Main Takeaways
- Case studies are powerful tools for building trust and providing authentic proof of value in marketing and sales. A successful case study starts with clear goals and objectives that align with the broader business and revenue goals.
- Capturing compelling stories with intention and addressing coverage gaps are essential for effective case studies.
- Updating case studies over time can keep them relevant and provide an opportunity to showcase ongoing success.
- Building relationships with multiple individuals within a company can help mitigate the impact of personnel changes.
- The emergence of customer marketing as a dedicated role within companies shows a growing focus on customer-driven content and stories.
- The barrier to creating video content is decreasing with the improvement of phone cameras and software, making remote video more accessible. AI is also playing an increasing role in capturing, repurposing, and telling stories, enhancing content creation and optimization.
- Authentic and verifiable proof provided by case studies continues to be valuable and important in skeptical and competitive markets.
- Promoting case studies is crucial for maximizing their impact and ROI, and it’s an area that shouldn’t be neglected.
Resources
Website & Social Media Links
- https://twitter.com/JoelKlettke
- https://www.casestudybuddy.com
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelklettke/
Fun Facts
I’ve been attacked by hawks three times. I’ve eaten a burger in every province of Canada. I was briefly the ‘best-looking man in the world’ according to Google.
Video
Transcript
Alan: Hello. Hello everyone. Welcome back. We have Joel Kla today. Hi Joel. Welcome to the show.
Joel: Thanks so much for having me. I’m
excited to chat.
Alan: Awesome. So we’re gonna dive deeper into content promotion, but specifically case studies, right? You are the founder of Case Study Body, and so I’m really interested to know more about the world of case studies, which is something that is not really talked enough about, I think specifically when it comes to, like using it as a way of promoting a company, promoting a brand.
Okay. the first question that I always like to get started with is, what does, a content promotion mean to you specifically?
Joel: Yeah. Content promotion to me means taking something you’ve. Created with intention to the intended audience. It’s for, not just, to me, promotion is more than just slapping it on a channel or giving it a nudge to me, if you’re really coming at promotion, thinking of promotion in the right way, it’s about taking that intended work, that intended audience, those intended pains or solutions or ideas.
And marketing that, bringing that to the audience in a way that meets their expectations on that channel and engages them in the way they expect to be engaged on that channel. So more than just, creating one push and doing it universally across channels as well, but being considerate not only the audience, but the context in which they’ll interact with it.
So
that’s all I.
Alan: And so is the,so is the content promotion something that people should think about in the beginning, where they go about creating the content as well for you?
Joel: Yeah. For me it’s always begin with the end in mind. I think for most people, promotion is an afterthought. Even now there’s so much attention given to generating ideas and coming up with topics and the style of the creation and the media of the creation and so on and so forth. and I think the mistake a lot of people make is that, if the product, in this case the content, if the content is good, it will market itself.
And while that can be true, and while we see that sometimes to not put careful thought and attention into how you bring that to people, how you deliver that to people, how you entice them, I think is still a huge area where things are being overlooked, especially. In a world where things are evolving so rapidly and channels are changing quickly and trends come and go.
I think being cognizant of, even with case studies, we will get more into this I’m sure, but being very conscious of, not just what you’re promoting and the message you want to send, but bringing that all together on a channel level and an audience level, I think really matters and is still a huge blind spot.
Even for more seasoned marketers, it’s. It’s often not the most fun part to focus on, but it is the part that ultimately drives the results connected to the content you create. So it’s massively important.
Alan: Yeah. definitely a hundred percent. Especially nowadays, there’s so much noise around, especially now with Chad G p T, all of the artificial intelligence stuff. There’s going to be a whole sleuth of like fake artificial intelligence content out there that doesn’t look too bad in like for most people.
And so everybody’s just gonna start publishing tens and thousands of New articles on all sorts of topic under the sun. so yes, it’s definitely nice to be able to stand out and find a way to reach your target audience. wanna give us a bit of,walk through in what made you start, case study body and what makes it difference compared to similar services?
