If your case study is anonymous, how can you be sure it gets read?

Every case study should be aimed at a defined target reader.

It might be CFOs of SaaS companies, or IT managers of financial institutions, or marketing directors of digital advertising agencies or something even more specific.

Usually, you can use your customer’s brand name and logo as a signal to that target reader.

Those brands and logos wave a flag, saying, “Hey CFO/CEO/director/etc., here’s a company you probably already know that shares your challenges—challenges that we solved for them.

But what about anonymous case studies where you can’t share the company name, brand name, or logo for reasons of confidentiality?

How can you signal to your target reader that this case study is for them when you can’t attach any names to it?

Here are three clever techniques you can use to capture the attention of your target reader without revealing any sensitive information:

1. Specify the employee count

One technique is to specify the employee count.

When you specify that the unnamed company has ten, 100 or 1,000-plus employees, you convey important information about the scale of the project and the customer.

When you specify the number of employees, you convey important information about the scale of the project and the customer.

For example, if you’re targeting enterprise companies—and you don’t want to attract smaller businesses—you can specify how many employees your customer has, as we did in this clip from the front page of a recent case study (circled in blue):

As you can see, our client’s customer has over 1,000 employees, which gets the attention of government agencies or enterprise companies with similar employee counts.

In short, the employee count serves as shorthand to demonstrate that our client has the capacity and capability to provide its services to large scale enterprises.

2. Name the industry or niche

Another great signaling technique is to mention the industry or niche.

In the above example, we kept this description more general, specifying only “a U.S. city.” It’s a little vague, but it’s what the customer was comfortable with so we honored their choice, of course.

In this example, we were able to get a bit more specific:

As you can see, we were able to describe the customer as a “U.S. Department of Defense contractor.”

This is perfect, because the case study is meant to appeal to that exact target market: DOD or other government contractors that require the highest levels of data security.

So while we can’t say which DOD contractor it was, we don’t have to. The description is enough to attract the right eyeballs.

3. Harp on a common pain point

Yet another technique you can use is to harp on a pain point that your anonymous customer and target reader both share.

Maybe it’s removing friction between legal and sales departments in the contracting process.

Or shutting down ransomware attacks before they occur.

Or simplifying complex and inefficient tech stacks.

Whatever the pain point, choose something that’s common across your entire target market.

Give your anonymous case studies teeth

Just because you need to anonymize your case study to protect the confidentiality of your customer, that doesn’t mean you can’t give it teeth to reach your target audience.

By specifying the employee counts, industry/niche, and common pain points, you can still make sure that your target market will see itself in your customer stories.

Use these techniques to help your target market see itself in your customer stories.

Want your anonymous case study to resonate with your target audience?

Contact us to start the conversation.