Why are case studies important?

Your clients are your best salespeople

Call it the Peer principle of persuasion: People are more likely to believe that if a program, product or concept worked for someone else, it will probably work for them, as well.

Enter the case study.

It’s the tool you can use to amplify the voices of your happy clients, transforming their success stories into the written equivalent of a product demo. When clients serve as brand ambassadors in case studies, they show instead of tell how your products and services work.

Why write case studies?

1. Case studies tap people power.

It’s the Writing Rule of One: It’s easier for readers to care about one person they know something about than to care about dozens — or even hundreds — of nameless, faceless souls.

Put a human face on your offerings by telling your clients’ success stories in their own words.

Show your readers how your products and services worked for one person. It’s the best way to bring your messages to life.

2. Case studies deliver social proof.

Call it social proof: We look to what others do to guide our behavior.

Social proof is one of 6 principles of persuasion outlined by Robert B. Cialdini — the emperor of influence — in his seminal book Influence.

It’s the human condition to want to do what others are doing.

“We view a behavior as more correct … to the degree that we see others performing it,” Cialdini writes. In other words, if our audience members believe that “everyone’s doing it,” they’re more likely to do it themselves.

Case studies showing how others have used your products and services may help prospects decide to jump on the bandwagon.

3. Case studies help people decide.

Case studies help readers understand what it would be like to go through the same experience. The result: more informed decisions (Slovice and Gregory, 2000).

These narratives work because they help people:

• Weigh factors in decision-making. In one study, participants who received information in narrative form understood the attributes of the situation better and were more likely to weigh them appropriately to make a good decision (Satterfield, Slovice and Gregory, 2000).
• Make better choices. In another study, people who were given narrative information made more accurate judgments on a task than those who were given the same information in bar graphs or data tables (Sanfey and Hastie, 1998).
• Think logically and emotionally. Stories trigger both sides of the brain. Logic and emotion are both essential to good decision-making (Epstein, 1994).
• “Enter the story.” By seeing themselves in the narrative, people can make even unfamiliar situations easier to imagine and evaluate (Oatley, 1994).
• Remember longer. Storytelling improves retention (Price, 1996).
• Enjoy the information. Readers prefer learning the experiences of other health care plan members to just reviewing data. Readers also feel more confident evaluating stories than numerical ratings (Gibbs, Sangl and Burrus, 1996).
• Make better decisions, regardless of their age. Stories helped older consumers chose the right health care plan (Hibbard, 2002).

4. Case studies are the ultimate word-of-mouth referrals.

Word of mouth may be the best form of advertising:

• The elasticity of word-of-mouth referrals is 2.5 times higher than that for other types of marketing, according to a 2009 report by the American Management Association. (Elasticity is marketing speak for how sensitive the demand for your products and services are to other variables, like price hikes and recessions. The more elastic, the more likely you are to be able to weather these ups and downs.)
• Word of mouth marketing lasts longer: for three weeks vs. three to seven days for traditional marketing efforts.
• That means word of mouth “may be among the most effective of marketing communication strategies,” write the report authors.

But prospects could be anywhere from 60 to 90 percent through the buyer’s journey before even contacting a sales person, according to research by Forrester. If you’re not offering case studies on your website, you may never get the opportunity to do so.

Bottom line, according to the Journal of Marketing: Word of mouth leads to more clients; more clients lead to more word of mouth.

5. Journalists love case studies.

More than half of business-to-business editors surveyed seek more feature releases, including case studies and how-to stories, according to a survey by Thomas Rankin Associates.

Make your next press release a case study, and watch pickups climb.
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Sources:

Maggie Georgieva, “Use Case Studies to Increase Word-of-Mouth Marketing,” HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog, March 2, 2010

Jami Oetting, “The Guide to Creating Case Studies For Your Agency,” HubSpot Partner Publication

Michael Trusov, Randolph E. Bucklin, & Koen Pauwels, “Effects of Word-of-Mouth Versus Traditional Marketing,” Journal of Marketing, September 2009

Lori Wizdo, “Buyer Behavior Helps B2B Marketers Guide The Buyer’s Journey,” Forrester, Oct. 4, 2012

Judith H. Hibbard and Ellen Peters, “Supporting Informed Consumer Health Care Decisions: Data Presentation Approaches that Facilitate the Use of Information in Choice,” Annual Review of Public Health, 2003, Vol. 24, pp. 413-33