3 things that make your case studies drive quality leads
Case studies work. They sell. They drive people to your site. They enable you to be found online. They create interest, qualify leads, refresh content, build brand, and drive down the cost of sales.
There’s a catch, however: There are case studies and then there are self-serving, self-congratulatory loads of dreck that masquerade as “case studies”. What distinguishes the former from the latter? Clear descriptions of three things:
1. The most valuable benefit of the product or service being featured. This assumes that you understand what it is about the product that would arouse the attention (read: make somebody reach for their checkbook) of a user/customer/consumer. In other words, you know what your target customer holds dear. What they value most.
2. What it took the user in the case to adopt your product. What did he have to unplug? Undo? Buy extra? Learn? Re-learn? What was your product’s (or service’s) adoption cost?
3. The price. At very least, some order of magnitude of what your stuff costs relative to alternatives.
Those three elements constitute your value proposition. A value proposition is not an elevator pitch. It’s a quantifiable entity. And any case study that doesn’t communicate it is not worth the pixels on the screen. Your value prop is compelling only to the extent that the size of #1 (above) exceeds the sum of #2 plus #3.
Note: we understand the sensitivity of putting price information into case studies given the realities of negotiation. Just never lose sight of the fact that price is central to the customer’s definition of a value proposition. And this is only definition that counts.