How do you measure the effectiveness of Case Studies? Why is that even important? And isn’t a Case Study just a Testimonial in another name?
First of all….
A Case Study is not another way of saying “Testimonial”. Thinking it is so, is probably the first reason why your “Case Studies” are not achieving the ROI you wanted to get.
What is a Case Study?
Let’s use an analogy. A Case Study is like Star Wars (and I’m talking about the original trilogy). Pick any of the original movie and that is like a case study… It’s a journey and a full story.
A Testimonial is like, watching Luke Skywalker’s final flight into the trenches and firing the torpedos into the Death Star and “thanking” the Force for that success… And skipping the rest of the movie.
Case Studies are a story of a journey to success. Testimonial only talk about the success.
Another way of putting it, Case Studies are about YOUR CUSTOMERS story, where you are the Force, or Obiwan. Testimonials are about You.
As a business owner or marketing manager, the natural question then is, “Why do I need Case Studies then? I want other potential customers to know about Me and My business, not someone else!”
While there is good reason to want testimonials over Case Studies, the effectiveness of a Case Study can be multifold, and in more ways then you imagine.
So let’s just quickly breakdown what makes a good Case Study. An effective case study follows a Hero’s journey… What’s a hero’s journey? It was popularise by Joseph Campbell, but in reality, it’s how we as a talking ape, have been telling stories since the beginning. This TedEd video does a fantastic job to explain what it is:
And how does that relate to business marketing?
Let’s break it down:
The Hero
The Hero in a Case Study is your successful Customer
They had a problem which is like their call to adventure.
That problem needs to be solved.
With the Mentor and the Mystical Object’s help, the problem will eventually be “slayed”.
The Mentor
Well… That’s Your Role in this story.
Your business has the insight on how to defeat the Hero’s foil because you are the expert in what you do.
Your guidance is what helps the Hero find what they need to complete the quest, and solve their business or life problem.
The Mystical Object
Your Product or Service is that object or item that give the Hero their means to defeat the villian.
With your help to use or find this product or service, the Hero can conquer their problem and a achieve a new, higher state of existence.
The Journey
It is important to note that not all journeys are the same, and some are also riddled with near disasters or failures. Not all Case Studies are perfect from start to finish. In fact, having some twists in the story adds authenticity as it will really showcase how your business handles roadblocks, which can give confidence to other potential customers.
The New and Better Status Quo
What are the results from using your business? What are the tangible benefits or achievements?
Here’s an example of an great case study that has all the elements of a classic Hero’s Journey:
Why Case Study over Testimonials
There are a couple of reasons that a single Case Study, can be as effective as many testimonials put together. Here are a couple of those reasons:
Answers more objections
The nature of a journey story shows cause and effects of using your business to solve problems.
And because you are taking your potential customers on a journey that your successful one and gone through, it will hit more conversion objections than a testimonial, which usually focuses mainly on the effects.
Hits all three parts of a Sales Funnel
A well done Case Study can serve as a lead magnet, and a Sales Converter.
Because of the “entertainment” value of a good Case Study, it can stop a casual browser from doomscrolling to watch your video.
And a person considering your business will want to see how you solved someone else’s problems.
Finally, to be certain about your offerings, the Case Study will show a bottom of funnel lead the key wonderful features of your business.
Flexibility to produce multiple marketing assets
Being able to capture an extensive story behind your customer’s success means that the content within that video can be packaged in multiple ways to server various distribution channels.
A comprehensive case study already includes: a Testimonial, a Product or Service Explainer, a Product Demo, among other things.
These separate videos and not to mention converting it into a text based case study means you can distribute it on Email, YouTube, Website, LinkedIn, and other Social channels relatively easily.
Most of all, Case Studies are a form of emotionive story telling that puts authenticity, and the human touch to your business, product and Brand.
Test-able Swiss Army Knife of Marketing Videos
Just by the ability to tailor a case study video into a variety of content types for different audiences, already makes it a multi-trick pony.
And an little unsung side effect of a comprehensive Case Study is that you can A/B Test different messages in your video to find out what your potential customers really want to hear.
A/B Testing videos???!!!
Yes, one of the key components to making effective videos is actually to test them and tweak them across time to see which message or which way of telling stories work best for your target customers.
What makes Case Studies Effective?
If a Case Study is carefully structured to be used in a marketing campaign or a Sales Funnel, that is, formatted/edited to fit the various stages of a campaign or funnel, it can meet the audiences’ buying journey needs at the right time which can shorten your sales funnel.
However, just setting and forgetting will not get as much of a result as the continuous tracking to see how well the message is being consumed and what is working or not. The ability to tweak the message in a Case Study, at a lower cost as well, gives it an edge over many other types of videos, be they testimonials, or explainers.
