example of a mini case study

How to write a case study — examples, templates, and tools

It’s a marketer’s job to communicate the effectiveness of a product or service to potential and current customers to convince them to buy and keep business moving. One of the best methods for doing this is to share success stories that are relatable to prospects and customers based on their pain points, experiences, and overall needs.

That’s where case studies come in. Case studies are an essential part of a content marketing plan. These in-depth stories of customer experiences are some of the most effective at demonstrating the value of a product or service. Yet many marketers don’t use them, whether because of their regimented formats or the process of customer involvement and approval.

A case study is a powerful tool for showcasing your hard work and the success your customer achieved. But writing a great case study can be difficult if you’ve never done it before or if it’s been a while. This guide will show you how to write an effective case study and provide real-world examples and templates that will keep readers engaged and support your business.

In this article, you’ll learn:

What is a case study?

How to write a case study, case study templates, case study examples, case study tools.

A case study is the detailed story of a customer’s experience with a product or service that demonstrates their success and often includes measurable outcomes. Case studies are used in a range of fields and for various reasons, from business to academic research. They’re especially impactful in marketing as brands work to convince and convert consumers with relatable, real-world stories of actual customer experiences.

The best case studies tell the story of a customer’s success, including the steps they took, the results they achieved, and the support they received from a brand along the way. To write a great case study, you need to:

• Celebrate the customer and make them — not a product or service — the star of the story.
• Craft the story with specific audiences or target segments in mind so that the story of one customer will be viewed as relatable and actionable for another customer.
• Write copy that is easy to read and engaging so that readers will gain the insights and messages intended.
• Follow a standardized format that includes all of the essentials a potential customer would find interesting and useful.
• Support all of the claims for success made in the story with data in the forms of hard numbers and customer statements.

Case studies are a type of review but more in depth, aiming to show — rather than just tell — the positive experiences that customers have with a brand. Notably, 89% of consumers read reviews before deciding to buy, and 79% view case study content as part of their purchasing process. When it comes to B2B sales, 52% of buyers rank case studies as an important part of their evaluation process.

Telling a brand story through the experience of a tried-and-true customer matters. The story is relatable to potential new customers as they imagine themselves in the shoes of the company or individual featured in the case study. Showcasing previous customers can help new ones see themselves engaging with your brand in the ways that are most meaningful to them.

Besides sharing the perspective of another customer, case studies stand out from other content marketing forms because they are based on evidence. Whether pulling from client testimonials or data-driven results, case studies tend to have more impact on new business because the story contains information that is both objective (data) and subjective (customer experience) — and the brand doesn’t sound too self-promotional.

Case studies are unique in that there’s a fairly standardized format for telling a customer’s story. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for creativity. It’s all about making sure that teams are clear on the goals for the case study — along with strategies for supporting content and channels — and understanding how the story fits within the framework of the company’s overall marketing goals.

Here are the basic steps to writing a good case study.

1. Identify your goal

Start by defining exactly who your case study will be designed to help. Case studies are about specific instances where a company works with a customer to achieve a goal. Identify which customers are likely to have these goals, as well as other needs the story should cover to appeal to them.

The answer is often found in one of the buyer personas that have been constructed as part of your larger marketing strategy. This can include anything from new leads generated by the marketing team to long-term customers that are being pressed for cross-sell opportunities. In all of these cases, demonstrating value through a relatable customer success story can be part of the solution to conversion.

2. Choose your client or subject

Who you highlight matters. Case studies tie brands together that might otherwise not cross paths. A writer will want to ensure that the highlighted customer aligns with their own company’s brand identity and offerings. Look for a customer with positive name recognition who has had great success with a product or service and is willing to be an advocate.

The client should also match up with the identified target audience. Whichever company or individual is selected should be a reflection of other potential customers who can see themselves in similar circumstances, having the same problems and possible solutions.

Some of the most compelling case studies feature customers who:

• Switch from one product or service to another while naming competitors that missed the mark.
• Experience measurable results that are relatable to others in a specific industry.
• Represent well-known brands and recognizable names that are likely to compel action.
• Advocate for a product or service as a champion and are well-versed in its advantages.

Whoever or whatever customer is selected, marketers must ensure they have the permission of the company involved before getting started. Some brands have strict review and approval procedures for any official marketing or promotional materials that include their name. Acquiring those approvals in advance will prevent any miscommunication or wasted effort if there is an issue with their legal or compliance teams.

3. Conduct research and compile data

Substantiating the claims made in a case study — either by the marketing team or customers themselves — adds validity to the story. To do this, include data and feedback from the client that defines what success looks like. This can be anything from demonstrating return on investment (ROI) to a specific metric the customer was striving to improve. Case studies should prove how an outcome was achieved and show tangible results that indicate to the customer that your solution is the right one.

This step could also include customer interviews. Make sure that the people being interviewed are key stakeholders in the purchase decision or deployment and use of the product or service that is being highlighted. Content writers should work off a set list of questions prepared in advance. It can be helpful to share these with the interviewees beforehand so they have time to consider and craft their responses. One of the best interview tactics to keep in mind is to ask questions where yes and no are not natural answers. This way, your subject will provide more open-ended responses that produce more meaningful content.

4. Choose the right format

There are a number of different ways to format a case study. Depending on what you hope to achieve, one style will be better than another. However, there are some common elements to include, such as:

• An engaging headline
• A subject and customer introduction
• The unique challenge or challenges the customer faced
• The solution the customer used to solve the problem
• The results achieved
• Data and statistics to back up claims of success
• A strong call to action (CTA) to engage with the vendor

It’s also important to note that while case studies are traditionally written as stories, they don’t have to be in a written format. Some companies choose to get more creative with their case studies and produce multimedia content, depending on their audience and objectives. Case study formats can include traditional print stories, interactive web or social content, data-heavy infographics, professionally shot videos, podcasts, and more.

5. Write your case study

We’ll go into more detail later about how exactly to write a case study, including templates and examples. Generally speaking, though, there are a few things to keep in mind when writing your case study.

• Be clear and concise. Readers want to get to the point of the story quickly and easily, and they’ll be looking to see themselves reflected in the story right from the start.
• Provide a big picture. Always make sure to explain who the client is, their goals, and how they achieved success in a short introduction to engage the reader.
• Construct a clear narrative. Stick to the story from the perspective of the customer and what they needed to solve instead of just listing product features or benefits.
• Leverage graphics. Incorporating infographics, charts, and sidebars can be a more engaging and eye-catching way to share key statistics and data in readable ways.
• Offer the right amount of detail. Most case studies are one or two pages with clear sections that a reader can skim to find the information most important to them.
• Include data to support claims. Show real results — both facts and figures and customer quotes — to demonstrate credibility and prove the solution works.

6. Promote your story

Marketers have a number of options for distribution of a freshly minted case study. Many brands choose to publish case studies on their website and post them on social media. This can help support SEO and organic content strategies while also boosting company credibility and trust as visitors see that other businesses have used the product or service.

Marketers are always looking for quality content they can use for lead generation. Consider offering a case study as gated content behind a form on a landing page or as an offer in an email message. One great way to do this is to summarize the content and tease the full story available for download after the user takes an action.

Sales teams can also leverage case studies, so be sure they are aware that the assets exist once they’re published. Especially when it comes to larger B2B sales, companies often ask for examples of similar customer challenges that have been solved.

Now that you’ve learned a bit about case studies and what they should include, you may be wondering how to start creating great customer story content. Here are a couple of templates you can use to structure your case study.

Template 1 — Challenge-solution-result format

• Start with an engaging title. This should be fewer than 70 characters long for SEO best practices. One of the best ways to approach the title is to include the customer’s name and a hint at the challenge they overcame in the end.
• Create an introduction. Lead with an explanation as to who the customer is, the need they had, and the opportunity they found with a specific product or solution. Writers can also suggest the success the customer experienced with the solution they chose.
• Present the challenge. This should be several paragraphs long and explain the problem the customer faced and the issues they were trying to solve. Details should tie into the company’s products and services naturally. This section needs to be the most relatable to the reader so they can picture themselves in a similar situation.
• Share the solution. Explain which product or service offered was the ideal fit for the customer and why. Feel free to delve into their experience setting up, purchasing, and onboarding the solution.
• Explain the results. Demonstrate the impact of the solution they chose by backing up their positive experience with data. Fill in with customer quotes and tangible, measurable results that show the effect of their choice.
• Ask for action. Include a CTA at the end of the case study that invites readers to reach out for more information, try a demo, or learn more — to nurture them further in the marketing pipeline. What you ask of the reader should tie directly into the goals that were established for the case study in the first place.

Template 2 — Data-driven format

• Start with an engaging title. Be sure to include a statistic or data point in the first 70 characters. Again, it’s best to include the customer’s name as part of the title.
• Create an overview. Share the customer’s background and a short version of the challenge they faced. Present the reason a particular product or service was chosen, and feel free to include quotes from the customer about their selection process.
• Present data point 1. Isolate the first metric that the customer used to define success and explain how the product or solution helped to achieve this goal. Provide data points and quotes to substantiate the claim that success was achieved.
• Present data point 2. Isolate the second metric that the customer used to define success and explain what the product or solution did to achieve this goal. Provide data points and quotes to substantiate the claim that success was achieved.
• Present data point 3. Isolate the final metric that the customer used to define success and explain what the product or solution did to achieve this goal. Provide data points and quotes to substantiate the claim that success was achieved.
• Summarize the results. Reiterate the fact that the customer was able to achieve success thanks to a specific product or service. Include quotes and statements that reflect customer satisfaction and suggest they plan to continue using the solution.
• Ask for action. Include a CTA at the end of the case study that asks readers to reach out for more information, try a demo, or learn more — to further nurture them in the marketing pipeline. Again, remember that this is where marketers can look to convert their content into action with the customer.

While templates are helpful, seeing a case study in action can also be a great way to learn. Here are some examples of how Adobe customers have experienced success.

Juniper Networks

One example is the Adobe and Juniper Networks case study , which puts the reader in the customer’s shoes. The beginning of the story quickly orients the reader so that they know exactly who the article is about and what they were trying to achieve. Solutions are outlined in a way that shows Adobe Experience Manager is the best choice and a natural fit for the customer. Along the way, quotes from the client are incorporated to help add validity to the statements. The results in the case study are conveyed with clear evidence of scale and volume using tangible data.

The story of Lenovo’s journey with Adobe is one that spans years of planning, implementation, and rollout. The Lenovo case study does a great job of consolidating all of this into a relatable journey that other enterprise organizations can see themselves taking, despite the project size. This case study also features descriptive headers and compelling visual elements that engage the reader and strengthen the content.

Tata Consulting

When it comes to using data to show customer results, this case study does an excellent job of conveying details and numbers in an easy-to-digest manner. Bullet points at the start break up the content while also helping the reader understand exactly what the case study will be about. Tata Consulting used Adobe to deliver elevated, engaging content experiences for a large telecommunications client of its own — an objective that’s relatable for a lot of companies.

Case studies are a vital tool for any marketing team as they enable you to demonstrate the value of your company’s products and services to others. They help marketers do their job and add credibility to a brand trying to promote its solutions by using the experiences and stories of real customers.

When you’re ready to get started with a case study:

• Think about a few goals you’d like to accomplish with your content.
• Make a list of successful clients that would be strong candidates for a case study.
• Reach out to the client to get their approval and conduct an interview.
• Gather the data to present an engaging and effective customer story.

Adobe can help

There are several Adobe products that can help you craft compelling case studies. Adobe Experience Platform helps you collect data and deliver great customer experiences across every channel. Once you’ve created your case studies, Experience Platform will help you deliver the right information to the right customer at the right time for maximum impact.

To learn more, watch the Adobe Experience Platform story .

Keep in mind that the best case studies are backed by data. That’s where Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform and Adobe Analytics come into play. With Real-Time CDP, you can gather the data you need to build a great case study and target specific customers to deliver the content to the right audience at the perfect moment.

Watch the Real-Time CDP overview video to learn more.

Finally, Adobe Analytics turns real-time data into real-time insights. It helps your business collect and synthesize data from multiple platforms to make more informed decisions and create the best case study possible.

Request a demo to learn more about Adobe Analytics.

https://business.adobe.com/blog/perspectives/b2b-ecommerce-10-case-studies-inspire-you

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/business-case

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/what-is-real-time-analytics

28 Case Study Examples Every Marketer Should See

Published: March 08, 2023

Putting together a compelling case study is one of the most powerful strategies for showcasing your product and attracting future customers. But it's not easy to create case studies that your audience can’t wait to read.

In this post, we’ll go over the definition of a case study and the best examples to inspire you.

What is a case study?

A case study is a detailed story of something your company did. It includes a beginning — often discussing a conflict, an explanation of what happened next, and a resolution that explains how the company solved or improved on something.

A case study proves how your product has helped other companies by demonstrating real-life results. Not only that, but marketing case studies with solutions typically contain quotes from the customer. This means that they’re not just ads where you praise your own product. Rather, other companies are praising your company — and there’s no stronger marketing material than a verbal recommendation or testimonial. A great case study is also filled with research and stats to back up points made about a project's results.

There are myriad ways to use case studies in your marketing strategy . From featuring them on your website to including them in a sales presentation, a case study is a strong, persuasive tool that shows customers why they should work with you — straight from another customer. Writing one from scratch is hard, though, which is why we’ve created a collection of case study templates for you to get started.

Fill out the form below to access the free case study templates.

Free Case Study Templates

Showcase your company's success using these three free case study templates.

• Data-Driven Case Study Template
• Product-Specific Case Study Template
• General Case Study Template

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

There’s no better way to generate more leads than by writing case studies . But without case study examples to draw inspiration from, it can be difficult to write impactful studies that convince visitors to submit a form.

