The Power of Case Study Content Marketing

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. SUMMARY KEYWORDS case study, clients, testimonials, case studies, transformation, case study content marketing, website, case study page, writing case studies, writing a case study SPEAKERS Erin Ollila Erin Ollila 00:04 Hey friends, welcome to the Talk Copy to Me podcast. Here we empower small business owners to step into the spotlight with their marketing and messaging. I’m your host, Erin Ollila. Let’s get started and talk coffee. Hello, friend, today’s episode is being brought to you by blogging foundations, my signature foundational course on how to write a strategic and SEO blog post. It is currently on sale if you’re listening to this episode before September 5 2023, as I am re recording all new videos for the course. And you can grab it at a super discount. But even if you’re listening after the fifth, don’t worry, it’s always sold at a super low price for all of the information that you’re going to receive in blogging foundations. So hit pause on this episode, go grab your access to blogging foundations and join me and all of the other smarty pants in there. We are still here today to talk about content however, except instead of blogging, we’re going to be talking about case studies. Now, I have all the heart eyes for case studies. But we haven’t really talked about them as much as I’d like to on this show. Earlier in season one, I was fortunate enough to have a friend and fellow case study writer Brittany Herzberg on the podcast, as we talked a bit about the difference between testimonials and case studies, as well as kind of how you can turn testimonials into case studies. And we’re going to talk more about that today. And why case studies make for such great forms of evergreen content. Usually people think of case studies as something or at least this what this is what I’ve heard from clients and friends, case studies or something that they’d love to do. And they may even have some great information to put into case studies. But no one is making time for them. And that drives me absolutely wild, I get it. I don’t make as much time as I should for my own case studies. So I’m not picking on you here. However, case studies are a real really marketing goal. They are like testimonials with really big muscles that do the job for you of selling. So kind of think of them, like the salesperson that exists on your website that shows people who are interested about working with you or purchasing your products, exactly why they should do so and how they’re going to get like the biggest bang for their buck when they actually hire you, or when they work from you. Because it’s really just showcasing another person’s experience. So sounds great. Right? Well, it is great. So that’s why we’re here today to talk about all things, case studies and how they should really be an integral part of your evergreen marketing content, and your overall editorial calendar and strategy for your business’s content. Because while they may exist on your website, there are so many great ways that you can repurpose the content from case studies and use them in different ways. So for example, if you have a really strong case study, you should be able to call testimonials directly from your case study. And use those testimonials as standalone testimonials on different pages of your site, as well as on social media, on sales pages and in emails. The transformations that you offered. In your case studies with a client for example, could also be something that you post about on social or share via email. Maybe you even create a Services Guide like a downloadable guide that you send to potential clients and include the case studies in there. They really are great for repurposing, and excellent for SEO, if they’re created with that evergreen aspect in mind. So let’s dive in with a quick and simple question. What is a case study? In the business world at least a case study is a report or a story about the experiences that one of your clients or customers had when working with you or hiring you or after purchasing something from you. Now usually the reason that we create case studies is so that we We can show our leads our prospects, or our general audience that we don’t even know exists, what type of transformation that we’ve given previous clients, or at least the needs, wants, desires and experiences of those clients or customers during their journey of working with us, or after they bought something from us, it really sets up those prospects to understand that, one, they are not alone, that other people have had similar issues or problems or needs or desires that they do to that you are the right, or a potential candidate that they could hire or buy from, in order to, you know, get those desires or needs that they have met as well. And three, not only that you’re a potential candidate, but how your overall influence of working with your former client or let’s say, you know, having that former customer speak up, how it’s changed things for them. So it kind of shows not just that you are capable, but really why you stand out from the rest of your competitors to to help them with whatever it is that they are looking for. So case studies are really marketing gold, they help your audience visualize the way that you work with other clients, they help your audience see themselves in the shoes of your former clients. And they speak about who you are as the business owner or the service provider, let’s say in a way that your own marketing messages cannot in an in a way that is a bit more explained or a bit more nurturing than an average testimonial could do on their own. Now, that is not knocking testimonials in any way. We all know, I love testimonials. I have an entire course on testimonials, the testimonial toolbox, because I really want people to be able to have not only the empowerment, like the confidence in requesting testimonials, but also systems in place to get them easily for their business, which I think is bringing up a really good point that I’d like to address before I kind of dive deeper into case studies. And that is our testimonials and case studies the same are they related? And the answer is they can be both. So a testimonial is really a short quote that describes what it was like to work with you or a short quote that sings your praises from a former client