Well, in That Case…

April 17, 2024

When you hear the word “anecdotal,” what are the first associations that come to mind? It wouldn’t surprise me if you said, “sub-par,” “less reliable,” “downgrading,” and the like. In other words, it’s a relegating term. And in many contexts, anecdotal data is—and should be—considered less important than statistical trends and scientific information. For example, quantitative evidence is probably more crucial to, say, determining the efficacy of a surgical procedure than anecdotes are. In data-based evidence, numbers matter: the number of people whose lives were saved by the surgery; the number of people who experienced complications from that surgery; the number of physicians who have performed the surgery; the total number of surgeries performed.

Almost every industry, however—including the medical one—realizes the importance of occasionally doing a deep dive into an example, a single case, in order to gain insights that cannot be extracted from surveying broad figures. If statistics are the forest, case studies are the trees. Every once in a while, the numbers don’t tell the whole story. Sometimes, you need the story in order to tell the whole story.

Ideas communicated via stories impact real-life business deals more often than you might think. Although data might be a superior form of information in some contexts, feelings may be far more active in guiding our decision-making process, for better or for worse. (For more on this, check out our discussion of Paul Smith’s book, Sell With a Story: How to Capture Attention, Build Trust, and Close the Sale.)

Soliciting stories from our prospects and clients can also be a valuable tool in understanding their pain points, as Rachel Smith points out in the above review:

Take the example of, “What is your number-one problem area right now?” I would call that an open-ended question. The answer is not a simple yes or no, and a list of potential choices have not been provided. According to Smith, however, it’s a closed-ended question. Why? Because the response could be just a couple of words, and [Paul] Smith is looking for a story. What if, instead of the question above, you asked a prospect, “When did you know for sure that you had a real problem on your hands?” That requires an answer of more than a few words. That requires the description of an event. That requires a story!

If we’re asking our prospects and clients to tell stories, the least we can do is offer some in return! Of course, stories and statistics aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, the presence of a business story in a case study in no way obviates the role of hard data. Case studies can be nicely enhanced with numbers. “I’m a big fan of seeing metrics and achievements represented in branded graphics,” writes Hachem Ramk on the Zapier blog. “It can be a jarring experience to navigate a website, then visit a case study page and feel as though you’ve gone to a completely different website.”

CASE STUDIES: THEY’RE EVERYWHERE

Before branching out into other disciplines, case studies probably began in the medical and psychological fields (perhaps most famously typified in Freud’s writings). Today, they’re ubiquitous in business school curricula. Open any MBA syllabus, and you’ll probably find the term peppered liberally across the page. According to the Yale School of Management, “A case study is a snapshot of an organization or an industry wrestling with a dilemma, written to serve a set of pedagogical objectives…what distinguishes a pedagogical case study from other writing is that it centers on one or more dilemmas. Rather than take in information passively, a case study invites readers to engage the material in the case to solve the problems presented.” This last point is especially important; being an active participant in learning is an effective way of understanding material. In fact, a 2015 study about, well, case studies, suggests that using case studies to teach kids science works quite well.

Engaging with case studies is also a way to see how certain concepts bear out in real-life situations. Think back to the word problems you were given in math class as a kid. How much cash does Jane have left at the end of her day? hits a bit different than What is 45.31 minus 32.13? What it does is exports a skillset from the world of the theoretical to the world of the practical.

This partnership goes both ways. Case studies that are accessorized with concrete numbers can look far more convincing. Even though we might want to think of our decision-making processes as depending largely upon factual evidence, Paul Smith’s book (and the research he reviews) tells a different story. That said, I think it’s still safe to assume that most of us would like to think that data plays a meaningful role in our decisions. Including tangible records alongside the “story” acknowledges the importance of both facts and the context, or stories, surrounding them.

UNDERSTANDING, CREATING, AND FORMATTING A CASE STUDY

“Most often,” writes Dave Meyer, president of BizzyWeb, “case studies are done by businesses to highlight how they helped another business or person resolve a challenge. This is done to show potential future clients real-world examples of services in action.” They can give prospects a taste of how your business might approach a problem or goal similar to theirs. They can demonstrate your acumen, style, and toolbox of talents—not unlike a demo reel might do for an actor. And like a demo reel, they need to be structured in a way that presents information professionally and engagingly.

According to Uplift, a good case study begins with an executive summary that showcases your customer, the challenges they faced, and your business’s successful response to these challenges (“be sure to include a preview of the results your customer saw from your products”) and end with a call to action.

What happens in between? You define the problem your client faced. “This section is an ideal spot to use a customer quote and let them share their story in their words. Remember to paint your customer in a positive light.” You review other products the client tried in advance of engaging your business and talk about how the client found you (including testimonials). You explain the solution you provided for the problem (don’t forget the implementation part). You review outcomes, offering real figures that speak to these outcomes. “Metrics are where you can show off the data—hard numbers like revenue gains and time saved that illustrate the return on investment your customer gained from your solution.”

This is Uplift’s approach. There are several ways to structure a case study. Here are some templates that might be helpful to you:

Some of the above discussion refers to case studies in the real world, others to case studies in classroom settings. No matter the context, though, a case study is a story. It’s a story about you and your work. The Content Marketing Institute puts it this way: “Case studies tell the story the prospective customer wants to know. Do you understand their pain points or need? Do you have a solution? Does it really deliver results? And case studies give those answers in a way that communicates credibility that an intrusive ad designed to sell, sell, sell could never do.”

So go on, tell your story. Just don’t forget your audience.

CASE STUDIES: THEY’RE EVERYWHERE

UNDERSTANDING, CREATING, AND FORMATTING A CASE STUDY

FURTHER READING

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