1. Copyright © 2011 by G. David Dodd. All rights reserved. 1
Seven Tips for Writing Customer Case Studies
that Sell
Customer case studies, sometimes called
customer success stories, are one of the most
popular marketing communication vehicles used
by B2B companies. Today, it’s not uncommon
to find multiple case studies on the websites of
almost all kinds of companies. When they’re
done right, customer case studies can be a
powerful tool for increasing sales and
shortening sales cycles.
According to research by Eccolo Media, case
studies are the third most widely consumed type
of marketing collateral (behind product
brochures and white papers) and the second
most influential type of marketing collateral
(trailing only white papers). (B2B Technology
Collateral Survey Report, Eccolo Media, 2010)
Why Case Studies Work
Customer case studies are potent marketing
tools because they’re good at performing
several important marketing jobs. They
establish credibility by demonstrating that you
are a real company with real customers. They
educate potential customers about the benefits
of your product or service. And, they help
prospects validate their decision to do business
with you by providing examples of real
companies that have obtained substantial
benefits by using your solution.
Credibility, education, and validation are all
important marketing benefits, but the real power
of customer case studies lies in their ability to
reduce the buyer’s perception of risk.
Marketers have traditionally viewed B2B
purchasing as a purely rational process. The
basic idea is that business buyers make
purchasing decisions by following a logical,
step-by-step process and moving through stages
that we label something like awareness,
consideration, evaluation, and purchase.
It turns out, however, that B2B buying behavior
is often far from rational, that emotions play just
as important a role in B2B buying as they do in
consumer buying. More importantly, it’s now
clear that the most powerful emotion driving
B2B buying behavior is fear.
Many business buyers believe that they receive
little credit when a purchase is successful, but a
great deal of blame if a purchase goes bad.
Therefore, many business buyers are very risk
averse. They have a strong fear of taking risks.
This means that the real unstated goal of the
B2B buying process is to reduce fear by
avoiding risks.
Customer case studies have become critical to
successful B2B marketing precisely because
they can lower the perception of risk and reduce
the level of fear that potential buyers inevitably
experience.
Good News―Bad News
The good news is that customer case studies can
significantly boost the effectiveness of your
marketing efforts. The not-so-good news is that
most everybody now recognizes the value of
case studies, and the use of case studies has
exploded.
This means that your case studies are facing
more competition than ever before. If your case
studies look and sound like all of the others that
your potential buyers see, or if they don’t tell a
compelling story, they simply won’t produce
the results you expect.
The balance of this article describes seven tips
for writing effective case studies. These tips
reflect current best practices, and they describe
the principles and techniques that we use when
we write case studies for clients.
Tip #1―Inventory the Ingredients
One of the popular programs on the Food
Network is Chopped. In each episode,
competing chefs are given baskets containing
several ingredients, and their objective is to
create a dish using only those ingredients (plus
“B2B buying decisions are usually
driven by one emotion―fear.
Specifically, B2B buying is all about
minimizing fear by eliminating risk.”
Gord Hotchkiss
The BuyerSphere Project (2009)
1135 Holiday Dr
Crossville, TN 38555
931-707-5105
www.pointbalance.com
Seven Steps to More
Compelling Case Studies
• Identify your basic
“ingredients”
• Define the target audience
• Determine what your key
takeaways will be
• Make your case study a true
“story”
• Describe results in specific,
quantitative terms
• Use customer quotations to
tell your story
• Make the case study easy to
scan

2. Copyright © 2011 by G. David Dodd. All rights reserved. 2
those found in an obviously ample pantry). The
chef who creates the best dish wins.
The first step to writing an effective case study
is to identify what “ingredients” you have to
work with. A compelling case study tells the
story of a real company facing significant
challenges that used a specific solution to
achieve positive results. You can’t change the
basic facts or “invent” new ones. So, before
you start writing, create a brief outline of the
facts that will provide the basis for your case
study. Your outline should include a
description of:
• The customer’s business
• The problem your solution addressed
• The solution you provided
• The results the customer obtained
Tip #2―Define the Target Audience
The most effective case studies are those that
are written with a specific reader in mind.
Identifying an “ideal reader” helps you
determine what aspects of the customer’s story
to emphasize, and this enables you to create a
case study that is more relevant and persuasive.
Suppose, for example, that your company sells
marketing asset management/web-to-print
solutions. Your target “buyers” include chief
marketing officers, chief sales officers, and
chief financial officers. These buyers don’t all
see the world from the same perspective. They
have different job priorities, and they aren’t
likely to value the benefits your solution would
provide in the same way. Therefore, a case
study that resonates strongly with a CMO, may
not appeal that much to a CFO. The solution?
Create one case study for the CMO and a
second case study (perhaps based on the same
customer) for the CFO.