Joel: Yeah, absolutely. So case study buddy. Started as a side project. So I, my background is in copywriting. I went out on my own in 2013 originally doing content and then very quickly, pivoted to be more on the conversion side of things and websites and landing pages. And so I had just wrapped up a project, for a company called WP Engine, and it went pretty well.
and we were all pretty happy with, the process. And so someone who sat on their board said, Hey, I advised this little company called Ping Board, would you be willing to, are case study something you do? they have a need for that. And it was a moment where like my whole career, I’ve tried to learn.
By doing things that are new or maybe a little bit uncomfortable. I like to dive in and get in the weeds of and learn the process of ’em. So I thought, yeah, sure, like it’s a great opportunity to impress some that already like working with. So in doing that project, it was the first case study I’d really done, and in doing that project, a lot of things came to light for me.
I think number one, I realized. Just how many moving pieces there are in a case study. There are multiple stakeholders, the client, the customer, the customers, legal or PR teams, sometimes their marketing team. There are a lot of different stakeholders. And then I also realized, okay, because there’s so many moving pieces, these are really tricky to do.
you have to really stay on top of the administrative side and chasing up and making sure you’re following up for approvals and all of that. And then I also noticed, okay, Every B2B company needs these in some way. Every B2B company wants to have these success stories published. But in having conversations, I found that while everybody wants them, they were a priority that kept slipping down the ladder that there are other things that teams had to focus on, and so they either never got to them or they didn’t have a good processs for them.
And so the wheels started turning and I thought, maybe, Maybe I could build something here. I saw, even though there was multiple moving pieces, I saw that there was a repeatable process, steps you could go through. And that triggered in me. I wonder if I could build a process around this, a team around this.
And then the final straw for me was I thought, surely someone has done this already. Surely someone else has planted the flag and say, we’re the case study experts. And when I looked to the market, It was hardly anybody. There’s Casey Hibbard. She was the queen bee of the space. But other than that, there was the odd freelancer here or there, Wilton Blake, for example.
But no agencies, no teams, no one who had really focused on making this scalable and predictable. I thought, why not me? So we brought in,some friends, I brought in, Jen, who I’d worked with agency side as a partner and served with a very small team and quietly for the first time.
Couple years just off the side of our desks in addition to our other work. And then just before the pandemic, decided to make it our full-time focus. So what makes us different? unlike having a freelancer write a piece or a videographer, film a piece, we bring a whole team to bear to handle the process end to end.
So project management, Account management, all of the admin, all of the chasing. We take a very strategic approach to the storytelling itself. We try to keep the end in mind in terms of who we’re trying to reach and where and how we’ll try to reach them. So it’s a really hands-on end-to-end service that covers all the facets versus
just the creative piece.
Alan: Awesome, awesome. So I really love that you combined the copywriting and the storytelling with something, that is more of like commercial nature, right? yeah. On this note, how do you create a case study that is compelling enough to be able to showcase the client success, but also to be able to get the audience to engage with them?
Joel: I think at the heart of that is, The understanding that this story is not about you. It’s not really about your company. It’s not really, you have a role to play in it, but if you want this story to be compelling to your audience, if you want it to have rich detail, the kind of detail that makes people actually want to go through it and absorb it and learn from it, then you need to put your customer at the center.
And so much of the success. Of a story begins way before you ever get a customer involved. One of the things that matters a great deal is that companies take a moment and step back and ask themselves, what are our coverage gaps? what gaps do we want these stories to fill? Those can be gaps in sales.
Sales might say, we’re coming up against this competitor all the time. If only we had stories showing people that switched from them to us, or they might say, people don’t really understand our product. In this space or a service in this space, we could use stories that disambiguate how we help, or it might be, Hey, we’re really not landing with this type of role, or people aren’t aware of this great part of what we do.
So taking a moment to step back and ask what business goals, what revenue goals, what coverage gaps do we need our stories to fill, for us to align with? And just doing that gets you thinking in a different way. But for most companies, These stories are very reactive. They wait for a story to come to them, or a client to put up their hand.
