Write Case Studies That Get Clients Clamoring to Work with You (Episode 287)

Speaker A: Are you ready to learn the keys to copywriting success? Whether you're brand new to copywriting or you're ready to break through to new

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Speaker A: My name is Nikki Krazik, and I've been a copywriter for more than 20 years, writing for multi billion dollar companies, solopreneurs and every size business in between. And through the comprehensive copywriting academy, I've

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Speaker A: students on this podcast started with. And it's where you should start too. Find it@, ah, freecopywritingtraining.com. and now let's get to the show.

Speaker B: Hey there, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the build your copywriting business podcast. Hey there, Kate.

Speaker C: Hello. Hello.

Speaker B: Hello, Kate. Want to talk case studies?

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker B: I thought you might. And I thought so, because then I would say we would probably stop the recording because just three minutes ago we decided that was the topic that we talked about today. I mean, that's a real pretty big.

Speaker C: Really throw a curveball and say, I don't talk about dinosaurs. Go, Nikki, what's your favorite?

Speaker B: Make me think of my toes, which I trace.

Speaker C: Triceratops.

Speaker B: Yeah, Triceratops. Yes. And perhaps we can talk about dinosaurs after case studies. But one of the reasons we think it was so important to talk about case studies is this case studies can be so important for a business, right? A case study is in effect a business. Your client saying, hey, other potential clients that work for them. Like say, for example, your client is a, uh, meta ads agency or maybe even make it broader. Let's say your client is a branding company and they want to attract clients for their business, right? So they want a way to demonstrate effectively, like our portfolios, right? They want a way to demonstrate the kinds of work that they do with other kinds of clients. And because something that is as, as big as branding or I think about clients. I've done case studies for PR agencies or technology companies. Not something that you can usually reduce to a single image on a website. The way that we can with our, uh, portfolios. We can sometimes with our portfolios when they have, uh, a longer, a larger client Engagement, it requires more detail, it requires a more fleshed out story. And that's what a case study does.

Speaker C: Yeah, especially if they're working on thinking of things that just have multiple components to it. Maybe they were hired to, not only did they work with the client to produce just like an email campaign, but it could have been email with out of home with, you name the medium. And how did this all come together? How did the relationship come together? How did the client work with the end client? What did that look like? And what were frankly the results?

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. It's the potential client looking at your client's website and going, I'm interested in working with these guys, but first of all, what is it going to work for us? What kind of results can we get and what's it like to work with them? So really a case study, you are, you're telling the story of a client engagement from the beginning through to the end, and actually even really kind of beyond the end because you do want to talk about results. So as you are approaching writing a case study for a client, really think in storytelling terms. What story am I trying to tell? What message am I trying to get across? And as you are planning out, often you'll be hired to do multiple case studies. What is the key message that I want to get across here? What is the key message about working with my client that my client wants to get across in this one? Does my client want to get across how easy it is to work with the team? And of course the results as well. But do we want to focus on how easy it is to work with the team? Do we want to focus on how flexible the team is? Or in this one, do we want to just focus on how amazing the results are? Do we want to focus on what are what differentiates one client engagement from another one? And what paints your client in the best light as kind of an overarching theme that will help guide you as you plan out writing the case study.

Speaker C: Mhm. And I think that theme might be something that your client comes to you with or certainly as you're listening to them give all of the kind of facts and information about this engagement that they had. You might be the one saying, okay, I see a couple of different themes here. Here's the one that feels strongest. Does that sound good to you? And I would certainly recommend in a case like in a case like a case study to outline what you're thinking first and get that approved with your client and work with them on what you think the structure is what some of the key points are, uh, before you start writing the full thing. M. Mhm.

Speaker B: Yes, exactly. And when you have, when you're approaching a case study project, the ideal scenario would be your client. Your client says, okay, I want you to do this case study project. And they either sit down with you and they go through all the information, or maybe they even have a lot of information to give you. Like, oh, hey, what? We pulled these quotes from this client because they loved, they loved working with us. So, you know, use some of these quotes. Here's how the. And um, you can talk to so and so who led up this project. So you're almost doing a little bit of like journalistic interviewing potentially. Um, or on the other side of it. I certainly have worked with clients where they go, we want to study. Can you just do that? And you say, okay, here's what I'm going to need. I'm going to need information about this project. I'm going to need quotes from the client. Do you want me to get those or do you want to get those? And I'm going to need to talk to who was on that team that was working on. I want to get it from their side as well. So probably one of the first things that you need to do as your client says, okay, I want to write a case study, is to ascertain what assets you have at your disposal. And if they're assets you don't have yet, that's going to be on you to go get them.

