It would be great if we could wave a magic wand to convince prospects to buy your product or service… But we can’t. So, a case study is your next best option.
They’re a powerful sales and marketing tool for those prospects that are sitting on the fence. The problem is, they’re often dry, bland, and anything but magical.
We’re here to show you how to write a case study that will convince customers to choose you over your competitors. To create something so compelling they’ll have no doubt about your ability to deliver results.
Whether this is your first or 100th stab at it, we’ve got you covered with tips and best practices, real-world examples, and ideas for how to format a case study.
In this post, we’ll look at:
- What a case study is and why you need one
- What makes a good case study
- What should a case study include?
- Essential prep for creating a case study
- How to write a case study in 5 steps
- 8 Further case study best practices
- 5 Real-life case study examples
- 3 Case study templates to get you started
🔍Are you looking for some case study examples? This compilation of case study data and leadership input from just a few RingCentral SMB customers will show you exactly how they have modernized their business communication processes.
What is a case study and why should you create one?
A case study is basically a document— or it can be a video—that outlines how a customer used your product to overcome a problem. It’s real-world proof that your product works and gets results.
If your product or service has helped customers get great results, a case study will help you showcase those results to your future customers. They’re an excellent way to attract more business, and can mean the difference between a lost opportunity and a really good end-of-quarter.
What makes a good case study?
First, it’s helpful to highlight what makes a lot of case studies bad: most are painfully boring. What they have is research and detail, but what they lack is a cohesive, consumable story.
They list numbers and contain data, but the reader isn’t sure what it all means or why it’s relevant to their problem. They end up existing as technical documents that do little to persuade or excite anyone. That’s unfortunate because they have the potential to be a powerful sales tool that can help you close big deals in the decision-making phase.
So how do you write a case study that’s actually effective, then? Here are three characteristics every good case study should have:
It’s digestible
There’s no hard and fast rule on how long a case study should be. But it’s always a good idea to ask “how short can we make it?”
A good case study avoids the unnecessary minutiae, knows what it’s trying to say, and communicates it quickly and without ambiguity. With a few exceptions, effective case studies are concise and clear.
It’s thorough
On the other side of the length equation, being thorough is also important. Case study writing is all about making impressive claims about how a product helped someone achieve a certain result. However, it also needs to explain how it happened.
Good case studies include key details that show how the customer got from A to B using the product—something you don’t get with customer reviews. Don’t make your reader work too hard to visualize the story. If you can use images and videos, use them.
It’s a story
Yes, case studies are sales tools. But the ones really worth reading tell a compelling story with a beginning, middle, and end. They beg to be read all the way through. Often, they present a problem that creates tension and demands a solution. And remember, in this story, the customer is the hero—not you.
What should a case study include?
Caveat: There is no one-size-fits-all approach to writing a case study. But, in general, there are sections you should feature to make it clearer and more impactful. Those include:
- Title: This should be concise and engaging. Naming your document “A Case Study of RingCentral” sounds dry. A headline like “Navigating Communications in a Remote World: A RingCentral Case Study” has more impact and explains what theme you’re exploring.
- Executive summary: Consider this like an abstract. Provide a brief overview of the case study, including the key purpose, approaches, findings, and solutions, without giving too much away.
- Introduction: Provide essential details about the customer in context.
- Challenges: Here’s where you highlight where your customer was before using your product or service and where they wanted to be. Present raw data where applicable and discuss any other background information that shows their struggles.
- Solution: Here’s where you get to show off. Explain how and why the customer chose your company, and how a specific product or service helped them achieve their objectives.
- Results: Time to get tangible. Dive into how the customer used your product, the results they saw, and long-lasting benefits. Incorporate any testimonials and statistics that showcase these results.
- Conclusion: Case studies are just as much about the future as the present. Use this closing section to highlight where your case study customer is going next thanks to your solution. Consider including a call-to-action here to encourage your prospect to take the next step.
Essential prep for creating a case study
Before you start actually writing, there’s a bit of prep work you’ll need to do to make sure your case study is amazing.
1. Choose your customer
You may have many customers who’ve seen great results using your product (let’s hope!). But you can’t just pick a name out of a hat and showcase their results; they may not be right for your audience or their results may not be typical.