Then they rush to capture it. They’re not really thinking about how it aligns with their broader strategy. So starting there is the first big step. The next thing though is, as I mentioned, keeping the customer at the center. So when you are crafting your question set, you want to go into the interview with the client, and I firmly believe there should be an interview, not just writing it in a bubble, but when you go into that interview, You wanna go in, having as much context as you can about them, about the win, about what they achieved, so that in that interview you can go deep instead of wide.
You can really explore one, one or two key things as opposed to trying to cover everything. And when you’re able to do that’s where you get this rich detail I was alluding to where you can talk about their experience, you can talk about what was made possible. You can talk about. How they made that decision and their criteria and so on.
and that kind of ties into the third piece. So I think to make it really compelling, you need to go beyond the facts. Facts are not all that interesting. Like a metric might get someone to click in, it might get the initial attention, but what keeps someone reading? And drives action is relating to the experience of those facts.
So I mentioned just now, right when we talk about the challenge in a story and when listeners write about the challenge or film about the challenge in a story, don’t stop it. This is what the challenge was, but okay, what were the stakes? What would it have meant to not act on this? What were the stakes in getting this wrong?
And then when we write about the solution, not just. we did this. Or feature. But what was it about what you did? Why did you do what you did? Why that and not something else? Why show the thinking on display or for the features? How were they leveraged to make those outcomes possible?
And then when we talk about results, not just, okay, X percent lift or the metric, but what did that make possible for them? What can they do now or do better? Why has that made a difference for them, their boss, their organization? In structuring your questions and going into this interview, thinking through the lens of how do we take this beyond the facts and into the experience, that is what really makes things compelling.
And then finally, as we started the conversation, thinking about the delivery mechanism, if you’re going out to share this story in cold outreach, a 1500 word piece probably isn’t the route to go. You, that person, you don’t have permission or buy-in from them yet to give them something like that.
But a one sheet might work well or a short video. If you’re sharing on social, whether it’s carousels or imagery or video, being conscious of, and again, beginning with the end in mind, thinking about where do we want this story to live and how can we tell it in a way it meets
expectations for that channel.
Alan: Awesome. So you mentioned a couple of them already, but I, so I would love to dive deeper into what some of the most common mistakes that people make are when they do case studies.
Joel: I think the first one is just not including the customer because it’s harder. Most people go, oh, if we have to get their approval and interview, wouldn’t it just be simpler if we just wrote it as we saw it? And I think you rob yourself of so much richness of story. Conversations with your clients where you’ll learn a lot about why they chose you in their overall experience.
I think you also potentially compromise the relationship because if they don’t like the way that story is told, you can damage that. So that’s one. I think another is really, just sticking purely to your preconceived bias about the format, problem, solution results. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but if that’s your only compass for telling a great story.
You’re missing out. There are many different ways and many different focuses you can tell a story on. And I mentioned some earlier things like switcher stories, disambiguating, a use case for a new market. focusing on implementation for software, for example, just telling the story of implementation, bringing in personal elements.
So some of my favorite stories that we’ve done or that I’ve seen lately are aspirational words. Yes, about the product a little bit, but it’s also about the kinds of people who use that service or product, and I aspire to be like them. Or one of the best examples I’ve seen of late too is Mutiny has these wonderful playbook style stories where it’s like, Hey, if you want to get this outcome, not only here’s a story of someone who did it, here’s the recipe they used.
So just sticking blindly to the format, I think is a mistake. I think another mistake is just, and this one really you see all the time. But, telling this story one way in one place one time, and then moving on, and I think this happens because there is so much effort that goes into capturing the story and then getting approval, creating and all of that, that by the time you reach the finish line and push published, oh, we made it.
And then no one thinks about promotion, right? So I, I think the lack of promotion is a big one. and I’ll tack one more on, and I think this is one of the most prevalent. It’s believing that case studies are only end of journey assets. That they’re only good for the bottom of the funnel or at the end of the buyer’s journey, I think they can be used across the full spectrum of lead generation, nurturing, upselling.
Thinking bigger about the role that these can play is really important. So confining yourself to just all the 1500 word ish pieces at the end of the virus journey, I think that’s a huge missed opportunity
as
well.
