Design the Perfect Case Study for Your 3CX Clients

Posted on July 14th, 2020 by Ellen Wilkinson, Partner Communications Manager

Case studies are brilliant tools for building trust and guiding your prospects through the consideration stage of your marketing funnel. They help you establish how your brand solves problems for your customers and gives prospects real-world examples that they can connect to their own experiences. Here at 3CX, we’re always bestowing the virtues of case studies to our partners! We know from our own experience that having clear references drives traffic, engagement and conversion. But how exactly do you create one?

Luckily we’ve got your back. Check out our quick guide:

What are case studies?

Let’s start with the basics. Case studies are essentially mini-stories that explore a particular customer journey in detail. When you design them, keep a typical narrative structure in mind. You’ll want to open with an exploration of a particular character (your customer), then explore their key challenge (a.k.a their pain point) and then you’ll want to close by demonstrating exactly how your product helps them to overcome this.

Here’s what it looks like in action:

1. Open with the customer’s business.
2. Cite a challenge
3. Discuss the decision process.
4. Explain how a solution was implemented.
5. Explain how the solution works.
6. End with the results.

Why create a marketing case study?

There are tonnes of reasons why you should be creating case studies for your website. Here’s just a handful:

1. Case studies build trust with prospective clients, especially if they can identify similarities between themselves and the studies subject
2. They help to establish your organisation as the authority or expert in delivering the products you promote
3. Case studies create efficacy for your solution, in other words, they prove you have real, tangible results!

And for 3CX partners, there’s another major benefit: 3CX shares case studies over 64SC on our website. You’ll receive the attention befitting of your hard work and get some extra exposure at the same time!

How do I format my case studies?

Who says your case study needs to take the form of an article? If you can, consider alternative approaches when planning to make your case studies more engaging for your audience. Remember, your prospects spend 3 seconds scanning content on average before deciding whether to read on, so you need to capture their attention- immediately! Infographics, sliders & video all make for wonderfully interactive studies and they’re easy to create using applications like Canva.

Your Case Study Structure

Title

Keep it short and snappy. Think of an interesting project name that sums up the project and keeps things light-hearted.

Subtitle

Celebrate your achievements! What was the main takeaway for the customer? Perhaps they increased productivity by 45% after their install or were able to increase customer satisfaction by a specific amount. You don’t need to go into detail here- the main body will explore the steps you took to get there.

Executive Summary

Whilst we hope that your case study grips every reader to the very end, make it easy for readers to glean key information if they’re in a hurry. Have a 2-4 sentence summary that includes metrics that display your successes if more likely to evoke further action than relying on your titles alone.

Paragraph 1: About the Subject

Help your reader get to know your customers. Pick out key elements of their business or decision-making process that you think will ring true for other consumers and discuss. The more similar your case studies are to your prospects needs, the better your conversion rate.

Paragraph 2: Key Challenges

What, if anything, was making your customer’s life more challenging prior to you set them up with a 3CX solution. Talk about their pain points and how it was impacting business. This section can also include goals and ambitions, so if there was no obvious pain point talk about your client’s ambitious plans for the future and what changes needed to be made to get there.

Paragraph 3: How did you become the solution?

Describe how you used 3CX to provide a solution to the challenges or goals you outlined in the previous paragraph. The key here is to make yourself the supporting character rather than the hero. Your client needs to have solved their problem by themselves, just with a little helping hand from you. Make them the focal point!

The big finale: Your results

Round up your case study by sharing how your product or service specifically benefited the company using tangible results and testimonies from the client. Using data can help to illustrate key points in your case study and cement your readers view of you as a topical authority whilst featuring direct quotations from those that benefitted adds credibility.

Follow this guide and you’re guaranteed to become a case study pro. For inspiration, check out 3CXs case studies here. And remember; if you’re writing about a large, complex or unique project, share it with your 3CX Channel Representative and we can feature you on our site.