Speaker C: Mhm. And there might be a final tangible output product, or there might have been nothing that's necessarily tangible that they can share with you. Maybe it was, uh, something internal that they just can't share. That's not going to be facing the public. I don't, I don't know what that would be. But there just might not be the final. You might not see the final product. So that might require talking again with more people to understand what was the goal, what was the goal of the client engagement? What was the problem? Did your client's client come with a problem and what was that? What was kind of the start of the engagement like? Did the client, let's call it the agency that you're working for that's hired you. Did the agency then say, okay, here's the problem, what we think you need to do, and partnered with them to come up with an even better solution than the client thought. When they came in, they thought they needed one thing, and turns out they needed a different thing. And the client was Able to help navigate that distinction and why that would have benefited them better. How did they then go about attacking that problem and what was that process? And then results. So if you think of it in the kind of storytelling buckets, it's okay, what problem, the process, slash, how that got to the solution, and then what were the results after implementing that or kind of the big, high level buckets that you want to fill in.

Speaker B: Exactly. When you're really telling the story of a transformation. Right. You're telling the transformation of your client's client. And it's a. Before. Oh, what was life like before? Oh, we had this challenge. Things were difficult in this way and. Or, oh, we knew that our website needed to be completely redone because we had this problem or our clients couldn't.

Speaker C: Our clients, clients, clients.

Speaker B: Uh, our customers couldn't find this on our website. And that. So what is the before, what is that?

Speaker C: But we couldn't take the website down because they needed to use it the whole time. So how do we go about rebuilding a website while keeping it running and not having downtime?

Speaker B: Exactly. What is the challenge that they were dealing with that they brought to your client? And then the middle portion is, how do they solve it? How did they attack this problem? What was the strategy? Oh, we, we immediately realized XYZ or at. Oh, we had seen something like this with another client. So we knew to do XYZ or we. The way that we approached it was a very. Because we couldn't take the site down and we needed to make. We need to make very measured changes. We approached it by laying it out in this way and talk to your clients and really get a sense for how they solved that problem and why the way they solved it was different from the way other companies might solve it. And these are actual questions you can ask your client and say, okay, so they came to you with this problem. How did you approach it when you, when you first looked at the problem, what were the first things that stood out to you? Okay. And. And as you thought about how are we going to solve this problem, what were some considerations? What were some factors that you knew you had to include? Okay. And were there additional challenges that maybe even your client didn't recognize? Right. Like client's client that they didn't even realize when they came to you with the challenge, Was there something that, that they didn't even know? But as you dug into it. Whoa. We recognize that it's even more of a challenge. This is all going to be information that's going to be Useful to have in the case study because thinking of someone who is. Has not yet hired your client, they want to see how in depth your client does. They want to see how your client, um, caters to each of their clients problems individually and customizes everything. And they want to see that it's not just, well, they gave us a website, they needed a website redone. And so we redo the website and we did it prettier. Yeah, exactly. That's not useful. If you are considering hiring a company, you want to see that they really think things through and they really customize them. That again, that they identified issues or challenges that the client didn't even identify. All of these kinds of things. Really digging into it. Thinking of this in terms of helping a potential client be impressed. Right, Go. Ooh, these people are smart.

Speaker C: I want the way they think. That's what people want to see. The thought process and not just the final out. How did we get from messy chaos problem to this incredible transformation? Make that real for us, make that grounded in something that we can understand, how that transition took shape over whatever amount of time. And as you're, you know, we've alluded to kind of talking with people at the company and certainly potentially even the agency you're working with, the clients that they worked with. Factor that in to your quote and get a sense of, oh, I'm gonna have to talk with hopefully a lot of people, quite frankly, because you might not end up quoting all of those people. But the more angles, if a designer was working on it and let up a team, you know, if there was uh, a copywriter involved, if there was uh, an account person involved, if there was a project manager involved, if there was a developer, if there was on the client side, what were. Who were the stakeholders on the client side that were weighing in on this and what were all of their goals and kind of angles that they were coming at and what they were looking for in the solution that the agency was going to provide. What were some of the things that they liked about working with the agency? Was it they were always available and personable and up for taking meetings versus just emailing back and forth. And what makes them. Because the other thing you want to do is not only put your agency obviously in a good light, but what makes them different than working with another agency? What were some of the qualities of the individuals that the client got to work with at the agency that just made them feel like, wow, we would totally hire them again for another project? Mhm. Because obviously your clients, your clients Picking people that probably had a good working relationship with probably was a good project. They're not going to pick people where it was like, oh, we would never work with them again. But you want to get as many perspectives as possible because you might want to quote a lot of people in a case study. Certainly you want have options for polling quotes on both sides, on the agency side and the client side. Mhm.