Alan: Yeah. And so you mentioned distribution. so the next thing that I’d love to know is what are, for you, the best channels that B2B companies can use to distribute these case studies?
Joel: Yeah, I think there are so many and so much will depend on what I mentioned earlier, the business or revenue goals. Of the company, but some areas that we’re seeing these be particularly effective in 2023, for example, cold outreach, if you are doing cold outreach campaigns, sending these along as a quick resource in a format that makes sense to that channel, like a one sheet, a very short video.
we have seen clients that, that do this do see upticks in response rates and they’re able to build rapport and get clients interested. So that’s one channel I think. They can be very powerful and they’re often underutilized. Another is remarketing ads. using stories to bring people who’ve already investigated you out, back to the site.
really easy thing to deploy, right? you can get granular where if they’ve checked out specific aspects of your service or pages, you tie them to a story that’s really tied to that. But, we’ve seen those be quite effective for folks and. And that’s another great channel. I think another that is emerging more, but getting some traction, is you won’t necessarily see the conversions on the back of this all the time.
but I think as an awareness play, it can make a difference. Or things like on social and places like LinkedIn, carousels, taking the story, distilling it down into something very concise and sharing repeatedly that way. And one of my favorite. Use cases here is there’re companies like Revinate where you look at their social channels and they’re, they very smartly, come up with things like a monthly customer feature.
here’s a customer campaign that we’re gonna put in the spotlight. And what that does is not only evangelizes the value of your, you know what you’re doing, but it makes it normal to talk about KPIs. It shows your clients, Hey, here’s a really non-threatening way that we could put your work in the limelight and make you look good.
So it creates this bridge to getting more stories done, which I think is tremendously valuable. So those are a few different channels that we see emerging. But all that to say, the old standbys are still very effective. Having the stories on your site, in a resources section, having videos that you can embed within them.
And one of the mediums that, that we’re really excited about because it’s low lift and anybody can do it, as long as you have releases, taking audio from the interview and using that as well embedded in written pieces. Tho those are some of the channels or mediums that we see emerging and doing
quite well,
Alan: Yeah. Something else that I’ve seen work, quite well, for a friend of mine that does, digital PR is using case studies very simple like screenshots or things that they’ve done in, newsletter sponsorships. So this way they essentially provide some kind of value because they. They explain what they did to make this specific campaign successful.
Joel: They post a couple screenshot, we got this link here. And basically that’s it. So people just read this, but it’s kinda valuable. And so they, so I guess the goal for this is to get people in the frame of mind. They think, oh, I could have this for myself as well. absolutely. I think, again, meeting the expectations of the channel, right? Sometimes you wanna show that desired outcome and that aspirational outcome and get them thinking about it. Other times, when you’re running ads, for example, not remarketing ads, but when you’re running ads, say on a particular pain point or set of keywords around that, then having a story tied to that makes clear sense.
other times it can be, again, more passive. So again, a campaign that I really like I’ve mentioned earlier, but, HubSpot for example, has these great stories surrounding startups. Ron Dawson, who’s running that program, has done a really, good job of getting some diverse founders and different people in there.
And so it really creates, again, this whole presence of I’d like to be like them. I can see the success they’re getting. I admire the whole culture of both HubSpot and this whole content initiative. So I think just again, bringing it back to what we started this conversation with, thinking very critically about the environment you want to deploy in.
and as you mentioned in your use case, like a couple screenshots are all you need in, in that instance, you don’t need a gargantuan piece. You can push to one if someone wants to read more. But taking what you’ve done and repurposing it, and rethinking it for these different channels, it gives you so much more utility, so much more opportunity.
Alan: And so I’d be curious to know, do you have any advice for companies like us, for example, where the work that we do takes so long to be able to produce some kind of effects? we do link building on the promotion for clients. Sometimes it takes six. Maybe even more, to bring some kind of results.
so do you have any advice for these types of businesses where it’s not as easy to get quick case studies in the door?
Joel: I think the same advice that we give to companies where it is quick, I think regardless of your relationship to the client. Number one, you want to have a process in a system. It should be very clear internally for who is accountable for. Checking in on roi, checking in on KPIs, documenting why they came in and what their goals were and however long their relationship is, making sure that information gets carried forward.
