As a B2B company, you face special challenges in reaching your target audience. Your customers are other businesses. They know all the marketing tricks that are in your bag to drum up business because they use them, too.
With experience and testing, marketers have found that certain strategies tend to work better than others when other businesses are your customers. B2B companies: case studies may be your secret weapon in reaching more of your target audience.
The Content Marketing Benchmark Report has found that 66 percent of B2B marketers say that case studies are the most effective tool they use to reach their target audience. Here are a few reasons why they work:
Tell Stories
Narratives are powerful tools for reaching people.
Whether you are trying to sell a product or win an argument, finding a way to tell a story to illustrate your point can help you reach your goal.
Stories engage your audience. They pull people in, and they provide an emotional connection.
With the right storytelling, your target audience will see how your product or service can make a real difference to their business. They might be convinced that your equipment will help them lower their overhead and increase their profits, or they might get inspired to find success with your marketing system.
The stories inspire and convince your audience in a way that straight marketing copy cannot.
Provide Evidence
The case studies you should be sharing are those that show the effectiveness of your product or service — or the effectiveness of some benefit that your product or service provides.
For example, you may sell software that helps you save money by better managing your finances, or the software may help you control inventory, which has the added benefit of helping you save money. You can share case studies of businesses that used your software to lower their overhead and increase their profits.
Case studies prove the claims you make about your products. Customers know that your advertising will make big claims to try to make your product seem great, but they will actually believe those claims if you can show how you’ve achieved results with real customers.
Establish Credibility
In the B2B niche, your credibility is everything.
Businesses have a lot riding on the products and services they choose, so they can only afford to choose the best. Your case study establishes your credibility by using real clients and showing how they have benefited from your product or service.
The more examples you can use, the greater your credibility will be. The fact that your customers are so happy with your product or service that they are willing to provide quotes for and be used in your case study will speak volumes.
Interview your clients to get good quotes for your study. The better the quote, the more effective it will be.
Provide Practical Tips
The best marketing copy doesn’t just sell your company — it also provides something of value for your customers.
Case studies offer a great opportunity to provide practical tips for your customers. For example, you can provide a case study of how other clients used your payroll management software and include practical tips for how to get the most out of the software. You can create a case study with tips of how to use your display products to promote a new product line or special event.
The more specific and helpful your guide is, the more effective it will be. Not only will customers be more interested in reading the case study, but they will have more incentive to buy your product or service after they are finished reading. The best case studies will show customers exactly what they can get from following your tips, and buying your product or service will be the natural last step.
Supply Content
You need a steady stream of content to attract traffic to your site and keep your rankings high in search results.
Case studies help you to create fresh content for your site. You can create case studies from other content that is already there, and you can write blog posts from your case studies. You can continually recycle the content so that it works for you again and again.
You can also share your case studies on your social media and in your email newsletter, allowing you to maximize the results from your content marketing. You’ll get more engagement on all your channels, increasing exposure for your brand and helping to generate more leads.
B2B marketing is more challenging than traditional online marketing, but using the right tools can help you overcome those challenges. Creating case studies is one of the more effective ways that you can reach your business clients. If you are not already using case studies on your blog, now is the time to start implementing them.