If you are a product reseller or a channel partner, a case study is one of the better marketing tools you can use to draw attention towards your business and what you offer. While testimonials and customer ratings do the job of building trust and reliability, an evidence-based case study can further reinforce that.
Understanding customer case studies
Case studies help you isolate and probe individual customer problems to illustrate your technical capabilities that helped solve them. It helps leverage the power of a satisfied customer to demonstrate your level of expertise in Zoho products and highlight your experience solving cases similar to that of the reader.
Not to mention, a satisfied customer is possibly the best advocate you can find for your brand. For a potential customer visiting your website, having doubts about the credibility of the presented information is almost inevitable. Case studies are a tool that you can leverage to combat this skepticism.
How to go about building an effective case study
Here are a few tips before you get started:
Choose the right customer.
Keep an eye out for a good story.
Frame the right questions for the interview.
Define the problem effectively.
Highlight interesting quotes.
Provide a clear before and after comparison.
Sum up each stage of the customer's journey.
Provide background on the customer for relatability.
Provide supporting data and numbers in the case study.
Incorporate engaging visuals.
Case study template
Below is a format you can use while creating case
Note: This is not a definitive format; you can make minor alterations to customize this to fit your problem statement.
Title
The first section of the case study should include:
Name of the customer's business
Brief description of the case study
For example, "How Merchant & Co. used Zoho Social to streamline their social media strategy"
Overview
Provide a summary of the document. This section could include:
A brief description of the problem
A quick description about the product that solved the problem.
Key takeaways from the case study.
Executive summary
This section includes a summary of the featured business—what they do, who they are, and what they sell. You can include any business-related information you think might be relevant to interpret your case study.
This could include:
The location of the business.
A brief history of the organization.
The company's industry and products or services.
How many employees it has.
This would be the appropriate section to start including quotes from credible sources working at the business.
<Start with a quote describing the company and what they do. Try to gain relevant information like how much data they have on the cloud or how cloud-dependent they are.>
Problem statement and key challenges
You should be able to clearly define the problem that the customer was facing and why. You could include details about the system the customer had in place and how it was disrupting productivity at the organization.
Draw out a clear list of key challenges that you observed were adversely affecting the day-to-day operations within the organization. Isolate the different issues from one another.
To aid the content, you could add numbers and data here, like data regarding the loss of productivity or extra costs building up.
<Insert a quote from the business owner/a reliable source within the customer organization to describe the challenge and how the employees/business was affected by it.>
Evaluation of the problem
This section would cover details of how you employed your expertise to evaluate the problem that the customer was facing. It should also include details of how your experts determined the appropriate solutions to fill the process gaps within the featured business.
Proposed solution(s)
Here you can include details about the proposed solution. Include details about why this product best fits the customer's needs (you can include details about specific features) and attribute it to the problems the customer is facing and how they could be solved.
Implementation
Include how long it took you to implement the solutions. Use this to demonstrate your efficiency as a partner. If there were any unexpected deviations that happened during the implementation, mention that along with how you mitigated it. If the implementation was complex, mention that. Migration and additional services provided during the implementation process can be added here, too.
Results
Describe in detail how the business was impacted after moving to the proposed products. Add numbers to aid the content. Mention revenue changes, lead conversion rates, and how the shift helped the customer achieve their objectives and goals.
End with one more quote that clearly demonstrates the value the customer derives from implemented products.
<Company Name>
<Email ID/Contact>
<CTA>
build trust and credibility
To demonstrate skill and expertise
You can get all of the above and still underutilize the potential of a case study if you are not promoting them right.
Why and where to leverage a case study and its benefits
Why:
To build brand advocacy
As an effort to motivate your customers
Where:
On your website
As part of your email marketing
In your newsletter
As part of your training module
As part of your sales materials
How to utilize a case study as a Channel Partner
A well-developed case study is a versatile tool. Here are three ways you can utilize one case study:
Use snippets, data points, and quotes from the case study in marketing materials like brochures, presentations, or even your website to help add credibility to your brand.
Use it as a sales tool during conversations with potential customers. Case studies can provide compelling talking points to highlight your value proposition.
Use it as an advocacy tool on your website to demonstrate the effectiveness of your services and expertise, and to address and highlight common objectives.
If you are a Zoho Partner, you can watch the recording of our webinar How to create compelling Zoho product case studies here.
Visit our webinars page to learn more about our webinars.
Comments