Marketing Case Study Examples

To help you create an attractive and high-converting case study, we've put together a list of some of our favorites. This list includes famous case studies in marketing, technology, and business.

These studies can show you how to frame your company offers in a way that is both meaningful and useful to your audience. So, take a look, and let these examples inspire your next brilliant case study design.

These marketing case studies with solutions show the value proposition of each product. They also show how each company benefited in both the short and long term using quantitative data. In other words, you don’t get just nice statements, like "This company helped us a lot." You see actual change within the firm through numbers and figures.

You can put your learnings into action with HubSpot's Free Case Study Templates . Available as custom designs and text-based documents, you can upload these templates to your CMS or send them to prospects as you see fit.

1. " How Handled Scaled from Zero to 121 Locations with the Help of HubSpot ," by HubSpot

What's interesting about this case study is the way it leads with the customer. That reflects a major HubSpot cornerstone, which is to always solve for the customer first. The copy leads with a brief description of why the CEO of Handled founded the company and why he thought Handled could benefit from adopting a CRM. The case study also opens up with one key data point about Handled’s success using HubSpot, namely that it grew to 121 locations.

Notice that this case study uses mixed media. Yes, there is a short video, but it's elaborated upon in the other text on the page. So while your case studies can use one or the other, don't be afraid to combine written copy with visuals to emphasize the project's success.

Key Learnings from the HubSpot Case Study Example

• Give the case study a personal touch by focusing on the CEO rather than the company itself.
• Use multimedia to engage website visitors as they read the case study.

2. " The Whole Package ," by IDEO

Here's a design company that knows how to lead with simplicity in its case studies. As soon as the visitor arrives at the page, they’re greeted with a big, bold photo and the title of the case study — which just so happens to summarize how IDEO helped its client. It summarizes the case study in three snippets: The challenge, the impact, and the outcome.

Immediately, IDEO communicates its impact — the company partnered with H&M to remove plastic from its packaging — but it doesn't stop there. As the user scrolls down, the challenge, impact, and progress are elaborated upon with comprehensive (but not overwhelming) copy that outlines what that process looked like, replete with quotes and intriguing visuals.

Key Learnings from the IDEO Case Study Example

• Split up the takeaways of your case studies into bite-sized sections.
• Always use visuals and images to enrich the case study experience, especially if it’s a comprehensive case study.

3. " Rozum Robotics intensifies its PR game with Awario ," by Awario

In this case study, Awario greets the user with a summary straight away — so if you’re feeling up to reading the entire case study, you can scan the snapshot and understand how the company serves its customers. The case study then includes jump links to several sections, such as "Company Profile," "Rozum Robotics' Pains," "Challenge," "Solution," and "Results and Improvements."

The sparse copy and prominent headings show that you don’t need a lot of elaborate information to show the value of your products and services. Like the other case study examples on this list, it includes visuals and quotes to demonstrate the effectiveness of the company’s efforts. The case study ends with a bulleted list that shows the results.

Key Learnings from the Awario Robotics Case Study Example

• Create a table of contents to make your case study easier to navigate.
• Include a bulleted list of the results you achieved for your client.

4. " Chevrolet DTU ," by Carol H. Williams

If you’ve worked with a company that’s well-known, use only the name in the title — like Carol H. Williams, one of the nation’s top advertising agencies, does here. The "DTU," stands for "Discover the Unexpected." It generates interest because you want to find out what the initials mean.

They keep your interest in this case study by using a mixture of headings, images, and videos to describe the challenges, objectives, and solutions of the project. The case study closes with a summary of the key achievements that Chevrolet’s DTU Journalism Fellows reached during the project.

Key Learnings from the Carol H. Williams Case Study Example

• If you’ve worked with a big brand before, consider only using the name in the title — just enough to pique interest.
• Use a mixture of headings and subheadings to guide users through the case study.

5. " How Fractl Earned Links from 931 Unique Domains for Porch.com in a Single Year ," by Fractl

Fractl uses both text and graphic design in their Porch.com case study to immerse the viewer in a more interesting user experience. For instance, as you scroll, you'll see the results are illustrated in an infographic-design form as well as the text itself.

Further down the page, they use icons like a heart and a circle to illustrate their pitch angles, and graphs to showcase their results. Rather than writing which publications have mentioned Porch.com during Fractl’s campaign, they incorporated the media outlets’ icons for further visual diversity.

Key Learnings from the Fractl Case Study Example

• Let pictures speak for you by incorporating graphs, logos, and icons all throughout the case study.
• Start the case study by right away stating the key results, like Fractl does, instead of putting the results all the way at the bottom.

6. " The Met ," by Fantasy

What's the best way to showcase the responsiveness and user interface of a website? Probably by diving right into it with a series of simple showcases— which is exactly what Fantasy does on their case study page for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They keep the page simple and clean, inviting you to review their redesign of the Met’s website feature-by-feature.

Each section is simple, showing a single piece of the new website's interface so that users aren’t overwhelmed with information and can focus on what matters most.

If you're more interested in text, you can read the objective for each feature. Fantasy understands that, as a potential customer, this is all you need to know. Scrolling further, you're greeted with a simple "Contact Us" CTA.

Key Learnings from the Fantasy Case Study Example

• You don’t have to write a ton of text to create a great case study. Focus on the solution you delivered itself.
• Include a CTA at the bottom inviting visitors to contact you.

7. " Rovio: How Rovio Grew Into a Gaming Superpower ," by App Annie

If your client had a lot of positive things to say about you, take a note from App Annie’s Rovio case study and open up with a quote from your client. The case study also closes with a quote, so that the case study doesn’t seem like a promotion written by your marketing team but a story that’s taken straight from your client’s mouth. It includes a photo of a Rovio employee, too.

Another thing this example does well? It immediately includes a link to the product that Rovio used (namely, App Annie Intelligence) at the top of the case study. The case study closes with a call-to-action button prompting users to book a demo.

Key Learnings from the App Annie Case Study Example

• Feature quotes from your client at the beginning and end of the case study.
• Include a mention of the product right at the beginning and prompt users to learn more about the product.

8. " Embracing first-party data: 3 success stories from HubSpot ," by Think with Google

Google takes a different approach to text-focused case studies by choosing three different companies to highlight.

The case study is clean and easily scannable. It has sections for each company, with quotes and headers that clarify the way these three distinct stories connect. The simple format also uses colors and text that align with the Google brand.

Another differentiator is the focus on data. This case study is less than a thousand words, but it's packed with useful data points. Data-driven insights quickly and clearly show how the value of leveraging first-party data while prioritizing consumer privacy.

Key Learnings from the Think with Google Case Study Example

• A case study doesn’t need to be long or complex to be powerful.
• Clear data points are a quick and effective way to prove value.

9. " In-Depth Performance Marketing Case Study ," by Switch

Switch is an international marketing agency based in Malta that knocks it out of the park with this case study. Its biggest challenge is effectively communicating what it did for its client without ever revealing the client’s name. It also effectively keeps non-marketers in the loop by including a glossary of terms on page 4.

The PDF case study reads like a compelling research article, including titles like "In-Depth Performance Marketing Case Study," "Scenario," and "Approach," so that readers get a high-level overview of what the client needed and why they approached Switch. It also includes a different page for each strategy. For instance, if you’d only be interested in hiring Switch for optimizing your Facebook ads, you can skip to page 10 to see how they did it.

The PDF is fourteen pages long but features big fonts and plenty of white space, so viewers can easily skim it in only a few minutes.

Key Learnings from the Switch Case Study Example

• If you want to go into specialized information, include a glossary of terms so that non-specialists can easily understand.
• Close with a CTA page in your case study PDF and include contact information for prospective clients.

10. " Gila River ," by OH Partners

Let pictures speak for you, like OH Partners did in this case study. While you’ll quickly come across a heading and some text when you land on this case study page, you’ll get the bulk of the case study through examples of actual work OH Partners did for its client. You will see OH Partners’ work in a billboard, magazine, and video. This communicates to website visitors that if they work with OH Partners, their business will be visible everywhere.

And like the other case studies here, it closes with a summary of what the firm achieved for its client in an eye-catching way.

Key Learnings from the OH Partners Case Study Example

• Let the visuals speak by including examples of the actual work you did for your client — which is especially useful for branding and marketing agencies.
• Always close out with your achievements and how they impacted your client.

11. " Facing a Hater ," by Digitas

Digitas' case study page for Sprite’s #ILOVEYOUHATER campaign keeps it brief while communicating the key facts of Digitas’ work for the popular soda brand. The page opens with an impactful image of a hundred people facing a single man. It turns out, that man is the biggest "bully" in Argentina, and the people facing him are those whom he’s bullied before.

Scrolling down, it's obvious that Digitas kept Sprite at the forefront of their strategy, but more than that, they used real people as their focal point. They leveraged the Twitter API to pull data from Tweets that people had actually tweeted to find the identity of the biggest "hater" in the country. That turned out to be @AguanteElCofler, a Twitter user who has since been suspended.

Key Learnings from the Digitas Case Study Example

• If a video was part of your work for your client, be sure to include the most impactful screenshot as the heading.
• Don’t be afraid to provide details on how you helped your client achieve their goals, including the tools you leveraged.

12. " Better Experiences for All ," by HermanMiller

HermanMiller sells sleek, utilitarian furniture with no frills and extreme functionality, and that ethos extends to its case study page for a hospital in Dubai.

What first attracted me to this case study was the beautiful video at the top and the clean user experience. User experience matters a lot in a case study. It determines whether users will keep reading or leave. Another notable aspect of this case study is that the video includes closed-captioning for greater accessibility, and users have the option of expanding the CC and searching through the text.

HermanMiller’s case study also offers an impressive amount of information packed in just a few short paragraphs for those wanting to understand the nuances of their strategy. It closes out with a quote from their client and, most importantly, the list of furniture products that the hospital purchased from the brand.

Key Learnings from the HermanMiller Case Study Example

• Close out with a list of products that users can buy after reading the case study.
• Include accessibility features such as closed captioning and night mode to make your case study more user-friendly.

13. " Capital One on AWS ," by Amazon

Do you work continuously with your clients? Consider structuring your case study page like Amazon did in this stellar case study example. Instead of just featuring one article about Capital One and how it benefited from using AWS, Amazon features a series of articles that you can then access if you’re interested in reading more. It goes all the way back to 2016, all with different stories that feature Capital One’s achievements using AWS.

This may look unattainable for a small firm, but you don’t have to go to extreme measures and do it for every single one of your clients. You could choose the one you most wish to focus on and establish a contact both on your side and your client’s for coming up with the content. Check in every year and write a new piece. These don’t have to be long, either — five hundred to eight hundred words will do.

Key Learnings from the Amazon AWS Case Study Example

• Write a new article each year featuring one of your clients, then include links to those articles in one big case study page.
• Consider including external articles as well that emphasize your client’s success in their industry.

14. " HackReactor teaches the world to code #withAsana ," by Asana

While Asana's case study design looks text-heavy, there's a good reason. It reads like a creative story, told entirely from the customer's perspective.

For instance, Asana knows you won't trust its word alone on why this product is useful. So, they let Tony Phillips, HackReactor CEO, tell you instead: "We take in a lot of information. Our brains are awful at storage but very good at thinking; you really start to want some third party to store your information so you can do something with it."

Asana features frequent quotes from Phillips to break up the wall of text and humanize the case study. It reads like an in-depth interview and captivates the reader through creative storytelling. Even more, Asana includes in-depth detail about how HackReactor uses Asana. This includes how they build templates and workflows:

"There's a huge differentiator between Asana and other tools, and that’s the very easy API access. Even if Asana isn’t the perfect fit for a workflow, someone like me— a relatively mediocre software engineer—can add functionality via the API to build a custom solution that helps a team get more done."

Key Learnings from the Asana Example

• Include quotes from your client throughout the case study.
• Provide extensive detail on how your client worked with you or used your product.

15. " Rips Sewed, Brand Love Reaped ," by Amp Agency

Amp Agency's Patagonia marketing strategy aimed to appeal to a new audience through guerrilla marketing efforts and a coast-to-coast road trip. Their case study page effectively conveys a voyager theme, complete with real photos of Patagonia customers from across the U.S., and a map of the expedition. I liked Amp Agency's storytelling approach best. It captures viewers' attention from start to finish simply because it's an intriguing and unique approach to marketing.

Key Learnings from the Amp Agency Example

• Open up with a summary that communicates who your client is and why they reached out to you.
• Like in the other case study examples, you’ll want to close out with a quantitative list of your achievements.

16. " NetApp ," by Evisort

Evisort opens up its NetApp case study with an at-a-glance overview of the client. It’s imperative to always focus on the client in your case study — not on your amazing product and equally amazing team. By opening up with a snapshot of the client’s company, Evisort places the focus on the client.

This case study example checks all the boxes for a great case study that’s informative, thorough, and compelling. It includes quotes from the client and details about the challenges NetApp faced during the COVID pandemic. It closes out with a quote from the client and with a link to download the case study in PDF format, which is incredibly important if you want your case study to be accessible in a wider variety of formats.

Key Learnings from the Evisort Example

• Place the focus immediately on your client by including a snapshot of their company.
• Mention challenging eras, such as a pandemic or recession, to show how your company can help your client succeed even during difficult times.

17. " Copernicus Land Monitoring – CLC+ Core ," by Cloudflight

Including highly specialized information in your case study is an effective way to show prospects that you’re not just trying to get their business. You’re deep within their industry, too, and willing to learn everything you need to learn to create a solution that works specifically for them.

Cloudflight does a splendid job at that in its Copernicus Land Monitoring case study. While the information may be difficult to read at first glance, it will capture the interest of prospects who are in the environmental industry. It thus shows Cloudflight’s value as a partner much more effectively than a general case study would.

