Aaron Hoos

Marketing is all about telling stories and a case study is a type of story about a customer who had a problem until they bought your solution. Case studies are very effective ways to market your business because the prospective buyers in your sales funnel see themselves in these stories and it helps to convince them to buy from you.
Here are 5 ways to use case studies in your marketing:

1. Case studies as separate, formal documents

If you have a great story about a customer who had a problem until they bought your product or service, you can write up your case study into a separate document – a nicely-designed one-page PDF is perfect! – and add it to your marketing collateral. Make them available on your website for download and send them to prospective buyers from time to time.

2. Case studies as informal stories

These are easy and fun to write and you should make it a point to write this kind of case study for every customer you have. Just create a one-paragraph story about the customer’s previous problem and the benefits they received when they bought from you. It’s very similar to the more formal version (above) but these stories can be used more broadly – in blogs, in emails, in conversations, in your sales letters, in your brochures, in your ebooks, etc. Keep these case studies in a file so you can pull from them whenever you need to.

3. Testimonials

Testimonials are a type of case study… from the customer’s perspective. When you work with a customer, ask them for a testimonial and post it on your website. (Check out testimonials from my clients). Use these testimonials everywhere!

4. Fictional case studies

The idea of using fictional case studies might upset some readers but they are a very common technique in marketing and sales copy writing. The famous sales copy headline “They laughed when I sat down at the piano but when I started to play!” is a case study… it’s just a fictional one. These types of case studies should be truthful, even if they are fictional. (That is, they shouldn’t be that different from the real benefits experienced by real customers). Be careful when using these case studies… they are acceptable as highly valuable marketing and sales copy techniques but they shouldn’t be presented as real case studies.

5. Case studies of NON-customers

Here’s a great way to use case studies: You can write case studies but they don’t have to be about your customers. Typically, these case studies are negative case studies, highlighting situations where the person or business didn’t follow through with a solution and suffered the consequences. These are frequently used in business books where the author wants to compare a positive case study and a negative case study. In a financial book I’m reading right now, the author highlights Bre-X as a company that did not use proper accounting methods. It’s a negative case study. Note: Don’t identify specific prospects who didn’t buy from you!

Case study tips

• Categorize your case studies by problem and also by industry so that you can find them quickly and send them to the right targeted prospects.
• Not all of your case studies need to have your customer’s name in them. Sometimes a customer doesn’t want their name in a case study. However, you can say something like “A customer who is a leader in the automotive sector…” or “A customer who is a multinational insurance company…”. Some of your case studies SHOULD have a customer name, though, just to add credibility. Your most formal case studies and your testimonials should use the customer’s name, especially if they are well-known.
• Your case studies will be the most valuable to you when your prospects see themselves in the case study. Therefore, make sure the problems are realistic and the benefits are achievable. One case study with amazing results will be less valuable to you than three or four case studies with realistic results.

Let’s say you want to sell something. Maybe you’re a brand spanking new start-up with a shiny sales funnel, or maybe you’re a seasoned business that has sold lots of stuff before. But now you have something new to sell.

You don’t want to just haphazardly stick a price tag on it and throw it out there in the hopes that the market will jump on it. You want to add the offering into your sales funnel in a way that makes it a profitable product or service to sell.

Here’s how to construct your offer from the ground up.

1. DEFINE THE OFFER ITSELF

Figure out what people are actually going to buy from you. What is the product or service?

• What do your customers actually get when they buy? What don’t they get?
• What tiers do you offer? (i.e. will you offer a Silver, Gold, and Platinum version?)
• Will this product or service be combined with other new or existing products or services?
• How long does it take to make/do/deliver?
• What are your costs to develop the product?
• What is the value proposition? (i.e. WHY would someone want to buy this?)
• How is it different from competitive offerings?

2. DEFINE THE TERMS

Now you need to figure what you are going to charge and any other financial/administrative considerations.

• How much are you going to charge?
• Where is the paygate? Do they pay before delivery? After delivery? In installments? (Check out my blog post Sales funnel paygates to learn more about possible paygates in your sales funnel)
• How will you transact payment?
• How will you deliver it? What are the responsibilities that you have and what are the responsibilities that your customer has?
• What is the return policy?
• What guarantees do you offer? (Check out my blog post Give your guarantees some teeth for a great tip)

3. DEVELOP MARKETING

Now you need to figure out how it fits inside your sales funnel.

