SaaS Case Studies [Ways of Leveraging Customer Success Stories You didn´t know]

So you mentioned that case studies are probably something that you can use across the funnel. You know, I personally always thought of it, looked at it like a more middle of the funnel or bottom of the funnel. I think some founders may struggle when trying to understand the value behind Maybe creating more case studies versus focusing on maybe just creating top of the funnel content. When leveraging their existing information, why do you think case studies and customer success journeys are valuable information to share with prospects or customers?

So I came at it the same way you did. When I first started doing case studies, my mentality was, okay, this is like middle, bottom of funnel stuff, like get them over the finish line. The deeper that I got into it, especially with this conversion copywriting background that I have now, the more I realized like, actually, no, there's huge utility to use these as top of the funnel assets. Like the companies who are doing this really well are using them as top of funnel assets. For example, CartHook, who's a client of ours, they bring leads in with case studies. They identified that there's some key pain points, some really critical desired outcomes that they know an ideal prospect either is feeling or wants to have. And so they use customer success stories as a key part of their acquisition. I think what makes them so valuable and what blows the doors off of just bottling them into one part of the funnel is that these are stories when done right about people like you who have the problems you have, who made the decision you're debating and got the result you want. And there's a lot packed into that story. I think where a lot of companies fall on their faces with these is that they only know how to tell them one way. They only know how to write them to be bottom of the funnel assets, or they only think to write them as these very generic, canned, unexciting assets that feel pretty boring, ugly, narcissistic, like a lot of customer success stories are done poorly. So I think what makes these stories so valuable too, you asked the question or kind of put it out there, well, why keep creating them? Like how many of these things do you need? Why not just throw Fill the top of the funnel, and it's not that you have to do one or the other. But to the question of well, how many case studies should we even have? My response has always been well, think about it this way: How many different pain points can somebody have? How many different roles are you selling into, especially in B2B SaaS? How many different roles need to sign off or approve that? Right? If we think about IT or security needs to sign off on okay, does this pass? muster on regulations and that sort of thing. Well, that can be a case study. The CFO might need to pass off on, okay, is this a wise investment? The CTO might need to pass off, does this fit with our existing stack? And so on and so forth. So how many roles do you have? How many pain points do they have? What are the key desired outcomes and how can you express that? And then even thinking through the lens of, okay, what niches or industries or different spaces do you sell into? They all wanna see a story that as closely mirrors theirs as possible. So while having just one great story is a good start, it's not the end of the line. Sales teams need— think of it like ammunition. Each story is a different bullet in the chamber that they can pull out and use at any point that they need to.

And so besides telling stories about your brand and then also customer success stories, are there any other underserved aspects or other areas you can use case studies that people may not think about?

Yeah, I mean, these weren't even— again, these weren't even on my radar when we started, but thinking about for SaaS especially, Let's say you have multiple tiers of plans, you have a premium plan or a high-end plan. Why would you not use a customer success story to upsell or to cross-sell, right? During that nurture sequence, when people want to see the efficacy of their choice, when they want to feel like, okay, I've made a wise decision, right? They've just purchased. They might be feeling buyers, that nervousness, that buyer's remorse that we all kind of get no matter how good a purchase is until we realize the outcome. Using stories to bridge that gap or as fuel in your nurture sequences, or even let's say for SaaS, you want to highlight different aspects of the product, overlooked features, things that maybe people don't know how they would use or how to derive the value from. Telling them a story of how someone like them got the value of that feature might make them go, oh, actually, yeah, we should be using that. That is worth investigating. Or, oh, you know what, actually going up to the pro plan or the elite plan or whatever might actually be Really worth the investment. So they're really great for nurturing, for upselling. Another sort of use case that gets widely overlooked is win-back emails. So if someone churns out, and if you're a smart software company, unfortunately, it's still this is still not that common on the conversion copy side when I come in and do assessments. This isn't happening. So if you're listening and you don't want to do the customer success story thing, here's a tip for you anyway: Every single software company should be asking. Segmentation types of questions during onboarding. You should be learning who this customer is, what their expectations are, how they expect to use your product, and how they will measure success. How they measure success is your problem, but software companies often don't make it that way. They don't check in; they don't hold themselves accountable for helping that client get over the line. So if you know all that through the onboarding sequence and someone churns out, well now if you have a story. That comes in later on where it's like, hey, this aligns with the profile of that person, what they wanted. It's a very natural way to reach back out and say, hey, we know you tried our platform or software or what have you. You didn't get the result that you want, but I wanted to share this story of someone like you. And maybe it's, you know, would it be worth revisiting? It's a really natural way to reopen the conversation. And then the last one that I want to mention too is just that bringing it right back to where we started, that top of the funnel. If you can especially make your case studies prescriptive, how to do XYZ, and then use a customer as sort of the model for doing that, then that works really well as acquisition material because you're teaching that how-to, that pain alleviation. But you've got this proof baked right in that, hey, you know, this works. Here's a real example to illustrate this concept because a lot of top-of-funnel content is theoretical. It's here's a process for it. There's not a lot of proof on the other end. So if you can put the two together now, your piece is stronger than your competitors and hopefully you close Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

And then if we look at the format, so whether you're creating the top of the funnel how-to or just a full-on case study, what do you say is the best format for these stories or similar elements that you can get so you can get more effectiveness and engaging case study? Would you suggest going written or video or a combination of both? What do you find to be more effective?

