it. If you have a good dialogue with the customer, you can keep it from creating friction or taking up too much of their time. You can get sound bites early in the experience and have them in your back pocket for when the time comes. 

Examples of Strong Form Factors 

Narrative – narrative case studies are written deep-dives driven by customer quotes. They’re up to 1,500 words long with tons of detail. Many follow some type of challenges > solution > results framework. A “snapshot” might be a little shorter (~650 words), following a similar framework. Find some examples here.

Slide deck/ad carousel – slide-based case studies are designed to be presented or embedded in ads. For example, Humi makes great case study content for social and sponsored ads with LinkedIn carousels. They’re excellent visuals that are succinct, short versions of a deeper story. They take individual sound bites from multiple stories and push the requested demo. 

Social Images / Display ads – sized for social media or small on-site callouts. For example, Factor One Digital Marketing does a great job of turning case studies into Google Display ads that are visually compelling and use headlines that grab a reader.

One sheet – short summaries for time-starved prospects and quick conversations. Tenbound has a really strong one-sheet that outlines the goals along with a narrative. 

Animated videos – Lemonade turns customer testimonials into funny, well-executed, and compelling animated videos. This is an effective form factor when you can’t get a live on-location shot.

Audiograms  – take the audio from an interview and turn it into a text-based video with the customer voicer. This can be embedded alongside the written case study and plays well on ads, social, and websites.  

On location videos – Algolia created on-location videos that are beautifully executed, compellingly shot, and have a very intentional use of different sound bites that capture their narrative coverage goals. 

Remote video testimonials – just because you can’t do an on-location shoot doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do video. Officevibe created great examples of remote video testimonials that show you can capture a compelling story without a camera crew on site.

How long should case studies be? How detailed vs. skimmable should case studies be?

Create assets of variable length – don’t take your interview and publish a single asset of a single length—releverage it to build a whole campaign. We use the following length framework to guide decisions:

• Nibble – a pull quote for social
• Bite – a LinkedIn carousel version
• Snack – a one-sheet
• Meal – a full-length written case study

The average length of written case studies is ~900 words – our 2023 Saas Case Study report found that the median length was 890 words, and the average was over 900. See the full report here.

Using case studies

How can you organize and showcase case studies on your website?

Don’t gate your case studies – gating case study downloads used to be common practice, but it’s dying out. In our 2023 study, we found only three of the top 50 SaaS companies gated some (or all) of their customer success stories.

Filters to help customers find relevant stories- KlientBoost does this really well. If you have a lot of case studies, a filter helps customers of different sizes, industries, and marketing types easily find case studies that are most relevant to them.

Infographic website page – Lighthouse has a great customer impact page with an infographic showing their aggregate impact for clients in a data-centric way.

Interactive case studies – Everbrave and MetaLab have great case studies on their website with interactive elements so that different elements swoop in as you scroll. 

Compendium of top case studies – this is a really low-lift way of drawing attention to old assets. Rockwell Automation publishes a compendium showing their top five visited case studies in the last year. It can be tremendously interesting to prospects and gives your teams an extra resource to promote.

Engrossing and emotional stories are great for partner stories – HubSpot is the industry gold standard for telling incredible partner stories. They do great resonant social videos highlighting partner success.

At which point(s) in the sales cycle is deploying case studies most effective?

Use case studies across your sales cycle – many of the most exciting use cases I’m seeing deploy case studies in lead gen. There will always be a role for case studies in sending them to buying groups to close deals. One of the most compelling reasons to create a case study program is the versatility of these assets across your sales cycle. They can even be featured at different points to the same client — this is difficult and rarely done, but effective if you can pull it off. 

Case studies are often underutilized for cross-sell/upsell – if you want to get more upsells, you should be telling stories about customers who upgraded and the amazing world those customers now live in because of the upgrade. Case studies are underutilized here, but it’s low hanging fruit and particularly valuable in these economic times. 

Overall

What are the most important things to get right?

Build a strategy to identify the stories you’re going after and why – be proactive instead of reactive. Have a plan with SOPs and treat this like a team sport.

Case studies are not an asset, they are a program – good case studies are hard to do, you have to be great at identifying good clients, running a powerful interview, gathering context, and story. Good case studies aren’t the result of one-time exertion, they’re the byproduct of a successful and persistent program. 

Publish a web version of the story – PDFs are great and they serve a wonderful purpose but spend a bit of time creating a nice looking web-based layout. When it’s on the web you can track it better, share it better, make it more appealing for mobile, embed more media, and include it in campaigns that PDFs don’t work for. Don’t just link off to PDFs.

What are common pitfalls?

Skimping on publishing and sharing – make sure you reap the rewards of all the effort you put into creating the case study. Many companies finish the story, throw it on their website and go “Great! We got it! We’re live!” It’s shared one time and then it vaporizes and languishes. If you can share these well, you’re ahead of some of the biggest enterprises on the planet. Take one great interview and turn it into 5, 10, or 20 articles of different lengths and different media.

Only creating case studies for big logos – some of your most convincing stories will inevitably come from low-profile customer logos. Don’t discount the value of these just because they’re not household names.

Rejecting anonymous stories – anonymous stories can be obscenely powerful and they give you a lot of freedom to tell a deeper story. They can still be trustworthy by including things like quotes and specific details that still don’t reveal the customer. 

Erasing your client from the story – these are customer success stories, not “you” success stories. Create a narrative with the customer at the heart of it. Frame the value of your solution in the context of the customer’s success, you need them as the beating heart of the story.

Trying to include too much in one story – narratives need to be focused. If you try to appeal to every role in one story, it will be a worthless asset. If you try to showcase every win your customer has in one story, it’s like baking a cake and dumping all your spices and condiments on it.

Taking credit where credit’s not due – don’t say your solution drove 300% revenue growth. If they doubled the size of their team, you’re probably not the only person responsible for that. Don’t try to take credit for all of your customer’s business success, your prospect will see through that. Prospects find honest assessments of impact more credible.