The page is comprehensive and ends with a compelling call-to-action — "Looking for a solution that automates, and enhances your Big Data system? Are you struggling with large datasets and accessibility? We would be happy to advise and support you!" The clean, whitespace-heavy page is an effective example of using a case study to capture future leads.

Key Learnings from the Cloudflight Case Study Example

• Don’t be afraid to get technical in your explanation of what you did for your client.
• Include a snapshot of the sales representative prospects should contact, especially if you have different sales reps for different industries, like Cloudflight does.

18. " Valvoline Increases Coupon Send Rate by 76% with Textel’s MMS Picture Texting ," by Textel

If you’re targeting large enterprises with a long purchasing cycle, you’ll want to include a wealth of information in an easily transferable format. That’s what Textel does here in its PDF case study for Valvoline. It greets the user with an eye-catching headline that shows the value of using Textel. Valvoline saw a significant return on investment from using the platform.

Another smart decision in this case study is highlighting the client’s quote by putting it in green font and doing the same thing for the client’s results because it helps the reader quickly connect the two pieces of information. If you’re in a hurry, you can also take a look at the "At a Glance" column to get the key facts of the case study, starting with information about Valvoline.

Key Learnings from the Textel Case Study Example

• Include your client’s ROI right in the title of the case study.
• Add an "At a Glance" column to your case study PDF to make it easy to get insights without needing to read all the text.

19. " Hunt Club and Happeo — a tech-enabled love story ," by Happeo

In this blog-post-like case study, Happeo opens with a quote from the client, then dives into a compelling heading: "Technology at the forefront of Hunt Club's strategy." Say you’re investigating Happeo as a solution and consider your firm to be technology-driven. This approach would spark your curiosity about why the client chose to work with Happeo. It also effectively communicates the software’s value proposition without sounding like it’s coming from an in-house marketing team.

Every paragraph is a quote written from the customer’s perspective. Later down the page, the case study also dives into "the features that changed the game for Hunt Club," giving Happeo a chance to highlight some of the platform’s most salient features.

Key Learnings from the Happeo Case Study Example

• Consider writing the entirety of the case study from the perspective of the customer.
• Include a list of the features that convinced your client to go with you.

20. " Red Sox Season Campaign ," by CTP Boston

What's great about CTP's case study page for their Red Sox Season Campaign is their combination of video, images, and text. A video automatically begins playing when you visit the page, and as you scroll, you'll see more embedded videos of Red Sox players, a compilation of print ads, and social media images you can click to enlarge.

At the bottom, it says "Find out how we can do something similar for your brand." The page is clean, cohesive, and aesthetically pleasing. It invites viewers to appreciate the well-roundedness of CTP's campaign for Boston's beloved baseball team.

Key Learnings from the CTP Case Study Example

• Include a video in the heading of the case study.
• Close with a call-to-action that makes leads want to turn into prospects.

21. " Acoustic ," by Genuine

Sometimes, simple is key. Genuine's case study for Acoustic is straightforward and minimal, with just a few short paragraphs, including "Reimagining the B2B website experience," "Speaking to marketers 1:1," and "Inventing Together." After the core of the case study, we then see a quote from Acoustic’s CMO and the results Genuine achieved for the company.

The simplicity of the page allows the reader to focus on both the visual aspects and the copy. The page displays Genuine's brand personality while offering the viewer all the necessary information they need.

• You don’t need to write a lot to create a great case study. Keep it simple.
• Always include quantifiable data to illustrate the results you achieved for your client.

22. " Using Apptio Targetprocess Automated Rules in Wargaming ," by Apptio

Apptio’s case study for Wargaming summarizes three key pieces of information right at the beginning: The goals, the obstacles, and the results.

Readers then have the opportunity to continue reading — or they can walk away right then with the information they need. This case study also excels in keeping the human interest factor by formatting the information like an interview.

The piece is well-organized and uses compelling headers to keep the reader engaged. Despite its length, Apptio's case study is appealing enough to keep the viewer's attention. Every Apptio case study ends with a "recommendation for other companies" section, where the client can give advice for other companies that are looking for a similar solution but aren’t sure how to get started.

Key Learnings from the Apptio Case Study Example

• Put your client in an advisory role by giving them the opportunity to give recommendations to other companies that are reading the case study.
• Include the takeaways from the case study right at the beginning so prospects quickly get what they need.

23. " Airbnb + Zendesk: building a powerful solution together ," by Zendesk

Zendesk's Airbnb case study reads like a blog post, and focuses equally on Zendesk and Airbnb, highlighting a true partnership between the companies. To captivate readers, it begins like this: "Halfway around the globe is a place to stay with your name on it. At least for a weekend."

The piece focuses on telling a good story and provides photographs of beautiful Airbnb locations. In a case study meant to highlight Zendesk's helpfulness, nothing could be more authentic than their decision to focus on Airbnb's service in such great detail.

Key Learnings from the Zendesk Case Study Example

• Include images of your client’s offerings — not necessarily of the service or product you provided. Notice how Zendesk doesn’t include screenshots of its product.
• Include a call-to-action right at the beginning of the case study. Zendesk gives you two options: to find a solution or start a trial.

24. " Biobot Customer Success Story: Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida ," by Biobot

Like some of the other top examples in this list, Biobot opens its case study with a quote from its client, which captures the value proposition of working with Biobot. It mentions the COVID pandemic and goes into detail about the challenges the client faced during this time.

This case study is structured more like a news article than a traditional case study. This format can work in more formal industries where decision-makers need to see in-depth information about the case. Be sure to test different methods and measure engagement .

Key Learnings from the Biobot Case Study Example

• Mention environmental, public health, or economic emergencies and how you helped your client get past such difficult times.
• Feel free to write the case study like a normal blog post, but be sure to test different methods to find the one that best works for you.

25. " Discovering Cost Savings With Efficient Decision Making ," by Gartner

You don't always need a ton of text or a video to convey your message — sometimes, you just need a few paragraphs and bullet points. Gartner does a fantastic job of quickly providing the fundamental statistics a potential customer would need to know, without boggling down their readers with dense paragraphs. The case study closes with a shaded box that summarizes the impact that Gartner had on its client. It includes a quote and a call-to-action to "Learn More."

Key Learnings from the Gartner Case Study Example

• Feel free to keep the case study short.
• Include a call-to-action at the bottom that takes the reader to a page that most relates to them.

26. " Bringing an Operator to the Game ," by Redapt

This case study example by Redapt is another great demonstration of the power of summarizing your case study’s takeaways right at the start of the study. Redapt includes three easy-to-scan columns: "The problem," "the solution," and "the outcome." But its most notable feature is a section titled "Moment of clarity," which shows why this particular project was difficult or challenging.

The section is shaded in green, making it impossible to miss. Redapt does the same thing for each case study. In the same way, you should highlight the "turning point" for both you and your client when you were working toward a solution.

Key Learnings from the Redapt Case Study Example

• Highlight the turning point for both you and your client during the solution-seeking process.
• Use the same structure (including the same headings) for your case studies to make them easy to scan and read.

27. " Virtual Call Center Sees 300% Boost In Contact Rate ," by Convoso

Convoso’s PDF case study for Digital Market Media immediately mentions the results that the client achieved and takes advantage of white space. On the second page, the case study presents more influential results. It’s colorful and engaging and closes with a spread that prompts readers to request a demo.

Key Learnings from the Convoso Case Study Example

• List the results of your work right at the beginning of the case study.
• Use color to differentiate your case study from others. Convoso’s example is one of the most colorful ones on this list.

28. " Ensuring quality of service during a pandemic ," by Ericsson

Ericsson’s case study page for Orange Spain is an excellent example of using diverse written and visual media — such as videos, graphs, and quotes — to showcase the success a client experienced. Throughout the case study, Ericsson provides links to product and service pages users might find relevant as they’re reading the study.

For instance, under the heading "Preloaded with the power of automation," Ericsson mentions its Ericsson Operations Engine product, then links to that product page. It closes the case study with a link to another product page.

Key Learnings from the Ericsson Case Study Example

• Link to product pages throughout the case study so that readers can learn more about the solution you offer.
• Use multimedia to engage users as they read the case study.

Start creating your case study.

Now that you've got a great list of examples of case studies, think about a topic you'd like to write about that highlights your company or work you did with a customer.

A customer’s success story is the most persuasive marketing material you could ever create. With a strong portfolio of case studies, you can ensure prospects know why they should give you their business.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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Mini Case 1: Case Study Learning in the Classroom

MSC began by producing and piloting case studies in classrooms around the University of Michigan campus. One early adopter, Professor Jeremiah Johnson at the School of Natural Resources and Environment, developed two of MSC’s first case studies with students from his class. The narrative that follows describes the learning and assessment that took place with those cases, as Professor Johnson attempts to answer the question “Can student work promote classroom learning for other students and contribute to faculty scholarship?”

Professor Jeremiah Johnson clicked “Save” on the syllabus for his Winter 2016 class, NRE 615: Renewable Electricity and the Grid. He hesitated a moment before closing the document, reflecting on the adjustments he had just made to the course. As with most faculty, the bread and butter of his courses was lectures. Lately, though, he had begun to feel dissatisfied with relying so heavily on this one teaching method. The problem with lectures, as he saw it, was that it encouraged far too much passivity among students. What he really wanted was for them to be engaged in the learning process, to take a more active role in both acquiring and creating knowledge. He wasn’t entirely sure how to do this, but he had just signed his name onto a proposal for the Transforming Learning for a Third Century (TLTC) initiative in which the faculty of the school were throwing their weight behind an effort to create case studies for sustainability education. The initiators of the proposal had chosen case studies because they have been shown to enhance student learning (Srinivasan et al., 2007; Herreid, 2011). In the spirit of the proposal, Professor Johnson planned to have his students create their own case studies as the major project for the course. Running such experiments in the classroom was always risky, he knew. Would the students understand the assignment and be able to deliver suitably high-quality work? Would the assignment enhance their learning and motivate them to be more active learners? Or, would their distaste for the assignment result in poor course evaluations for him? And lastly, could he use the students’ case studies in future semesters to promote classroom learning while contributing to his own scholarship?

It was April, and the end of the academic year was finally near. Professor Johnson settled into a rotating seat in the auditorium-style classroom, pen and rubric in hand. This week, the students were giving presentations about the case studies they had been working on all semester. Based on the written work the students had turned in, they had risen to the occasion with some truly excellent case studies. Several representatives from MSC had also joined class to scout for the best ideas to potentially fund and develop into complete, multimedia-enriched cases. Professor Johnson knew which groups he would recommend, and he was curious to see if the MSC representatives agreed with him. Later that month, Professor Johnson found himself in MSC’s first curricular advisors meeting, reviewing proposals with other faculty from around campus. The room buzzed with excited energy as the advisors sorted the proposals by theme, location, and competencies addressed, seeking diversity for a future case library. By the end of the two-hour meeting, 27 proposals had been accepted and would become the very first MSCs, including two proposals from his students in NRE 615. Professor Johnson was especially interested in these case studies because they fit well into his existing syllabus, and he could use them to teach future students. And, having the students write the case studies based on their classroom work seemed to be an efficient way of creating new teaching materials. He hoped the student case authors would get as much out of the process as he was getting in new teaching materials. He thought they would, based on what he knew about the research on the benefits of project-based learning (Wiek et al., 2014).

Summer came and went far too quickly. The student case authors had put in a lot of work over the past few months to transform their classroom assignments into complete case studies. One of the case studies, “ Distributed Energy Storage ” (Kraus et al., 2016), about an innovative partnership between Tesla and a small electric utility in Vermont called Green Mountain Power, was slightly further along in the production process and would likely finish soon. The team had worked especially quickly given that they had chosen to do the majority of the podcast production themselves. Most teams that Professor Johnson knew of worked with MSC to conceptualize the podcast and conduct interviews, and MSC provided the production and engineering. One of the student case authors, Andrea Kraus, had some experience in audio production, and she was using this opportunity to flex and strengthen her media muscles. The podcast was shaping up to be an excellent addition to the case study, both as a complementary mode of learning (Serva & Fuller, 2004) and as a connection to the practitioner for the case, Josh Castonguay of Green Mountain Power. Mr. Castonguay had been able to provide an insider’s perspective on the partnership Green Mountain Power had undertaken, and as a result the case study linked theory to practice in a way that a textbook could not. Professor Johnson had high hopes for the positive impact the case would have on his teaching when he piloted it next Winter term. However, he still had to decide how to assess the impact of the case on the students’ learning. How could he get useful feedback in a way that would also help build his own scholarly portfolio?

Resolution: In January 2017, Professor Johnson launched “Distributed Energy Storage” in NRE 615 by giving his students a quiz. He had a keen interest in assessing the case, or, in other words, finding out whether using the case study produced positive student learning outcomes. Although MSC was rapidly developing its own set of assessment tools for its cases, Professor Johnson had a solid idea of the approach he wanted to take, so he had ventured out on his own and was now passing out content-related questions about the case. The students would see these same questions on the final exam in April, and he planned to compare scores between the two tests. Professor Johnson was also looking forward to the annual meeting for the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) that, conveniently, would be held in Ann Arbor in June. He was already preparing his abstract, certain that his results would interest other environmental engineering professors looking to improve their own teaching.

At the conference that summer, a sizable crowd gathered to hear Professor Johnson’s talk about his experience using “Distributed Energy Storage.” Although many of the audience members were passionate about teaching, he was unsure how many were using case studies. He knew that case studies, although they had some research supporting their efficacy (e.g., Anderson et al., 2017; Dochy et al., 2003; Dori et al., 2003), were not universally loved. Many instructors believed that case studies were an inferior method of teaching course-related content, for example. Often, appropriate case studies were unavailable, requiring an instructor to create his or her own case study from the ground up, which consumed precious time. Faculty were also used to lecturing and often not trained in facilitating the kinds of classroom discussions associated with case studies (https://www.hbs.edu/teaching/case-method/Pages/default.aspx). MSC aimed to overcome some of these barriers with its case library and teaching workshops, but changing habits and minds would take time.

