Customer case studies are the cornerstone of B2B marketing and everyone has some on their website. So it's really easy and formulaic, well...not really. There is a lot of moving parts to getting it right:- the story, the format, the delivery method and the best call to action. This session will talk about potential formats, pitfalls, key learnings, best practices and some data points based on my experience of doing case studies and product marketing for 20+ years.

1. B2B Customer Case Studies
How hard can it be!
Oisín O’Connor, Senior Director Product Marketing, MATRIXX Software
Product Camp Dublin, 14 June 2018
Slides: www.slideshare.com/OisinOConnor

2. Little bit about Oisín:
1995 20052000 20152010
2 Start-ups
 product/marketing, technology/telecoms, Ireland/UK/Silicon Valley

3. Marketing, case studies, it’s all just…..
 Dilbert knows best

4. Getting Case Studies Right
Case
Studies
Why they
matter
Content
Formats
Distribution
Case Studies are
the most important
sales collateral.

5. OTHER CUSTOMERS
Why they matter

6. Why they matter
 Reference selling is everything in B2B
 Every sales deck has customers in it
 Who are your customers is the second question after what do you do
 Its probably the most visited page on your website
 How you tell your customer success stories is a big part of your sales pitch
 If you do it right you get a more educated customer into your sales funnel

7. Content

8. Content
 Prospective customers (prospects) want some meat, not your product
collateral regurgitated
 Don’t give me this unnamed customer BS, get the name, take chances, its
easy to pull it down, named references are everything
 Keep it short, and conversational,
 tell me everything I need to know in no more than 30 seconds, seriously
 most people want to get this info fast and be able to re tell it if they like
 If you don’t simplify and keep the copy tight they wont bother to keep reading
 The goal is to get a sales meeting not to document all the details…next step after a
good sales call and demo might be a customer reference call

9. Content
“Marketing is no longer about
the stuff that you make,
but about the stories you
tell.”
– Seth Godin, author & entrepreneur

10. Content
 Tell them a story….
 Why us, challenges / context / what they were looking for
 What did they do, very high level
 What was the business impact
 A sound bite quote
 Project timelines
 Some visuals, show me what you did for them
 What this could look like if you buy our solution

11. Formats

12. Formats
It’s just a PDF for the
website, isn’t it?

13. Formats: The ‘master sauce’ for content
Website Landing Pages
eBooks PPT Decks

14. Formats - Website
Logo soup

15. Formats - Website
Logo soup – taster tile

16. Formats - Website
Snapshot

17. Formats – Landing Page

18. Formats – Landing Page Cont

19. Formats – PPT Decks
Pitch decks PPT Snap shots
Timelines

20. Formats - Video
Video testimonials Video product showcases

21. Distribution

22. Distribution
 Everywhere, don’t rely on sales…
 External
 Website
 Email marketing
 Social
 Nurture Campaigns
 Paid campaigns
 Workshops
 PPTs decks
 Internal
 Slack, Dropbox etc
Email Marketing
Social / Paid

23. Challenges & war stories
 But that customer, is not that friendly…
 They wont let us use their name
 We have a quote but its not great
 We don’t have a quote

24. Many thanks
Oisin O’Connor
http://ie.linkedin.com/in/oisinoconnor

25. Useful Links & Tools
Further reading
http://www.matrixx.com/customers/
https://seths.blog/2018/06/on-paying-for-software/