By Case studies are an excellent way to build trust, mitigate customer objections and increase your sales as they work to influence your customer’s purchasing decision.
Imagine you’ve just come across brand-new marketing automation software. Your business has survived without it, but you’re convinced it could take you to the next level.
The set of features obliterates your current setup. It’s simple, affordable and powerful. The landing page sings to you. What more could you want? You’re ready to buy, you reach for your credit card but… something just feels amiss.
You can’t find any case studies, reviews or testimonials about this new software. How do you know it’ll truly meet your expectations? If only there were tangible case studies from real business owners just like you, expressing their delight of how impactful this software has been on their business.
Unfortunately, they lost your sale and their conversion rate dipped.
After all, the last thing you want to do is sign-up for a free 30-day trial only to experience buyer’s remorse. You may not have spent a penny, but you’ve definitely wasted a lot of unnecessary time.
This case study template was designed to prevent this from happening to your business. And to help you build authority, increase sales and double your conversion rates.
Want to know how to get amazing case studies like these?
Business Case Study Template
Here is the case study template we’ve used to compile and produce over 90 glowing testimonials for our workshops and consultancy services.
Don’t be surprised if you amass a lot of information. To prevent overwhelm, follow this step-by-step process when writing up your case studies.
1. Headline
As with all marketing copy, your headline is the most essential element of your case study. Cast a critical eye over your headline. It must stand out and highlight the key results or achievements your customer achieved by working with you.
Use numbers to add credibility
Compare these two case studies below.
“When we met Alasdair, our turnover was approximately £214,000. After working with Grow, our turnover was around £608,000.”
“They are reliable and consistently excellent performers and were a joy to work with. They’re methodical, concise and imaginative.“
Which one sounds punchier? The one with numbers of course. Numbers add a definitive, objective point to your statements. Unlike flowery statements, numbers make your customer’s words sound believable, which promotes goodwill for your business.
2. Key Achievements
Compose the key achievements like a modern CV with bullet points.
-
- Grew our list of leads by 120% resulting in £130,000 of revenue
- Upgraded 20% of existing customers to VIP memberships (worth £25,000)
- Lowered churn-rate by 17% month-after-month
Always use verbs and action phrases when composing key achievements.
You want to make it clear what was achieved.
Writing their achievements in this way adds clarity to your case study and increases the chance of them reading further.
To add further credibility, use a quote from your customer which highlights how you’ve changed their business or why they chose you over a competitor.
“We enjoyed working with Grow because Alasdair is very good at what he does. He really understands small businesses. He is practical, he practices what he preaches. He’s very
clear, very supportive and he is a very nice guy. I also liked that the fact that we could go to him and bounce ideas. Alasdair understands the big picture and his advice goes beyond marketing.”
Once you’ve done this, the main business challenge and work involved should follow.
3. Key Business Challenge
A well-written case study will always outline the key challenges a business faced before they found you.
General to specific approach for storytelling
Remember to follow the general-to-specific approach when writing up your case studies.
Essentially, this means that you start by outlining the business challenge in a general sense, and then following up with specifics which actually caused a problem for that customer.
For example:
Many businesses struggle to identify actionable metrics in their data, which leads to making unverified assumptions about their new product and target market.
Follow with specifics:
“Company A was using basic analytics software which told them nothing about who was coming to their site and whether they were a good fit for their product. They suffered by investing a lot of money into pop ups, tracking pixels and retargeting to capture visitors who left their website before viewing even 2 pages.”
4. Work we did
Now here’s your chance to shine.
Talk about the specific actions you took whilst working with your customer.
Did you create a 30-point action plan? A marketing strategy? Did you use and implement new tools? Bring in new staff or introduce new processes?
Specify exactly what you did and close out with how your approach and actions could help businesses with the same problems.
This case study template is perfect if you need a starting point for creating case studies without hassle. Try out this business case study template and start building the authority your business deserves.
| About the client | |
|---|---|
| Company: | |
| Contact name: | |
| Job Title: | |
| Best telephone number to call: | |
| Email: | |
| Website: | |
| Date called: | |
| What is the nature of the work you have done with this company? | |
| Script – Introduction | |
|---|---|
| Hello, my name is (NAME) and I work at (COMPANY NAME) I know you worked with us on/used our (WORK/PROJECT/PROGRAMME/SOFTWARE) I’d love to get some feedback about our work together/our product and services. Can I ask you a few questions over the phone? It’ll just take about 10 minutes of your time. |
|
| A. Yes. Continue to the question below |
B. No Ask your client when would be a good time to arrange a new date to talk NEW DATE: |
| Script – Questions | |
|---|---|
| 1. What were the key challenges you were facing that led to us working together/you choosing our solution | |
| Answer:
Notes: |
|
| 2. In what ways did these challenges impact your business? |
| Answer: |
| 3. Was there any particular reason you choose to work with us? |
| Answer: |
| 4. How did our work together/product or service address your business challenges? |
| Answer: |
| 5. What did you most enjoy about working with us/using our product or service? |
| Answer: |
| 6. What are the measurable or tangible results in your business after our work together/after using our product/service? |
| Answer:
Notes: |
| 7. Are there any areas where we could improve? |
| Answer: |
| 8. Thanks for taking the time to talk and for your feedback, it’s been really helpful. We sometimes feature customer’s feedback in our marketing materials and our website. Would you be okay with that – we’ll obviously share what we’ve written with you before. | |
| Yes Date: |
No Date: |
| If Yes to allowing feedback to be used in marketing: | If No to allowing feedback to be used in marketing: |
| Thank for your time. Your feedback is really helpful. I will put something together for you and send it to you by email. Is that okay? |
Thank for your time. Your feedback is really valuable, and I’ll make sure to share what you’ve said with (NAME) *If there are any issues that need to be addressed after the call, the relevant person can contact the client |
| 9. FORMATTING AND WRITING THE CASE STUDY: |
| Use the following format: A. What the client issues were B. What you actually did for the client/how they used your product or service C. What tangible results the client achieved by using your product or service We like the case studies from https://www.hubspot.com/customers 1. Combine the answers to create a case study using the format, A,B,C 2. Ensure that your grammar is correct and that the text reads smoothly and logically 3. When possible, use the client’s language and terminology as this gives more credibility 4. Bold sections that stand out from the case study such as result 5. Add the name of person including job title, name of business, their picture and their website 6. You can usually find the persons picture on Linkedin or by doing a Google search 7. Send your completed case study the client by email for a final review 8. Only once they approve it can you put it on your website. If they request changes you must do this and then you can resend the case study for approval |
Get your customers to answer the questions in this case study template. Once you’re done, you’ll have a treasure chest of information to build your case study with.
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