Speaker B: Well, and if you're listening and thinking, whoa, how long is a case study? This sounds like a massive amount of information. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. A case study usually ends up being a webpage, right? Like a medium length webpage. And whoa, Nikki, Kate, this is way too much. Yeah, it is.

Speaker C: But you want more information, more to

Speaker B: call through so that you go, all right, oh, I liked this. But you know what? Now this is so much more impactful and this. You want to have more. You don't ever want to be in the scenario. You have to sit down and write a case study like, I had nothing to use.

Speaker C: I'm gonna make stuff up.

Speaker B: Yes. I mean, don't do that. Okay. No, no.

Speaker C: But I think sometimes clients, depending on who you're talking to, you might have to provide. Hopefully not. I would go in seeing what they give you. And you might have to ask questions multiple different ways to get them to elaborate. Because some people are like, it was good. And you're like, well, tell me what does good mean?

Speaker B: What is.

Speaker C: Yeah, you might need to give examples so that they understand what you're looking for. Some people just aren't used to speaking, I feel like, or kind of giving

Speaker B: information just thinking these terms, thinking in marketing terms.

Speaker C: They're thinking one word answers like, yeah, exactly. Um, and so you want. And certainly why you have more interviews too is because you might get some people like that aren't giving you a lot to work with. And then you might have some people that give you a wealth of information to work with. But for those people that I've worked with, clients, and sometimes it's like, hey, here's kind of what I'm thinking and what I've heard so far, react to it. And they might then come back with you and be like, yeah, it was like this, but this. And then so you give them something to react to to get them thinking in the right direction. I would save that in your back pocket for worst case scenario. You don't want to lead people down a path just because you feel like you have an angle. You want to have kind of the information that they give you. Dictate what the outcome and. Or what the ultimate story is. But just very occasionally, you might need to say, hey, kind of what I'm thinking. Yeah. Does this.

Speaker B: Yes. Would you say that that lines up with what actually happened? Okay, yes. And actually, speaking of which, that makes me think about quotes. Uh, you know, sometimes you will talk with people who are. Who are erudite and who have a lot of really fantastic things to say. And sometimes you'll talk to people who do not. And they just. They're. Yeah, that's what happened. Um, what you can do is you can say, okay, so it sounds to me. Would you say that. And then, you know, kind of give them some. So would you say that this. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. And then say, yeah, that's about right. Say, okay, can I take that, Massage that just a little bit and just send it back to you for your approval? It does not always have to. If you're working with someone, they give you a great quote to begin with. Awesome job done, easy. Sometimes that doesn't happen, but it still counts as a quote if you take it, massage it a little bit. If they approve of it and they say, yeah, absolutely, that I can. You can quote me on that. That absolutely still counts. And you will have to do that periodically. The key, though, is that they have to approve it. You can't just be like, I really wish they'd said this. So I'm just going to say that they said this. You can't do that. It has to be an actual quote from them. But that if you're thinking, oh, God, my client just doesn't. Can't string two words together. Amazing person. But just for whatever reason, can't put together a good quote. You do have some options there. But okay, so we have done that. We've done the.

Speaker A: Before.

Speaker B: You're really massaging the pain points. We're done the. During the process, how they came to the miraculous resolution that they did. And then part three is the miraculous resolution. This is where we talk about all of the great outcomes. And remember, we're trying to sell potential clients on working with your client, with the agency. So we really want to talk about the awesome Outcast. And not just, yes, if there are numbers, great use numbers. But also what is the experience for. For your client's client? Is it now easier for them? It does. Is work smoother for them. Has it saved time? Has it saved headaches? Sure, sure. Are there higher opt in rates or whatever? But look for all of the kinds of transformations, not just oh, well, now they have this number of more purchasers. Okay, great, that's certainly useful and you may want to pull that out. But what are all of the results, what are all the positive results and all the different angles you can come at it from?