or customer. Whereas a case study is a bit more of a longer thing. It could be considered like a blog post length, or even even if it’s just a few paragraphs, a case study does a little bit more heavy lifting than a testimonial would. However, there are many ways these two work together. So one, let’s say that you have testimonials that you’ve already collected from clients, a testimonial can be a great jumping off point to ask for a case study interview from that client. So let’s say someone has really given you a nice testimonial, you can go back and say, Wow, this was a really strong testimonial, thank you so much. Would you be willing if I interviewed you a tiny bit more, so I can build a case study about our time together. Or you could just take the testimonial though, you know, 123 quotes you may have gotten from your Testimonial Request, and use that to build your own case study that explains what it was like working with that client. Now reminder, if you’re going to build case studies without asking your clients to be interviewed post a project or after they’ve purchased from you, you really need to have some verbiage within your contract that indicates that you will be using their experiences as marketing collateral, because not everyone wants their business. They are in a business workings, I guess you could say, shared as marketing material. Erin Ollila 09:22 So when I when people hire me to do website copy, or copy coaching or other things, I have it within my contract that states that I may use their experiences as part of a case study. And I always explain that to my clients so that they know if it’s something that they’re not familiar doing or if there is something specifically they would like me to omit from the case study. You know, maybe it’s something that they’re not comfortable sharing about their business publicly, that they definitely let me know so we can make sure we only present information that they are comfortable sharing. That’s very important. me in my business, and I just think it is the ethical approach. I don’t think we should be writing detailed case studies about our clients without them knowing we’re doing that in our business. But I just point that out because not all case studies need to come from direct interviews. A case study could be written from your experience as the business owner, to kind of showcase the process of working together, so long as you’re doing it in a way that’s fair to your clients. But we were talking about testimonials. So when we finish, a testimonial can be the jumping off for a case study. But Alternatively, a case study could be the place that you get testimonials from. So if you don’t have testimonials from former clients, and you’re able to do an interview with them, for the case study that you’re creating, you can make sure to phrase certain questions in specific ways. So that in addition to the story you create, for your case study, you also get specific pull quotes that you can use as testimonials, on your website, on social and in many different places from the time you spend together for the interview. So all right, we’ve covered a lot of ground here only 11 minutes in, we’ve talked about what case studies are, why they’re so important, how they are related to testimonials. So now let’s talk about case studies as evergreen content. Now, if you remember from a couple episodes ago, I mentioned that evergreen content is not news related or time specific. But you might be thinking to yourself, well, if someone hired me in 2021, let’s say, you know, that’s too long ago now to write a case study about you would be wrong. As long as you can write a case study about your experience with that client that is not reliant on the date, or reliant on a specific news reason, what you’re doing in the case study is painting a picture of the shared work experience. So you’re not talking about 2021. Let’s say you’re talking about what it was like to work together, you’re talking about the transformation that that client had. Just for a quick example, I’m thinking of a client I worked with, I think it was in 2020, this person had left their job. I don’t remember whether it was downsizing or whether it was, you know, just a personal choice and because of the pandemic, to start their own business and worked for themself doing what they had been doing in the traditional, like work environment. So they were well trained, they were well educated, they had everything that they needed to be successful. But it was their first business venture, and they were going out on their own. A lot of what we did together was kind of setting their business foundation up for success, even though that we were writing the web copy. And we were working together with their designer to kind of build the you know, the average website, there was a lot of business foundational work that was happening. And there was also a lot of transformations for this individual because of that. So yes, this happened in 2020, which is three plus years now. I mean, I can’t do my math exactly, I’m sure just three years at this point to depending on when you’re listening to this episode. But while the pandemic influenced this person’s decisions to start a business, and I’m sure that is something I could have referenced within the case study itself. I’m not talking about the pandemic, I’m not talking about things that are old news, I’m talking about things like what it’s like to have your first website, the decisions that you have to make in brand building and message building, when you start a business, right, those are the key things that would be addressed in the case study, not the specific point in history in which we work together. So as long as you can make sure that the content you’re sharing, the main message of the case study is related to let’s say, a business process. Or maybe it’s related to how you work with clients or the wins that they received. Case studies can be written about any client at any point in time that you’ve worked with them, which is really important if you’ve neglected these type of marketing tasks, you know, writing case studies or sourcing testimonials. So many people I talked to have this fear that they cannot go back and ask former clients, and they may know these things about clients, let’s say you know, a client had a really big win, because of working together. They may say, oh, it’s been