Professor Johnson’s assessment results were encouraging: Most students showed improvement from pre- to post-test, including international and first-generation college students. His class comprised students primarily from three different schools: Engineering, Business, and SEAS. Interestingly, the Engineering students showed the largest score gains, followed by the SEAS and Business students (Figure 1). Overall, Professor Johnson told the audience, he had observed great value in having students write a teaching case. He also found that supplementing lectures with cases helped to tie disparate concepts together for the students. 

The audience clapped enthusiastically after Professor Johnson concluded his presentation. A barrage of questions followed, so many that the moderator had to end the discussion to let the next speaker take the podium. Professor Johnson returned to his seat, beaming. He wasn’t sure how many converts to case-based teaching he had made, but he suspected it was at least a few. The case studies had, in the end, been a successful experiment in co-production, and he intended to use the student-produced material in his class for a long time to come.

Figure 1. Average number of questions answered correctly by students on the pre- and post-tests, out of a maximum of five. Error bars show the standard error. Three questions covered material from “Distributed Energy Storage,” and two covered material from an additional case study used in the class, “A Radioactive Decision” (Szczepanik et al., 2017). Dual-degree students were counted in both of their programs. Data are credited to Jeremiah Johnson. At the time of data collection, the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) was known as the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE), though the label SEAS is retained in this figure for simplicity. 

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Mini Case Studies

Mini-Case Studies are designed as short lessons to build students’ understanding of data analytics and illustrate their application in a variety of business contexts. Unlike longer case studies, mini-cases are designed to take 15-30 minutes of class time.

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The Mini-Cases: 5 Companies, 5 Strategies, 5 Transformations

From repositioning an entire organization to rethinking design approaches, supply chains and government collaborations, sustainability-related concerns are prompting many businesses to make major shifts. Here are mini-case glimpses of Nike, Rio Tinto, GE, Better Place and Wal-Mart.

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• Sustainability

Sustainability isn’t a one-size-fits all strategy that a company can implement by following a set of rules. Rather, it springs from challenges each company faces in its own markets. Take Nike Inc., whose brand is synonymous with cutting-edge design. As part of its strategy to reduce the amount of material in its shoes, and thus waste, redesigning the athletic shoe became a core element of its approach to sustainability.

The Leading Question

What changes when a company acts on sustainability?

• Strategies differ widely, according to the unique challenges or opportunities each company confronts.
• First steps always lead to unexpected further options.
• Actions often lead to new sources of competitive advantage.

To be sure, there are common elements in how companies try to capitalize on sustainability — reducing energy consumption, lowering carbon footprints and becoming more efficient consumers of water, less wasteful manufacturers and more thoughtful corporate citizens. But the specific path each company takes depends on what it views as most critical to its business. For a start-up like Better plc, LLC, an electric vehicle provider based in Palo Alto, California, that might mean locating in countries around the world most receptive to the electric car business. For Wal-Mart Stores Inc., sustainability might mean greening the supply chain.

But one thing is certain: Sustainability is less a target than an approach, which is why it is continually being refined. As companies ramp up understanding, they also push the envelope of what can be accomplished. In short, learning more about what they do has led companies to change how they do it.

Though it takes investment and commitment, the rewards are measured in energy cost savings, new product design, customer engagement and employee commitment. Together, all these attributes amount to the one thing any business understands: competitive advantage.

Courtesy of Nike

From Labor-Practice Compliance to Design Offensive

Backstory: Stung by a campaign against its labor practices in the 1990s, Nike embarked on a long process to ultimately reinvent its operations and meet broad sustainability metrics by 2020.

Challenge: Can you move beyond “compliance” and capitalize on sustainability by integrating it into the fabric of a company — from design and manufacturing to the supply chain?

Key moves: Nike began taking a deep look at its operations in the early 1990s, after it faced a firestorm of criticism over labor practices at its Asian suppliers. The early efforts were siphoned to a team focused on compliance and social responsibility.

A turning point came when the team began to ask about the long-term implications of the company’s product design and manufacturing decisions. Where did the product materials come from? Were they toxic? What happened at the end of a product’s life? Looking into manufacturing, they found it took three shoes’ worth of material to produce just two — one shoe, in effect, ended up as waste, at a cost of $700 million a year. As a result, the goal of zero waste got the attention of senior managers. It became one of several long-term goals to reach by 2020 — along with zero toxic materials, closed loop systems and sustainable growth and profitability. Nike also created an in-house index to measure product design against these goals.

The company brought partners into the process, like Dow Chemical, DuPont and BASF, because it knew it could not achieve its goals without working within the supply chain.

Then it began reinventing the design process. If the athletic shoe were streamlined to cut waste and material by reducing the number of components, production efficiencies could offset the cost of more sustainable materials.

Impact: Nike began implementing zero waste and streamlined production around its Considered line of athletic footwear and apparel. That leading-edge line now comprises 15% of its products. The company aims to convert all athletic shoes to its Considered Design standards by 2011, all clothing by 2015, and all equipment like balls, gloves and backpacks by 2020. Under the new design and production methods, these products reduce waste by up to 67%, cut energy use by 37% and slash solvent use by 80% compared with other Nike products.

Courtesy of General Electric

General Electric

An opportunistic push into sustainable business.

Backstory: General Electric Co. decided sustainability was a business opportunity rather than a cost and pushed into the field in 2005 with its ecomagination initiative. But the products and services weren’t only for its customers — they first transformed GE.

Challenge: How do you create a new business in sustainability and move into the major leagues?

Key moves: GE began looking at sustainability as part of a demographic trend, realizing that scarcity would increase with population growth. Energy and water use, waste, carbon emissions — all would decline among the most efficient and sustainable companies. GE saw a profitable business opportunity in helping companies along this sustainable path. So it set up its ecomagination unit to offer environmental solutions.

GE also gambled that carbon would eventually be a cost, following the implementation of previous regulatory regimes such as limiting acid rain. Although the precise way carbon would be regulated was unknown, as it still is, the company had little doubt that regulation would come to pass. Rather than wait, GE joined a climate coalition with nongovernmental organizations to press for a cap-and-trade system in order to build certainty into the future.

Within the company, GE began engaging employees to see where energy savings could be found. That might include turning off the lights when a factory was idle or even installing a switch so that lights could be turned off. Ecomagination sold solutions within GE, whether the project involved installing LED lights on a factory floor, recycling water at a nuclear facility or offering combined heat and power generation units at a plant in Australia. Within GE, managers began to be measured on how much energy savings they had achieved.

Impact: The company so far has saved $100 million from these measures and cut its greenhouse gas intensity — a measure of emissions against output — by 41%, according to the company’s sustainability report. The work inside GE became a proof of concept to external customers grappling with similar issues. Ecomagination targeted C-level executives to build this business, since most problems cut across divisions (improving energy efficiency, for example).

So far GE has invested $4 billion in this effort, much of it in research and development. But it reaped sales of $17 billion in 2008, up 21% from a year earlier, and is striving for $25 billion in sales in 2010.

Courtesy of Rio Tinto

Mining the Social Dimensions of Its Vast Operations

Backstory: Given its business of mining over 5 million tons of rock a day, Rio Tinto has a big footprint. The mines are expensive, take decades to fully develop and are not portable if something goes wrong. To reduce the political and economic risk and thus ensure steady returns, Rio Tinto has sought to win the backing of local communities, governments and the societies in which it operates.

Challenge: How does a company obtain a “social license” to operate, and nurture the local labor force that it needs?

Key moves: About a decade ago, Rio Tinto came up with the concept of working within communities on outreach and social and economic development. At the time, the company was developing a mine in Madagascar that was a source of contention with NGOs, which were worried about threats to biodiversity and the local community. Ninety percent of the island had already been cleared by farming, grazing and charcoal production; the mine was situated in one of the island’s last pristine regions. The challenge was to create an operation “respectful to the environment, respectful of our employees, that is seen to be sustainable,” said CEO Tom Albanese.

A plan was developed to protect the environment and create economic opportunities in the communities surrounding the project, setting up standards and goals for the company to meet. These in turn aligned with broader company policies on environmental stewardship, social well-being, governance and economic prosperity.

Putting this strategy to work, Rio Tinto created a long list of measures, including:

• Policies to protect biodiversity and water quality around mine locations
• Employment for aboriginal peoples living near its mines
• Training programs to shift employees from manual labor to skilled positions
• Plans for the day when mining would be done, seeking to prevent “ghost towns”
• Goals for greenhouse gas emissions and energy use

Impact: Through these coordinated initiatives, Rio Tinto has obtained what it calls a “social license to operate.” The company felt an urgency because it recognized a global brand risk if it operated without such a license. Rio Tinto also helped form the International Council on Mining & Metals, which encourages sustainable practices across the mining sector.

Courtesy of Better Placec

Better Place

Charging ahead in favorable regulatory climates.

Backstory: Better Place saw a future in electric cars and a demand for ways to recharge them. But how soon will electric charging stations make sense?

Challenge: What’s the fastest way to bring the electric “filling station” — a technology of the future — to market?

Key moves: Shai Agassi founded Better Place in 2007 on a straightforward rationale: Oil is finite, petroleum prices will inevitably rise and global warming has created the impetus to reduce carbon emissions. Electric cars will be part of the emissions-reduction answer, as long as they have refilling stations.

Still, there was a big gap between that knowledge and the kind of favorable policies needed to create a critical mass of electric cars, at least in most markets.

So Better Place decided to analyze which geographic areas had already made political and cultural strides toward favoring electric vehicles — in essence, “outsourcing” its work on regulatory policy change to communities in which it was already underway.

Among Better Place’s criteria for identifying hospitable locations for operation were that the public had to be receptive to electric cars, therefore creating an underlying market, and the government had to be creating a political climate to bring electric transportation to life. At the top of its list of nations was Israel, which wants all new cars to be electric by 2020. Urban centers in Israel are also less than 150 kilometers apart (about 90 miles), and 90% of car owners drive less than 70 kilometers per day, perfect for a short-haul electric vehicle. Add on gasoline taxes and a burgeoning wind industry, and Israel appeared the perfect habitat to nurture electric vehicles — and thus electric refilling stations.

Coming in a close second was Denmark, which has a strong green consumer movement and has committed to cutting carbon emissions by 21% by 2012. Better Place also partnered with the city of Copenhagen for the rapid deployment of electric recharging stations. In addition to these two leading-edge countries, the company is working in Australia, the United States (Los Angeles) and Japan to roll out recharging stations.

Impact: By identifying favorable locations, Better Place is accruing a competitive advantage in removing a major barrier to the widespread adoption of electric cars. It has also positioned itself to be the first to reap the benefits when battery pack recharging facilities and infrastructure are more universally accepted, by having proof of concept in hand in leading-edge nations.

Image courtesy of Wal-Mart

Repurposing the Supply Chain

Backstory: Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world, with over 7,800 stores, has been working steadily to improve sustainability. From installing green roofs to rolling out a more efficient trucking fleet, the company has moved forward internally, but now it is bringing its suppliers along.

Challenge: How do you green the supply chain?

Key moves: Wal-Mart has been pushing sustainability since adopting the strategy in 2005, establishing goals of being 100% fueled by renewable energy, producing zero waste and selling products that will sustain the environment.

So how does that happen? In one famous example, the company began working with Unilever plc in 2005 to sell concentrated laundry detergent in a 32-ounce container (equivalent to 100 ounces under a previous formulation). Consumers got a more powerful detergent in a smaller package. Three years after rollout, the new container had saved 80 million pounds of plastic resin, 430 million gallons of water and 125 million pounds of cardboard, according to a company fact sheet. More importantly, it became an industry standard, prompting other packaged goods companies to switch to concentrated detergent as well.

Wal-Mart’s zero waste initiative is also moving forward. The company, which is aiming to eliminate all its landfill waste by 2025, was able to reduce waste by 57% between 2008 and 2009. It did so by improving inventory management, increasing donations and ramping up recycling (including 25 billion pounds of cardboard).

Now it is striving to push these criteria down into the supply chain on a three-stage path. First, it wants suppliers to rate their products on sustainability criteria. Second, it wants to gather data on product life cycles. Third, it is creating a sustainability index that will increase transparency for the consumer.

The first initiative, rolled out earlier this year, involves a questionnaire sent to more than 100,000 suppliers. It polls them on four categories: their energy and greenhouse gas emissions, waste and quality initiatives, “responsibly sourced” materials and ethical production.

Products are also being measured through their life cycles. Collaborating with academics, retailers, NGOs, suppliers and government in a consortium, Wal-Mart’s goal is to build a global database of product information. As environmental business consultant Joel Makower wrote on his blog, http://makower.typepad.com, “the consortium’s mandate is to focus on how to evaluate products, which Wal-Mart hopes will become the basis for standards, ratings, or other product-level evaluations that it would use in its stores.”

That data will be used to develop an index consumers can use to evaluate products, though it’s still unclear how that information will be measured and presented. Nor is there a timeline for rolling out such an index.

Impact: Wal-Mart wants its sustainability index to be open to all, becoming a standard to measure and communicate the green credentials of a product and thus becoming “a tool for sustainable consumption.” In the process, the exercise of measurement itself may reap rewards in more efficient production, less waste and lower emissions — all of which are also cost-saving measures.

About the Author

Samuel Fromartz writes frequently on sustainability topics and is the author of Organic, Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew (Harcourt, 2006).

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15+ Professional Case Study Examples [Design Tips + Templates]

By Alice Corner , Jan 12, 2023

Have you ever bought something — within the last 10 years or so — without reading its reviews or without a recommendation or prior experience of using it?