I think number one, you can set your business apart from the 99% of companies just by having a good system for when you onboard capturing their goals and their objections, what they’re looking for, carrying that forward. I think in addition to that, a long delivery cycle or time to roi. Gives you the opportunity throughout that relationship to basically do escalating commitment.
So even though you might not have the full blown case study, very short order and the big metric and the full thing, there’s nothing stopping you from collecting feedback along that journey about how are you finding this? What I are you seeing in these early stages? what, how are we meeting your expectations or not meeting your expectations?
I think by opening up a dialogue with the customer, whether it’s through things like surveys, whether it’s through regular check-ins and calls, your normal cadence of communications. But again, you can get a client to put up their hand along the journey so that by the time you get to. The big result, instead of having to reactively go, oh, what was their need?
And discover it all in reverse. Now you’ll have it documented so you can go, great. It’s all there. We’ve got the outcome. Now we can tell this story very quickly with a lot of context. So using that time to, to use that escalating commitment and documenting it going forward. I think those are the two big things that will make a huge difference for companies in that circumstance.
Alan: yeah. So sometimes it’s really difficult. Like we get a lot of clients that maybe every once in a while they tell us via email who are like, I really liked, what you guys did here. I love your process for this. It’s super systematized. I love. Like this spreadsheet that you sent over.
But it’s really difficult for us to know how and where and when to use these kinds of, compliments that the clients make us. So is this something that you guys come across as well, where you help, clients like collect all of these little snippets of, like good words from the clients?
Joel: Yeah, it’s not something that necessarily we handle hands-on, but there are lots of things that we can recommend around it. I think one of the things that you can do. Whether it’s an Excel spreadsheet or a full blown software like HighSpot, the solution can fit where your company’s at and your actual level of need.
But I think again, it starts with kind of strategy and understanding, okay, what are the pain points of our clients? Or what are the desired outcomes of our clients, or what are the objections? That kind of thing. And when you get. like that, have a place to put it that is categorized so you can go, okay, I can, we’ve got this great feedback on our reporting.
Great. We’ve got that set up. I can grab this quote, I can list the source. I can put it in there and building up this quote bank over time so that you make it referenceable. You have to have that centralized so everyone knows. Where to take it. You need to have some clear ownership over it.
And one of the things that I’ve found can make a big difference. It’s almost like when you’re a kid, and for me anyways, my parents like Saturdays are the days for chores. it’s coming, you’re gonna have to vacuum the house, whatever. If you put on the calendar once a month or twice a month, even like a we Wednesday, where it’s okay, we’re gonna pause, go back through our emails or our Slack message, whatever.
Collect the wins we’ve had over this period, make it a, put it on the calendar as a reminder for yourself or for the team. When something’s on the calendar, it gets remembered and it’s always easier to do this stuff progressively over time than to try to batch it and go back. So those are some simple things I think you can do is set up a bit of a quote bank or something categorized and then put it on the calendar as a reminder, Hey, what wins are regenerating?
And the byproduct of that is, If you’re not generating any, you’re not seeing any new positive commentary, that can be a bit of a check engine. Like where, how are we doing? Should we be checking in on our clients? Are we having enough conversations around roi? So some simple things. Any company, I think can put in
place that
can really help
Alan: Something we did try is to have a weekly automatic message inside Slack, where it’s like, please,mention any wins that you had this week. But the thing that I noticed is that it’s only the. The same two or three people that say something. Some of the others like never say anything.
And I guess this comes from a, maybe like limiting beliefs. Maybe they don’t think that what they’re doing is good enough to be mentioned, so how would you go about, like clarifying this for a team to let them know that like even the smallest thing help.
Joel: Yeah, I think a lot will depend on the culture of your company and what feels appropriate for that. I think we have seen companies, for example, put real. Incentives to it. we’ve seen a bounty on case studies. We’ve seen,celebrations in the form of gift cards or little events or things like that.
