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A case study provides you with these benefits:

    * Offers first hand evidence of a satisfied customer
    * Clearly demonstrates who your target audience are
    * Provides downloadable information for prospects to keep and share
    * Gives you control over the feedback/ review

The structure of a case study
A case study is more than just a description of what a customer has bought from you. Case studies should be written in such a way that the reader follows a journey from the identification of the problem, to how it was solved (with you) and then through to the positive impact of this change. The amount of information to provide in each case study will depend on your product and target audience, however, a general structure to follow is to divide it in to these parts….

    * Customer: Who is the case study about, what do they do, how big are they etc
    * Challenge: What was happening within their business/ industry?
    * Problem: Why did something need to change or be bought?
    * Journey: What research did they do, how did they hear about you etc?
    * Discovery: What made them go with you?
    * Solution: What did they buy from you and why?
    * Implementation: How was this integrated in to their business?
    * Results: What positive impact did you have on their business?

Who to approach?
When a brand or product develops a core group of advocates these people are worth their weight in gold. They spread positive word of mouth amongst their peers, become actively involved in your social media activities (blog, twitter etc) and more often than not buy exclusively from you. If you are lucky enough to have brand advocates, these are your first port of call for a case study. If you are unsure who they are, a more systematic approach may be needed. List your top customers by revenue, length of time as a customer and number of items bought. The customers at the top of these lists are your power users and the ones most likely to be happy enough with you to go on record.

How to approach them?
This obviously depends on your existing relationship with them. If you have regular face to face or telephone contact, asking them asking them is pretty straight forward. If your services are all managed online with minimal or no contact then you’ll have to introduce yourself first. Send a simple email explaining who you are, what you want from them plus the benefits to them of taking part (incoming link, exposure to your site visitors etc). That last part is important, the marketer in them will see an opportunity to advertise themselves to your customer base as well as helping out a trusted brand (that’s you).

More than just a case study
Once you have all this fantastic information you should also look at how you can use it in other formats. For example you could adapt the case study in to press releases, direct mail pieces, in newsletters, developed in to a leaflet/ hand out for trade shows and used in presentations.