two years since I worked with so and so. I really wish I could have done a case study with them on the time because now All I know, for example, that they have built their business into a multi, you know, six figure business. And we work together when they were just starting out. And they once said, you know, they owed me a lot of credit for XYZ. Okay, cool. If they, if they really liked you, and they credited you as part of their success at one point in time, they’re still going to credit you as part of that success in the future. So have no hesitation to go back and request a case study from a former client. And remember, while a case study is your marketing asset, it is also beneficial to the client that you’re writing about it is publicity, obviously, you’re going to be showcasing your clients in the best atmosphere possible, right. So if your clients have a case study that has written about them, they are most likely going to want to share that with their network for one, but two, it is a beneficial piece of publicity that they can refer back to for their own business. Okay, so before I jump into the nitty gritty about, like individual case studies, I do want to talk about the difference between one individual case studies and a case study page on your website. Before we even begin, I’m gonna say that I personally think that you need both. So an individual case study can is going to focus on one client. Or, you know, I guess it could be multiple clients. If you’re doing a case study, let’s say about a small cohort based group program, and you’re highlighting, let’s say two or three people within that individual case study. So a case study is about a particular thing that you’re reviewing and sharing the story of, usually in the case of one client, it can be either shared to your website in the in the form of a blog post, or a website page. So sometimes I hear this client this question from clients is like, well, is a case study a website page, or as a case study a blog post? And the answer to that is either it, there is zero difference on whether you put your website pages or your blog post as your case studies. However, if you are curious about that, and you’re really trying to make a decision on what works best for your business, I usually determine that for my client based on the design capabilities and functions that they in their individual business need. So for most people, a blog post works absolutely fine as a case study. Like you know, like a format for a case study. All you really need is the ability to have images, to have headings and different types of like, font such as like italics, or anything like that, as well as, as well as regular text on the page. If you want to have a case study, you do not need anything fancy. However, there are many ways to fancy fi a case study. You know, one example and I hope I’m remembering this correctly is I had heard on an episode of the business first creative podcast, Erin Ollila 18:16 I think it was an episode with both Brittany Hertzberg, who I’ve referenced in the beginning of this episode. And obviously Cooley James, who is the host, that Kohli has her case study set up as canvases and show it that people can kind of click through, you know, the before and after, if I remember correctly, and then it links to an additional like page where you can read more information about the project. So that’s kind of an example of how you can use things like pages to give you a little bit more freedom when it comes to design. If you are, I mean, this isn’t the best example. I was gonna say if you were a photographer, you know your case studies may be very picture heavy. But now, you know, most photographers don’t necessarily think of the word or the the idea of a case study as what they would share. They think of it as a portfolio which is somewhat synonymous. However, an interior designer is a better example. An interior designer is another type of individual who has a very photo heavy business. They share their work via images of the creations that they have, you know, like whether they’ve done about a bathroom transformation, or a complete kitchen remodel. Their case studies are going to include images, and because of that, it may be a little easier for them to build out case study pages, so that they can play with the design elements of the website a little more easily than they could do on an average blog post. But don’t let me distract you too much here, because in all truth, you can make a case study As a blog post or webpage, and it makes almost no difference. But what does make a difference is the key I don’t know if this is the right way to say this the the hierarchy of a case studies main page, and the individual case studies. So let’s rewind a bit because I just mentioned photographers may not really think of case studies, as much as they would think of like, Oh, I’m creating like a new port a page in my portfolio. Now, if we think of a case studies main page on a website, as the portfolio link, you would see on a photographer site, the reason that’s created is because if someone’s going to hire, let’s say, a wedding photographer, before they even reach out, they want to click through their portfolio to make sure that the images that photographer takes is ones that they like that their style is related to the style that the person was hoping for their own wedding photos, which just makes sense, right, you want to do your research before you waste your time reaching out to a service provider. Now, case studies can work exactly the same as that portfolio structure for a photographer, a case study main page, could be a place where you can kind of highlight your multiple case studies that you have or showcase maybe some of your best case studies. So I do recommend if you are going to invest in case studies, and you’re going to be creating multiples of them, and not just one, that you have a standalone page, you know, your URL slash case dash studies, or whatever that can hold the feed, have all of your case studies, let’s say, or where you can design to highlight particular case studies you’ve created. Now, those individual case studies, again, can be blog post, or can be pages. And they are created to highlight one particular story, one particular report about working with a client or their experiences. So hopefully, you hear that and you’re like, okay, cool, this makes a lot of