For example, don’t feature an enterprise company when most of your customers are small businesses. Or a business achieving a 90% customer retention rate when most of them see 70% on average (still impressive, though). When considering which customer to use, start by creating a list of customers that meet these criteria:
They’ve seen good results with your product or service
The numbers are what really matter. So choose customers that have seen strong results using your product. But be careful about showcasing exceptionally good results if they’re not likely to be repeated by most.
They have a respected and recognizable brand
Strong brands give your product instant social proof. They prove that you’re established and trustworthy. That alone can make you a front-runner in the decision-making process. After all, if Big Brand X trusts you, so can a prospect.
They’re a typical customer
Good results don’t carry as much weight when they’re achieved by companies in other industries or verticals. Identify current customers that are similar to your target audience. If you sell enterprise software, choose enterprise customers. If you’re a consultant in the healthcare industry, choose a customer that works in healthcare.
With your list in hand, you can start reaching out. Picking up the phone can be a lot more effective than sending an email. It’s more personal, lets you build rapport, and is harder to ignore.
Try to get in touch with customers who use or are very familiar with your product or service—someone who can speak to results. Tell them you’re interested in writing a case study and you’d love to hear more about the results they’ve achieved. Be clear about what the process involves on their part—whether it’s a list of questions in an email, a phone call, or if it involves a camera and crew.
If you’ve provided value, your customer is more likely to see you as a partner rather than a vendor and, hopefully, will be happy to participate. Remember, you’re also shining a spotlight on their own success. So it’s a win-win.
That said, you may hear “no” a few times, too. Don’t get discouraged. Some customers will decline for different reasons, regardless of the results they’ve achieved with your product.
2. Begin your research
Start collecting information about your customer. This is easier if you work as a team. From sales to marketing to customer service, everyone who’s been in touch with customers will have insight about their experience.
They can help you understand what your customers do and sell, and what challenges they’re facing. Identify the stakeholders you need to speak with—anyone in the company who uses your product—from the CEO to the marketing intern. Collect stats, even ones you don’t think are relevant—they may be later.
3. Ask the right questions
Smart questions get insightful answers. Here are some examples of great questions to start with:
- “What were some of the bigger challenges you faced before using our product?”
- “How does our product help you reach your individual goals?”
- “Which key metrics have improved most since using our product/service?”
- “Which parts of your business have been impacted most, and how?”
- “How long did it take to roll out our product?”
But don’t stop there. Use these questions to segue into deeper, more targeted questions that underscore the real-world benefits of your product. Let the conversation flow naturally—this is the magic of interviews. You can’t always plan for what interesting topics come up next.
4. Identify your target audience
Beyond your customer’s industry, consider who the target audience of the case study is. Who will see it? Who does it need to influence?
While it’s often high-level executives who make large purchase decisions, employees at all levels can act as a champion for your product or brand. Your case study may have to persuade an IT worker that your product or service is going to make their job easier. Meanwhile, it may also need to convince the CFO that they’ll see a real return on investment.
5. Identify the top three things you want to highlight
During the initial research phase, you’ve likely uncovered a lot of interesting information about your customer and their experiences with your product.
While it might be tempting to use it all, when you write a case study, you should quickly and clearly communicate the value of your product. Go through this information and identify the three most important business results you want to feature.
Stats and key performance indicators (KPIs) to consider using in your case study:
- Ramp up time: How long did it take to get started with your product? Did it improve any other facet of their workflow?
- Sales results: How did the product impact your customer’s bottom line?
- Total return on investment (ROI): How long did it take to earn more than they spent on your product?
- Productivity increases: Which teams saw improvements in process and workflow? And by how much?
6. Choose your format
So, what does a case study look like visually? It doesn’t have to exist only as a PDF attachment in a late-stage deal email (although there’s nothing wrong with that). Consider the format. Think about who’s going to read it (or watch it).
Do you want to turn this into fancy interactive content? Does your prospect have the time and interest to dig into the details? Or do they just want the facts? Choose the format that you think best engages the audience that you’re selling to.
Here are some options:
Report format
This long-form document has been the gold standard for B2B case studies for many years. It’s effective when the subject matter is complex and demands detail.
Remember, a CTO who’s evaluating large-scale business communications platforms for a multi-year deal is going to want more information than a marketing manager who’s evaluating a new social media ad platform.
One-pager
Keeping things short and sweet is often the best way to get your message heard. By focusing on the key points, you can highlight the biggest wins at just a glance.
