How to plan and produce better case studies

Case studies can be one of the most frustrating pieces of content to create. Not only do they require a happy customer, but they also require multiple internal teams to gather the data and put it together.

If internal coordination becomes too frustrating, or no one wants to coordinate with the customers, then marketing teams default to other types of content they can make without dependency on other people.

Eventually, complaints start to grow that there aren't enough case studies.

Then, this happens:

• The CEO says, “We need more case studies.”
• The CS team reaches out to the happiest customers, often reusing the same customer for the 2nd or 3rd time.
• The CS team fills out a template with details of the work.
• The design team creates a nice PDF.
• The marketing team puts it on the website.
• No one ever looks at it.

Often, the easiest case studies to produce are the ones that are needed the least.

Here is a much better way to produce case studies that will get used:

1. Start with your prospect account segments. Case studies are sales collateral, so align them with the segments your sales team is targeting (geography, industry, size, or a combination).
2. Identify gaps. For each segment, how many case studies do you currently have? Which segments lack case studies or have ineffective ones that sales won’t use?
3. Set focused goals. Create powerful case studies specifically for those gaps.
4. Tailor the messaging. Understand the narrative sales is using for each segment. If sales emphasizes ROI, create case studies about ROI. (If you can’t produce case studies aligned with your main selling proposition, you may have deeper issues.)
5. Publish quickly. Get a simple version out fast, and refine with more detail later if needed. Don't delay everything because you want to make a fancy video
6. Ensure great enablement training for sales teams. Don't just distribute the case study. Ensure they know which products, use-cases, or customer segments that it can be matched with.
7. Track usage. Monitor how often the sales team uses the case study and adjust if necessary.

If you keep following this cycle, two things happen. Firstly, you end up with more case studies for the priority sales segments. Secondly, the CS teams will know in advance which clients they need to get case studies from and can approach their account planning accordingly.

Let me know if you want to discuss this process in more detail.

Other things to read.

Creating a document management style guide

The document management of most marketing teams is a joke. Each team member names files and folders differently, Shared cloud folders become a mess, There are files called finalfinalfinal. It is hard to find the latest update of anything.

Take some inspiration from this style guide for programmers and engineering teams. It specifies folder structures and naming conventions, file naming and prefix conventions. Think about how parts of this might apply to marketing? Imagine being able to find any planning document and be confident that it is the latest version? Or know exactly where a specific vendor invoice is stored?

https://github.com/Allar/ue5-style-guide

How to think about professional relationships

This article puts forward a model for measuring professional relationship and tracking where you stand with each person. There are seven 'relationship states' and suggestions for how to move between them

https://tej.as/blog/how-to-grow-professional-relationships-tjs-model

That's it for now. Have a great week.

Chris