Benefits of Case Studies for Your Small Business
No matter what industry you’re in, the main thing your potential customers want to know is whether your business can actually deliver the promises made on your website and in your marketing. Any company can claim their products or services are of a high quality, which explains why so many consumers consult online reviews before making an important purchase. But reviews aren’t something your business can totally control, and they don’t paint the whole picture of your brand. If you’re looking for a way to demonstrate your company’s value and convince customers you’re the right choice, it’s time to develop some case studies:
What are Case Studies?
Case studies are a research method used in nearly every industry, from medicine to education, to analyze a claim or case. Essentially, case studies are stories of what happened in a real-life situation. In marketing, case studies tell a story of how a real customer overcame a challenge or reached a goal using a company’s products or services.
Like any good story, a case study has a beginning (customer problem or objective), middle (how a product or service was implemented), and ending (the results or objectives the customer achieved). If you’ve written a good case study, by the end, the reader should be relating to the featured customer and visualizing themselves achieving their own goals using your product or service.
Benefits of Case Studies for Small Businesses
Case studies can be developed using a variety of media, from copy and graphics to slideshows and videos. Even with a small budget, your small business can make a big impact through case studies.
- Tell your story and invite the customer to join you. If your company is publishing blogs, social media posts, and other types of content marketing, that’s great! You are already educating potential and existing customers about your industry and brand in relevant ways. Case studies are yet another way to show off what your company does, and they can help you connect with your target audience even deeper by inviting them to imagine themselves as part of your story. This type of marketing can be highly effective for attracting new leads and increasing customer loyalty.
- Offer solutions to problems that potential clients can relate to. Like an online review, a case study is a direct endorsement from a satisfied customer whose challenge or problem was resolved by your company’s solutions – but better. It’s a more complete story with real data, and it allows a potential customer to see themselves in the featured customer’s shoes.
- Provide credible evidence backed by numbers, data, and analysis. It’s not hard to understand why online reviews greatly influence consumers’ decisions – we all want proof of value before we spend our hard-earned money on a product or service. Testimonials are great, but a customer’s experience with your company is subjective. Case studies offer the cold, hard data.
- Boost your SEO. How people do (or don’t) engage with your online content can impact your SEO. Engaging, informative case studies can draw more visitors to your site and hold their attention, sending a signal to search engines that your content is relevant and valuable.
Here’s another tip to boost the SEO value of your case studies: Develop them based on key topics for your target audience, and choose keywords that relate to those topics. This appeals to both users and search engines.
The best case studies feature a compelling story that a majority of your target audience will identify with. Do you want some help? Contact Triton Commerce today! We strive to make digital marketing easy, honest, and, most importantly, profitable for your business.