So you can look at it through the lens of, okay, can I incentivize this? Is there something that will land for that team? I think, there are some people who are just generally a little more awkward, in public, and so sometimes for those individuals, bringing it up, coming to them personally and just saying, Hey, I notice that you’re doing a lot of really great work.
not as like the teacher coming down on them and wrapping their knuckles with the ruler. Basically just saying you might not have to get a big win, but I just want you to know, like I see the great work that you’re doing. I really appreciate it. And if you’ve got any positive feedback, I, I would just love to hear it one-on-one rather than, some people don’t thrive in that spotlight,reframing it a little bit and giving them the opportunity to either submit it privately or one-on-one.
Sometimes again, you have to know the person, right? Because again, for some people being celebrated in that way makes them feel very uncomfortable. But sometimes you can motivate them to action by celebrating them publicly. Like again, you have to know how that’s gonna land for them. But, whether it’s incentives, whether it’s approaching them one-on-one.
Whether it’s just leading by example and sharing some very small wins,in our own Slack channel for us, for wins, I’ll share everything from a big new closed account right down to this project went off without a hitch. Or here’s just like a, this person just said they’re really happy with the result, demonstrating that it’s not just the big huge outcomes, but these little tiny things, they count, they matter.
And then when someone does share, when one of those people finally does, Put something in making a, making sure you’re celebrating that was done and just commending them for it and reinforcing that.
Alan: Yeah, Yeah, I love that. And so we mentioned a couple different things regarding formats. I’d be curious to know about video. So how do you guys use videos in case studies, and how do you distribute
Joel: Yeah, there are a lot of different ways you can use video depending on the channel and what you want to accomplish. So some of the most common you can have these. Very short teaser videos where it’s a single quote, something really, ear catching or really intriguing. So might be 10 seconds, might be 15 seconds, but it’s basically just designed to get someone interested and then push to a bigger resource or just something really snackable.
and so you see that on social
fairly often.
Alan: it’s kinda like we do with like audiograms for podcasts.
Joel: Yeah, exactly right. Just something that’s really intriguing and gets them thinking about, okay, how is that possible? Or how did that come together? Or, I’d like to learn more,the kind of two minute, two minute 30 types of cuts. Those you can leverage right on your site and your resources section.
Those can be part of campaigns. So we’ve seen those successfully deployed in things like newsletters where it’s here’s a quick overview of some stories, some work that we’ve done. one of the things that, it’s emerging, but I think people are more and more gravitating towards communities, like online communities especially.
And so a lot of communities have these open share channels or whatever, and. Sharing video in there can be particularly compelling. So here’s a, a cool one that we had recently. you can have, I have seen it’s far less common, but you can have these like documentary style, it has to be a really great story, but longer videos as well, really getting into the meat and the guts of the story and what was done.
And so I’ve seen that done, for example, with, they’re really emotionally charged and very well put together, very cinematic, but I’ve seen it done by crisp video for personal injury lawyers and things like that. So that’s an option too. But if you’re going long form video, you really need to be, bringing in people that know how to tell a compelling story in long form video.
It’s that, that is, It’s easy to make a very boring 10 minute testimonial video. It’s much harder to make that gripping and enticing, audiograms, as you mentioned, like when someone isn’t comfortable being on camera or you just simply weren’t able to capture them on camera, if you have released for the audio, that can be just a very versatile asset.
One of the things we do ourselves and some of our clients do is embed that audio right along, written pieces, especially in very skeptical industries. So that I can actually push play and hear that quote and more. and so I, there’s no doubt that’s authentic, that it’s actually, true and real.
so I think, yeah, there, there are many different ways to deploy it. I think too, the last one that comes to mind is you would have to shoot it with this intention. But having these kind of how to style playbook sort of videos where there’s this mesh of like story and also tutorial, that can be very powerful.
Alan: but again, you have to have the right kind of use case for that type of story to be told. Okay. That’s great. And so can you share maybe any examples of campaigns that have performed like really well? Maybe some numbers, and why do you think those have been su successful?
