Case studies can help you build your brands and tell your customers about them. So, you can effectively promote your products or services by incorporating case studies into your brand and PR strategies. Case studies can also help you identify what methods work and don’t, depending on consumer needs and preferences.
A 2020 survey suggests that nearly 87% of consumers read reviews of local businesses online, and 95% said such reviews greatly impacted their buying decisions. Also, 90% of consumers trust what others say about brands instead of the companies themselves.
So, there’s no doubt that case studies are powerful tools you can use as part of your marketing strategies. They are more than reviews and testimonials. They consist of a problem, a solution, how to implement it, and, more importantly, the outcome of your strategies and plans.
What are Case Studies in Marketing?
Case studies effectively persuade customers to buy your products or subscribe to your services. They are helpful tools that let consumers know about your offerings and how you successfully brought them out. They come with a story that explains the problem and solution and its implementation through your products. Above all, case studies also consist of live testimonials and reviews by people that help create experiences for consumers.
These testimonials and reviews persuade them to think you have good products and services.
However, when you talk about case studies from a marketing perspective, they also prove if your brands or products work and whether they can get you the results you seek. When you look at it that way, case studies, particularly those for marketing purposes, may consist of the following elements.
- Clients.
- Problems or challenges.
- Solutions that the product or service offers can help resolve those problems.
- Their implementations and outcomes.
For instance, let’s say you want to subscribe to a service. The first service provider has 5-star ratings and good testimonials throughout their website. However, the second service provider has fewer. So, your issue would be choosing between the first service provider with 5-star reviews and another with no such reviews. What would you do? You prefer the first service provider, right? However, the real question here is, why?
Case studies suggest that:
- The first service provider is an industry leader.
- They send case studies, reviews, and testimonials to educate them about their products and services.
- They guide their customers through their buying journeys and get quality leads.
- They also help connect with customers deeply to prove their worth.
- Establishing such connections also helps boost credibility and allows you to share your brand’s values and purposes with your target audience.
- Letting customers know more about their brands helps them connect with them deeper and learn more about them and their buying preferences.
Why Use Case Studies for Promoting your Brands?
Case studies tell customers about your brands and products through their success stories. They discuss a problem or challenge that your products or services solved and the positive outcomes they could generate as part of the results. Likewise, here are some other things that case studies can do for your brands.
1. Tell Your Story
Case studies tell a story – that of your brands, products, or services, and each story has a happy ending, showing that you helped resolve a problem. Moreover, the narrative is from a client’s perspective, which makes the story more convincing, relatable, and credible. These stories can answer customers’ questions about your offerings and don’t merely state facts or figures.
2. Build Brand Reputation
Case studies can help your brands and companies become more credible and reliable, which is what customers look for in a brand. They want to try your products or services because they have read good reviews and testimonials. So, it becomes vital to publish case studies and reviews about your brands, not only on your website but also on your social media handles, with more positive reviews. That way, consumers would want to try them out.
3. Demonstrate Success
Case studies demonstrate the successes of your brands by talking about how they have helped resolve your customers’ problems. The results also emphasize the action and how your brands helped you achieve your goals.
Case studies also discuss how other such brands have helped resolve similar problems and how your brands stand out by achieving better results.
The table below shows what you could include and, more importantly, how much you should emphasize each aspect so that consumers would want to buy your brands.
| Brand Strategy | 33% |
| Market Analytics | 29% |
| Marketing Operations | 28% |
| Digital Commerce | 26% |
| Market research and competitive insights | 25% |
| Strategy development and planning | 22% |
| Marketing technology strategy, adoption, and use | 22% |
| Campaign creation and management | 21% |
| Multichannel marketing strategy and orchestration | 14% |
| User experience research | 14% |
| Personalization and testing | 14% |
| Talent development | 13% |
| Creative design and development | 12% |
| Demand generation and management | 12% |
| Media buying and placement | 12% |
4. Generate Leads
Case studies can help generate more leads for your brands and products if implemented correctly. So, you should get that positive tone going about your offerings if you want to get the most out of them. You could stress more about the results, facts, and figures and how your brands helped achieve those results. Likewise, you could include customer quotes and call-to-actions. These things help urge customers to try your brands out and increase the visibility and credibility of your brands.
Conclusion
Case studies are social proof and give prospects a reason to try your brands. They let customers know more about your products and services and help them decide if they should go for them. About 13% of marketers also say that case studies are a primary media source for their strategies, despite stats and facts. So, you can rely on case studies for your marketing efforts and win big.
