Case studies are a crucial component of your marketing toolbox.. They add credibility to your claims and demonstrate the concrete benefits and advantages of your product or service. Perhaps most importantly, they help prospects understand how they might apply those benefits within their own organization.

Case studies are also helpful to communicate your key points of difference - what sets your company apart from all the others. (You do know your Essential Message, right?)

Powerful case studies and scenarios, however, don’t happen by chance. They must be short enough to be easily read and understood, while long enough to include both the key rational and emotional points that support your positioning.

Sound daunting? Well never fear - we've created a template that will help you write a case study (or better yet, several) quickly and easily. It will help you organize your thoughts, information and customer comments in a way that can be easily transformed into a powerful, interesting and valuable case study or scenario. You can jot down bullet points for each section in any order that is easiest for you.

1. BASIC FACTS:

• Company name:
• Customer contact information:
• Industry sector:
• Date of project:
• Names of key contacts:
• Your team members and their titles/contact information:

2. BACKGROUND OF THE COMPANY OR ORGANIZATION.

Use this section to give the reader context for the story. It is essential that you use this section to set up the key elements that relate to the benefits which will be described later in the story. So, if your product is especially helpful to companies with a large workforce, make sure you include references to size of workforce; if your service is especially helpful for companies with multiple locations, make sure you include references to number of locations, and so on.

3. KEY STRENGTHS OF THE COMPANY OR ORGANIZATION.

What were the key strengths of the company before you started work with them? As in the background above, relate the strengths of the company to the solution that you eventually created for them. In other words, rather than focus (in this section) about what they were doing wrong, ask yourself, 'what were they doing right?'

4. KEY CHALLENGES AND PROBLEMS.

What were the key challenges and problems of the company before you started working with them? Was something undesirable happening that they wanted to stop? Or, was there something they wanted to accomplish but couldn't using their old systems and processes?

5. COSTS.

What were the challenges mentioned above costing the company? If they could identify a financial cost to the challenge, what was it? Perhaps they were able to identify a lost opportunity cost – eg: because they were not able to enter a certain market, they were missing out on $20mm of potential sales volume.

The costs of the challenges are helpful to develop a business case/ROI, so it’s important to explore this section as much as possible. Two additional questions to answer related to costs:

• What non-financial costs did they experience? eg: loss of morale among employees, unhappy shareholders or board of directors, project manager can't sleep at night, etc.
• If they had done nothing to fix the challenges/problems, what bigger problems would they experience in the future? eg: lost market share, competitive pressure, business would go bankrupt, etc.

6. OPTIONS AND ALTERNATIVES.

This section demonstrates your credibility in this area. Your ability to explain the options and alternatives – and why they did not (or could not) work proves that you are an expert.

• What (if anything) did the company/organization try to solve the challenge/problem before implementing our solution?
• What other methods could they have tried?
• In each of the situations above, why were these options and alternatives inferior? The answer to this question may be partly based on your opinion – what do you think is bad or wrong about these alternatives?

7. THE SOLUTION.

This is the traditional part of the case study – what did you do for the customer? Describe the solution and highlight the key aspects related to the challenges and problems listed in part 4.

8. THE RESULTS.

What benefits did the company or organization get as a result of your solution? These should reflect back to the points listed in part 5.

• Financial results – eg: lower costs, added revenues, lower liability and risk.
• Non-financial results – eg: streamlined decision-making, greater security and confidence, higher morale of workforce. In addition, benefits may be very personal to certain people – eg: CEO has one less thing to worry about.

In both cases above, it’s very important to be specific. If the company saved money, how much? If the CEO has less to worry about, give an example where this was important.

9. BONUS POINTS.

• Was there anything you did that exceeded customer expectations? If so, explain.
• Did you encounter an unexpected problem that you solved in an especially clever way?
• Was there a side benefit to your solution that was a pleasant and unexpected surprise?
• Was there anything in your process or way of working that the customer found especially helpful?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: use this template to create a case study based on a recent situation with a client. Or, take an existing case study and assess it according to this template.