Showing:
How SaaS Companies Can Tell BIG Cross-Enterprise Success Stories
When you’re a startup SaaS company, landing your first BIG client can leapfrog you from startup to enterprise status. That first big client confers immediate credibility by demonstrating that you have what it takes to handle the demands and complex needs of a large, multifaceted business. Naturally, once you’ve added one of these clients to your roster, you want to use it as proof to persuade other enterprise companies to choose your solution. But what’s the best way to share...
Why Your Success Story Needs a Hero
Eight-year-old Leo Shidla had a 130-million-year-old fossilized bone to pick with National Public Radio (NPR)’s oldest news show, All Things Considered: “I never hear much about nature or dinosaurs or things like that. Maybe you should call your show Newsy things Considered, since I don’t get to hear about all the things,” he writes. “Newsy things Considered.” Talk about a devastating burn. So what did NPR do? They owned the oversight: Y'all remember Leo and his point about our lacking...
How Long Should A Case Study Be?
What’s the ideal case study length? If your case study is too long… your leads might not look at it, never mind read or watch it. But if a case study is too short… it may lack the details it needs to persuade leads that you’re the one and best choice for them. So how long should your case study be? Fortunately, research gives us some guidelines for case study length on the written side of things. According to a...
How to Handle a Difficult Interviewee (With Scripts!)
Without a good interview, your case study will suffer. You can probably still write it. But it won’t have the coherent story and sparkling details that make good case studies so irresistible. So how do you run a great case study interview with a difficult interviewee? “Difficult” not because they’re a bad person or purposefully uncommunicative. (Although this CAN happen. Some interviewees are combative and gruff, and you need a thick skin.) But sometimes, difficult interviewees are simply people who...
The Easiest Way to Get a Case Study Win
Updating your existing case studies isn’t an obvious thing to do. It certainly wasn’t obvious to me when I first started creating them. Instead, all of my focus was on creating NEW case studies. The idea of updating existing ones didn’t really occur to me. But when you think strategically, the benefits become obvious. Things Change—and So Should Your Case Study Business isn’t static. So your case studies shouldn’t be static either. Things change. And almost certainly, your customer has...
6 Bad Things That Can Kill a Good Case Study
A surprising number of things can kill a good case study before the finished product finally lands in the hands of your prospective customers. Case studies are harder to do than most people expect. And a whole lot of things can happen that take them off the rails. At Case Study Buddy, we’ve created hundreds (maybe thousands?) of case studies for our clients, so we know a thing or two about where things can go wrong. So how do we...
5 of the Most Common Case Study Mistakes
Creating a good case study sounds pretty simple. After all, it’s just problem-solution-result, right? How hard can it be? But when you actually put a case study together, a lot can go wrong. It takes nuance to tell your best possible story. At Case Study Buddy, case studies are all that we do. Literally. It’s our job to keep an eye on what’s working and what’s not. And we’ve looked at hundreds and hundreds of them. In the process of...
How Many Case Studies Should You Have?
“How many case studies should I publish? How many do I actually need?” For many companies, getting even one case study done can be a real victory. And when it’s your first, it IS a big deal. But case studies aren’t a “one and done” asset. You can’t just check case studies off your content marketing to-do list. And often, that first great case study opens the door to many others. Strategic companies want case studies for every sales situation...
Two Ugly Ingredients for Stronger Case Studies (and How to Use Them)
Can a case study to be *too* positive? A strange question, maybe, but one that’s kept me up at night. If there’s one thing people LOVE bashing about case studies, it’s their credibility—and in many cases (no pun intended), I don’t blame them. The average case study out in the wild tends to be light on details, heavy on hyperbole, and tough to trust. They’re criticized for being cherry-picked examples in baskets of otherwise rotten fruit; impossibly great outcomes made...