A Complete Guide to Effective Case Studies (Part 1: Planning)

Case studies are the ultimate powerhouse of most B2B content marketing. But when you look around for inspiration, there are just so many insipid examples.

I get why this happens: Your sales team passes the content team a customer who eagerly volunteered to participate in a case study. Eager is always good, right? But the outcome is that you usually end up with a slew of case studies for the same customer profile (not the upmarket ICP that your organization says it wants more of).

Moreover, the execution is usually a passive and canned retelling of the story the customer wants to tell instead of an active and expressive telling of their real experience, the emotional journey, and the tangible outcomes. 

For case studies to live up to their conversion powerhouse potential, it takes a lot more work than this passive process. Let's dive in (and get comfortable, this is going to be a long read!)

The 101: What Are Case Studies?

A case study is a detailed examination of how a specific customer successfully used your product or service to solve a real business problem. Unlike testimonials or reviews, case studies tell a complete story from consideration through to implementation and beyond.

Case studies are primarily bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) content that drives conversions among prospects who are already evaluating solutions. While they may generate significantly fewer page views than top-of-funnel blog posts or guides, their impact on conversion rates is typically much higher. The audiences consuming case studies are often in active buying cycles, making them some of your most valuable content for directly influencing revenue (up there with your money pages).

The most effective case studies follow a clear narrative structure, include specific metrics, quotes from key stakeholders, and enough detail for prospects to understand both the "what" and the "how." 

• Pain: Document the customer's initial challenge
• Agitation: How that challenge was costing them (budget, time, lost business, costly mistakes, etc., quantify the agitation wherever possible)
• Solution selection: The trigger moment that made them look for a solution, and how they navigated that selection process
• Solution implementation: The solution you provided, the implementation process, and timeline
• Impact: The measurable results achieved, as well as less measurable benefits (support, decreased stress, etc.)

For SaaS companies, case studies serve as powerful proof points that demonstrate your product's value in action. They transform abstract features and benefits into concrete, relatable outcomes that prospects can envision for their own businesses. The specific impact metrics cited give prospects a more trustworthy account of your product's impact on a business like theirs.

Building a comprehensive library of case studies serves multiple strategic purposes for SaaS companies:

• Lead generation and nurturing: Case studies are particularly effective for bottom-of-funnel prospects who are evaluating solutions and need concrete proof of success. Consider building ‘journeys’ from TOFU and MOFU content that drive to Case Studies and Money Pages.
• Sales enablement: Your sales team can use case studies to address specific objections, demonstrate relevant use cases, and provide social proof during conversations with prospects. Having case studies that match different industries, company sizes, and use cases gives sales reps the right story for every situation.
• E-E-A-T collateral for other content: Case studies provide authentic content for multiple marketing channels—from website pages and email campaigns to social media posts and conference presentations. They can be repurposed into blog posts, video testimonials, infographics, and more. Having these E-E-A-T factors is important for GEO and SEO.
• Customer success and retention: Internally, case studies help your team understand what success looks like for different customer segments. They can inform product development, reveal best practices for implementation, and provide templates for helping other customers achieve similar results.
• Competitive differentiation: Well-crafted case studies showcase your unique value proposition in action, helping prospects understand why they should choose your solution over competitors. They demonstrate not just what your product does but how it delivers superior outcomes.
• LLM citation: Case studies were often neglected by SEO-first content strategists because they rarely command much search volume. But they (along with other E-E-A-T-rich content) are/will be important for LLM citations.

The key is to build a diverse library of case studies that cover your different customer segments, use cases, and success metrics. Simply put: You want your sales team to have a relatable case study for every sales scenario. This ensures you have the right story for every prospect and sales conversation.

Good Case Studies Can Be Difficult to Produce

If you’re used to desktop research of keyword/prompt-driven topics, working on case studies can be a little daunting. 

For one thing, you’re going to have to pick up the phone and talk to somebody. This sounds like the kind of thing you’d expect to be bread-and-butter for writers, but many content marketers have got so used to desktop research that the prospect of talking to customers can be incredibly daunting.

