Case Studies: Your Best Cheerleaders
When a prospect is considering doing business with you, one of the strongest enticements you can use to put your offering over the top is proof.
Whether you’re soliciting your prospective customers through direct mail, email marketing, website content, or any other method, you need to prove, to your prospect's satisfaction, that your business will do for her what you say it will.
There are lots of ways to do this.
You can give statistics about how much your customers have made, saved, or improved their lives by doing business with you.
You can point out the growth of your own business, as evidence that you must be doing something right.
But the best way to prove your case to prospective customers is to let your existing customers do it for you… through their testimonials.
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And the best way to do that is to have a professional writer create a sort of “super testimonial” known as a case study – an engaging, true, real-life story about how a customer found the solution to a formidable problem… by doing business with you.
Your best customers are your business’ best cheerleaders.
Help them tell their success stories – stories of how doing business with you was one of their best decisions – and they’ll help your business win.
Story Telling Is Powerful Selling
We all love a good story.
We read our favorite novels and watch our favorite movies over and over.
Just look at the recent trend in our society of “bingeing” on TV shows: planting ourselves on the couch, potato-like, and watching episode after episode of a series until we’ve consumed every intriguing word of the story!
Neuroscientists have proven that stories do more than just entertain us. They also have the power to affect the way we think, feel, and make decisions.
Like buying decisions!
But that’s not why we devour them.
We devour stories because we love them!
And that’s why case study testimonials – powerful, engaging stories told by your real customers through the artful craft of a professional writer – will always be among the most avidly-read parts of any marketing campaign.
If you have case studies on your firm’s website, your prospects will read them.
And your chances of landing their business will increase as dramatically as the tension in a good cable-network series.
A Story Is Born
A typical case study testimonial is 500-1,500 words, written in a style reminiscent of a magazine personality feature, and published (by you) as a PDF or as a page on your website.
It also makes a great “lift note” – or separate inclusion – in a direct-mail package.
Your copywriter tells the story. But he does so by emphasizing real quotes from your customer. A professional writer will not only know how to tell an engaging story; he will also be talented at conducting the brief interview with your customer and getting the quotes needed to make that story come across as iron-clad proof of your business solution.
In the best case studies, the customer tells the story through the writer.
After all, you want to make your customer the real “star” of the story. Right?
Your prospect will, of course, pick up on this. Subconsciously, he may think, What a brilliant person for choosing this company! Could the star of the next story on this site be... me?
Of course, your answer to that question is an enthusiastic YES!
Your great business story is waiting to be told. To be sold!
Your best customers will be happy to do the telling and selling for you.
And your ideal prospects will be happy to devour every word.
May you all live happily ever after!
