As a startup, so much of your success depends on your ability to establish a deep, rich and organic connection with your target audience - particularly when it comes to bringing in new customers.
Startups, in general, are facing several significant challenges that their larger, more established competitors aren't. Audiences have become more jaded - they're not just going to take your word for it that what you're doing is important. You must show them.
Likewise, their attention has become more fractured. You're not just battling with the TV for visibility. You're going up against smartphones, tablets, other mobile devices, desktop and laptop computers, the behemoth that is the Internet - the list goes on.
Finally, you have the fact that customers aren't looking for "one and done" relationships. Customer loyalty is more important than ever and, when you're still in the startup phase, creating it can be a challenge, to say the least.
In a world where you're going up against challenges that are essentially moving targets, startups around the country seem to have found one of the true silver bullets they have left to accomplish these things and more. Case studies are regularly being employed by startups to gain new customers, primarily using knowledge as their shining light through the darkness.
What Are Case Studies?
Case studies are documents containing qualitative research that look at individuals, small groups of people or even large groups in relation to a specific thing or concept. For startups, that "idea" becomes the product or service that they're offering. A quality case study may look at how the lives of participants were positively affected over X period of time before, during and after use.
But these documents are so much more - they're marketing tools, and powerful ones at that. "Customers want to learn about what a startup is doing and what they have to offer, but they want to do it in a compelling way," says Anthony Bergs Project Manager at Writers Per Hour. "They want to be informed. They want to find out whether you're an authority. They want to know whether you're someone they can trust. A case study lets you do all of this and more, all at the same time."
Case Studies: By the Numbers
Startups are learning something that content marketers have known for years - case studies can be an incredibly powerful weapon when wielded effectively. Per a study conducted by CMI, 73 percent of all content marketers use case studies to connect with their audiences. They use them to talk about the processes they went through to bring a product to market, the challenges they faced and how they could overcome them.
According to a piece reported on by Forbes, case studies are among the single most important tactics that marketers and businesses alike are using to tap into the full potential of their prospective audience in 2017 and beyond. In fact, Forbes lists them as more important than videos - making them better than something that already increases conversion rates by 80 percent.
Startups looking to embrace case studies regularly turn to services like Writers Per Hour to accomplish exactly that. "Our customers know what they need, but not necessarily have the existing infrastructure in place to generate that content," says Anthony. "That is exactly what we provide for them by giving them access to high-quality writers to deliver exactly what they need when they need it the most."
Bottom Line:
Case studies, along with other content marketing techniques, are the best ways to connect with your target audience today - especially when "connecting with your target audience" is something that your continued survival depends on, as is the case with startups. They're more than just an educational tool or a piece of marketing collateral. They're a communications tool that you can use to outline not only what you're trying to do and why you're trying to do it, but the positive change that you hope to accomplish when finally given the opportunity. That in and of itself is something that money alone cannot buy.