Speaker C: Mhm. Especially the less. There's some things that you can't measure. You can't measure the concept of ease, you know, that it's easier for people. Now how do you put a number to that? Maybe things that are faster, things that people had to search the site for 30 seconds, they can now find in five. Okay, fine. But the concept of just a pleasant experience or it's a little less tangible but no less valid, especially if that was what your client was hoping to achieve. And frankly there might be, oh, here was this pleasant side effect of doing this project that we didn't even realize or during the process. The agency worked with us because they uncovered this and instead of sweeping it under the rug, they also fixed this for us and helped us solve two birds, one stone type of situation. So there, there's other. Just more. Think about it being a human. What's important to you as a human and you know, what's important to the end client? What did they get out of it? That certainly if it helped business, great. But I think there's so much value in just people are happier or you

Speaker B: know, that's a question too that you can, you can pose to. If you get to talk to the end client, great. Or if you have to have your client talk to the end client, that's fine. Was there any, were there any pleasant surprises? Were there, was there anything that surprised them about this project that they, that they were happy about? Because that will sometimes jog things like they might go, well, yeah, you know, we got more sales, but oh, actually we got 25 fewer customer service tickets because people could find stuff on the website. So it's saving, it's saving our team time. And now they have more time to do this. And any of those that you can pull out to just give a bigger picture of the, the end benefit of working is just going to make it that much more impactful and going to make somebody who reads this goal. Oh wow. Yeah, I want that, I want that kind of transformation.

Speaker C: Mhm. And I think with case studies too, it's a more long form, if you will piece. You're telling a big story. So there's going to be more to it. So as you're going through it, thinking of all the tools that you have to make this a Little more digestible, a little more visual. And no, we're not designers, we're not talking about designing. But are there subheads, friends? Subheads, exactly. Subheads. Are there bullets? Are there sections that, ooh, this is a list. And you know what? This might work better as a bulleted list versus just in a paragraph with lots of comments that just is a dense chunk of chunk of text. So anything where you're going through and it's just like, ooh, this feels like a whole forest of words. What are some other ways I can break this up? Is there an image I can think of that would make sense? Here is throughout this engagement between the client and agency, M. Are there any images of them working together for whatever reason? Are there any images of the results in the end product? Are there any before people? Yep. Are there any as you're doing quotes from people? Can you put a little headshot of someone with their quote, other icons that would work besides like bullets or, uh, could this. Ooh, I have three things and it would pair really nicely with icons. Or oh, here's a stat that would be great. That's this stat that helps support the problem and why this was so important for them to tackle. And maybe that's pulled out of the copy as more of like a little infographic style mockup up. Pull quotes themselves can be pulled. Pull down on the text so that they're a little more visual. Bold.

Speaker B: Yes. Pull them.

Speaker C: Pull them.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I mean, no matter how great the copy you write is, nobody wants to get to a page and see a whole bunch of copy and go, oh, great, now I have to read this. And remember too that the people don't have to read this. They read this because they're evaluating your client for potentially hiring them. So how can you make it easier for them to digest? Test the rule of a long page with CCA students. You know this. The rule of a long page of copy is at first you make it easy to skim, right? Easy to get through. So that if all they do is skim, they get a solid. They take away a solid element of what it's about. Right? And then two. And part, uh, of that, of course, CCA students, subheads, a lot of people do throw away. Subheads should give key information about what comes after it. And then also it gives key information where they go, oh, actually that I want to know about. Then they know to read more there. So at end, the, the first, the highest level, it should be easy to skim, but also that being easy to skim should lead them to places that they might be especially interested in and all of that, maybe you'll get to the point where they read the whole thing. That's great. But if not, it needs to be easy for them to digest and breaking things up and using the elements Kate was talking about, all of that just makes it so much more likely that they are going to, they're going to land on the page and go, okay, well let me dig into this a little bit. And then as they go, as they see how well you've written it and how compelling it is, they'll read more and, and then they'll want take action on it. But it's, how can you invite them in with the way that you are structuring your copy and make it seem like it is it pleasant to consume versus oh God, there's no way I'm going to read this. Which by the way is the way that most case study pages look.

