"Yeah, yeah, IP...but I already have a bunch of case studies."

Case studies can be a highly compelling tool to:

• Demonstrate the value created by your service
• Preview the client experience of working with you.

Isn’t that enough of a sales/marketing tool?

Doesn’t a case study go deeper than a more generalized framework or other forms of IP?

Well...

Case studies, notwithstanding their other key benefits, still fall short in three areas.

1) Cold start - this one is obvious. If you’re launching a new service, you won’t have any case studies to showcase, so IP becomes your most effective tool (perhaps your only tool!) to demonstrate your approach to your client’s urgent problem.

2) Results lag — Depending on your domain, it could take months or years for the impact of a successful client engagement to materialize in a quantifiable and impressive way. This becomes less of an issue after you’ve been in business for several years. But until then, you may still deal with an extension of the cold start problem, even with several completed engagements under your belt.

3) Context differential — unless your prospect/reader’s situation mirrors exactly the same conditions (which it never does), a case study will still require them to take an additional cognitive step to trust that your polished success story can be repeated in their context.

This context differential between the case study and your prospect offers a window for detractors to start poking holes in your approach and purported value. These holes sound like:

• We’re in a different growth stage…
• That was before Covid…
• This doesn’t account for genAI impacts…

Each objection adds friction to the sales cycle, slows conversions, and perhaps even diminishes trust if you can’t help them cross that cognitive jump.

So, while case studies can be wonderful illustrations of success stories, you can rely on your durable IP to fill the holes left behind.

Even better, you can build your IP (such as an original framework) — THEN use case studies to drive home your IP.

One. Two. Punch.

💡

-Wes