Joel: Yeah, on the video front it’s a little bit harder on, on the written front. I have more that I can point to. I
think on the video side? Yeah, on the written side, for example, one of our clients really put a focus on. basically two types of stories, switcher stories, so competitive, people who moved from a competitor to them as well as stories that kind of focused on the full spectrum of their offering.
We did over 50 stories for them, in, in that particular year, but at the time, they, we’d only deployed I think between eight and 12 of them. And the one thing this company did very well is they would look at assisted conversions. They would look at where a case study was part of a buying decision and, a tribute in that way because you’re not gonna see, for example, it’s very rare to see, okay.
I looked at a case study and I bought a product, especially in our market, which is mid-sized to enterprise. So they looked at the impact of just these eight or 12 or so out of 50 plus assets we, we did on the year and. When they forecasted, and they looked at across, multiple months, I think it was six, six months or more.
Th those pieces were forecasted to drive over, assisted in driving, I should say, over 2 million in new annual recurring revenue. another client of ours used, stories heavily in remarketing. they had the stories live on their site, but their primary use case was, When someone would come in, they’d hit them with the stories afterwards.
The metrics are escaping me. But what I do know, there’s a company in the, e-commerce space, not business to consumer, but e-com selling to like store owners, things like that. It was their top performing, their top performing kind of ad channel, ad campaign. so we’ve seen things like that.
We’ve seen in an agency environment some work that we did for a, An agency specializing, not crisp video, but an agency specializing in private, personal injury lawyers and they had no stories. When we began working with them, we put together three very well crafted stories, and within the first three months of deployment, they were able to use those stories to assist in, in closing over 200,000 in new business in one month.
so we see. Things like that. we see these different campaigns. I think one of the challenges for everyone with customer stories is attribution and knowing how do I even measure the performance of these things? And realistically, it depends on where they’re being deployed. It. It might be it, if it’s a remarketing campaign, you look at those types of metrics.
If it’s outreach, your positive response rate, if it’s. with the sales team, this was always a bugaboo, but one of the ways I know,some clients are measuring this now is they basically get sales to rate their degree of confidence in closing beforehand with different scenarios. And then after they have stories and they see is it making a difference, has it improved their confidence?
it can be tricky. it’s nice when I write a landing page, the result is very, Objective. With this, it can be a little bit harder, but we do see these stories where people see lifts, they see increases in sales. they’ll tell us anecdotally at shortening sales cycles. But I think the attribution is an area that even we are trying to get better at helping clients track and measure and
do a really great job
of.
Alan: Yeah. Yeah. And so most people see case studies as like a snapshot of something that’s happened in time, right? So how do you approach the fact that maybe the industry changes, there’s new thing that a company does, is something else that you do, maybe updating the case studies.
Joel: It’s possible. I think you want to, we encourage our clients to use these as stepping stones in a relationship. If you’ve already gone to the trouble of. Capturing the story once, then coming back to that client a year later and saying what else has happened? What else has changed is, in theory, a pretty easy win, a way to, to keep things current.
the challenge, especially in b2b, especially over the past two years, is there has been so much upheaval and so much churn in personnel that your point of contact might not be there. So I think this is more of an emerging area, but I do think there are some practical lessons. We can take away from it.
Number one, to give your assets the longest shelf life possible. Make sure they’re aligned with broader business and revenue goals. be strategic about the stories you tell and the objectives they fulfill and the coverage gaps that they close. so that’s number one. tell stories with intention.
Number two, again, be intentional about asking, can we follow up in the year? Would it be okay with you if we give this a polish? come six months or you, whatever’s appropriate for your space. And then on more of a, this is not something we get to dictate, but making sure that your reps and your team members are getting to know more than just one individual in the company.
Building up that visibility, building up that rapport so that if one person moves on, you’re now not got this void of knowledge about the relationship and what has happened. So it can be difficult for that reason to keep stories updated, but. it’s worth the effort in putting some infrastructure behind to try to make
possible.
Alan: it’s definitely challenging. We’ve had a couple clients that we’ve been working with for the last two, three years, and some of them have changed, like three, four different people. So every time we have to do,like calls with the new person to explain everything that we do, and it’s always difficult to make the relationship keep going smoothly as well, because everyone.