Most report format case studies can be easily condensed into a one-page document. This is ideal for prospects (and salespeople) who are short on time and prefer something they can quickly scan.
Video
Few things can tell a story the way that video can, and case studies are no exception. They give you an unmatched level of creative freedom and storytelling using music, lighting, pacing, and voice that can evoke emotions and persuade someone using more than just numbers and facts.
And at just a couple of minutes long, they can do a lot of heavy lifting in not a lot of time.
Infographic
People love infographics. They’re an excellent way to convey important data in a simple, eye-pleasing way.
If your case study requires you to use a lot of data to prove a point—or if visualizing data can make the results more clear—building an infographic case study can be a great investment.
How to write a case study in 5 steps
Congrats. You’ve done the research. You’ve made the calls. You’ve pored over all the details. Now, all you have to do is write.
Here are five simple steps that’ll help you better understand how to create a case study that champions your customer and clearly showcases the real-world value of your products or services.
1. Introduce the customer
Set the stage for your case study with an introduction. Briefly explain who your customer is with a bit of background information that can include their industry, product, company size, and location.
You don’t have to dig into the nuts and bolts of their business, but you do want the reader to understand who they are and what they do. The more color you can provide here, the more impactful it’ll be when you show the awesome results this customer saw because they chose you.
2. State the problem
Every product or service is a solution to a problem. Explain the problem (or problems) that you helped your customer overcome. Describe the larger impact of the issue. Maybe it was customers leaving. Perhaps it was bad leads—or good leads that were never followed up on.
Use this as an opportunity to clearly show what was at stake, and make sure you leave the jargon out of it. Frame the problem in simple terms that any reader can understand.
3. Introduce your product
This is where you begin solving the problem. Briefly introduce your product and what it does.
Start on a general level, then apply it to the challenge the customer was experiencing. Talk about which teams or individuals used your product and how they used it. Be sure to make the connection between the customer’s problem and your solution crystal clear.
4. Show results
The big reveal. What kind of results was your customer able to achieve using your product or service? Speak to how they solved the problem descriptively, but also with cold, hard numbers.
Not everything can be measured in numbers (sometimes, peace of mind is a powerful benefit all on its own), but whenever you can, back up your story with the stats. At the very least, this will make it easy for a CFO—or a prospect who wants to buy—to justify buying your product.
For example:
The customer saw a 33% increase in web traffic, a large influx of social media activity, and a 10% boost in revenue over the duration of the campaign.
5. Prove it
Don’t forget to show your math. How you get the results is just as important as the results themselves. What specific steps were taken to get those results? Not only will this help validate your claims, it makes it easier to envision how the reader may be able to achieve them, too.
8 Further case study best practices
That’s how to write a case study in broad strokes, but what else can you do to make sure yours stands out from the crowd?
1. Avoid jargon
As a subject matter expert in your line of work, it can be tempting to go into as much jargony detail as possible. This is normal as it’s often the language we use at work every day.
Remember, though, that your customer probably doesn’t speak that language. When in doubt, try to put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn’t live and breathe your product or industry..
2. Spend time on your title
It’s tempting to use the case study’s most interesting or impressive KPI as your title. But that also gives away the ending before the story begins, and skips details that are important for context in the process. Try writing a title that piques interest without being a spoiler.
3. Edit. Then edit again.
Once you’ve got your first draft completed (and the jargon removed), edit the case study. A few best practices here:
- Look for and eliminate unnecessary adjectives.
- Speak in an active voice.
- Look for details that get in the way of the story.
And then do it all over again until you can’t edit it down anymore without losing the essence of the story.
4. Pay attention to the imagery
Well-designed charts, graphs, images, or infographics can do the heavy lifting of several pages of text in just seconds.
They can also help break up large pieces of text, making the case study easier to read—and nicer to look at. After all, the end goal is to have these read all the way through.
Here’s an example of a graphic from a longer CPA Canada infographic (that includes a short case study embedded inside it):
5. Pull quotes
Hard data and results are good. But a customer quote is a great piece of social proof and adds a human element to your case study. And that makes your results more believable.
Here’s an example of what that looks like:
6. Make it scannable
Some people will take the time to read your case study front to back and absorb every detail. Some won’t give it more than a single glance. And sometimes, that person is the decision-maker.
