When it comes to content marketing, a client case study is a fantastic way to demonstrate the benefits of your product or service. A case study gives you the opportunity to go into great detail into how your business has solved a challenge that your prospects are experiencing. This is a great way to demonstrate your expertise and create trust in your brand.
With so many businesses competing for attention, your content needs to be spot on to engage your prospects from the very beginning. Here are 5 tips to help you craft a client case study that converts.
1. Make it an appropriate length
The answer to this question very much depends on your business or audience. A good rule of thumb is around 500 words. This doesn’t overwhelm the reader and is easy to digest.
However, if your client case study concerns a particularly technical product, or explores a complicated issue you helped a client overcome then it is not necessarily a bad thing to go into great depth. Long-form content like this helps reaffirm the expertise of your business.
As with everything in marketing it all comes down to testing. Test short content vs long content and see which converts best for your audience.
2. Make it a joy to read
Spending the time to create a really well-written client case study is vital. There are so many websites where businesses have slapped together a case study because everyone else is doing it, without a thought for readability. Carefully think through how best to make your case study as interesting as possible. Another dull piece of content will only lead to one thing, bored readers, and 0 conversions.
Make your client case study a well-written story with a beginning, middle and an end. Be creative and captivating with your copywriting to make the reader WANT to read on and find out how your client overcame their challenge.
3. Make it easy to read
You are competing with millions of other websites for the attention of your reader. Your content must be interesting and ‘skimmable’. You need your reader to be able to digest the content by skimming through the page and to do that the reader needs signposting. You can do this through various techniques:
- Before writing, pull together a list of the key things you want the reader to take home with them from your case study. Then throughout the case study use subtitles, bold, italic or underlined fonts, capitalisation and design to highlight these points.
- Use catchy headings to separate content.
- Break up long paragraphs with thought-provoking subheadings.
- Makes sure sentence length is kept short and punchy.
- Use bullet points, lists, tables or charts to deliver content or data in easy to understand formats.
- Use ‘pull quotes’ – These are highlighted quotes that are made highly visual through colour and size that reinforce the benefit of your product or service.
4. Make it beautiful
Nobody likes being faced with a long page of text on a boring white background. Hire a creative designer to bring your case study to life and ensure a professional looking finish.
Add beautiful imagery so that the reader can quickly understand the content without having to read a word. Use photography and other visual elements to help readers digest information and ensure a creative use of colour to bring attention to particular sections.
5. Make different length versions
Offer readers the choice of different length versions of your case study. Create small, medium or large versions of the same document, with each version going into the subject matter in a different level of detail. This will help readers with less time choose an appropriate case study and prevent losing their attention mid flow.
You could also give your reader an idea of how long it will take to read your client case study and signpost the difference in content. By doing this, the reader can budget their time accordingly. This will set expectations and make them more likely to read to the end of whichever client case study they choose.
Create your own amazing client case study
Do you have a client that you have a strong relationship with? Approach them and ask them if they are happy for your to create a case study about how you have worked together, and if you can, ask them for a testimonial. This will add further evidence of your expertise. Follow the simple steps in this article and you’ll soon be creating case studies that will make prospects desperate to work with you.