sense, I know what you’re talking about. And if you don’t definitely reconnect with me on Instagram, so I can explain it a little bit more. It’s hard to not do a show Intel, sometimes on an audio podcast, because I just want to be like, Look how easy this is, here’s a page and here are the individual posts. But you’re just listening to me right now. So let’s move on. When you’re ready to write your case studies, the first thing you need to do is determine who you are going to interview. Or even if you’re not going to interview them, who you are going to write the case studies about. So really, it’s easy to do this, you’re going to look at your former client list and think about the types of wins that they have, or any transformations that they they that you know of a that they experienced during your time or after your time together. If you’re going to interview them, you obviously have to connect with them and explain what you’re doing and explain what you’d like from them. And what you’d like is really just a way that you can interview them to talk about what it was like before you work together during your time together. And then after your time together. And I don’t want to oversimplify that I’m going to talk a little bit more about that in a second. But I always tell people, it’s not as simple as just thinking about like, Oh, I’d like to talk to this person, you also kind of want to know what the end result is. And have that in mind. Before you determine who you ask. Again, I could write a case study about every single one of my clients, because I have the inner knowledge of what it was like to work together. And you know, what, what in they needed and how I help them. But that doesn’t mean they’d all be very strategic. You want your case studies to showcase particular things. So for example, I may have a case study about working with someone in a VIP manner. And what I might try to highlight within that case study is how quickly we were able to get a lot done. So you know, maybe the pain point that the client came to me with was that they had a lot of work that they needed to get accomplished, or they had a lot of ideas that wanted to go into their marketing, but they just didn’t know how to do it or they didn’t have the time to so then the end result The win was after you know, like working with me and developing a strategy and me doing the implementation of whatever, they were able to complete all of this work all of this creative output that they just never believe they would in such a short period of time. So that’s an example of one type of case study, let’s say and the reason I’d have that is because I want to highlight you know the quickness this witness of having a VIP intensive with me. Another type of case study could be maybe a different service like website copy or copy coaching. But services and products are not the only reasons you should be doing case studies, you should be doing case studies to highlight your work experience your processes, because, sure, I could have five 612 case studies on people whose website copy I created for them. But for some clients, you know, maybe the big win was that they are now being found at with no effort of their own via search, because we did an excellent job of in SEO search engine optimization. But another client may be me writing their website copy, of course, they had benefits like external benefits for their business such as, you know, getting found on search or, you know, not being able to like share their website with people that are potential leads, but maybe they had more internal transformations. I remember one of my clients that I wrote website copy for, wrote me a very beautiful letter, like almost a year after we work together to talk about how impressed with a copy she was initially. But yet, the fact that it’s been a while since we had worked together, she had written that she had gained so much confidence with herself, and her business because she finally had the words written, that she could articulate what it was that she does, like, who she serves, why she serves them. And it was all in our brain before. But because she’s someone who doesn’t love, like communicating and doesn’t love writing, and marketing, she felt everything was really jumbled up. So that’s a huge win. Erin Ollila 26:47 I mean, I’m sorry, we all love stats and fun figures and, you know, reports that someone had like income that was majorly increased, but as a human being the idea that I help someone gain confidence in their business, and finally learn how to like talk about it in a way that felt easy for them. That was a bigger win for me than then some fancy staff that may not even be able to be replicated, again, depending on the circumstances in which they were tried to be replicated. So don’t forget that the wins that you share within your case studies don’t need to be externals, they don’t need to be stats, they don’t need to be financially, you know, related, they could be internal things. And there’s a beauty in doing that, because it makes you look like a true human right. And it showcases an a transformation that everyone understands, you know, someone reading a testimonial. I mean, it shouldn’t be a case study, and wanting to work with a service provider, they may have different goals in their brain about like what they’d like for an outcome. Or they have may, they may have limitations on themselves, in which they’re very aware that they can only accomplish x, y, z and not ABC. An example of this is the past few years, I’ve been working at home with children at home, and no form of childcare. So it was very clear to me when I read certain case studies that I didn’t have the same eight or 10 hour workday than the other people did. And my distractions were higher than most people’s. And my external needs were different. So I had to remember that whenever I kind of compared myself against other things, such as case studies, that I factored in my own lived experiences. So if I read something like, for example, like I if I read a case study that I just mentioned, where my client had talked about how I had given her confidence, confidence is something I get using this example, right? It doesn’t matter if my kids are home or not home, I understand competence, I understand being able to better express myself. So I don’t have to compare it to like big financial gains, or, you know, huge