by Brandon Glenn | Feb 5, 2025 | Blog
Case studies represent an opportunity for companies to present potential customers with a real-world story of how their products and services helped an actual customer solve a common industry-wide problem.
Whether the customer’s positive outcome involved greater revenue, lower costs, or happier clinicians and patients, a case study enables companies to move beyond talk with prospects to action – as in, “If you take the same action as our customer did, you, too, can overcome the barriers that have been holding you back from accomplishing your objectives.”
Potential customers want to be reassured that they are hiring a vendor that has experience helping companies like them surmount obstacles like those that they currently face. A well-written case study will accomplish just that.
At its most basic level, a case study follows the familiar story arc of “problem – solution – results,” but there’s more to it than that. Here are three must-haves to build better case studies:
Quantified results: The surest way to kill the potential of a strong case study is to include unimpressive or vaguely worded results that fail to clearly illustrate the value of adopting a new solution. Solid case studies require data to demonstrate the improvement of key metrics. While some customers may be understandably reluctant to publicly share hard dollar amounts, many will be more comfortable stating percentage increases or decreases, such as, “reduced costs 10% in the first year of implementation.”
What’s next: It’s easy to remember that a case study highlights what a customer accomplished after adopting new technology, but one less obvious element to include involves next steps. Now that the customer has taken care of its most pressing issues, what are their plans for the future? While it may seem like a small point, including next steps can help potential customers envision a long-term strategy around your product.
The customer’s own words: A customer’s own description of a solution’s impact will always carry more weight than what a vendor says about its own products. Interview some end-users to obtain quotes and insights that detail the difference your product made for them – once again with an eye toward obtaining quantifiable measures.
Case studies can be effective tools for nudging prospects and customers along the next steps of the buyer journey. To maximize their value, be sure to include quantified results, what’s next, and the customer’s own words.
by Brandon Glenn | Apr 24, 2019 | Blog
Closing a venture capital (VC) investment is a big deal for any young company.
After all, less than 1 percent of all U.S. companies receive VC money. A VC investment represents market validation. An experienced group of industry veterans has decided that your company holds the promise and potential to make them (and maybe even yourself and a few of your employees) rich. They think you have an innovative idea, and their cash will serve as the catalyst sparking that growth.
Sounds great and it is. Landing VC money is a huge accomplishment for any company that is able to make it through what is generally an ultra-competitive process.
It’s also a great opportunity to generate some media coverage, which for many young companies, will represent their first introduction to the market and first occasion to share their stories with potential customers, partners, acquirers and other investors.
The only problem? Announcements of VC investments happen all the time, so the media is not lacking in coverage options. To make sure your announcement about obtaining a venture capital investment gets noticed, keep these four integral principles in mind.
Do not withhold the dollar amount: If you’re looking to create media interest at all, I cannot stress enough the importance of including the dollar amount of the investment. This is a very important point for reporters who need some way of assessing the gravity of all the funding announcements they see. Obviously, $50 million will look better in headlines than $5 million, but $1 million looks a lot better than nothing. In my reporter days, when I saw a funding announcement without a dollar amount, it immediately went to the bottom of my queue of potential upcoming stories. Don’t fumble away this valuable opportunity by failing to get approval from your investors to include the dollar amount.
Describe how you’ll use the investment: All reporters expect that you’ll use your recent cash infusion to drive “growth,” but they’ll want more specifics than that. What are your key measures of growth? If it’s customer acquisition, what type of customers are you looking to acquire? If it’s employee headcount, how many are you looking to hire? (BONUS: Including potential jobs numbers in an area can help you get into local media AND aid in your recruiting efforts.) If it’s revenue, by what percentage are you hoping to grow revenue in the next year? Obviously, you don’t want to reveal any secret strategies to competitors, but your investment announcement provides an opening to begin shaping your company’s story and the way it’s publicly perceived. Do that by articulating a clear vision for the future that describes exactly what “growth” means to you.