Different personalities as well. So yeah, definitely understand the challenge, but I love the point on being clear on what’s been done so that we have the account and we can actually show it to them. so I would say the next question is like, looking ahead, what would you say are some trends that you see, happening in the space and how they might impact, the case studies?
Joel: Yeah, I think there’s a handful. I think one of them is there’s finally some budget and attention being put in companies surrounding customer marketing. an interesting stat I heard the other day is most people in customer marketing have only been in the role for two years or less. So this is really an emerging area.
We’re starting to see more companies build out resources internally to focus on these customer driven, pieces of content and stories and, communities and that sort of thing. So I think that’s a net positive, and I think smart companies are starting to look at how can we be intentional about the roles we put to this.
The processes we put to this. That’s one trend. I think there is continually,the barrier to creation, especially for video content keeps coming down. the phone cameras we have in our pockets keeps getting better. The software to correct audio and visual keeps getting better and better. And so I think, there’s still a huge and very important market for on location video.
And I think that’s still the premium best. A way to tell a video story, but remote video for more and more companies is becoming more and more tenable. Something they can roll into their regular content. It’s not this very expensive or very unpredictable asset that it once was. I think as with all things content, the emergence of AI is set to play a big role in things.
I think for us, we’re using it in everything from how we plan to capture stories to. how we repurpose them or how we take one core story and break it up into these different pieces for promoting on different channels or how we might even, we’re exploring the idea of how could we capture a story and then tell it in different ways using AI for a CT over a CMO and so on and so forth.
So I think broadly repurposing as a whole is still something that’s growing and people are being more. Cognizant of and intelligent with, especially in an economic CL where people are trying to do more with less as the cliche goes. But I think AI is accelerating that. And then I think more than anything, these stories are not going away.
They maintain their importance, especially as markets get more and more skeptical, as markets get more and more saturated, more and more competitive. the value of having verifiable authentic proof just continues to. Increase and so this is not something that’s, it’s not like the infographic boom where it’s like everybody’s doing it and suddenly nobody’s doing it as often.
the, these are maintaining their value as a, and growing a value as a really critical part of marketing and sales
functions.
Alan: cool. So we got closer to the end. so there’s a question that I always like to end the interview with. and I hope like you prepared a little bit for this, because it’s a weird one. if you could have, any character from the eighties or the nineties movies to promote your content or even a case studies, maybe, who would they be and why?
Joel: Yeah, I think this is gonna be like a. A bit of a weird answer cuz it’s not like a normal, when I was thinking about it, I was like, I don’t know, I don’t just wanna be like, choose the cliche admin in a movie or whatever. So I think I would choose Speedy Gonzalez because I think velocity, the ability to just get things out there and move quickly and stay agile.
I like the spirit of that. So I think like probably, yeah, I put Speedy Gonzalez on
the job.
Alan: I love it. Yeah, I love it. This is the first, so cool. Awesome. yeah, is there any final thoughts that you would like to lead the audience with?
Joel: I think you know, if nothing else, the big takeaway can be, begin with the end of mind, right? We started the conversation with that, and I think if you wanna set yourself apart, if you want to set yourself up for success, if you wanna improve the effectiveness of your case studies, then promotion is. Where the rubber hits the road, it’s where the opportunity lies.
So much focus goes into getting these in the first place, and that’s not misplaced, but don’t neglect everything that comes after. There’s enormous opportunity in just telling that story in a way that fits with these different channels and audiences, and really ringing every drop of r o I from every store You can.
Alan: So where can people find you and get in touch with you, Joel?
Joel: Yeah, if you wanna learn more about what we do and we have a blog full of content that you can use yourself and use to inform a process, case study buddy.com. There’s a newsletter you can sign up for. We go twice a month and we share ideas and resources and examples. If you wanna connect with me on LinkedIn, I don’t always answer quickly, but I do always answer.
So feel free to send me a note there. And then I’m also on Twitter at
Joel Click.
Alan: Thanks a lot, Joel. It’s been great. And yeah, we’ll talk soon.