Good case studies show your existing and potential customers how other people are successfully using your product. This helps those customers related successful use of your product with their own story, which in turn creates happy customers (who can create stories other customers will relate to, which in turn creates more happy customers).
Here are five easy steps to capturing a customer case study, lifted from saas guru Dan Martell’s podcast (if you’re not listening, you should be).j
- Recognize The Moment. Empower your teams to identify and look for The Moment when a customer shares their success with your product. When a customer tells one of your team how they are loving your software, that is the time to ask, “Hey, would you mind if we use your story in a case study?”
- Start with the problem. When creating a case study, always start with the problem. What was the pain point that caused them to starting searching for a product like yours in the first place?
Starting with the problem helps other customers identify with this case study. “Hey, that’s our problem, too!” Once this happens, your case study starts to a valuable resource for them. - Describe The Search. Ask your customers what their journey was before they discovered your product. What did they try, what did they experiment with? Did they try to create their own solution, say with an in-house spreadsheet?
Again, you’re helping new customers connect their story with your successful customers’ stories. - Highlight The Solution: Learn from your successful customers what specific features of your product convinced them to choose you and not your competitors? How do they use those specific features to solve The Problem? Help them unpack their process so you can — you guessed it — tell the story other people will relate to.
- What’s The Benefit? What specific benefit and results do your customers have? Does your products help them make more money? Save time? Streamline processes? Improve communication. Open brave new worlds?
In the end, your customers want to know ROI is available to them. Make that obvious.
Try to find customers who realize different benefits from your product, different types of results from different industries. This diversity can help you share these benefits with potential customers, showing them the people just like them, with the same problem, and your digital product worked for them.