If the answer is no — or at least, rarely — you get my point.

Positive reviews matter for selling to regular customers, and for B2B or SaaS businesses, detailed case studies are important too.

Wondering how to craft a compelling case study ? No worries—I’ve got you covered with 15 marketing case study templates , helpful tips, and examples to ensure your case study converts effectively.

Click to jump ahead:

• What is a Case Study?

Business Case Study Examples

Simple case study examples.

• Marketing Case Study Examples

Sales Case Study Examples

• Case Study FAQs

What is a case study?

A case study is an in-depth, detailed analysis of a specific real-world situation. For example, a case study can be about an individual, group, event, organization, or phenomenon. The purpose of a case study is to understand its complexities and gain insights into a particular instance or situation.

In the context of a business, however, case studies take customer success stories and explore how they use your product to help them achieve their business goals.

As well as being valuable marketing tools , case studies are a good way to evaluate your product as it allows you to objectively examine how others are using it.

It’s also a good way to interview your customers about why they work with you.

Related: What is a Case Study? [+6 Types of Case Studies]

Marketing Case Study Template

A marketing case study showcases how your product or services helped potential clients achieve their business goals. You can also create case studies of internal, successful marketing projects. A marketing case study typically includes:

• Company background and history
• The challenge
• How you helped
• Specific actions taken
• Visuals or Data
• Client testimonials

Here’s an example of a marketing case study template:

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, business case studies can be a powerful resource to help with your sales, marketing, and even internal departmental awareness.

Business and business management case studies should encompass strategic insights alongside anecdotal and qualitative findings, like in the business case study examples below.

Conduct a B2B case study by researching the company holistically

When it comes to writing a case study, make sure you approach the company holistically and analyze everything from their social media to their sales.

Think about every avenue your product or service has been of use to your case study company, and ask them about the impact this has had on their wider company goals.

In business case study examples like the one above, we can see that the company has been thought about holistically simply by the use of icons.

By combining social media icons with icons that show in-person communication we know that this is a well-researched and thorough case study.

This case study report example could also be used within an annual or end-of-year report.

Highlight the key takeaway from your marketing case study

To create a compelling case study, identify the key takeaways from your research. Use catchy language to sum up this information in a sentence, and present this sentence at the top of your page.

This is “at a glance” information and it allows people to gain a top-level understanding of the content immediately. 

You can use a large, bold, contrasting font to help this information stand out from the page and provide interest.

Learn  how to choose fonts  effectively with our Venngage guide and once you’ve done that.

Upload your fonts and  brand colors  to Venngage using the  My Brand Kit  tool and see them automatically applied to your designs.

The heading is the ideal place to put the most impactful information, as this is the first thing that people will read.

In this example, the stat of “Increase[d] lead quality by 90%” is used as the header. It makes customers want to read more to find out how exactly lead quality was increased by such a massive amount.

If you’re conducting an in-person interview, you could highlight a direct quote or insight provided by your interview subject.

Pick out a catchy sentence or phrase, or the key piece of information your interview subject provided and use that as a way to draw a potential customer in.

Use charts to visualize data in your business case studies

Charts are an excellent way to visualize data and to bring statistics and information to life. Charts make information easier to understand and to illustrate trends or patterns.

Making charts is even easier with Venngage.

In this consulting case study example, we can see that a chart has been used to demonstrate the difference in lead value within the Lead Elves case study.

Adding a chart here helps break up the information and add visual value to the case study. 

Using charts in your case study can also be useful if you’re creating a project management case study.

You could use a Gantt chart or a project timeline to show how you have managed the project successfully.

Use direct quotes to build trust in your marketing case study

To add an extra layer of authenticity you can include a direct quote from your customer within your case study.

According to research from Nielsen , 92% of people will trust a recommendation from a peer and 70% trust recommendations even if they’re from somebody they don’t know.

So if you have a customer or client who can’t stop singing your praises, make sure you get a direct quote from them and include it in your case study.

You can either lift part of the conversation or interview, or you can specifically request a quote. Make sure to ask for permission before using the quote.

This design uses a bright contrasting speech bubble to show that it includes a direct quote, and helps the quote stand out from the rest of the text.

This will help draw the customer’s attention directly to the quote, in turn influencing them to use your product or service.

Less is often more, and this is especially true when it comes to creating designs. Whilst you want to create a professional-looking, well-written and design case study – there’s no need to overcomplicate things.

These simple case study examples show that smart clean designs and informative content can be an effective way to showcase your successes.

Use colors and fonts to create a professional-looking case study

Business case studies shouldn’t be boring. In fact, they should be beautifully and professionally designed.

This means the normal rules of design apply. Use fonts, colors, and icons to create an interesting and visually appealing case study.

In this case study example, we can see how multiple fonts have been used to help differentiate between the headers and content, as well as complementary colors and eye-catching icons.

Marketing case study examples

Marketing case studies are incredibly useful for showing your marketing successes. Every successful marketing campaign relies on influencing a consumer’s behavior, and a great case study can be a great way to spotlight your biggest wins.

In the marketing case study examples below, a variety of designs and techniques to create impactful and effective case studies.

Show off impressive results with a bold marketing case study

Case studies are meant to show off your successes, so make sure you feature your positive results prominently. Using bold and bright colors as well as contrasting shapes, large bold fonts, and simple icons is a great way to highlight your wins.

In well-written case study examples like the one below, the big wins are highlighted on the second page with a bright orange color and are highlighted in circles.

Making the important data stand out is especially important when attracting a prospective customer with marketing case studies.

Use a simple but clear layout in your case study

Using a simple layout in your case study can be incredibly effective, like in the example of a case study below.

Keeping a clean white background, and using slim lines to help separate the sections is an easy way to format your case study.

Making the information clear helps draw attention to the important results, and it helps improve the  accessibility of the design .

Business case study examples like this would sit nicely within a larger report, with a consistent layout throughout.

Use visuals and icons to create an engaging and branded business case study

Nobody wants to read pages and pages of text — and that’s why Venngage wants to help you communicate your ideas visually.

Using icons, graphics, photos, or patterns helps create a much more engaging design. 

With this Blue Cap case study icons, colors, and impactful pattern designs have been used to create an engaging design that catches your eye.

Use a monochromatic color palette to create a professional and clean case study

Let your research shine by using a monochromatic and minimalistic color palette.

By sticking to one color, and leaving lots of blank space you can ensure your design doesn’t distract a potential customer from your case study content.

In this case study on Polygon Media, the design is simple and professional, and the layout allows the prospective customer to follow the flow of information.

The gradient effect on the left-hand column helps break up the white background and adds an interesting visual effect.

Did you know you can generate an accessible color palette with Venngage? Try our free accessible color palette generator today and create a case study that delivers and looks pleasant to the eye:

Add long term goals in your case study

When creating a case study it’s a great idea to look at both the short term and the long term goals of the company to gain the best understanding possible of the insights they provide.

Short-term goals will be what the company or person hopes to achieve in the next few months, and long-term goals are what the company hopes to achieve in the next few years.

Check out this modern pattern design example of a case study below:

In this case study example, the short and long-term goals are clearly distinguished by light blue boxes and placed side by side so that they are easy to compare.

Use a strong introductory paragraph to outline the overall strategy and goals before outlining the specific short-term and long-term goals to help with clarity.

This strategy can also be handy when creating a consulting case study.

Use data to make concrete points about your sales and successes

When conducting any sort of research stats, facts, and figures are like gold dust (aka, really valuable).

Being able to quantify your findings is important to help understand the information fully. Saying sales increased 10% is much more effective than saying sales increased.

While sales dashboards generally tend it make it all about the numbers and charts, in sales case study examples, like this one, the key data and findings can be presented with icons. This contributes to the potential customer’s better understanding of the report.

They can clearly comprehend the information and it shows that the case study has been well researched.

Use emotive, persuasive, or action based language in your marketing case study

Create a compelling case study by using emotive, persuasive and action-based language when customizing your case study template.

In this well-written case study example, we can see that phrases such as “Results that Speak Volumes” and “Drive Sales” have been used.

Using persuasive language like you would in a blog post. It helps inspire potential customers to take action now.

Keep your potential customers in mind when creating a customer case study for marketing

82% of marketers use case studies in their marketing  because it’s such an effective tool to help quickly gain customers’ trust and to showcase the potential of your product.

Why are case studies such an important tool in content marketing?

By writing a case study you’re telling potential customers that they can trust you because you’re showing them that other people do.

Not only that, but if you have a SaaS product, business case studies are a great way to show how other people are effectively using your product in their company.

In this case study, Network is demonstrating how their product has been used by Vortex Co. with great success; instantly showing other potential customers that their tool works and is worth using.

Related: 10+ Case Study Infographic Templates That Convert

Case studies are particularly effective as a sales technique.

A sales case study is like an extended customer testimonial, not only sharing opinions of your product – but showcasing the results you helped your customer achieve.

Make impactful statistics pop in your sales case study

Writing a case study doesn’t mean using text as the only medium for sharing results.

You should use icons to highlight areas of your research that are particularly interesting or relevant, like in this example of a case study:

Icons are a great way to help summarize information quickly and can act as visual cues to help draw the customer’s attention to certain areas of the page.

In some of the business case study examples above, icons are used to represent the impressive areas of growth and are presented in a way that grabs your attention.

Use high contrast shapes and colors to draw attention to key information in your sales case study

Help the key information stand out within your case study by using high contrast shapes and colors.

Use a complementary or contrasting color, or use a shape such as a rectangle or a circle for maximum impact.

This design has used dark blue rectangles to help separate the information and make it easier to read.

Coupled with icons and strong statistics, this information stands out on the page and is easily digestible and retainable for a potential customer.

Case Study Examples Summary

Once you have created your case study, it’s best practice to update your examples on a regular basis to include up-to-date statistics, data, and information.

You should update your business case study examples often if you are sharing them on your website .

It’s also important that your case study sits within your brand guidelines – find out how Venngage’s My Brand Kit tool can help you create consistently branded case study templates.

Case studies are important marketing tools – but they shouldn’t be the only tool in your toolbox. Content marketing is also a valuable way to earn consumer trust.

Case Study FAQ

Why should you write a case study.

Case studies are an effective marketing technique to engage potential customers and help build trust.

By producing case studies featuring your current clients or customers, you are showcasing how your tool or product can be used. You’re also showing that other people endorse your product.

In addition to being a good way to gather positive testimonials from existing customers , business case studies are good educational resources and can be shared amongst your company or team, and used as a reference for future projects.

How should you write a case study?

To create a great case study, you should think strategically. The first step, before starting your case study research, is to think about what you aim to learn or what you aim to prove.

You might be aiming to learn how a company makes sales or develops a new product. If this is the case, base your questions around this.

You can learn more about writing a case study  from our extensive guide.

Related: How to Present a Case Study like a Pro (With Examples)

Some good questions you could ask would be:

• Why do you use our tool or service?
• How often do you use our tool or service?
• What does the process of using our product look like to you?
• If our product didn’t exist, what would you be doing instead?
• What is the number one benefit you’ve found from using our tool?

You might also enjoy:

• 12 Essential Consulting Templates For Marketing, Planning and Branding
• Best Marketing Strategies for Consultants and Freelancers in 2019 [Study + Infographic]

The Ethical Leadership Case Study Collection

The Ted Rogers Leadership Centre’s Case Collection, developed in collaboration with experienced teaching faculty, seasoned executives, and alumni, provides instructors with real-life decision-making scenarios to help hone students’ critical-thinking skills and their understanding of what good leaders do. They will be able to leverage the theories, models, and processes being advanced. Students come to understand that workplace dilemmas are rarely black and white, but require them to think through and address competing claims and circumstances. Crucially, they also appreciate how they can, as new leaders and middle managers, improve decisions by creating realistic action plans based on sound stakeholder analysis and communication principles. These case studies are offered free of charge to all instructors.

Cases come in both long and short forms. The long cases provide instructors with tools for delving deeply into subjects related to a variety of decision making and organizational development issues. The short cases, or “minis,” are quick in-class exercises in leadership.

For both the long cases and the minis, teaching-method notes are provided, which include not only recommended in-class facilitation methods, but also grading rubrics, references, and student feedback.

Testimonials

“I have been invited to judge the Leadership Centre’s Annual Ethical Leadership National Case Competition since its inception. Each year, competitors are given a Centre’s case to analyze and present. These cases are like nothing else. They bring the student into the heart of the situation. To excel, students must not only be able to cogently argue the options, but also demonstrate how to implement a decision based on a clear-eyed stakeholder analysis and an understanding of the dynamics of change.” Anne Fawcett, Special Advisor, Caldwell Partners

“I have worked with the Ted Rogers Leadership Centre to both develop and pilot test case materials. Feedback consistently shows that the Centre’s cases resonate with students, providing them with valuable learning experiences.” Chris Gibbs, BComm, MBA, PhD, Associate Professor

"As a judge in the recent national Ted Rogers Ethical Leadership Case Competition, I was very impressed with the quality of the case study prepared by the Leadership Centre. It was brief but well-composed. It exposed the students to ethical quandaries, of the sort they may well face in their business careers. It not only tested their reasoning, but it challenged them to develop a plan of action when faced with incomplete information and imminent deadlines.” Lorne Salzman, Lawyer

We value your feedback

Please inform us of your experience by contacting Dr. Gail Cook Johnson, our mentor-in-residence, at [email protected] .

Writing A Case Study

Case Study Format

Simple Case Study Format for Students to Follow

People also read

A Complete Case Study Writing Guide With Examples

Understand the Types of Case Study Here

Brilliant Case Study Examples and Templates For Your Help

Having trouble making your case studies stand out? Finding it hard to organise your story? You're not alone! 

Many students struggle with case study writing !

