Case studies. Application notes. User stories. Whatever you call them, they ought to be somewhere in your marketing arsenal. If you’re using an external PR company, they’re probably on at you all the time to do these. Why? Because they can just pass it on to some tech writer for £500 (been there, done that) and sell it on to you at a nice markup. If you use a small PR company or a freelance writer, they’ll probably be less enthusiastic, for the same reason you don’t like to do them yourself. When case studies get detailed, the customers start getting cold feet, and they’re not much fun to do.
However, I was intrigued by B2B Marketing Case Studies: Is Shorter Better? on Savvy B2B Marketing. In the past, the case study was often written with magazines in mind. That meant 1,000 words or more. Now that we’re all publishing straight to market instead, the case study is more likely to be for your own website. And online, a much shorter format might be more appropriate.
Now, supposing your case study only needs to be 250 words (the length of this article). That’s something which the salesman who dealt with the application could write. Or which you could write from a brief conversation with him. It’ll also be a lot easier to get customer approval.
So, if the case study production line at your company has dried up, perhaps it’s time to restart it.