Building the Case for Customer Case Studies

Marketing, as you have heard me say many times, is getting people with a need for your product or service, to know like and trust you so that they try, buy, repeat buy and refer others to you.

So one of the key aspects of this is building trust with your prospective customers and thats where reference stories, case studies and customer videos play a crucial part in the trust building process.

So, how do you go about building effective reference stories, whether in print or on video.

The beginnings of a good case study is the interview

Well, it’s a pretty simple process and comes down to getting the answer to a couple of key questions. When writing case studies for example , I have found that you need the answers to the following questions – and these are the exact questions I ask during the information gathering process.

1/ Tell me about your company, what you do and what, if anything makes you unique in your industry?

2/ What was the main problem that you were dealing with that made you look at implementing a new business management system?

3/ Why did you choose to work with partner x and why did you choose SAP Business One?

4/ What benefits have you realised as a result of implementing the new solution (or if its only a new customer), what benefits do you expect to realise as a result of implementing the solution?

5/ What advice would you give to other companies looking to go through the same process that you have?

Just by asking these questions, you’ll get a wealth of information that will enable you to write a really great piece about your customer. And of course, to get that on video, simply ask the same questions and capture the answers on video.

Now if you aren’t an award winning writer, thats no problem, because you don’t need to be.

There are 2 things you can do – firstly, put yourself in your prospective customers view and ask yourself what would you want to read about to help you understand what you need to do to when looking at a new solution. Then write about that, using the answers to the questions.

Secondly, you can also find many journalists working freelance as well that will be more than happy to write your case studies at a very cost effective rate, there are even services out there on the internet where you can submit your content to and get the case studies written.

In my next blog post I’ll talk a little more about the process of producing a customer case study on video as well as introducing a few other services you can leverage to help you build winning customer case studies and videos.

Don’t forget, if you need specific one on one assistance building your case studies, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at richard.duffy@sap.com – in fact I am ready and willing to assist you in any aspect of your marketing strategy.