Imagine spending a lot of time on your case studies, but they don't grab your reader's interest.  But don't worry! 

In this guide, we will go step by step through case study formatting, along with practical tips to make your research stand out from the rest! By following our step-by-step approach, you can understand how to write a case study assignment well. 

So, let’s get started!

Paper Due? Why Suffer? That's our Job!

• 1. How to Format a Case Study 
• 2. Case Study Format Template
• 3. Case Study Format Examples

How to Format a Case Study 

When it comes to crafting a compelling case study, understanding how to write case study format is key to presenting your research effectively. 

If you are wondering how to make case study format, here are the elements to include in your case study paper format.

Create an interesting title for your work. Keep it simple and short.

Here you need to briefly elaborate on the accomplishment. What you have done and how you got there.

Write about the entire story in one paragraph followed by 2-3 bullet points to display the case study contents.

An introduction about what the case study is all about.

Describe the challenges of the customer prior to using your product or service. Explain the long-term goals or objectives that the customer set out to achieve.

In this 2-3 paragraph section describe how your product or service specifically benefited and helped achieve the goals. You can also use percentages to show your contributions.

In the relevant section of your case study, add 1-2 quotes and visuals to support the story you are telling. You can also use icons to summarise information and highlight areas of your research.

Figure out what a study means and look at where else we can learn more are really important for making academic work have a bigger impact.

Call to action is optional but adding one can encourage your readers to take some action after learning your work.

Case Study Formatting Guidelines 

Effective case study formatting is essential to convey your insights clearly and engage your audience. Follow these guidelines to ensure your case study is well-organised and impactful:

• Opt for easily readable fonts like Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman.
• Maintain a consistent font size, typically 12 points for the body text.
• Set line spacing to double-spaced for the entire document.
• Use bullet points for concise and scannable information presentation.
• Employ numbered lists for sequences of steps or chronological order of events.
• Bold or italicize key phrases to draw attention to critical points; use underline sparingly.
• Choose left, center, or justified alignment based on your overall design.
• Make your headings clear and organized so readers know what's important.

If you need further assistance, check our case study format for students pdf here:

How To Write A Case Study Pdf

Case Study Format Template

Case studies can be used for different purposes. In social sciences, it can help you understand the problems of other people.

In businesses, it can help you earn the trust of potential customers. But do you even know what are the different  types of case study  and how to write one?

Refer to this case study format pdf before you start writing your own document. This student case study format sample contains all the information you might need when gathering information for your case study.

Case Study Format Examples

Case study examples are the best way to learn the basic techniques for writing a great case study on your own. 

Explore these short case study sample pdfs to gain insights into presenting your research cohesively:

For your help, we have also compiled real-life  case study examples  along with a format that you can refer to while writing your own.

APA Case Study Format

If you are asked to write a case study in APA format, keep in mind there are some specific requirements that you need to adhere to.

Here is a case study APA format example for you to learn how to format a case study.

Business Case Study Format

Business case studies can help businesses sell products or services to prospects. Here is a perfect example for you to learn how to write an impressive business case study.

Case Study Format For MBA Students

Case Study Format Nursing

Writing a great nursing case study can be tough. That’s why we have provided a case study format for nursing students to use as a guide in creating their work. 

Refer to this family case study format example if you are writing a nursing case study for the first time.

Nursing Case Study Format

Harvard Business School Case Study Format

Looking for HBS style business case study? Here is one for you to read and take hints and ideas to prepare this type of case study like a professional.

Tough Essay Due? Hire Tough Writers!

Medical Case Study Format

Writing medical case studies is helpful in medical practices as it gives a lot of information about different diseases. Look at this example and learn how to write a detailed medical case study.

Case Study Format Psychology 

To study how the human mind works, you need a clear and organised method. Follow this easy psychology case study format to explore the details of psychological research:

Case Study Format Psychology

To sum it up, getting good at writing case studies means combining a clear structure, good storytelling, and smart presentation. If you follow the tips I've shared in this blog, you're on your way to making interesting stories that grab people's attention.

If your case study is causing problems, consider getting professional help. 

Our custom paper writing service aims to help you secure top grades by meeting the criteria set by professors. 

Our skilled writers are here to assist with any type of assignment you may have. Explore our case study writing service to relieve your stress and excel academically.

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Dr. Barbara is a highly experienced writer and author who holds a Ph.D. degree in public health from an Ivy League school. She has worked in the medical field for many years, conducting extensive research on various health topics. Her writing has been featured in several top-tier publications.

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Keep reading

Data Analytics Case Study Guide 2024

by Sam McKay, CFA | Data Analytics

Data analytics case studies reveal how businesses harness data for informed decisions and growth.

For aspiring data professionals, mastering the case study process will enhance your skills and increase your career prospects.

So, how do you approach a case study?

Use these steps to process a data analytics case study:

Understand the Problem: Grasp the core problem or question addressed in the case study.

Collect Relevant Data: Gather data from diverse sources, ensuring accuracy and completeness.

Apply Analytical Techniques: Use appropriate methods aligned with the problem statement.

Visualize Insights: Utilize visual aids to showcase patterns and key findings.

Derive Actionable Insights: Focus on deriving meaningful actions from the analysis.

This article will give you detailed steps to navigate a case study effectively and understand how it works in real-world situations.

By the end of the article, you will be better equipped to approach a data analytics case study, strengthening your analytical prowess and practical application skills.

Let’s dive in!

Table of Contents

What is a Data Analytics Case Study?

A data analytics case study is a real or hypothetical scenario where analytics techniques are applied to solve a specific problem or explore a particular question.

It’s a practical approach that uses data analytics methods, assisting in deciphering data for meaningful insights. This structured method helps individuals or organizations make sense of data effectively.

Additionally, it’s a way to learn by doing, where there’s no single right or wrong answer in how you analyze the data.

So, what are the components of a case study?

Key Components of a Data Analytics Case Study

A data analytics case study comprises essential elements that structure the analytical journey:

Problem Context: A case study begins with a defined problem or question. It provides the context for the data analysis , setting the stage for exploration and investigation.

Data Collection and Sources: It involves gathering relevant data from various sources , ensuring data accuracy, completeness, and relevance to the problem at hand.

Analysis Techniques: Case studies employ different analytical methods, such as statistical analysis, machine learning algorithms, or visualization tools, to derive meaningful conclusions from the collected data.

Insights and Recommendations: The ultimate goal is to extract actionable insights from the analyzed data, offering recommendations or solutions that address the initial problem or question.

Now that you have a better understanding of what a data analytics case study is, let’s talk about why we need and use them.

Why Case Studies are Integral to Data Analytics

Case studies serve as invaluable tools in the realm of data analytics, offering multifaceted benefits that bolster an analyst’s proficiency and impact:

Real-Life Insights and Skill Enhancement: Examining case studies provides practical, real-life examples that expand knowledge and refine skills. These examples offer insights into diverse scenarios, aiding in a data analyst’s growth and expertise development.

Validation and Refinement of Analyses: Case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of data-driven decisions across industries, providing validation for analytical approaches. They showcase how organizations benefit from data analytics. Also, this helps in refining one’s own methodologies

Showcasing Data Impact on Business Outcomes: These studies show how data analytics directly affects business results, like increasing revenue, reducing costs, or delivering other measurable advantages. Understanding these impacts helps articulate the value of data analytics to stakeholders and decision-makers.

Learning from Successes and Failures: By exploring a case study, analysts glean insights from others’ successes and failures, acquiring new strategies and best practices. This learning experience facilitates professional growth and the adoption of innovative approaches within their own data analytics work.

Including case studies in a data analyst’s toolkit helps gain more knowledge, improve skills, and understand how data analytics affects different industries.

Using these real-life examples boosts confidence and success, guiding analysts to make better and more impactful decisions in their organizations.

But not all case studies are the same.

Let’s talk about the different types.

Types of Data Analytics Case Studies

Data analytics encompasses various approaches tailored to different analytical goals:

Exploratory Case Study: These involve delving into new datasets to uncover hidden patterns and relationships, often without a predefined hypothesis. They aim to gain insights and generate hypotheses for further investigation.

Predictive Case Study: These utilize historical data to forecast future trends, behaviors, or outcomes. By applying predictive models, they help anticipate potential scenarios or developments.

Diagnostic Case Study: This type focuses on understanding the root causes or reasons behind specific events or trends observed in the data. It digs deep into the data to provide explanations for occurrences.

Prescriptive Case Study: This case study goes beyond analytics; it provides actionable recommendations or strategies derived from the analyzed data. They guide decision-making processes by suggesting optimal courses of action based on insights gained.

Each type has a specific role in using data to find important insights, helping in decision-making, and solving problems in various situations.

Regardless of the type of case study you encounter, here are some steps to help you process them.

Roadmap to Handling a Data Analysis Case Study

Embarking on a data analytics case study requires a systematic approach, step-by-step, to derive valuable insights effectively.

Here are the steps to help you through the process:

Step 1: Understanding the Case Study Context: Immerse yourself in the intricacies of the case study. Delve into the industry context, understanding its nuances, challenges, and opportunities.

Identify the central problem or question the study aims to address. Clarify the objectives and expected outcomes, ensuring a clear understanding before diving into data analytics.

Step 2: Data Collection and Validation: Gather data from diverse sources relevant to the case study. Prioritize accuracy, completeness, and reliability during data collection. Conduct thorough validation processes to rectify inconsistencies, ensuring high-quality and trustworthy data for subsequent analysis.

Step 3: Problem Definition and Scope: Define the problem statement precisely. Articulate the objectives and limitations that shape the scope of your analysis. Identify influential variables and constraints, providing a focused framework to guide your exploration.

Step 4: Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA): Leverage exploratory techniques to gain initial insights. Visualize data distributions, patterns, and correlations, fostering a deeper understanding of the dataset. These explorations serve as a foundation for more nuanced analysis.

Step 5: Data Preprocessing and Transformation: Cleanse and preprocess the data to eliminate noise, handle missing values, and ensure consistency. Transform data formats or scales as required, preparing the dataset for further analysis.

Step 6: Data Modeling and Method Selection: Select analytical models aligning with the case study’s problem, employing statistical techniques, machine learning algorithms, or tailored predictive models.

In this phase, it’s important to develop data modeling skills. This helps create visuals of complex systems using organized data, which helps solve business problems more effectively.

Understand key data modeling concepts, utilize essential tools like SQL for database interaction, and practice building models from real-world scenarios.

Furthermore, strengthen data cleaning skills for accurate datasets, and stay updated with industry trends to ensure relevance.

Step 7: Model Evaluation and Refinement: Evaluate the performance of applied models rigorously. Iterate and refine models to enhance accuracy and reliability, ensuring alignment with the objectives and expected outcomes.

Step 8: Deriving Insights and Recommendations: Extract actionable insights from the analyzed data. Develop well-structured recommendations or solutions based on the insights uncovered, addressing the core problem or question effectively.

Step 9: Communicating Results Effectively: Present findings, insights, and recommendations clearly and concisely. Utilize visualizations and storytelling techniques to convey complex information compellingly, ensuring comprehension by stakeholders.

Step 10: Reflection and Iteration: Reflect on the entire analysis process and outcomes. Identify potential improvements and lessons learned. Embrace an iterative approach, refining methodologies for continuous enhancement and future analyses.

This step-by-step roadmap provides a structured framework for thorough and effective handling of a data analytics case study.

Now, after handling data analytics comes a crucial step; presenting the case study.

Presenting Your Data Analytics Case Study

Presenting a data analytics case study is a vital part of the process. When presenting your case study, clarity and organization are paramount.

To achieve this, follow these key steps:

Structuring Your Case Study: Start by outlining relevant and accurate main points. Ensure these points align with the problem addressed and the methodologies used in your analysis.

Crafting a Narrative with Data: Start with a brief overview of the issue, then explain your method and steps, covering data collection, cleaning, stats, and advanced modeling.

Visual Representation for Clarity: Utilize various visual aids—tables, graphs, and charts—to illustrate patterns, trends, and insights. Ensure these visuals are easy to comprehend and seamlessly support your narrative.

Highlighting Key Information: Use bullet points to emphasize essential information, maintaining clarity and allowing the audience to grasp key takeaways effortlessly. Bold key terms or phrases to draw attention and reinforce important points.

Addressing Audience Queries: Anticipate and be ready to answer audience questions regarding methods, assumptions, and results. Demonstrating a profound understanding of your analysis instills confidence in your work.

Integrity and Confidence in Delivery: Maintain a neutral tone and avoid exaggerated claims about findings. Present your case study with integrity, clarity, and confidence to ensure the audience appreciates and comprehends the significance of your work.

By organizing your presentation well, telling a clear story through your analysis, and using visuals wisely, you can effectively share your data analytics case study.

This method helps people understand better, stay engaged, and draw valuable conclusions from your work.

We hope by now, you are feeling very confident processing a case study. But with any process, there are challenges you may encounter.

Key Challenges in Data Analytics Case Studies

A data analytics case study can present various hurdles that necessitate strategic approaches for successful navigation:

Challenge 1: Data Quality and Consistency

Challenge: Inconsistent or poor-quality data can impede analysis, leading to erroneous insights and flawed conclusions.

Solution: Implement rigorous data validation processes, ensuring accuracy, completeness, and reliability. Employ data cleansing techniques to rectify inconsistencies and enhance overall data quality.

Challenge 2: Complexity and Scale of Data

Challenge: Managing vast volumes of data with diverse formats and complexities poses analytical challenges.

Solution: Utilize scalable data processing frameworks and tools capable of handling diverse data types. Implement efficient data storage and retrieval systems to manage large-scale datasets effectively.

Challenge 3: Interpretation and Contextual Understanding

Challenge: Interpreting data without contextual understanding or domain expertise can lead to misinterpretations.