But that’s not the only thing that’s hard:

• Finding the right candidates: You’ll need to dig into customer data and work with your customer success/sales team to track down the right candidates to build a rich library
• Prep: Don’t just sail into the interviews saying “so, uhm yeah, tell me about your business”. Prep for case studies and think about the story you want to tell
• Interview skills: You shouldn’t just go in with a list of questions and bang your way through them. Stay in the conversation and be on the lookout for interesting tangents, small emotional hooks. Despite the importance of prep, the real story sometimes manifests somewhere wholly unexpected
• Getting data: Customers can be understandably squirrelly about sharing data, or attributing specific results to your product. But the whole point of a case study is to understand real impact, so you’ll need to get creative about non-weaselly impact metrics that everyone is comfortable sharing.

Some agencies and freelancers specialize in case studies, and many organizations successfully outsource the challenge of case studies. I’m sure their work is incredible, and if resources aren’t available, this is a legit choice.

However, I personally push for in-house content marketers to own case studies over other kinds of content. Outsource SEO content or fluffy TOFU eBooks… but case studies represent a deeper opportunity to really get to know your customers, and that will have so many knock-on benefits for you as an in-house content marketer. 

Doing case studies yourself will help you ideate more content, nail the voice, see new keyword/phrase documents, deeply understand the delta between marketing messages and product realities, see your product from the outside in (rather than the inside-out view we’re usually afforded when product managers retrofit user research to the product they’ve built) and hear familiar things in bright, emotional, human terms. I could go on…

Indeed, I would say you should consider case studies your favourite thing to do as a content marketer, and the very last thing you would choose to outsource. 

Practical Steps: How to Build a Library of Case Studies

Building a comprehensive case study library requires strategic thinking beyond simply collecting customer success stories as they come in. The most effective approach is to create a matrix that maps your different customer segments, use cases, and markets to identify exactly what stories you need.

The Case Study Matrix 

Think of your case study needs as a three-dimensional matrix:

• ICPs (Ideal Customer Profiles): Your different customer segments, including different scales of customer 
• Use cases/features: The primary ways customers use your product. You might want case studies focused on different needs/pains/features rather than general case studies about the product in more generic ways.
• Geographic regions: The markets where you operate.

For example, if you have 2 ICPs, 5 primary use cases/needs you serve, and operate in 3 geographic regions (LatAM, EMEA and NA), you'd ideally want case studies covering each combination—potentially 30 different stories to tell the complete picture of your product's value across all scenarios.

Depending on your category, you may also want to add ‘first-time adopter’ versus ‘switching’ scenarios to your matrix, and even go a layer deeper with switching from specific competitors.

Start With an Inventory

Before pursuing new case studies, audit what you already have. Most of my clients discover their existing case studies cluster around certain patterns, often skewing toward:

• Smaller, more accessible customers who are eager to participate
• Early adopters who were willing to take risks on your product
• Specific use cases that generate the most obvious success stories

Map your current case studies against your matrix to identify gaps. Are you missing enterprise customers? International markets? Specific use cases that are crucial to your sales process? Focus your efforts on strategically filling these holes rather than creating more of the same type of story.

Competitive Intelligence

Research your competitors' case studies to understand what claims they're making and how they're positioning their successes. This "How Have Others" (HHO) analysis helps you identify:

• What proof points do you need to match or exceed
• Gaps in competitor positioning you can exploit
• Industry-specific language and metrics that resonate with buyers
• Presentation formats that work well in your space

Remember you customer may be actively comparing their case studies with yours. So, when they’re comparison shopping, having case studies that directly counter competitor claims or demonstrate superior outcomes gives your sales team powerful ammunition.

Diversity and Representation

Be intentional about showcasing diverse voices and perspectives in your case studies. Prospects connect more strongly with stories from people whom they can relate to, who work in similar roles, or face comparable challenges. 

Consider diversity across:

• Company size and industry
• Geographic regions and cultural contexts
• Job titles and seniority levels
• Gender, ethnicity, and other demographic factors
• Company stage (startup, growth, enterprise)

Next Up in Part 2

Read on for Part 2, where we cover:

• Best practices for interviewing case study candidates
• The anatomy of an effective case study