• Are you selling this offering inside your existing sales funnel (to the leads you are already generating) or will you need to create a new sales funnel?
• Why would someone buy your product or service? What need does it fulfill?
• How would they describe the problem that they need to solve?
• What is your target market’s mindset progression through the sales funnel?
• What marketing messages match each step of the contact’s progress through the sales funnel?
• How will you communicate these marketing messages? (i.e. what marketing channels will you use?)

4. INTEGRATE INTO YOUR SALES FUNNEL

Now it’s time to put all of the pieces in place.

1. Complete your product or service so it is ready to ship
2. Create the marketing content that you’ll need
3. Deploy the content into your sales funnel
4. Start marketing and selling the offering
5. Pay attention to initial feedback: Are people buying? Are they not buying? Are they responding to your product or service in some way? What is your conversion rate?
6. Adjust your offering or your marketing to address feedback.

There are 7 basic human emotions: Anger, Fear, Disgust, Contempt, Joy, Sadness, Surprise.

These are root emotions from which all other emotions spring. (Read more about them here). These 7 emotions are at the core of what drives our decision-making.

If you understand these emotions and build your sales funnel around them, you can sell more.

HOW TO USE ANGER IN YOUR SALES FUNNEL

Anger is a great sales-inducing emotion when you align your marketing and sales copy WITH your target market AGAINST some cause or position. Your copy will include a lot of “us-versus-them” content and will need to highlight the discrepancy between your target market’s current position and where they want to be. And, of course, the product or service you sell should erase the discrepancy and establish the buyer in the superior position over the antagonist.

Some good examples of using anger in your marketing can be seen by looking at the grassroots groundswell of support during the “Occupy” protests. Even though this was a grassroots movement, its messages were still “marketing” and they had a very clear us-versus-them language against a common “enemy”. I’ve also seen this anger approach used effectively in non-profit copywriting against things like cancer, poverty, racism, and sexism.

Here are some tips if you want to effectively use anger in your sales funnel:

• Align yourself with your audience. Don’t be angry at them and don’t make them angry at you.
• It’s easiest to generate anger against an antagonist that cannot defend itself (i.e. cancer) instead of an antagonist that can defend itself (such as a specific person or institution). You’ll also avoid any issues of libel this way! Avoid stirring up anger about a competitor.
• Your sale doesn’t have to eliminate the anger but it should have a cathartic effect in the buyer — a sort of “I’ll show them” impact.
• Don’t pull your punches! Don’t be afraid to use the strongest possible language. Your most likely-to-buy audience will feel the strongest about the issue and your strong language will make you an ally.
• A manifesto or a blog-based “rant” is a very effective way to express your anger.
• With emotions, it is easy to create a call to action but be careful that your call to action doesn’t come across as too salesy. People don’t want to buy; they want to get back at the target of their anger.
• If you are a business, you can help the cathartic effect by contributing a portion of all proceeds to some charitable group whose work is counter to the target of anger.

Anger is not an emotion you see in sales funnels very often but it can be a useful tool if used correctly. Take a look at your sales funnel and see if there’s a way that you can use it.

Running a business means managing a sales funnel. Sometimes you need to roll up your sleeves and do some serious work in your sales funnel to fix things that are broken or to optimize it for more profit. But other times, you just need to make minor tweaks to get a quick “pop” in you business.

Here are six quick ideas to get more money out of your sales funnel today

1. Draw out your sales funnel

You’ll gain such a clear understanding of how essential your sales funnel is to your business, plus I usually find that just drawing it out reveals some great opportunities.

2. Create just one clear call to action in your site

It’s easy and tempting to put in all kinds of calls to action — “Contact us” or “download this” or “subscribe here” — but if you have one offering, make it the front-and-center action that website visitors should take.

(Disclaimer: I’m not saying that you should take the other stuff off of your site. Just make one of those things the primary action).

3. Offer a dramatic one-day bonus

Create some short-term urgency by releasing a huge bonus product or service with the purchase of a a popular product or service you already have. Keep it short-term (a 24 hour period is good). See what kind of response you get. Find out if more people are being because they want the free bonus or because it’s a great deal.

