When Johnathan Dane, CEO, and founder of KlientBoost, shared how his company is taking client acquisition to the next level with case studies, we immediately took note. In this article, we’ll share what we learned when we talked with Johnathan about how this agency of “marketing unicorns” uses video case studies on Facebook to lead potential clients through the completion of their proposal funnel.

MEET KLIENTBOOST

KlientBoost helps companies make more money through intelligent PPC marketing and creative landing page design and testing. They take care of a company’s Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, andTwitter ads, and optimize their landing pages so they can get traffic at a lower cost and convert that traffic to a higher rate for their clients.

WHY CASE STUDIES?

When we learned that KlientBoost’s initial tests with video case studies had already netted them a $60 cost per acquisition (CPA) before optimization, we were hooked. We had to learn: Why case studies? How did they use their case studies so effectively? And why video case studies, specifically?

“I’m always kind of like that skeptic kind of person myself and there’s a lot of things as a marketer where you’re like, I don’t believe that,”’ Johnathan says, making the case that there is value in a statement being backed up by an outside source.  

“The idea behind the video was that we can’t really manufacturer this. This is an actual person who, if you go to their LinkedIn profile, you can see that they work at that company and they’re giving us praise,” he adds.

To Johnathan, a video case study is second only to actually picking up the phone or meeting with a previous client and asking them about what it was like to work with KlientBoost. “There’s no way you can fake that,”  Johnathan says. And the video case studies work.

“We have about a $60 CPA that we’ve achieved for just the first initial test and that’s without actually doing any improvement optimization for ourselves for retargeting on Facebook. From two video ads, we’ve already gotten some deals out of it. Compared to a lifetime value of $40,000 or more, we just needed to close half a deal and it would have been good already. We’ve had 39 leads in the last 30 days and we’ve spent around $2,400,” he explains.

HOW TO DO WHAT KLIENTBOOST DID IN FIVE STEPS

KlientBoost’s secret to success lay in using targeted PPC advertising to get their case studies in front of clients. Here’s their roadmap to case study success that any business can emulate in five simple steps:

1) Invest in high-quality content your audience will find valuable

Valuable content has to be concise, engaging, and authentic—that’s true of static case studies and video case studies alike. But when it comes to choosing a topic, Johnathan says that the most important thing is understanding your audience and what they want in terms of content.

“When we’re talking about our video format, I almost believe that we could have talked about a certain dish or dinner that we made or something completely random because the fact that they were able to associate our brand with their brand has enough value in of itself,” he adds.

2) Understand the limitations of each platform (and where your audience lives)

Put your case studies to work by creating ad copy out of them and then deploying them as targeting assets across social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, andYouTube. But as Johnathan reminds us, it’s important to tailor your case study content to each platform.

“Different platforms have different requirements of as far as like length. So, the actual thing that we’ve finished and created for Facebook and Instagram was actually not the whole interview, because with Instagram you’re only allowed to have like 60 seconds of an ad. With LinkedIn, the file size needs to be a certain level, so it has to be reduced even further. On YouTube, the video is displayed as an organic, full-length video. So, it really depends on the audience that you’re trying to target.” he says.

3) Target audiences at later stages of the buyer’s journey

Targeting can be tricky but, at KlientBoost, Johnathan and his team keep it simple. They decide who to target based off of where they see low-hanging fruit within their marketing funnel.

“We have the prerequisite that people who see that ad have already been on our site, so they know about us. It means that they’re more open to the call of action that we have, which is getting a proposal that we can track. Now, if it was just that we were targeting an audience that had no idea about us, but they matched a certain job title, we’re not going to see the same results. So, that’s why we took that route first,”  he says.

4) Start by casting a wide net into a large group of interested users

Effectively pairing case studies with PPC requires a large audience group. Johnathan recommends starting your campaigns by targeting as many people as possible before finding ways to refine your targeting.

“When it comes to using case studies, one challenge a lot of people have is making sure they have enough of an audience size to use PPC as a catalyst to get in front of more people’s eyeballs. If you’re trying to slice it too thin, you’re not going to get enough impressions and you’re not going to really know if it works. It’s better to go broad first and then narrowed in after because it’ll be easier,” he explains.

5) Refine your process for more granular targeting and even better results

Then find ways to improve the process. Johnathan and his team know that as amazing as their current results are, they’ll be able to target even more qualified customers and continue to lower their CPA once they focus on refining their process.

“We can further our targeting in the future and say ‘people who have been on our site for x amount of time, x number of pages’ in that visit or they’ve been on some key pages. We haven’t done that yet because I think that also means that it will be a smaller audience and so it will take longer to figure out whether it works or not, versus “cannonballing” it and seeing what happens,” he says.

“I think once we have more video case studies and even the image ones too that we’re going to create for pdfs, we can further narrow our targeting down and say, ‘let’s just target all the e-commerce stores.’ Even on our email list, it could be interesting to upload to Facebook, make sure they’re e-commerce businesses, make sure they only get the e-commerce case study and make that specific,” he concludes.

CONCLUSION

Of course, a successful case study strategy like KlientBoost’s wouldn’t be possible if they didn’t start with an amazing piece of content. All the PPC dollars in the world won’t buoy an obviously self-indulgent piece of content—you need to start with quality before you can hope to achieve results.

That’s why Johnathan can’t overstate the value of a good, persuasive case study.

“If you have the ability to create case studies—it doesn’t matter whether they’re static pdfs or videos, it –it’s still going to be super valuable,” he says.

But he would be the first to tell you that creating a case study—a truly great case study—takes a lot of time and effort to create. You need to understand how to structure a case study, ask questions that get meaningful answers and create a final product that your customers actually want to read.

“Even for a written case study, we write everything up for them. We even write the testimonial and we make sure that they are okay approving that. If they want it adjusted, we will. However, if they come back with a testimony that says, ‘KlientBoost does an amazing, great job,’ and it’s one to two sentences, that’s not a very powerful testimonial. So, we want to make sure that we’re helping by guiding them and make it as painless as possible for them, so we can get this done,” he says.

The tightrope that KlientBoost walks is shouldering the heavy lifting, while simultaneously fostering an experience that prompts their clients to sit back and say, “I’m glad that was so easy.”

“The client needs to know how much of their time will it take and what’s included. We try to make it as painless as possible saying, ‘Hey, the setup and the takedown of like the video equipment might take like an hour and a half to two. You will only be talking for 10 to 15 minutes. We’re trying to make it as painless as possible for you so that you can go on about your way,” he says.

“A lot of clients will have objections, or they will continuously reschedule your recording for it because they’re like, ‘You know, here it comes again… They’re about to be here tomorrow. It’s not important for me. Let me reschedule.’ So, we have to remind them that, ‘Hey, it takes no time for you. We’re just going to fill in the blanks and make sure that you’re on your way really quickly,’” he concludes.

It’s a process we’ve had to master at Case Study Buddy too. So, if you need case studies, but you don’t have the time or resources to create them in-house, we want to put our proven process to work for you.

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