4 ways to get your customers to participate in your case study

© Maxim Popov via 123RF.com.

While case histories are a goldmine, customers can drag around in giving the case studies, it is difficult for the marketers in convincing customers to share their stories.

Customer success stories irrespective of the brand name will help you in closing the sales cycle faster. And authenticity makes the company blog run as a media platform. Above all, it becomes a mini-trend on the internet. (Details on how to make customer success stories a trend on the internet will be shared in my next article).

Case studies are a goldmine

While some customers don’t want their competitors to know what they are up to, there are other probable reasons for why they wouldn’t do that. Surprisingly, 71.4% of the marketers say that, “Most of our customers work with us but they don’t agree to a case study.”

Customer case studies are like a goldmine for companies to close the sales cycle faster. They are brownie points to the marketing efforts and helps in building the brand better. In my experience of dealing with the client-side relations mostly with Fortune 500 companies and some of the small and medium scale enterprises, there are some challenges that marketers or customer case-study consultants are facing today.

Conversely, some clients don’t see any problem getting featured in your case study. But others have different reasons why they wouldn’t want to. There are probably three customer psyche you may encounter and engage with:

(i) See if your case study is a win-win opportunity

Maybe your customers have a thing for media or getting their work to the limelight. Customers see your case studies as an opportunity that will benefit both.

For example, if the implementation of your product or service has increased the productivity by a good number for supposedly, 15% or more, then, it is a wonderful opportunity to showcase the work.

Not forgetting the fact that the POCs of your project can utilise the case study to demonstrate the value of their efforts to their corporate overlords.

(ii) Get your sales and consulting team involved

Guess who would be the right person in understanding the customer account better and speak to the right contact in getting the case study? The one who maintains a relationship with the customer and it is undoubtedly your sales representative or the consulting person. And every marketer should use this relationship well, in getting the case study approved.

To take your customer success stories to the next level, introduce a short-term plan that might be effective if you’re struggling to get case histories due to lack of suggestions or cooperation from your team members.

(iii) Be sure of the timing

Any given day, customer experience and customer satisfaction are your strengths in working out things your way. If you want to ensure that you reach your happy customers around the time they commended your offerings – when they are excited about your product as well as the impact created. And, your happy customers would be the best bets for getting a quick customer case-study.

While the brand name can be your target any day, the customer might not reciprocate on the same. Getting case-histories from a happy customer would be better and be on the lookout for customers who will voluntarily recommend your business and ask if they would be interested in featuring in your case study.

(iv) Make sure of your customer policies…

…Some of them may be ‘restricted’ in giving client case studies.

You might have a crisp questionnaire in place, your sales representative might have a cordial relationship with the customer, you might have a happy customer who is extremely satisfied with your product or service but still, if you are facing any difficulty in getting the case study, your customer might have a restricted policy.

Sometimes you can get customers who have restrictive policies to agree to a case study that doesn’t identify the company name. While in such the impact might not be as big as the brand name, they do identify the company by their name. You might go for a ‘group case study’ which would be essentially a case study that would compile reviews from several customers.

Interview a large sample of your customers and create a case study that speaks of the industry challenge and gets their views or testimonials from them. Ask for a one-sentence quote or permission to put the company’s logo on your site as a customer.

There might be multiple reasons why many of the customers you would be reaching out for case-studies might want to turn you down for various reasons. But smart timing and a crisp questionnaire along with a proper understanding of the ‘customer psyche’ will help in turning the odds to successful case histories.