Make the most important results easy to spot, read, and retain at a glance. Write headings that are descriptive—if someone just scanned them, would they be able to get the gist of the story? Consider putting a summary at the very beginning of the study, or call out impressive results in a larger font size.
7. Record your interviews
Ditch the pen and paper. If you’re conducting one-on-one interviews over the phone, you can save yourself a lot of time and energy by recording the conversation (with your customer’s consent, of course).
There are tools that can make this easier too—you might find one or two in your marketing stack. For example, you could use RingSense AI for automatic note taking, summarizing, and transcribing.
8. Don’t forget the call to action (CTA)
Your prospect is excited because your case study has done an excellent job of showing how your product or service can help drive results for customers. Now, how do they get in touch with you to learn more?
Whether it’s a button that links to your website, an email address, or a phone number, make sure there’s an easy way of getting in touch with you in the case study.
5 Examples of great case studies from real-life companies
So, that’s the theory covered, but what do great case studies look like in practice? We’ve included a few elements from RingCentral customer stories as examples above, but we’re far from the only company to have recognized the importance of this kind of content
Here are some real-life case studies from other businesses you might just recognize:
Mailchimp: Make a connection in real life with postcards
What we like about it: The title doesn’t give everything away all at once, and the case study tells a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The sections are clearly titled and organized, and the results are easy to find. As a bonus: the video adds a believable human element.
LinkedIn: How Adobe achieves alignment and ABM success with LinkedIn
What we like about it: It’s detailed without being a novella. It understands and speaks to the enterprise customer. The key points are in bullet format and easy to read. The important wins are highlighted. And the video makes the content easy to engage with.
Hootsuite: How Meliá became one of the most influential hotel chains on social media
What we like about it: The title makes you want to read the whole customer story. They’ve embedded a well-produced video high on the page, so you can choose to watch it before you read on. The design and layout of the page makes the content and images easy to consume, and the results can’t be missed. Also, they weren’t shy about adding CTAs.
Slack: So yeah, we tried Slack
What we like about it: This case study follows the tried and true format of customer, problem, solution, and results. It uses humor and relatable characters throughout to support the story and keep your attention. And it’s only two minutes long so it gets the point across quickly.
Assetworks: South Carolina School Board Insurance Trust
What we like about it: This case study tackles the otherwise complex and technical topic, and simplifies it as an infographic using images to make the results clear. It’s concise and easy to follow because you can see the math without actually doing any math.
3 Case study templates to get you started
Starting from scratch can be time-consuming. To help you, we’ve drawn together a few free templates:
The generic one
Generic doesn’t mean boring! Canva’s templates are great if you need something concise and simple that still looks professional. A free account will give you access to several well-designed templates, including this one:
The layout is provided for you, so it’s quick and easy to customize with your branding and content. Don’t be afraid to use this as a foundation, then add in visual elements like infographics and videos.
The data-driven one
If your key messages revolve around numbers, start with a template structure that lets you highlight these. HubSpot has a data-focused template where you can pack in graphs, charts, and other visuals to drive your message home:
The industry-specific one
Not every template suits every company. Visme offers different templates created for different industries, including real estate, financial services, and healthcare.
If you’re building up a portfolio of case studies to incorporate on your website, this is a great option. You can download high-quality versions to use as a lead magnet or embed it onto your website for free.
The final word on how to write a case study…
Sure, an ad or boosted social media post can make someone aware of your brand or that your product exists, and a landing page can tell them how your product can solve their problem.
But there’s nothing quite as powerful as someone else singing your praises.
And that’s exactly what a case study does. Spend the time to do it right and it has the potential to deliver huge ROI no matter how big or small your company is. And not just once—but over and over again.
FAQs
Why are case studies important?
Case studies present a living, breathing witness to how effective your product or service is. In other words, they represent the ultimate in social proof. While customer reviews can also be valuable in influencing a potential client’s decision to buy from your company, they don’t pack the punch that case studies do. That’s because with case studies, you can curate a story that highlights how well your product solved a real-life problem, and back it up with solid data.
What’s the best way of selecting a client for a case study?
Ideally, you’ll want to use a client that’s not only had a great experience with your product or service, but is also representative of your target market. In other words, it has to be a client that has faced similar challenges and pain points as your prospective clients. That’s the best way of evoking empathy and stirring up interest in the mind of the reader.
Originally published Jun 15, 2024, updated Jul 03, 2024
