Blog Studies in Library and Information Ethics Case Study 2.20
When you're thinking about investing in a product or service, what's the first thing you do? Usually, it's one or both of the following: You'll likely ask your friends whether they've tried the product or service, and if they have, whether they would recommend it. You'll also probably do some online research to see what others are saying about said product or service. Nowadays, 90% of consumers used the internet to find a local business in the last year, and 82% of consumers read online reviews. This shows that the majority of people are looking to peers to make a purchasing decision. Most customers know that a little online research could spare them from a bad experience and poor investment of your budget. A case study is the analysis of a particular instance (or "case") of something to demonstrate quantifiable results as a result of the application of something. In marketing, case studies are used as social proof — to provide buyers with the context to determine whether they're making a good choice. A marketing case study aims to persuade that a process, product, or service can solve a problem. Why? Because it has done so in the past. By including the quantitative and qualitative outcomes of the study, it appeals to logic while painting a picture of what success looks like for the buyer. Both of which can be powerful motivators and objection removers. In essence, case studies are an invaluable asset when it comes to establishing proof that what you're offering is valuable and of good quality. According to HubSpot's State of Marketing Report 2020, 13% of marketers name case studies as one of the primary forms of media used within their content strategy. This makes them the fifth most popular type of content, outshined only by visual content, blogs, and ebooks. Okay, so you know case studies work. The question is, how do they work? And how can you squeeze the most value out of them? Here are the ways you can market your case studies to get the most out of them. Do not underestimate the value of providing social proof at just the right time in order to add value and earn their business. Case studies are extremely effective in the consideration stage of the buyer's journey when they are actively comparing solutions and providers to solve a problem they're experiencing. For this reason, case studies in an independent PDF format can be helpful in both marketing and sales. Marketers can use these PDFs as downloads in web content or email campaigns. Sales reps can utilize these assets in demonstrations, in a follow-up, or to overcome objections. Image Source The easiest way to create PDF case studies is by using a case study template. Doing so can decrease the amount of time you spend creating and designing your case study without sacrificing aesthetics. In addition, you can ensure that all your case studies follow a similar branded format. We've created a great case study template (and kit!) that's already locked and loaded for you to use. All you have to do is input your own text and change the fonts and colors to fit your brand. You can download it here. You should have a webpage exclusively for housing your case studies. Whether you call this page "Case Studies, "Success Studies," or "Examples of Our Work," be sure it's easy for visitors to find. Structure on that page is key: Initial challenges are clear for each case, as well as the goals, process, and results. Get Inspired: Google's Think With Google is an example of a really well structured case study page. The copy is engaging, as are the goals, approach, and results. Give website visitors every chance you can to stumble upon evidence of happy customers. Your home page is the perfect place to do this. There are a number of ways you can include case studies on your homepage. Here are a few examples: Get Inspired: Theresumator.com incorporates testimonials onto their homepage to strengthen their value proposition. Marketing gurus across the world agree that personalised marketing is the future. You can make your case studies more powerful if you find ways to make them "match" the website visitors that are important to you. People react to familiarity -- for instance, presenting someone from London with a case study from New York may not resonate as well as if you displayed a case study from the U.K. Or you could choose to tailor case studies by industry or company size to the visitor. At HubSpot, we call this "smart content." Get Inspired: To help explain smart content, have a look at the example below. Here, we wanted to test whether including testimonials on landing pages influenced conversion rates in the U.K. The landing page on the left is the default landing page shown to visitors from non-U.K. IP addresses. For the landing page on the right, we used smart content to show testimonials to visitors coming from U.K. IP addresses. Pop-ups have a reputation for being annoying, but there are ways to implement that that won't irk your website visitors. These CTAs don't have to be huge, glaring pop-ups -- instead, relevant but discreet slide-in CTAs can work really well. For example, why not test out a slide-in CTA on one of your product pages, with a link to a case study that profiles a customer who's seen great results using that product? Get Inspired: If you need some help on creating sliders for your website, check out this tutorial on creating slide-in CTAs. Once you publish a case study, the next logical step would be to write a blog post about it to expose your audience to it. The trick is to write about the case study in a way that identifies with your audience's needs. So rather than titling your post "Company X: A Case Study," you might write about a specific hurdle, issue, or challenge the company overcame, and then use that company's case study to illustrate how the issues were addressed. It's important notto center the blog post around your company, product, or service -- instead, the customer's challenges and how they were overcome should take centre stage. For example, if we had a case study that showed how one customer generated twice as many leads as a result of our marketing automation tool, our blog post might be something along the lines of: "How to Double Lead Flow With Marketing Automation [Case Study]." The blog post would then comprise of a mix of stats, practical tips, as well as some illustrative examples from our case study. Get Inspired: Check out this great example of a blog post from Moz, titled "How to Build Links to Your Blog – A Case Study." Internet services are improving all the time, and as a result, people are consuming more and more video content. Prospects could be more likely to watch a video than they are to read a lengthy case study. If you have the budget, creating videos of your case studies is a really powerful way to communicate your value proposition. Get Inspired: Check out one of our many video testimonials for some ideas on how to approach your own videos. Once you complete a case study, you'll have a bank of quotes and results you can pull from. Including quotes on product pages is especially interesting. If website visitors are reading your product pages, they are in a "consideration" mindset, meaning they are actively researching your products, perhaps with an intent to buy. Having customer quotes placed strategically on these pages is a great way to push them over the line and further down the funnel. These quotes should be measured, results-based snippets, such as, "XX resulted in a 70% increase in blog subscribers in less an 6 months" rather than, "We are proud to be