4. Announce that you are about to raise your prices

Hey, we all need to raise our prices at some point and most business owners silently raise their prices and hope that there isn’t a lot of backlash. Work this to your advantage by announcing — via press releases and social media — that prices are going to rise on a specific date. (If you sell services, make sure you let people know that they can buy now at the lower rate but receive the service after the price increase).

5. Get back in touch with old buyers

Confession: I find it pretty easy and fun to go after new business so it’s really easy for me to finish a project and then not get back in touch with previous clients. I know I’m not alone here. Lots of entrepreneurs let old customers dry up. Spend some time today combing through your past few years of business and getting in touch with your top ten customers from there. Let them know that you have some availability or extra products and would love the chance to serve them again.

6. Double your lead-generation efforts today

The more leads we generate, the more prospects we end up with and the more customers we can convert those prospects into. But sometimes, lead generation becomes a big strategic endeavor when really just a few extra minutes or hours of effort can have a dramatic, positive impact. Don’t think long-term, just go out and try to double the amount of leads TODAY.

In this business, your success is entirely dependent on leads. The more leads you have, the better. So where do you find these leads?

HOW TO FIND LEADS

First, start with you.
List you all the different places in life where you interact with other people. These are called your “spheres of influence“. List as many spheres of influence that you have. (By the way, you probably have more than you realize).

Some common spheres of influence include:

• Immediate family
• Extended family (don’t ignore family who may not live nearby!)
• Close friends
• Friends
• Acquaintances
• Current co-workers
• Previous co-workers (list all of your previous jobs)
• Alumni (college and high school)
• Church (past and present religious affiliations)
• Charity connections
• Other organizations (Toastmasters, etc.)
• Online connections (Twitter followers, Facebook friends, people you frequently talk to in forums)
• People you do business with (accountant, dry cleaner, mechanic, dentist, etc.)
• Current clients
• Past clients (past clients at your current job and past clients at your previous job… Just make sure that you are complying with any non-compete clauses if your are still in the same industry)

Second, list names
List all of the people by name in each sphere. Yes it will take a long time but the more time you spend being thorough right now, the more successful you will be later.

Third, gather contact information
Figure out how to get in touch with the people. If you know their number or email address or postal address, great! Collect it all into one place. I suggest a database of some kind.

Fourth, identify how you can help them
This step is optional but I think it helpful. Figure out how you can help them. If you’re a real estate professional and they are renters, you’ll likely be able to help them buy their first home. If you’re a financial advisor and they are near to retirement, you’ll likely be able to help them transition their portfolio into safer, income-producing investments while minimizing tax consequences.

If you really want to improve your odds, check out this blog post: 6 sales funnel tips for real estate professionals (it applies to financial professionals, too!)

Fifth, get in touch with them
Using whatever method you have identified (face-to-face, phone, email, or postal mail), get in touch with your contact and let them know what you do and make a recommendation about how you’d like to help them.

Chances are, one of the following things will happen:

• They will become your client
• They will hedge a little; they won’t commit, and they’ll tell you that they’ll think about it
• They will tell you no
• You won’t reach them or they won’t respond

If they become your client, that’s great. Congratulations! However, most people will fall into the second category and some people will fall into the third category. In those situations, thank them and let them know that if anything changes, you’d love to help them. Ask them for permission to stay in touch and collect any contact information you don’t have (so you can email or mail them something). Don’t delete the ones who never responded; just keep them on file and from time to time reach out to them.

GET EVEN MORE LEADS

Now that you have this list started, it’s time to generate even more leads. Here are three ways:

• Add another sphere of influence. Join a group, join the gym, get involved in a new organization, volunteer for a charity, etc.
• For each of your leads (yes, that big list you just created earlier in this blog post), do the same exercise and write down THEIR spheres of influence. Sure, you might not know their names but just get down the spheres of influence first. Then create a strategy to approach those people and make a request like: “Can you put up my business card on the bulletin board at your work?” or “can I put on a presentation about insurance in the lunch room at your office?” Make sure to keep the request easy for them to do. Remember: They won’t agree to anything that makes them uncomfortable!
• You probably already have a website that is geared to people who are ready to become clients. (Most real estate and financial professionals have a site like this). Move up your sales funnel and create content that is geared toward lead generation instead of prospect conversion. For example, a real estate professional might want to create content that answers some earlier stage questions like “should I buy a home right now?”. You can do this on your own site, or start another site, or use internet marketing (like articles and press releases and social media) to help you drive traffic to your website.