Use Case-Studies to tell a Story

Writing case-studies for all your client projects is a bit of a tick-boxing exercise and agencies often miss a trick here. Written well, case-studies can engage the reader, it can inspire them, it can draw them into the story of what it would be like to work with you. Before writing the case study, interview your client services team and your clients to get the full low-down of the project. With case studies potential clients want to see real life examples of how you have solved business challenges, and most importantly business challenges that are similar to theirs.

Use this information from the interviews to take the reader on a journey, tell the story from where the client started, not where it ended.

Marketers want to see what results you were able to achieve so hero these results with great graphics & use of typography. Where possible keep the case-studies short and break up the copy with headlines, testimonials, and quotes. You want it to be attractive and easy to read. Remember that attention spans are short these days. People want to very quickly be able to scan read case studies and pull out the key points quickly.

Some great examples…

• Koppaberg by Elmwood — this case study takes the reader on a journey and anyone who loves and appreciates design and creativity would absolutely love the film capturing the artist sketching out the illustration — these types of film on Instagram are truly captivating!
• Fortnum & Mason by Otherway — They use the titles of the case-studies to highlight the business challenges. The use of great images, a testimonial, a clear list of services and a little bit of back story make the whole case study very appealing and easy to read.
• The 2.6 Challenge by Studio Republic — their agency positioning is to create work that delivers impact so their case studies reflect this and they have some great results to support each case study.

Stuff to check out:

📚 READ: create engaging content on LinkedIn [tips from LinkedIn itself]

📈 DIGEST: Latest survey on how agencies navigated disruption in 2020.

🎧 LISTEN: Agency Accelerator Podcast where Rob Da Costa interviews me on what agencies should be doing to grow their new business pipeline.

🎥 TRY: Stop creating invisible content with these scroll-stopping, video popping templates.

♥️ ENJOY: Enjoy the end of the world with this satirical tea brand launched by agency Niiiiice.

🤣 FUNNY: The perils of creative feedback. *thanks to Jon Phillips for this share!

“Everything gets harder if you start going on and on about how hard it is”

Stephen Covey

What’s coming up ~

• I’m looking for agencies to interview and feature as part of my upcoming blog series on “Painpoints for Agency Leaders”. I’d like 20 minutes of your time, following the Design Thinking “Jobs to be Done” framework. If you’d like to take part, please email me with some dates.
• Next week “Lucy’s Latest” will focus on agency websites — I’m after some unusual examples to share if you’d like to email me some to be featured.

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“Lucy’s Latest” is sent out every Wednesday