customers of XX, they really look after us." Get Inspired: I really like the way HR Software company Workday incorporates video and testimonials into its solutions pages. Case studies make for perfect social sharing material. Here are a few examples of how you can leverage them on social: Get Inspired: MaRS Discovery District posts case studies on Twitter to push people towards a desired action. Case studies are particularly suited to email marketing when you have an industry-segmentable list. For example, if you have a case study from a client in the insurance industry, emailing your case study to your base of insurance-related contacts can be a really relevant addition to a lead nurturing campaign. Case studies can also be very effective when used in product-specific lead nurture workflows in reactivating opportunities that have gone cold. They can be useful for re-engaging leads that have gone quiet and who were looking at specific areas of your product that the case study relates to. Get Inspired: It's important that your lead nurture workflow content includes the appropriate content for where prospects are in the sales cycle. If you need help on how to do this, check out our post on how to map lead nurturing content to each stage in sales cycle. This idea is as good for your client relations as it is for gaining the attention of your prospects. Customers and clients love feeling as though they're part of a community. It's human nature. Prospects warm to companies that look after their customers; companies whose customers are happy and proud to be part of something. Also, whether we are willing to admit it or not, people love to show off! Get Inspired: Newsletters become stale over time. Give your newsletters a new lease of life with our guide on how to create newsletters that don't suck. Tailored content has become increasingly important to sales reps as they look to provide value on the sales call. It's estimated that consumers go through 70-90% of the buyer's journey before contacting a vendor. This means that the consumer is more knowledgeable than ever before. Sales reps no longer need to spend an entire call talking about the features and benefits. Sales has become more complex, and reps now need to be armed with content that addresses each stage of the buyer's process. Case studies can be really useful when it comes to showing prospects how successful other people within a similar industry has benefited from your product or service. Get Inspired: Case studies are just one type of content that helps your sales team sell. They don't always work by themselves, though. Check out our list of content types that help sales close more deals. Include a link to a recent case study in your email signature. This is particularly useful for salespeople. Here's what my email signature looks like: Get Inspired: Did you know that there are lots more ways you can use your email signature to support your marketing? Here are 10 clever suggestions for how you can do this. Having customer case studies is an invaluable asset to have when onboarding new employees. It aids developing their buy-in, belief in, and understanding of your offering. Get Inspired: Have you completed our Inbound Certification course yet? During our classes, we use case studies to show how inbound marketing is applied in real life. There are a number of offers you can create based off of your case studies, in the form of ebooks, templates, and more. For example you could put together an ebook titled "A step-by-step guide to reaching 10,000 blog subscribers in 3 months…just like XX did." You could create a more in-depth version of the case study with access to detailed statistics as an offer. (And don't forget, you can also use quotes and statistics from case studies on the landing page promoting the ebook, which adds credibility and could increase your conversion rates.) Or, you could create a template based on your customer's approach to success. Get Inspired: If you think you need to be an awesome designer put together beautiful ebooks, think again. Create ebooks easily using these customisable ebook templates. You can also use case studies to frame webinars that document how to be successful with X. Using case studies in webinars is great middle-of-the-funnel content and can really help move your leads further down the funnel towards becoming sales qualified leads. Get Inspired: Webinars are really effective as part of a lead nurturing workflow. Make sure your next webinar is spot on by following these simple webinar tips. It's important to build up a bank of evergreen content that employees across your organisation can use during presentations or demos. Case studies are perfect for this. Put together a few slides on the highlights of the case study to stir people's interest, and then make them available to your sales and customer-facing teams. It's helpful if the marketer who created the presentation is the one who presents it to anyone who might use them in the future. This ensures they can explain the presentation clearly and answer any questions that might arise. Get Inspired: What to create presentations people want to use? Here's a list of tools to make your presentations great. Following on from a few short slides, you could also put together a more detailed presentation of the case study and upload it to SlideShare. After all, not only is SlideShare SEO-friendly (because Google indexes each presentation), but there is a huge pre-existing audience on SlideShare of over 60 million users you can tap into. SlideShare presentations are also easy to embed and share, and allow you to capture leads directly from the slides via a lead capture form. Get Inspired: Want to generate more leads with SlideShare, but not sure how to get started? Check out this blog post. Now that you understand the value of a marketing case study and the different ways that they can be used in your content marketing (and even sales) strategy, your next step is to think about what would convince your target audience to do business with you. Have you recently accomplished something big for a client? Do you have a process or product with demonstrable results? What do your potential clients hope that you'll do for them? The answers to those questions will help you craft compelling content for your case study. Then, all that's left is putting it into your audience's hands in formats they want to consume. Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. What Is a Marketing Case Study?
Why Use Case Studies?
When to Use a Case Study
As a Marketing or Sales Asset
1. Use a case study template to create PDFs for email or downloads.
On Your Website
2. Have a dedicated case studies page.
3. Put case studies on your home page.
Bonus Tip: Get personal.
4. Implement slide-in CTAs.
5. Write blog posts about your case studies.
6. Create videos from case studies.
7. Use case studies on relevant landing pages.
Off Your Website
8. Post about case studies on social media.
9. Use case studies in your email marketing.
10. Incorporate case studies into your newsletters.
11. Equip your sales team with case studies.
12. Sneak a case study into your email signature.
13. Use case studies in training.
In Lead-Gen Content
14. Include case studies in your lead gen efforts.
15. Create a bank of evergreen presentations.
16. Create SlideShares based on case studies.
Originally published Jul 30, 2020 2:15:00 PM, updated September 08 2020
Blog Studies in Library and Information Ethics Case Study 2.20
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/case-studies-marketing
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