Solution: Collaborate with domain experts to contextualize data and derive relevant insights. Invest in understanding the nuances of the industry or domain under analysis to ensure accurate interpretations.

Challenge 4: Privacy and Ethical Concerns

Challenge: Balancing data access for analysis while respecting privacy and ethical boundaries poses a challenge.

Solution: Implement robust data governance frameworks that prioritize data privacy and ethical considerations. Ensure compliance with regulatory standards and ethical guidelines throughout the analysis process.

Challenge 5: Resource Limitations and Time Constraints

Challenge: Limited resources and time constraints hinder comprehensive analysis and exhaustive data exploration.

Solution: Prioritize key objectives and allocate resources efficiently. Employ agile methodologies to iteratively analyze and derive insights, focusing on the most impactful aspects within the given timeframe.

Recognizing these challenges is key; it helps data analysts adopt proactive strategies to mitigate obstacles. This enhances the effectiveness and reliability of insights derived from a data analytics case study.

Now, let’s talk about the best software tools you should use when working with case studies.

Top 5 Software Tools for Case Studies

In the realm of case studies within data analytics, leveraging the right software tools is essential.

Here are some top-notch options:

Tableau : Renowned for its data visualization prowess, Tableau transforms raw data into interactive, visually compelling representations, ideal for presenting insights within a case study.

Python and R Libraries: These flexible programming languages provide many tools for handling data, doing statistics, and working with machine learning, meeting various needs in case studies.

Microsoft Excel : A staple tool for data analytics, Excel provides a user-friendly interface for basic analytics, making it useful for initial data exploration in a case study.

SQL Databases : Structured Query Language (SQL) databases assist in managing and querying large datasets, essential for organizing case study data effectively.

Statistical Software (e.g., SPSS , SAS ): Specialized statistical software enables in-depth statistical analysis, aiding in deriving precise insights from case study data.

Choosing the best mix of these tools, tailored to each case study’s needs, greatly boosts analytical abilities and results in data analytics.

Final Thoughts

Case studies in data analytics are helpful guides. They give real-world insights, improve skills, and show how data-driven decisions work.

Using case studies helps analysts learn, be creative, and make essential decisions confidently in their data work.

Check out our latest clip below to further your learning!

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the key steps to analyzing a data analytics case study.

When analyzing a case study, you should follow these steps:

Clarify the problem : Ensure you thoroughly understand the problem statement and the scope of the analysis.

Make assumptions : Define your assumptions to establish a feasible framework for analyzing the case.

Gather context : Acquire relevant information and context to support your analysis.

Analyze the data : Perform calculations, create visualizations, and conduct statistical analysis on the data.

Provide insights : Draw conclusions and develop actionable insights based on your analysis.

How can you effectively interpret results during a data scientist case study job interview?

During your next data science interview, interpret case study results succinctly and clearly. Utilize visual aids and numerical data to bolster your explanations, ensuring comprehension.

Frame the results in an audience-friendly manner, emphasizing relevance. Concentrate on deriving insights and actionable steps from the outcomes.

How do you showcase your data analyst skills in a project?

To demonstrate your skills effectively, consider these essential steps. Begin by selecting a problem that allows you to exhibit your capacity to handle real-world challenges through analysis.

Methodically document each phase, encompassing data cleaning, visualization, statistical analysis, and the interpretation of findings.

Utilize descriptive analysis techniques and effectively communicate your insights using clear visual aids and straightforward language. Ensure your project code is well-structured, with detailed comments and documentation, showcasing your proficiency in handling data in an organized manner.

Lastly, emphasize your expertise in SQL queries, programming languages, and various analytics tools throughout the project. These steps collectively highlight your competence and proficiency as a skilled data analyst, demonstrating your capabilities within the project.

Can you provide an example of a successful data analytics project using key metrics?

A prime illustration is utilizing analytics in healthcare to forecast hospital readmissions. Analysts leverage electronic health records, patient demographics, and clinical data to identify high-risk individuals.

Implementing preventive measures based on these key metrics helps curtail readmission rates, enhancing patient outcomes and cutting healthcare expenses.

This demonstrates how data analytics, driven by metrics, effectively tackles real-world challenges, yielding impactful solutions.

Why would a company invest in data analytics?

Companies invest in data analytics to gain valuable insights, enabling informed decision-making and strategic planning. This investment helps optimize operations, understand customer behavior, and stay competitive in their industry.

Ultimately, leveraging data analytics empowers companies to make smarter, data-driven choices, leading to enhanced efficiency, innovation, and growth.

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Can machines compete with humans in transcribing audio? A case study using sermons from U.S. religious services

A 2019 Pew Research Center study and follow-up study in 2020 involved the complicated task of transcribing more than 60,000 audio and video files of sermons delivered during religious services at churches around the United States. The primary goal of this research was to evaluate relatively broad topics discussed in the sermons to determine if there were any notable patterns or denominational differences in their length and subject matter.

The huge number of audio and video files meant that it would have been too time-consuming and expensive to ask humans to transcribe all the sermons. Instead, we used Amazon Transcribe , a speech recognition service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). We hoped to identify the key themes in the sermons we collected, even if the machine transcriptions were not perfect or at times lacked elements like punctuation that would often come with a traditional human transcription service.

Overall, the machine transcriptions were legible. But we did run into a few challenges. The Amazon service did not always get specific religious terminology or names right. (A few examples included “punches pilot” instead of “Pontius Pilate” and “do Toronto me” in lieu of “Deuteronomy.”) There were also some recordings for which the machine transcription was simply of low quality across the board.

A notable body of research has found that machine transcription sometimes struggles with certain accents or dialects , like regional Southern accents and African American English (AAE). This led us to wonder if the errors we were seeing in the machine transcripts of sermons was coincidental, or if we were encountering performance biases that could be making some transcriptions more reliable than others in a way that might affect the conclusions of our research.

Since we downloaded our sermon files directly as audio or audio/video, we lacked an original written transcript to compare against the machine-transcribed text. Instead, as a test, we asked a third-party human transcription service to tackle portions of some of the sermons that Amazon Transcribe had already transcribed and then compared the results between the two.

What we did

For this experiment, we were interested in using sermons that included a variety of regional accents and dialects among the speakers. One obvious challenge, however, was that we didn’t know much about the speakers themselves. We knew the location of the church where the sermon was delivered, as well as its religious tradition, but these were not necessarily sufficient to assign an accent or a dialect to the person speaking in a recording. We could only use these features as approximations.

With that caveat in mind, we focused the analysis on audio files from the four main religious traditions for which we had a reportable sample size: mainline Protestant, evangelical Protestant, historically Black Protestant and Catholic. We also examined three large geographic regions: the Midwest, the South and a combined region that merges the Northeast and the West (again to account small sample sizes in those two regions).

We took a stratified random sample of 200 sermons from churches for each combination of religious tradition and region, proportional to the number of sermons each church had in the dataset. From this sample of full audio files, we took one random snippet of audio with a duration of 30 to 210 seconds from each file and sent those audio snippets to our external human transcription service. This service was a standard online provider that claimed to have native language speakers, a multistep quality check process and experience transcribing religious content, including sermons specifically. At the end of this process, we had a total sample size of 2,387 texts with both machine and human transcriptions.

How we compared transcriptions

There are a variety of computational methods to measure the similarity or difference between two sets of text. In this analysis, we used a metric known as Levenshtein distance to compare our machine and human transcriptions.

Levenshtein distance counts the number of discrete edits – insertions, deletions and substitutions – at the character level necessary to transform one text string into another. For example, if the word “COVID” is transcribed as “cove in,” there is a Levenshtein distance of three, as the transformation requires three edits: one edit to add a space between the “v” and the “i,” one edit to add an “e” after the “v,” and one edit to substitute the “d” for an “n.”

Levenshtein distance is useful as a comparison metric because it can be normalized and used to compare texts of different lengths. It also allows for nuance by focusing on character-level edits rather than entire words, providing more granularity than something like simple word error rate by scoring how incorrect a mistranscription is.

As a final bit of housekeeping, we standardized both our machine and human transcriptions to make sure that they matched one another stylistically. We transformed all the text into lower case, spelled out numbers and symbols when appropriate, and removed punctuation, filler words and words associated with vocalizations (such as “uh” or “ooh”). We also removed the “[UNINTELLIGIBLE]” annotations that the human transcription service included at our request to flag cases in which someone was speaking but their words couldn’t be clearly understood.

Across all the audio files we evaluated, the average difference between machine transcriptions and human transcriptions was around 11 characters per 100. That is, for every 100 characters in a transcription text, approximately 11 differed from one transcription method to the other.

We were also interested in looking at the difference across religious traditions and geographical regions. To do so, we used pairwise t-tests to test for differences in means across all religious traditions and all regions. (We did not calculate comparisons between each religious tradition and region combination after determining the interaction of the two variables was not statistically significant.)

The analysis found a small but statistically significant difference in Levenshtein distances between machine and human transcriptions for several religious traditions. Text taken from Catholic sermons, for example, had more inconsistency between transcripts than was true of those taken from evangelical Protestant sermons. And sermons from historically Black Protestant churches had significantly more inconsistency in transcriptions when compared with the other religious traditions.

While these differences were statistically significant, their magnitude was relatively small. Even for historically Black Protestant sermons – the tradition with the largest mismatch between machines and humans – the differences worked out to around just 15 characters per 100, or four more than the overall average. It’s also important to remember that we cannot assume the speaker is speaking AAE simply because the sermon was given in a historically Black Protestant church.

One expectation we had going into this experiment is that machine transcription would perform worst with Southern accents. However, we found that transcriptions of sermons from churches in the Midwest had significantly more inconsistency between machine and human transcriptions than those in other regions. Anecdotally, it appears this discrepancy may be because human transcribers had more difficulty than machines in understanding speakers in the Midwest: Sermon texts from the Midwest that were transcribed by humans included a greater number of “[UNINTELLIGIBLE]” annotations than those from other regions. There may also be other factors affecting transcription quality that we cannot account for, such as the possibility that sermons from the Midwest had systematically worse audio quality than those from other regions.

Again, although these differences were statistically significant, their magnitude was relatively small. Midwestern sermons, despite having the greatest inconsistency across regions, had only two more character differences per 100 characters than the overall average.

Conclusions and suggestions

In social science research, automated transcription services have become a popular alternative to human transcription because of the costs and labor involved in the latter. All in all, we found that the machine transcriptions and the human transcriptions used in this experiment were comparable enough to justify our decision to use an automated service in our research on U.S. sermons.

However, our experience does suggest a few ideas that researchers should keep in mind should they find themselves in a similar situation.

First, issues with transcription quality can be tied to the quality of the audio being transcribed – which presents challenges for humans and computers alike. By the same token, machine transcription may perform worse or better on certain accents or dialects – but that’s also true for human transcribers.  When working with audio that has specialized vocabulary (in our case, religious terms), human transcribers sometimes made errors where machines did not. This is likely because a robust machine transcription service will have a larger dictionary of familiar terms than the average person. Similarly, we found that humans are more likely to make typos, something one will not run into with machine transcription.

More generally, reliability is usually an advantage of machine transcription. Human transcription can vary in quality based on the service used, and possibly from one transcript to another if there are multiple human transcribers. But the reliability of machine transcription can sometimes backfire. When presented with a segment of tricky audio, for example, humans can determine that the text is “unintelligible.” A machine, on the other hand, will try to match the sounds it hears as closely as possible to a word it knows with little to no regard for grammar or intelligibility. While this might produce a phonetically similar transcription, it may deviate far from what the speaker truly said.

Ultimately, both machine and human transcription services can be viable options. Beyond the obvious questions of budget and timeline that are often primary considerations, we would suggest evaluating the nature of the audio files that are being analyzed before transcription begins. Audio of mixed quality, or which features competing sound from an audience, can be tricky for humans and machines alike.

Researchers should also determine how important it is to have formatting and punctuation in the text they hope to analyze. Our researchers found that the lack of these elements can be a key barrier to understanding the meaning of a particular piece of text quickly. In our case, it wasn’t an insurmountable barrier, but it certainly added a significant cognitive burden to tasks like labeling training data. And it might have posed an even bigger problem had our analysis relied more heavily on unguided methods for identifying our topics of interest.

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Website Optimization: 7 mini marketing case studies filled with examples of improved webpages

(As seen in the MarketingSherpa newsletter. Click to get a free email subscription to the latest from MarketingSherpa .)

Mini Case Study #1: Changing page to focus on quick mobile transfers of cable service increases conversion 10.6% for cable company

What do customers want from your webpages? You may think the answer is straightforward, but it pays to dig a little deeper and do some testing. For example, a cable company was working with MECLABS Conversion Marketing Services on a webpage that customers could use to transfer their cable services when they moved. (MECLABS Institute is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa).

The control webpage is perfectly logical from a company perspective. Customers wanted to be able to move their account, so let's give them a page to let them move their account. Here is an anonymized look at that page.

Creative Sample #1: Anonymized services transfer webpage for cable company — experiment control

But there is more to the story. Signed-out visitors were having an especially hard time completing the process. The mobile signed-out segment was identified as a major area of opportunity.

For the treatment, the MECLABS team tested a new approach.

Creative Sample #2: Anonymized services transfer webpage for cable company — experiment treatment

The treatment generated a 10.6% higher conversion rate for signed-out visitors.

It turned out that customers did not just want to transfer their services, they wanted to transfer their services quickly, often on mobile devices.

So the entire process was renamed “Quick Mobile Transfer.” And then to live up to the name, friction was reduced through step simplification. The customer didn’t need all that mumbo jumbo copy about how “moving can be crazy” or how they’re “juggling so many things.” They just wanted to get into it.

Well, because moving can be crazy, and people who are moving are juggling so many things. But don’t just tell customers that. Serve them! Make the process easier and quicker for them.