statistics within someone’s business because it’s difficult to compare your own lived experience to someone else’s when you don’t have all of the details. But internal transformations can really do a lot when it comes to using case studies and sharing them with potential new clients. Now, I did promise I would tell you how to actually write a case study you’re going to want to cover I mean, the sounds basic, but kind of the beginning the middle and the end of working with a client and I do not mean chronologically per se because you don’t want your case study to read like an auto biography or biography right. You want only to present the correct and the in the right information. So you’re going to want to kind of target whatever you share with the with your audience to that end goal. Have like what you’re trying to highlight. In the case of the client that I just mentioned, who told me about, you know, building her confidence and being able to express herself better, we would kind of want to look at it from the lens of like, well, what’s the main point? The main point here is that she came to me with a muddled message and feeling, not pleased with how she was presenting her business. And she ended our time together with a very clear message that spoke to the right people. And that over time, it really grew her confidence and excitement about how she spoke about her own business. So you can see the beginning, middle and the end and what I just shared, however, it’s more targeted. So think of it as like, what is either the problem or the desire, you definitely want to have that in the case study present that as like, maybe your starting place, like what is the problem here? You know, the problem is this person had a website she wasn’t happy with? Or what is the desire to have a website, she was happy with the sounds easy, right? But then you want to talk about, like, why this is so important, and how it changed things for her. And that’s kind of the end, right? When we talk about beginning, middle and end, the end is that transformation, the end is in true storybook creative writing. Like why did you read this story? Like what’s in it for me? Well, you just learned of the character’s transformation. And then when we talk about the middle, the middle is a little bit more about like the experience of between you and that client. So what was the experience like working with you? What are some of the things that you did that helped that individual client before they received that transformation? So a case study at its most basic form, can be looked at in two ways? In two ways? Yeah. First, the beginning, what the problem was, or what was the desire before they worked with you? The middle, what the process was like? And the end, which is, was the transfer? Was there a transformation? And what was it another way to look at a case study? It’s kind of the same thing, folks. Like, here’s the top secrets, it’s the same thing. But another way to look at it is, what is the problem or the desire? Pitch that first, then how did you work together to achieve a transformation from that problem, or desire? And then the third final part is, well, what was the transformation? Right? So it is very simple. As long as you follow that structure to write a case study, when you’re done writing, however, though, I really want you to go back and review it for two things with two things in mind. One, the first thing to review don’t do these both at the same time. One, is it evergreen, did you put anything in here that if someone read this case study a year from now, they’d be really confused about, or they would think to themselves? Oh, well, it was nice that, you know, this service provider did that then but there’s no way they can achieve it again, let’s say. So one, review it to make sure it is an evergreen piece of content, to review it to see how you can factor seo into this evergreen case study. Because it is SEO trouble, right? There are so many ways to put seo into a case study, but you’re gonna want to consider things like job titles, or service provided, or maybe like a question that someone would ask if they were looking for a specific outcome. Like, for example, in the case that I mentioned with the client who wrote me that nice letter, you know, some potential seo keywords could be like, rewriting website copy or rebranding a website or message clarity. So you know, that is not keyword research, my friends that was really off the top of my head, but that that light amount of work to look at how the conversation unfolded, and then use those keyword phrases to do some actual keyword research and implement some, you know, very strong keyword phrases within your article can take it from an average piece of content to a content that is easy to rank, get searched for and then bring ideal qualified leads into your audience. You don’t need to rethink the wheel. You do not need to recreate the overall idea of what a case study is. You really need to just commit to telling a story and to tell that story with a framework that is set out for you again, beginning middle end, or the problem or desire they had followed by the process. process or experience, and then completed completion with any wins that they had or any transformations that they received during your time together. It’s that simple. You can get creative, you can jump into more of a store FIDE approach to this. But if you want to write really good evergreen case studies for your business, you only need to showcase those three things. So I encourage you to jump on board the case study boat, they are not as hard or scary as they may seem. You really just want to dip your toe in, try it out and see what it looks like. Your clients and customers are going to want to help you. And like I mentioned, don’t remember, it’s not just a one way street. If you’re writing great stuff about former clients, it’s another form of publicity for them, which makes them even more interested in helping you. So get out there. Write those case studies. And we will be back next week to talk more copy. Have a great week everyone. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Top copy to me. If you enjoyed spending your time with me today. I would be so honored if you could subscribe to the show and leave a review. Want to continue the conversation. Head on over to Instagram and follow me at Erin Ollila. Until next time friends