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Why do case studies have to be so boring? Here is a back issue of Marketing Booster, the email newsletter that Richard Groom writes and sends free every fortnight to subscribers. You can subscribe here or read over 60 back issues using the back issues index page. In a recent edition of Marketing Booster I suggested that having a template format to follow makes writing new marketing materials a lot easier. As an example, I suggested that a good format for a case study might be: * The situation. * Finding a solution. * The chosen product. * The results. That's fine, but of course there is a potential problem with this approach if you write and publish lots of case studies: pretty soon they might start to get a bit, well, boring. If someone is reading several of them one after another, they might lose interest. So what can you do to make case studies a bit more interesting? How can you increase the chance that your readers (ie your potential customers) will spend some time reading them rather than quickly moving on to the next thing they have to do today? Here are a few ideas to get you started, but no doubt you will come up with others: 1. Mix it up a bit. OK, so you are writing a case study. But that doesn't mean that you can't add in extra information too. So if the case study is about how you helped a big company save money on its lighting bills, then why not include some interesting statistics about power consumption? 2. Profile more than one project. The classic approach to case studies is to only ever feature one customer per case study. But why not choose a subject area and describe what your achieved for a few customers? In fact, this might be a good way to more comprehensively explain your products and what they achieve for customers. 3. Add a bit of value. I know, I'm back to my favourite subject about including 'value-adding' advice and useful information in your marketing materials, but why not? Don't you think someone whose job depends on saving 10 per cent on their company's lighting bill would want to see 'ten ways to slash your power bills' as an extra element to a case study? 4. Make it human. Case studies often talk just about the benefits that the particular service brought to the client company. But what about the people who work in these companies? Sure, I am interested in products and services that save me money, but I am also interested in things that make my job a bit easier too. Can you cover the business AND personal benefits? 5. Fix the design. Too many case studies (in my opinion) fail to make proper use of graphic design skills. They appear as columns of text with nothing to help scan-readers find the relevant information. So why not design them as you would a magazine story, with snappy headlines, subheadings, text broken up into small chunks, great photographs etc.? They don't all have to look like technical reports from a government department. I think it's worth trying some of these techniques the next time you produce a case study. I doubt if they will make the process longer or more expensive, and they might just improve the chance that someone, somewhere will like what they see. Copyright 2005 Richard Groom |