In addition, since they were signed out, the treatment added a nav so they could sign in if they had an account (perhaps another device was signed in, but not the one they were on) and also to get their questions answered or do other things while they are on the site.

You can learn more about this experiment and the power of naming in webpage conversion optimization in the MarketingExperiments session Optimization Expert Flint McGlaughlin Rapidly Diagnoses Pages LIVE in Real-Time (Part 2) . (MarketingExperiments is the sister publication to MarketingSherpa).

Mini Case Study #2: CTA button placement garners almost 5% increase in clicks to donation form for PBS member station

You’ll find that this article is filled with more buttons than the vest of a TGI Friday’s server. It’s not flair most of these companies are after, it’s conversions on their webpages. And the main way to get a conversion on most webpages is with a button.

So you’ll see mini case studies with text experiments and new calls-to-action to the page (CTAs) later in this article. But first, let’s talk about button placement.

KVIE is a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television station. As such, it is a community-based, non-profit organization that is looking for donations.

KVIE’s agency did something I always encourage — looked outside its client’s industry for inspiration. Marketers often reach out to us looking for a case study in not only their industry, but their exact niche. And we have plenty of case studies , so we probably have one in your niche. While you can get great ideas from industry-specific case studies, think broader as well. After all, the great unifier between B2C, B2B and nonprofits is that the customer is always a human (even when they’re a human inside a business). And human behavior is human behavior.

“One of the most impactful changes we made was having a standout call-to-action in the menu on the upper right of the webpage,” said Bobby Reed, CEO, Capitol Tech Solutions . Reed referenced a B2C (business-to-consumer) brand and B2B (business-to-business) brand following the same practice. “Great examples are Hulu — as you scroll down, the signup is big and black in the upper right — or Salesforce, the ‘Try For Free’ in green in the right stands out well and is always there when a site visitor needs it.”

The original KVIE.org site did not have donate info in the menu under the About section. Reed’s team redesigned the site, pulled the donate button into the main menu and made it a color that stood out.

Creative Sample #3: Donate button on PBS member station website

“We saw an increase in clicks to the donate form of just under 5%, according to Google Tag Manager,” Reed said.

“Previously, we viewed the web as a place to just provide information about our programming. Our most-trafficked page was our TV schedule page, and we were okay with that, but [the site] was basically losing the visitor after they found the show they were looking for. Our website was considered just a resource and not used as a platform to achieve our strategic goals. Once we viewed the website as an important piece of our overall strategy, we put the proper metrics in place and started making changes to achieve our overall station goals. We created defined objectives and then started to experiment and try new ideas to achieve those goals,” said Andrea Anderson, Director of Marketing, KVIE.

Mini Case Study #3: Optimized call-to-action button increases conversion rate from 6.66% to 10.47% for local travel comparison site

Every action you expect your customer to take must have a value proposition. Of course that is true for something as big as making a purchase. But even a call-to-action button should have a value prop — a process-level value prop .

“One method we used to improve clickthrough rate on the buttons was by simply A/B testing the button call-to-action text,” said Alex Miller, VP, Digital Marketing, Up Hail , which helps customers compare taxi, rideshare and transit fares.

For example, customers could go to the website and type in their starting point and destination and see that they can take MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority), New York City’s public transit, and it would cost $2.75. Or they could take Lyft Line, a ridesharing app service where you can share the ride to split the cost, and they would have to pay $15 to $19 to get to the same destination.

Upon seeing the options, customers could click on a button with the text “Book It.”

Creative Sample #4: Control CTA button for local travel comparison site

The team tested three different calls-to-action to run against this control: “Get Deal,” “Save Now” and “Book Now.” “We used Google Optimize as the software to run the experiment, and randomly served the new call-to-action text to our users. 55% of our audience were served the original, and the remaining 45% were split up evenly between the three variations. We only ran the experiment on a little more than half our users, in a single city, in order to not rock the boat too much in case our experiment resulted in a major drop in clickthroughs,” Miller said.

Creative Sample #5: Test setup in Google Optimize for local travel comparison website

The experiment ran for one month in 6,222 different sessions. “Get Deal” garnered a 10.47% conversion rate, compared to 6.66% for the control “Book It.” The other variations did not perform nearly as well. 

The team continued to roll out the text “Get Deal” to a larger sample of users and consistently saw improved results. Eventually, 100% of users were served that call-to-action.

Do you notice the difference in the text from those CTA buttons? I’ll give you another example from an experiment run by MECLABS Institute that follows the same pattern: “Get Paid to Take FREE Surveys” generated a 10.44% conversion rate while “Take Online Surveys From Home and Win Cash & Prizes” got a 2.95% conversion rate.

The winning copy from both tests starts with the word “get.” But more than a word, it goes back to the process-level value proposition of the action — instead of a command to the customer like “Book It” or “Take Online Surveys,” the word “Get” connotes what’s in it for the customer. In other words, the action’s process-level value proposition.

Mini Case Study #4: Email marketing agency adds call button and increases conversions from 2.2% to 3.4%

As the classic New Yorker cartoon said, “On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.” Customers may have a significant amount of anxiety about your business if they have never heard of it before.

One way to reduce that anxiety is by providing an easy, convenient way for customers to reach out to your company.

For example, email marketing agency CodeCrew placed a click-to-call button on its homepage using the call-to-action “Give Us A Call.”

Creative Sample #6: Click-to-call button on email marketing agency homepage

The button increased conversion from 2.2% to 3.4%. “Not sure if it's that added level of comfort that you're a real business or something else, but it helped massively,” said Alexandra Marin, Co-founder and Director of Design, CodeCrew.

Mini Case Study #5: Law firm increases monthly website inquiries from eight to 15 by adding chat CTA

Another easy, convenient way for customers to reach out is with chat.

When Boulton Law Group only had phone and web form contact options, it averaged eight inquiries per month.

In the first month after installing chat, leads increased to an average of 15 inquiries, and those numbers have remained consistent since the chat installation in January 2019.

“If you have an aversion to a particular type of contact method simply because you wouldn't use it in your personal life, it doesn't mean that your visitors share your view,” said Attorney Matt Boulton, Firm Founder, Boulton Law Group. “I long resisted chat because I never used it, and I believed it would turn people off. Not the case.”

Mini Case Study #6: Apparel manufacturer increases mobile site speed and gets a 20% lift in blog traffic

“Mobile site speed is huge for conversions,” said Brian Lim, Founder and CEO, iHeartRaves , which manufactures and sells festival fashion (some of which might be considered racy, especially if you click on that link from your work computer).

To increase mobile site speed, the iHeartRaves team:

• Compressed images on its webpages to ensure images are optimized for site speed while still retaining image quality.
• Took steps to minify javascript and compress all source code — removing excess code and optimizing the remaining amount to load in the most efficient manner as possible.
• Prioritized script load order while trimming down the total number of scripts being called.
• Removed unnecessary assets on some pages while reducing image assets
• Used AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages, an open source HTML framework) on blog and static pages, which reduced page speed load time from more than five seconds to under one second.

“As a result, we've seen a 20% lift in traffic to our blog. Bringing more traffic to our blog increases the likelihood of making a sale as customers continue to navigate through the site,” Lim said.

Mini Case Study #7: Reducing anxiety with transparency increases inquiry rate from 5% to 21% for SEO consultancy

MarketingSherpa email subscribers ask us a lot of questions because we don’t send no reply emails , we allow our email subscribers to reply to our newsletter sends and want to hear from them. One of the most common questions comes from companies that sell business services, quite often marketing services, frustrated that they can’t get high-paying clients (which led me to write this blog post —  Ask MarketingSherpa: How to get high-paying customers and clients ).

Usually when I go to their website, they tend to have the same bold claims — more leads, sales or revenue, often while promising something digital. But how are they different from any other business service? And where is the credibility ?

This next example that came across my desk stood out because the consultant showed his expertise to potential clients, he didn’t just tell them how great he was.

Dan Ray, Freelance SEO Consultant, Ray Digital Marketing , built a page on his site called “ See Exactly How I Do Things .” It’s a long page, clocking in at 3,878 words, and as the name suggests, it explains tactic after tactic, step after step — exactly what Ray will do for your company if you hire him.

“The goal of this piece of content was to build trust and transparency into the service itself,” he said. “I had always known that a lack of trust and transparency was an issue in the industry, so addressing that at page level was a solid hypothesis. What I saw with these changes and the subsequent increase in performance is that my audience has some issues with trust and transparency. I had always known this through conversations with both existing, current and potential clients, taking direct steps to address them helped the site perform massively,” Ray said.

Here is an excerpt from that page as an example …

Content placements (Guest posting)

Best used when you don’t have a lot of content available, I will approach other sites in your subject areas that accept other peoples content on their site, I then have something amazing written for them and you both benefit.

They benefit by having an excellent piece of content that is relevant to their visitors and you benefit by having a contextual, relevant link back to your site.

Most services-based companies are a black box. Customers don’t really understand what they’re paying for. And as long as they get a result and you don’t do anything unethical or illegal, they probably don’t care too much.

However, that is after the fact. Before they get a result, how do they know you will deliver? How will they know they are getting what they are paying for, compared to so many similar options with equally bold yet vague claims?

Speaking of getting exactly what you’re paying for, Ray even lays out how much he charges right there on the page.

So how much do I charge?

2 very simple options, I sell in blocks of 200 targets, priced at £2000 per block.

If I do not achieve a minimum of 10 links I will continue to do outreach until you get at least 10. THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE!

Clients have experienced returns of up to 60 links from 200 targets.

I do however feel the need to stress that this is a monthly service, I am not interested in one-off clients.

“A traditional landing page was quite simply not converting enough for me. My hypothesis was that the people either couldn't afford my prices or didn't trust the service, as they may have been burned in the past or had a bad experience with a previous SEO contractor,” Ray said.

He continued, “With that in mind, I went for a full transparency angle. Tell the visitor exactly what I do, in minute detail, to the level that they could replicate the process themselves. However, if they didn't have the time or couldn't be bothered, then they could pay me to do it for them. Pricing is also transparent.”

When the change went live, he saw an almost immediate upturn. The inquiry rate rose from 5% to 21%, which meant he went from getting one to two inquiries per week to one to two inquires per day. He also got more conversion from the inquiries, increasing his close rate from 25% to 80%. “This was due to the clients knowing precisely what the service was before enquiring — from price to actual methodology — there are very few objections or questions,” Ray said.

It was also a good qualifying piece that reduced inquiries from people who couldn't afford the service while setting expectations for how much contact clients would have with him. This also greatly reduced the number of hours he spent on the phone having conversations instead of doing the work.

 “I think there is something to be said about complete and utter transparency. It's the entire basis for this strategy, and I believe it's also my biggest advantage in the marketplace currently,” Ray said.

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For Filmmakers, O.J. Simpson’s Trial Was a Powerful Case Study

In 2016, both an FX mini-series and an ESPN documentary re-examined the polarizing criminal accusations against Simpson and the nation’s divided conversation about race.

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By Emmanuel Morgan

More than 20 years after the O.J. Simpson trial, long after the headlines had faded and the news cycle had moved on to other scandals, the polarizing saga was thrust back into the national conversation thanks to two very different projects.

“ The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story ,” an FX mini-series directed by Ryan Murphy, won nine Emmys in 2016. That year’s “ O.J.: Made in America, ” a nearly eight-hour film for ESPN, won the Academy Award for best documentary feature.

“It was a story that combined everything that obsesses the American people,” the legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the day after Simpson died at 76 . Toobin’s 1996 book, “The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” inspired the FX series.

Toobin said the Simpson odyssey captivated the country’s psyche. There was love, violence, sports and Hollywood. Even a fugitive on the run.

Simpson had been a star football player , winning the Heisman Trophy in college and the Most Valuable Player Award in the N.F.L. But for many people, his athletic highlights are overshadowed by a highway chase involving a white Ford Bronco and murder charges in the 1994 deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald L. Goldman.

As Americans followed the nine-month trial, their perception of the criminal case against Simpson, a prominent Black athlete who became an actor and a pitchman , was often split along racial lines. Simpson was acquitted in the criminal case and was later found liable for the deaths in a civil trial .

“I think the reason it still feels so raw is that it still feels like it’s today,” said Larry Karaszewski, a screenwriter for the FX mini-series. “A lot of times people think we’re at this post-racial moment, but it keeps coming back.”

Karaszewski said that like during Simpson’s trial, race was at the forefront of the national conversation when “The People v. O.J. Simpson” was being produced, during the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement after the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watchman in 2012.

The mini-series focused on the Simpson trial, treating him as a secondary character while highlighting other key players in the courtroom , like Marcia Clark, the lead prosecutor, and Johnnie Cochran, one of Simpson’s prominent defense lawyers.

In contrast, ESPN’s documentary, an installment of the sports network’s “30 for 30” series, traced Simpson’s biography and contextualized it through the sports and socioeconomic history of the Los Angeles region. Its director, Ezra Edelman, has said he thought it was important to take that wider view.

“I was interested in the 30 years before the murders, the city, race and identity, and the juxtaposition with O.J.’s story,” he told The New York Times in 2016 . “This is a big American studies paper. This touches on everything in our culture.”

Through an ESPN spokeswoman, Edelman declined to comment after Simpson’s death. Several of the documentary’s producers did not respond to requests for comment.

Karaszewski said the distance from the trial allowed viewers of the FX series to watch the case with fresh eyes, without the emotional response to the verdict. And he and Toobin agreed that it also presented the saga and its characters — including Robert Kardashian, a defense lawyer whose family’s fame grew after the case — to new audiences.

“For those of us who lived through it, it brought it back up,” Toobin said, “but it introduced a whole generation of people who had no firsthand experience with the story.”

Emmanuel Morgan reports on sports, pop culture and entertainment. More about Emmanuel Morgan