Why Case Studies Create New Customers

Did you know that there is a simple marketing tool that can:

• Get buyers to pay attention no matter how many other marketing messages are competing for their notice?
• Breaks down and often eliminates buyers' doubts, objections and resistance?
• Raises your credibility to new heights every time you use it?
• Beats simple third party endorsements every time?
• And allows you to present your product or service's benefits in a form that is cannot be doubted and avoids any hint of self-serving hype?

What is this incredible marketing tool?

It is a case study that depicts one of your best customers' struggle to overcome a serious problem with help from your product or service. Case studies - also known as "customer success stories" - enable buyers to experience the benefits of your product or service through the story of your customer.

Stories are incredibly powerful ways to communicate.

Unlike other forms of advertising and marketing, a story cannot be ignored. When other marketing messages fail to even get noticed, a story grabs someone's attention. Stories (well-written stories at least) use something called a "Narrative Question" to create suspense and pull readers into the story.

A narrative question is a question the reader mentally asks as a result of what you have written. They can be "how did he get out of this problem?" or "what will happen next?" or "what does this mean?" or "who is the murderer?"

A stories introduction creates a narrative question and then answers it, but as soon as one narrative question is answered, a new narrative question arises.

The key to using storytelling techniques as a marketing strategy is to look for the story in every customer transaction. If you get a compliment from a customer, there may be a story behind it. If your sales team works hard to solve a customer problem, there will definitely be a story behind that situation as well. Also any customer that becomes a repeat buyer is probably doing so because what your company offers solves an important problem.

Generally, anytime a problem is solved for a customer and your product or service played a key role in arriving at that solution, a story exists.

You can even fill the pipeline for case studies by asking for feedback. Create surveys or just pick up the telephone to call customers. When you get a positive response, there will probably be a story that you can turn into a case study.

Once you have collected this information, you may wish to consider giving it to an experienced case study writer to interview the customer and write your case study.

A well-written case study can be used as a press release, posted to your web site, given to potential new customers as part of your marketing materials and even formatted as print advertising.