5 simple ways to fancy up your case studies

Around here, we’re big fans of the double win that is your customers singing your praises while you, in turn, sing theirs. And double-double it when you can manage to really humanize the experiences that come to life when your technology meets their ideas. I’m not saying I’ve shed tears watching some of our case study videos, but I’m not saying I haven’t.

Ok, I have. It happens a lot.

So, if you don’t believe in the magic of a good customer story, then keep on e-walking. But if you know that magic is real, read on, my friend. I have a few simple tips to take your good case study to great.

Don’t stop at good enough. The world has enough good enough.

1. Use visual hierarchy principles to tell your story at multiple levels at once

If you write two pages of well-crafted narrative to tell your story, you rely on your reader reading two pages of well-crafted narrative to get your message. It doesn’t matter how beautifully you’ve written it, very few people are going to read it top to bottom unless it is about them.

The visual layout of the story, use of headings, and organization of the information need to create multiple avenues for digesting your ideas. And each avenue should allow the reader to understand the story at some level of depth, even if it isn’t a complete one.

If the reader glances and only reads the title, ensure they get the biggest idea without going further.

If that title captivates them and they linger longer, ensure the visual elements to the right of the title contain some important insight about results.

If they look a little further, they should be able to get the flow of the story from reading only your section headers, which will summarize and tease the details.

Infographics and pull quotes throughout will add more depth and understanding, and all of this should make reading everything in between irresistible.

2. Present key concepts or data as mini-infographics

If, in your story, there is a process, a workflow, a result set, a methodology, or something else that can be composed visually, pull it out and show it within the flow of the story. You only need one of these, two at the most. They make your story more credible, more compelling, and much easier to digest.

3. Take your interview questions off-road

You’ve prepared for your interview by thinking through a strong set of questions to ask the customer and writing up a guide so you don’t forget anything. And because this isn’t your first rodeo, you know it’ll be goofy if you just go into the interview and read them. You’ll keep it conversational and go where the story takes you.

Now challenge yourself to dial up your curiosity one more level. Try to make at least half of the questions you ask follow ups to the answer to the previous question. Then follow up on that again. As they are talking, listen for open windows in the story, take a little note for yourself, and then follow back around and lead them beyond what they planned to say.

It’s in digging a few layers beyond the obvious that the most compelling parts of the story start to come out.

4. Make case study tacos, case study casserole, case study ragu…

Don’t go into this process planning to produce one single asset. You’re tapping a rich wealth of goodness by getting the story. Focus on crafting a beautiful and powerful primary story asset but spin out a bunch of little assets too. Rock out a blog post, some social nuggets, an infographic. Combine your story with a couple of other customer stories from the same industry and write a story about vertical solutions. Record or film the interview and put together animated video. Better yet, invest in some on-site filming and get a showpiece AND a bunch of B-roll you can use (Spoiler alert, we work with a partner who can make magic with as little as $15k—ping me and ask about it). Video is by far the most consumed content on the internet. Simply adding video to your plan will expand the reach of your story substantially, but every little piece you add expands the value of your work.

5. Invest in great design

Laying your story out in Word or PowerPoint is wasting high potential content. Don’t stop there. Make it beautiful. Make the experience of consuming the story an inspiring and easy one. Design is not the expensive part of the process, and the world is filled with great designers. Visuals matter.

If you love case studies as much as we do, reach out and share your tips. Or if you’d like us to help you make your customer stories get up and dance around the room, we’re here to help. ask@mixconsulting.com