The Case for Use Cases and Case Studies

In my blog series on finding the best content tactic for the job, I’ve talked about print, video, as well as eBooks and white papers. Now I’ll talk about two tactics you can use to tell compelling stories about your product: case studies and use cases.

Use Cases Help Customers Visualize How They’d Use Your Product

When does a realtor know that their client is ready to buy a house? When they sit down on the sofa in the living room and start talking about where their friends will congregate during a dinner party or when they pull up a chair at the kitchen table and start talking about where their children will do their homework while they’re cooking dinner. In other words, people are ready to buy a house when they can picture themselves living there.

That’s the idea behind use cases. I recently worked on a project for a technology vendor that had a vertical product that could be used in any number of horizontal and vertical applications. The problem was, how to get customers to imagine themselves using the product.

In the white paper, we showed potential customers, step-by-step, how they could use the product in their specific workflow. We researched all the types of activities in a particular process and then described in detail how the vendor’s product could fit into—and improve—that process.

Research indicates that when you tell a story, people actually put themselves in the shoes of the person you’re writing about. It’s as if they’re actually performing the action themselves along with the protagonist of the story. Concrete details increase the reader’s understanding.

We could have used a case study of a real customer for this task. But we would have run into two deal-breaking challenges. First, finding customers to illustrate all potential applications (let alone get their approval) would have been time and cost-prohibitive. Second, we would have been at the mercy of how real customers actually use the product. We wouldn’t have been able to take a forward-looking view and illustrate how the product could potentially be used.

With a use case, we had complete control. The story was limited only by our understanding of the processes the solution was automating and by the features of the product.

Case Studies Provide Social Proof

Since it’s challenging to find real customers who will agree to be references, use their stories strategically. It’s best to pick your ideal customer and application and go after customers that match that in a highly targeted manner.

And what is a strategic use of case studies?

Case studies are really all about providing social proof.

Wikipedia describes social proof as “a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect the correct behavior for a given situation…driven by the assumption that the surrounding people possess more information about the situation.” In other words, people are wired to learn from the actions of others and marketers can harness this fact to enhance their marketing efforts.

Studies show that social proof is more influential than product benefits—including saving money.

One example is an environmental study designed to persuade customers to use less energy in the summer by using fans instead of air conditioning. The study tested four signs—one told customers they’d save $54/month on their utility bill; the second told them they could prevent the release of 262 pounds of greenhouse gasses every month; a third told them it was the socially responsible thing to do; and the fourth let customers know that 77 percent of their neighbors were already using fans to save energy.

The most effective sign? The one that mentioned what the neighbors were doing.

Social proof is the primary strategic benefit of case studies. For this reason, 73% of B2B content marketers surveyed in the 2014 B2B Content Marketing study use case studies as part of their marketing efforts.

How can you maximize the impact of your case studies?

1. Choose customers similar to your target customer—Research on the topic of implicit egotism has shown that most people subconsciously place more weight on the opinions of people we believe are most like us. Thus, the closer the customer featured in the case study is to your ideal customer, the more effective the story will be.


2. Look for influencers—Researchers have found a cognitive bias known as the halo effect. This means we’re likely to judge a person’s opinion based on our overall impression of him or her. When you feature a customer with an established reputation, anything else they involve themselves with is seen in a better light by this association. This is why companies often go for big name brands when creating case studies.

In summary, both use cases and case studies tell a story that readers can identify with. This allows potential customers to visualize themselves using your product. Use cases give you the flexibility to show people stories that help them visualize exactly how they would use a product whose use would otherwise seem abstract. Case studies are less flexible in describing use cases because limited to the experience of a particular customer, but they excel at providing social proof.

The Case for Use Cases and Case Studies