B2B lead generation is a big enough challenge. But once you’ve succeeded in increasing your leads, you need to ensure they’re converting into sales at a reasonable rate. While it’s true that many people are now on the precipice of buying when they make an enquiry, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to choose your business. No matter how much content you have out there, if it’s not helping you convert leads to sales, it’s time to review it for gaps in the client education process.

One possible problem is that you’re not adequately demonstrating the benefits of your product or service to prospective clients. Another is that propective clients are not convinced your business has the capacity or experience to service their requirements. Detailed case studies can help with both issues.

Demonstrating expertise with client case studies

If you’re a B2B business owner or marketing manager, you’ll recognise the challenges in evaluating purchases for a business. Choosing the wrong supplier can be a costly mistake. Offering the product or service you need is merely the baseline. You’ll then be on the lookout for signs that they have experience in dealing with businesses like yours and can meet your expectations. Perhaps you want to be sure they have experience working with a particular industry such as construction or agriculture. Or you might want to ensure that they have experience with the scale of project your company is planning. Sure, a potential supplier’s website might say that they have the experience – but case studies are far more convincing. They’re customer success stories that can demonstrate the expertise, sector experience and project capacity of a business.

Building a library of project or customer case studies can be a time consuming challenge – but when done well, it can make a significant difference when it comes to converting enquiries to sales.

Educating potential clients with content: case studies

This can be a particular problem with IT, engineering, and even digital marketing related businesses – in fact, any type of business where technology is involved! When potential clients can’t ‘see’ how what you are offering would benefit their type of business, they’re naturally less inclined to invest.

(If you’re in IT, you might be interested in this article in Entrepreneur Magazine which looks at the problem of getting clients to adopt new technology.)

One way to overcome the problem is by producing content that allows readers to understand how your product or service would improve processes or results in their particular type of business. A very efficient ways to do that is to write and publish case studies covering the types of industries you can service. You can also create video based case studies by conducting interviews with clients.

A recent article in Entrepreneur Magazine looks at the problem for IT companies in getting clients to adopt new technology, but the principles mentioned apply much more broadly.

How to create case studies

MORE: Check out our post, How to Write a Case Study

Creating case studies is something you can do in-house if someone has the right skills, or outsource to a professional content writing service. The person writing up the case study will need:

• A case. Choose a few clients who are enjoying success as a result of your business and contact them to ask if they’d be happy for you to write a case study. Aim to cover a range of business types or industries, unless of course, you service only one type. Offer them the option of being named in the study (with a link to their website) or alternatively, the case study being written without specifics that would identify their business. The reason for option two is that not everyone will want competitors being able to read about their technology or strategies.
• Technical details about the project. This includes the products or services deployed for the client, and challenges faced during implementation.
• Results: By far the most important part of a case study is the demonstration of results. This information should be as specific as possible. Did sales, productivity or some other factor increase by a certain percentage? Was a particular problem finally resolved? What difference has it made to the business?

Once you have all the information at hand you’re ready to begin writing it up. Most case studies follow a standard format:

• Introduction
• Problem
• Options/Solution
• Implementation
• Results

Here’s our downloadable case study template.

Outsourcing case studies to content writers

If you decide to outsource case study write ups to content writers, you’ll need to convey the information outlined above to them in a brief. However, you may save time preparing the information by requesting that the writer conduct phone interviews with the necessary people. That might include your client, and/or a person in your company who was involved in the implementation of the project.

Once written, any good content service will be happy to make amendments based on your feedback – it’s all part of the process, so don’t feel awkward asking for changes or additions.

If case studies would help your potential clients see the benefit of your services, feel free to contact me to discuss your requirements and obtain a quote. Our professional article writers are accustomed to interviewing stakeholders and preparing case studies.