Speaker C: Yeah, and one of the things you can pose to your clients at the beginning too, this is very client dependent and on their budget and what resources they have. But if you are already interviewing people both within the, with your client and with your client's client, is that something that they can turn those interviews in that zoom footage into clips, into video clips? And can you recommend, oh, this person had this really good clip and that pairs well with what our team said. Here's a compilation of the client, different people within the client's organization, what they all said and how that could tell a story. There might be something there. Again, figure it out with your client. Is that something that they're open to and have someone who can edit that together, but you could help them craft that story to say, okay, here's some really powerful quotes from these interviews that I think together would make a great 30 second highlight reel. Maybe you put that at the top or maybe within different sections it's oh, here are all these quotes of people talking about the process and how great it was to work together. And here are people talking about the results. And maybe each section has enough content, but that'll obviously be dependent on what content you get. And again, whether your client's open to having a resource to edit that because of we are not video editors.

Speaker B: I don't, no, we don't have to

Speaker C: any of us do that. But what you can do, you are if you can tell a story, you can kind of suss that together. So someone with the technical capabilities to edit that video can take your framework for that.

Speaker B: Well, and say students you can write a script. You have the video script. Yeah. So take that course. Go through that course. You have that, you have access to that right now. But I love that multimedia. How can you make it, how can you make it just fun to consume it if there's. And nobody wants to watch a 10 minute video. Not nobody, but if it's a. Oh, 30 second, 45 second.

Speaker C: Oh.

Speaker B: And actually that makes, that was interesting. What they send that video. Maybe I am going to read this section a little bit more. We're all just, we're inviting them in and helping to show the very best of what your client has to offer and how your client's client can have that same kind of transformation.

Speaker C: Mhm. And certainly they're going to want to. Your client's going to want to promote this case study. Presumably you can offer, look, here's ways to turn this content into five LinkedIn posts. Pitch them on additional work friends. Pitch them on additional work.

Speaker B: An email that goes out to their current list and yes, exactly. All kinds of stuff. Repurpose. Because I think sometimes people and clients especially make the have m the mistaken assumption that they put something out once everybody knows it. And that's not the case. Nobody says everything and nobody reads everything and nobody is certainly not on social media. So it put things, put repackage it in multiple ways and multiple times. You could even put together, uh, you know, okay, we're going to repackage it in this way and you're going to put that out this month and then in three weeks we're going to repackage it in this way and you're going to put it out in this way. It's all kinds of opportunities and all of these, number one, yes. Are they opportunities for you to earn more money? Yes, we love that. Number two though, it's all opportunities for you to be more valuable to your client. And that is what they're looking for. They're looking for a partner, someone who will help them. They don't have to think about this stuff themselves. That is where you come in and demonstrate exactly why you are so good at what you do. And then of course too next time they have to write a case study, who are they gonna come back to? They're gonna come back to you who made it all so easy for them. Yes, yes.

Speaker C: In the case study is such a big again we're saying big piece but then great. It makes your job so much easier to break that up and think, okay, what components of all of this can I turn into other things? You have the full thing, and now we can use the pieces in different ways, which is much easier, I feel like, than crafting something small and trying to then make it into something.

Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. So those of you who especially like storytelling or have a storytelling background or similarly like journalism or have a journalism background, case studies can be really fun. Especially fun projects for you can be fun for everybody, but can be especially fun projects for you. So dig into them. And also look around. If you see a company, if you're on their website, you think, oh, gosh, I know they've worked with clients. I really think they would benefit from case studies here. Pitch them, um, on putting up some case studies on their websites.

Speaker C: Everybody see them. Look at the different components that people and the way different companies present their case studies. You might see just some. Ooh, yeah, that's something I want to keep in my back pocket to know that they presented this data point this way. And that's an idea that I can apply to this client or whatever. You might just get some ideas for formatting and sections that you want to include or. Or could include again, depending the information that you have to work with.

Speaker B: Absolutely. So that, my friends, is case studies. Go forth and case study. Case write some case studies. They can be really fun projects. So we hope you will enjoy them. And so with that, we will catch you all in the next episode. Bye, everybody. Like what you heard?

Speaker A: Subscribe to the Build your copywriting business podcast so you never miss any copywriting tips, tools or tactics. And if you think copywriting might be right for you, check out our free on demand video training@freecopywritingtraining.com we'll catch you in the next episode.