Use Case Studies on Your Website This Year To Influence Purchasing Decisions
Everyone loves a good story. Watch as a great storyteller begins his tale. Everyone in the room leans forward, listening intently, hanging onto his every word.

Case studies are business stories that also engage the reader. They motivate, inspire, and support key product concepts and ideas. A good case study paints a vivid picture of how a company, brand, or product solved a pressing problem and how you, as their potential customer, can solve your problems, too.

Companies today significantly underutilize case studies in their online marketing programs. Case studies take time to write and require good relationships with your customers who are willing to share their tales with you and the world so that you can build a case study library. But the effort pays off in multiple ways and provides valuable content for your digital marketing programs.

Here’s why you should add case studies to your website this year.

#1. Provides social proof

Customers today are highly skeptical of product or brand claims. Many feel tricked or cheated by past experiences in which a product’s claims failed to live up to their hype. (Anyone who has bought products from a late night infomercial can relate. Except for Ginsu knives. Those things worked.)

Case studies provide demonstrable proof to a skeptical public that yes, this product worked, and it worked well. 92% of online consumers look at product reviews before purchasing a product. 87% of buyers conduct extensive research online before making a decision to buy a product. If they encounter a case study about the product, it adds to the body of evidence supporting their decision to buy the product. Along with product reviews, it gives people a sense that the product or service does indeed live up to its claims and is worth purchasing.

#2. Leads to new marketing ideas

New products, new marketing concepts, and new markets may come to light after you talk directly with your customers about how they’re using your products.

When writing a case study for a catalog company, a writer discovered that a mistake in the response phone number in the catalog was actually responsible for doubling the response rate! To correct the problem, the company sent a postcard out shortly after discovering the mistake. The postcard prompted their B2B customers to find the catalog, which they often held onto for many weeks before ordering products, and to call in an order immediately. This surprising result from a big mistake led to the company rethinking their direct mail program and sending a shorter catalog out with a follow-up card. Now they routinely see higher response rates. Their new marketing idea came as a direct result of exploring a case study.

#3. Positions your brand as an authority

Many companies claim to be an authority on X topic or Y problem but fail to prove it. You can’t just say you’re an expert – anyone can say anything about themselves but that doesn’t make it so.

Case studies showcase your knowledge about a topic by demonstrating how you solved a problem for a customer. Those who have the expertise in an area and can solve a problem are the authority on the topic. Make your case studies about problem solving and you’ll prove through your stories how you are the authority on the subject.

Add Case Studies Now to Your Site

The bottom line is that case studies add value to your overall product or service story. They underscore that your brand lives up to its promise and they provide social proof to a skeptical public. A good case study can be used in many ways and content can be spun from the study into social media posts, blog posts, and much more. It’s an investment that pays many marketing dividends.

If you’re interested in adding case studies to your website, now is the time to act. Dashboard Interactive can write, design, and share case studies for your company that position you as the brand authority and provide excellent shareable moments for social media. You’ll have a suite of case studies to share on your website and in person that position your company as the brand authority and the expert in your field.

Contact us at (763)242-2454 to get started with case studies this year.