Understand and intuit the challenges that come with communicating their services. Case studies are a fantastic opportunity to set your business apart and to display your unique strategies.
For those who have never worked with a marketer before, these case studies provide valuable insight into what they can expect from your work. Showing your prospects that you can walk into the dark and come out on the other side unscathed will reassure them that they’re putting their faith (and budget) into the right hands.
Does writing a study on case studies mean this blog is also a case study? Before I get a headache trying to unpack that one, let’s get into how you, too, can build great case studies!
Explain the Challenge!
While it might feel like reliving a deeply buried trauma, articulating the challenges you faced leading up to the job is crucial for framing the case study as a narrative.
These challenges can be the client’s constraints, such as design guidelines, forbidden words, colors, or simply the complexity of making their field of work understandable to a wide audience. You can add your own, too, like deadlines and technology constraints you may have faced at the time. It’s not complaining if it’s done with and over, right?
The deeper you go into the job’s complexity, the deeper of an understanding your audience will have of how you intuit your jobs, so make sure you’re as detailed as possible. However, anything you introduce as a problem should still be matched with a solution in the next section. Your prospective clients deserve the confidence to know that they’re hiring a capable and results-driven marketer who can not only spot difficulties but overcome them.
Explore the Solutions!
Once you have articulated the challenges you faced in creating the marketing content, you can go into your solutions. Here, a narrative is reinforced by explaining what led you to this particular course of action. These solutions will change depending on the field your work was in, but a few principles remain the same:
What did your solution offer to overcome the problem?
Why did you choose this strategy?
How was your strategy implemented in the outcome?
This is a neat little magician’s trick. You place one problem in front of them, wave your wordsmithing wand, and boom! Only a solution remains! Be sure to tie up any loose ends you introduced in the introductory challenges. By this point, the reader should think you are quite the clever little cookie.
While you are ultimately the one who decides upon and frames the two sides of the challenge/solution bridge, beware of being too self-congratulatory in regards to your solutions. This paragraph should still be all-business. Your victory lap comes soon, and that’s through displaying the results of your labor.
Show Off the Results!
Here you may include reviews, testimonials, ongoing work, or an aesthetic breakdown of the solutions you introduced.
You should explore the highlights of a final product put the final pieces together for your audience’s journey from problem to solution. The language should be geared towards how your client’s customers won out from your choices, not just the client. After all, they aren’t just in it for themselves.
We suggest photos that show off the components of your campaign—something visual that illustrates the parts working together. Collect any reviews and toss them in as well! Client feedback in their own words shows that you didn’t just ship and close the hatch to further communication, which is a fear for many businesses starting on their marketing journeys.
The bottom line is if the client is proud, you should be too. Don’t be afraid to be your champion for a bit.
Crafting an excellent case study is like a résumé for your project. Treat it like you would pitching yourself—flexible, creative, and effective.
If you’re struggling, feel free to reach out or book a meeting! I’m all about turning your problems into compelling solutions.