Make sure executives are available for interviews on the day of the announcement: For the chance to pose questions like those mentioned above plus plenty more reporters will be interested in speaking with a top company executive, preferably the CEO. After coordinating key talking points with the CEO, be sure to coordinate schedules. As important as a funding announcement is, it’s not realistic to expect an executive to block off her entire day for interviews. But one or two decent chunks of time on the day of the announcement isn’t too much to ask.
Be sure to include investor and customer quotes: A VC investment serves as an important representation of market validation, and the funding announcement is a chance to shout that validation from the rooftops. A quote from the investor is a must, explaining why the VC firm thinks this company is one to take a risk on, why the market will ultimately choose their technology as a winner and what type of growth potential exists in this particular market niche. For bonus points, include a customer quote explaining (preferably with quantifiable outcomes) exactly how your technology helped them address a significant business problem.
Yes, it can be difficult to gain media coverage for venture capital announcements due to all the stiff competition out there. But it is possible to get journalists’ attention.
Drafting an announcement that follows the key principles above will help your announcement stand out while giving journalists what they want and need – a good, complete story to tell. And the same story that helped you win the investment in the first place.
by Brandon Glenn | Dec 12, 2018 | Blog
While every tool in the PR arsenal from press releases to bylines offer value in generating attention, a strong case study has the potential to stand above the rest as a real-world example of how a vendors’ product helped a customer solve a vexing business problem.
A strong case study can help a company begin to move beyond talk to illustrate action specifically the positive outcomes, enhanced revenue or cost savings a prospect can achieve by taking the action of implementing your product. Customers want to know you have experience solving problems just like the ones their company is currently experiencing, and a case study provides the perfect opportunity to demonstrate exactly what your company and product accomplished to deliver value to a similar organization.
A well-executed case study must tell a story. In this story, the hero is the customer that boldly and courageously implemented your product to better serve her own patients or customers. The vendor plays the role of the humble servant, providing support and guidance to help the hero accomplish her goals and save the day.
In its most basic form, a case study’s story consists of “Problem -> Solution -> Results” but a strong case study requires more. Think of it as a job interview in which your primary challenge is to convince a prospect why your product is the one she should hire for the position.
When developing your next cast study, be sure to include these four essential elements:
- Customer quotes: Don’t just tell us how the customer feels about your product, show us by using the customer’s own words. A customer’s own words always carry more weight and create a greater impact than what a vendor says about its own solution. The best way to obtain valuable quotes is to interview end-users of the product.
- Quantified results: Nothing is more demoralizing for a case study consumer than to feel interest and curiosity while reading through the introduction, problem and solution sections, only to come to a disappointing results section that contains vague language of improvement and no key metrics. It’s a sure way to turn off a prospect who was beginning to consider your solution. After implementation, did your solution help the customer make money, save money, see more patients, or improve operations in some other quantifiable way? Let us know about it in as much detail as possible. While some customers are understandably reluctant to share specific dollar amounts, they’re more likely to approve of using percentages, such as “grew revenues 50 percent one year after adopting the solution.”
- What’s next: It isn’t lost on most people that a case study must include detailed information on how a customer has already used a vendor’s solution, but it’s easy to forget to include details about future plans. Does the customer plan to expand use of the solution with a new patient population, offer it at a new location or purchase a complementary product? Including this information will help prospects conceive of a long-term strategy for their adoption of your product.
- Call to action: Another easy-to-forget aspect of a case study is the call-to-action (CTA), which provides the vendor with an opportunity near the end of the piece to request a specific action from the reader. Whether you’re offering the reader more content to consume or a free giveaway, or asking them to fill out a form, be sure to make the experience as easy as possible for the user to complete.
Wherever your latest prospect is in the customer journey, a solid case study holds the possibility of providing that nudge to take the next step. When you sit down to plan out your next customer case study, don’t forget these four essential elements.