Tip #3―Identify the Key Takeaways
Because case studies are relatively short (the
preferred length is 1-2 pages), the message
should be tightly focused. Once you identify
the ideal reader for your case study, you need to
identify the two or three “story points” that will
be most appealing to that reader. These key
takeaways will inevitably relate to the results
the customer obtained by using your solution.
The immediate objective of the case study is to
communicate the key takeaways effectively, and
everything else in the case study should be
designed to help you present those points in the
most compelling and persuasive way possible.
Tip #4―Tell a Story
Communicating with stories is a tradition as
ancient as human language itself. Throughout
history, we have used stories to pass along
knowledge from the past to new generations.
Stories enable us to put information in a
concrete, real-world context, and that makes the
information easier to grasp and retain. The best
case studies are, therefore, truly stories.
A story contains three core components―the
setup, the complication, and the resolution. The
setup is where you introduce the main character
of the story, the customer that is the subject of
the case study. Be sure to include enough
details in your description to make the customer
“real” to your readers. The setup is also where
you introduce the individual who will be the
primary spokesperson for the customer. While
your case study is primarily about the customer,
it also tells the story of how a real human being
solved a problem or fulfilled a need. Including
a “human element” in your case study will make
it much more compelling.
The complication part of the story is where you
describe the challenges that your “hero” was
facing. In addition to describing the problems
in detail, you need to capture their significance
by describing how they were adversely affecting
the customer’s business. And finally, if you
can, describe how the customer attempted to
address the challenges before finding your
solution.
“Stories help people imagine
scenarios and gain inspiration from
seeing others’ successes―and they
are moved to act as a result.”
Casey Hibbard
Stories that Sell (2009)
1135 Holiday Dr
Crossville, TN 38555
931-707-5105
www.pointbalance.com

3. Copyright © 2011 by G. David Dodd. All rights reserved. 3
In the resolution part of your story, you describe
how the customer successfully used your
solution to address its problems and challenges.
This is where you talk about how the customer
learned about your company, and what let the
customer to choose your solution. Describe the
solution you provided and focus on the aspects
of the solution that were primarily responsible
for producing the results featured in the key
takeaways. Most importantly, this is where you
describe the results your solution produced for
the customer. (More about this in Tip 5)
Tip #5―Include Specific Results
The centerpiece of an effective case study is the
results the customer obtained by using your
solution. As we said earlier, the key takeaways
in your case study will inevitably relate to the
benefits your solution produced.
We follow two basic principles for describing
results in case studies. First, specific always
trumps general. By this we mean that it’s
always better to describe results in specific
terms than in generalities. For example, “With
the ABC solution, XYZ [the customer] reduced
the time required to fulfill requests for
marketing materials from seven days to two,” is
a more powerful statement than, “With the ABC
solution, XYZ substantially reduced the time
required to fulfill requests for marketing
materials.”
The second principle is that results described in
quantitative terms are almost always stronger
than results described only qualitatively. This is
particularly true when the ideal reader for a case
study is a “financial” buyer.
Tip #6―Use Quotations. . . Liberally
Your customers can often tell your story better
than you can. Many buyers are more inclined to
believe statements made by customers than
those made by a potential vendor. So, you
should use customer quotations in your case
studies as often as possible.
Customer quotations can be used throughout a
case study to enhance readability and
persuasiveness. The customer can help you
describe the problem and previous attempts to
address it. The customer can also explain why
they chose your company and your solution.
And, of course, there’s no real substitute for a
customer quotation that praises the expertise of
your company, or the quality of your service, or
the value of your solution.
Tip #7―Make it Easy to Scan
Today’s buyers are incredibly busy. Before
most buyers will spend even 10 minutes reading
your case study, they will take a few seconds to
scan it to decide if it’s worth more of their time.
Since you can’t change this behavior, your next-
best alternative is to make it easy for your
prospective readers to quickly see what they
will learn by reading your case study. You do
this by using layout and content features that
make your case study easy to scan.
We’ve incorporated some of these features into
this article to illustrate our point. The sidebar
on the first page of this article contains a
summary of the major points discussed in the
article. We’ve also used subheadings
throughout the article to introduce the major
topics, and we’ve highlighted a couple of good
quotations about two of the article’s important
points. These features enable a prospective
reader to grasp what the article is about very
quickly, probably in less than 30 seconds.
Need Help?
We now offer custom case study development
and writing for companies in a variety of
industries, including marketing services and
graphic communications. If you’d like to learn
more about how we can help you create case
studies that sell, contact G. David Dodd at 931-
707-5105 or ddodd@pointbalance.com.
1135 Holiday Dr
Crossville, TN 38555
931-707-5105
www.pointbalance.com