What is a case study? It’s a report of a brand’s implementation of something, such as a service, system, practice or product. It is a detailed account of something that your brand did from the beginning to the end. Let’s start by talking about what makes a good case study. First, you want something that is digestible. This means you communicate your story quickly and efficiently without any boring jargon. Second, although you want it to be unambiguous, you still want to convey the study in its entirety, so it must be thorough. This brings us to the last key point, good storytelling. You always want your viewer to be intrigued and interested in the content.
Now that you understand what makes a good case study, let’s cover some tips on how to create your own that your audience will want to see.
1. Relatability. Highlight customers that will appeal to your audience. Make sure that you know your target audience and choose someone that they can relate to.
2. Data. Use specific data and include numbers. Seeing proof in black in white is a great way to prove your value. If you can’t do this depending on the style of case study, use testimonials instead.
3. Good storytelling. As mentioned above, being a good storyteller is important. Having a beginning, middle and end are crucial to a good story. Try leading with a solution to a problem can attract attention quickly. Ask the right questions to get a complete picture of the journey from start to finish.
4. Key points. Identify the top 3-5 key points that you want to get out of the case study. It will be important to know your customers here. What challenges do they face? How can you help them with these challenges?
5. Formatting & appeal. Try different formats that appeal to different types of learners. Text, video, infographics and even podcasts work here.
Here at Locomotive, we’ve conducted case studies with previous content creators to understand what their process was like working with us from start to finish. It’s helped us understand what our strengths are and point out things that we can improve on. Typically, we’re pleasantly surprised with our client case studies but this doesn’t stop us from continuing to improve so that we have a seamless experience for content creators. Hopefully this list will help your brand understand how to create a good case study to better understand your business or assist your audience to better understand what makes your brand stand out from all the rest.
