6 Foolproof Tips to Make Your Case Study Writing Less Boring and More Goosebumps-Raising

Buckle your seatbelt. Hold onto your chair. Ready for a wild ride?

Whether you've ever written a business case study before or not, chances are you are not expecting that the above applies to case study writing. With great respect for our amigos in the B2B marketing realm, this is an area they've been flopping at since—dare we say?—the invention of the written word.

Not anymore.

Here are six simple tips to take your case study copywriting from snooze-inducing to heart-racing.

1. Don't Get too Technical

It's easy to be caught up in the finer details and technical intricacies of the success story you're focusing on—don't.

Yes, your potential customer wants to know how a real product you're selling once helped a real person solve a real-world problem. But you know what they really don't want to hear? The technical minutiae of it all.

Consider how an outsider—a novice prospective customer—would understand your B2B case study, however technical. For all the customer stories in your locker, strip them down plainly and make them incredibly high-level.

Focus more on how your product/service benefits your potential clients and less on the mechanics of the process.

2. Tie it Back to the Human Values 

Boiled down to bare essentials, chances are good that your ultimate selling proposition is that you help clients save money or make money. Five bucks, there are at least five mentions of the word "ROI" in your latest B2B case study.

Increase profits ten-fold, supercharge ROI 10 times, improve the bottom line…yada, yada, yada, but all that falls flat. Clients have heard it time and again. To create a compelling story, tie it back to what really matters.

Money isn't just money—it's peace of mind, power, freedom, more time with the kids, that vacation you've been daydreaming about for years. Translate financial gain into emotional impact.

3. Make it Digestible

No marketing team in history ever received a crown for crafting incredibly long case study content. Not even the Harvard team that wrote arguably the longest case study in the modern era: "Harvard Study of Human Development."

Desist from making your business case study boringly long and numbingly clucky. Even before you craft open-ended questions for your study candidate and hold dialogues with your sales teams, take time to envisage your case study's ideal length. Better yet, ask yourself: "How short can we make it?"

A good case study knows what it's trying to say, steers clear of the unnecessary minutiae, and gets the points across quickly and succinctly. With only a few exceptions, effective case studies are concise and clear.

4. Format it Like Your Life Depended on It

The moment you ignore engaging design is the moment you bury your show-stopping B2B case study six feet under.

A good case study doesn't just tell a compelling story; it reels in potential customers with a well-thought-out, carefully-curated format.

Of course, there's a wide range of case study formats to pick from, so don't be too hell-bent on the conventional report format. Explore.

• One-pager: This one helps you highlight the biggest wins at just a quick glance.
• Video: If pictures are worth a thousand words, videos are probably worth a million. Video case studies are particularly viable for in-depth customer stories that are impossible to nail down in just a few fanciful words. And at just a couple of minutes long, videos can do a lot of heavy lifting in half the time.
• Infographic: Who doesn't love infographics? When it comes to case study writing, infographics can be the ultimate tiebreaker extraordinaire—determining whether your study content gets read or gets looked at with irk and detest. Use infographics if all your case study is doing is scream: "I am suffocating in data and factual evidence. Can I please have some breathing room?"

5. Edit, Edit, and Edit Some More—Cut Out the Excess Fat

"To write is human, to edit is divine." (Stephen King)

It's the editing phase that separates top-notch case study writers from half-glass writers who only care about padding the word count. Emancipate yourself from the latter.

Once you've put the final full stop on your case study, don't hand it in just yet. Instead, edit it ruthlessly. If possible, hand it out to a colleague for fact-checking. 

Are there any loose jargon or misplaced adjectives? Wipe them off.

Instances where you could've used active instead of passive voice? Do the needful.

A paragraph where you could've sprinkled in a direct quote from current customers? You know the drill…

But don't stop there. Edit your copy all over again until you can't edit it anymore. Here's the point: as long as you can trim down the excess fat without your success story losing its essence, keep going.

And oh, here's your ultimate guide on how to write, edit and format a winning case study.

6. Make Your Copy Easy to Scan

Almost as important as crafting a compelling case study is making it glance-worthy.

Nine times out of ten, the person reading your case study is strapped for time and probably rushing for an executive meeting somewhere. They really don't have the minutes to go through your "groundbreaking" case study page for page, back and forth. And sometimes, that person is the decision-maker—a potential customer that needs just a bit of a shove to drop into the bottom of your sales funnel like a daredevil on a cliff's edge.

To that effect, make your study content a real feast for the eyes. Said differently, make the important stuff easy to spot, read, and scan through. Are your headings descriptive—if someone just scanned through them, would they be able to grasp the gist of the story? What about the overall visual representation of the copy—are research stats haggled up in one corner, or are they well distributed for maximum effect?

Effective case studies, like these ones, don't just blow their readers' minds with nifty copy. They also reel them in with scannable text that screams "I'm worth your time!" every other line. And it doesn't even cost a lot. Call out impressive results in larger fonts or put up a summary at the beginning of the study, and yay!—you're good to go.

Don't Spoil the Broth With Too Many Cooks. Let Zoey Be the Perfect Cook to Your Case Study Writing Recipe.

One expert too many will undoubtedly sabotage your case study writing goals. Worse still, you risk ending up with fluffy (not succinct), ho-hum (not authoritative), overly technical (not humanized) copy that makes potential customers turn in their sleep.

You can do better, and Zoey is here to help you transition from snooze-inducing to heart-racing case study writing—all through the power of perfect, well-ideated copy.

While we won't promise to give you a plug-and-play study template or help you conduct study interviews, we promise to give you one thing: a tried-to-true strategy. Our case study writing strategy does more than just help you win paying clients—it helps you win lifetime followers. And you know what that means…mulla!

Ready to be dazzled with powerful, witty, humanized case study content? Reach out to us today or check out our cases study writing services and we'll be more than willingto assist!

Photo by Lukas on Pexels: Thanks Lukas : )