I think you've really touched on an important point and that is there is no one supreme format. Format. I would say you know there's a reason video content is so popular, and it's because it can be massively repurposed. Once you have the video, you've got every conceivable asset you can have. You've got audio. You can turn it into written, and that's why Case Study Buddy is increasingly you know beefing up our video offering and so on and so forth. But a video can fall flat in other situations, right? Like sometimes written really is the best. It's hard, for example, like if I want to pass on. some firm specs, or I want to pass on something to my internal team, a short little study that they can read, you know, in a few— in a minute or 2 minutes might feel more approachable to them, more tangible than a video. Sometimes in some cases, you know, video can be the most expensive asset to do if you want to do it at a, you know, really high level. Like with COVID and everyone at home now, webcam testimonial videos are kind of taking off and the quality is kind of relaxing a little. People are more comfortable having these a little bit more raw types of assets, and those are great too. But video can be cost prohibitive, especially if you're bootstrapping, especially if you're early days. It's a lot more scheduling, a lot more equipment, a lot more know-how that has to go in. So, and not everyone's comfortable on video. So having just the audio, something that we're helping our customers do that nobody else really is, is turning customer success stories into these audiograms. So turning them into a social sharing asset that has this interactive element where you can sort of hear for yourself what the customer had to say and read the words and get the gist of the story or embed these audio snippets in the written version on your site as this undeniable proof that, yeah, this person actually said that. I mean, as skepticism increases because we see things like GPT-3 rolling out, which if you haven't heard of, you should go Google right now and get both amazed and terrified at what's about to hit us. But it adds this level of credibility. And then even within written, there are moments when A soundbite is all somebody needs on a sales page, you know, a quick testimonial. But then there are other situations low in the funnel where they want— they need all the detail. They want a meaty case study. They're ready for it. So they're having a longer format of the same story is hugely beneficial. So it's not just how many case studies should we have, but it's also how many different formats should we be telling this story in to sort of cater to the awareness level, what the lead is ready for, what their informational needs are. So that it can do its job.

Makes sense. And for those, you mentioned about early stage or bootstrap founders, for SaaS founders in that early stage, they understand the value of using case studies, but they just don't have as many users or they still haven't measured the effectiveness of their product to be able to build a full-on case study. How else can they use or think about creating a case study to generate authority and help them building their brand and credibility continuously?

Yeah, so before we answer that question, and it is an important question, there's one question that you didn't ask that I need to answer because the most important thing I feel like you can be doing as a bootstrap startup, if you're looking for an edge, a way to beat out more established competitors, a way to make social proof a big part of what differentiates you, because let's be honest, they can steal your features, they can steal your design, they can steal— like all that stuff can be stolen, but nobody can take the success stories you've created for your clients from you. So the most important thing I think small companies, bootstrap companies, companies in the early stages can be doing is thinking about how do we systematize communication with our customers? How do we have conversations and make sure we have conversations early with customers about expectations, about the segment that they belong in, about what they're, you know, hoping to get as a result and how they will measure that? And how do we create a system for checking in with them so that communication with us feels normal? Because that's the difference between asking for a case study, feeling like a stranger swooping in, asking for a favor from this faceless big software company and, hey, oh no, I know my account rep and we've been talking about this for a long time. Of course I'm happy to share our story. So that's something really critical. But for these, you know, early stage companies, these startup companies without huge user bases, You don't need to explode out the gate with 5 different studies, 10 different studies. Where to focus is— and you can actually hurt yourself by moving too quickly to try to get a case study, because if you haven't had customers with you long enough to realize any value, you're going to get these very flaky, shallow stories anyways. So set up the systems, be collecting these bits of feedback and testimonials, have these check-in points along the way, whether it's NPS scores or customer surveys or conversations with sales reps. Start with, you know, kind of like you're far from in Guadalajara, but like when it snows up here, like a snowball, right? Like start rolling with what you have. It's only going to grow and grow and grow. So for early-stage companies, work on getting those first testimonials from your big advocates, your early adopters, and then have systems in place so as they realize wins, you can recognize it, you can respond, and then build stories out that way over time. So And yes, investment, we all have to be careful with the capital we have. It's not infinite, especially when you're bootstrapping, but I do want you to consider that while you can feed the beast of a blog over and over and over again, one great story can be repurposed all these different ways. It's worth spending the money on getting something that's going to give you that much leverage versus just one more generic blog post drop in the bucket that you hope is going to rank for