Video is an incredibly powerful medium for storytelling that enables you to convey your brand’s narrative in a captivating way. Through visuals, sound, and narrative structure, you can connect with your audience on a deeper level and keep your brand top-of-mind with viewers long after your video ends.
The fast pace of today’s online culture demands content that not only captures attention but also resonates deeply with viewers. While witty taglines and viral soundtracks are effective, there is a more powerful tool at your disposal – video case studies. Unlike testimonials, these compelling narratives, shared by real customers, allow your brand to demonstrate the real-world impact of your products and services. By showcasing the stories, challenges, and transformations of your customers, video case studies stand out as a more in-depth and authentic way to establish trust and provide potential customers with valuable insights and solutions.
The Importance and Impact of Video Case Studies
To make the most memorable and impactful video campaigns, your brand needs to leverage the power of case studies. Case studies are persuasive video content that uses real stories told by real customers to highlight a brand’s products and services. When paired with a thoughtful video script, video case studies can reach viewers on a more authentic level. They provide a sense of brand security in a way that no other video campaign can. By offering viewers who are faced with similar challenges the chance to see how a brand’s products can improve their lives, they are much more likely to make a purchase.
Case studies currently rank as the number one method of increasing sales, beating out branded website content, social media posts, blog posts, and even SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Case studies play a crucial role in winning new business and crafting modern marketing strategies. Primarily, they provide tangible evidence of your product or service’s success. They also highlight real-world results, allowing potential clients to witness the value you bring to your customers. When utilized correctly, video case studies can foster trust and credibility among your audience in ways that typical video campaigns cannot.
Because of their effectiveness in marketing, SaaS (Software as a Service) companies have already increased their production of case studies by 36% from 2022 to 2023 with plans to create even more. In fact, case studies have been so wildly successful that 24% of SaaS companies report they would produce more case studies to drive sales, even in the face of an economic recession. If you are ready to leverage case studies to win new business for your brand, let’s dive into the video production process.
Getting Started with Video Case Studies
Creating impactful video case studies requires a structured approach and careful planning. Not only will you be deciding the directionality of your narrative, but you will also need to choose which products and services to represent and how many video case studies you want to produce. The great news is, case studies are not a one-size-fits-all marketing tool, so you can create something that fits the length, format, and style most relevant to your brand, budget, and goals.
To help you gain a clearer understanding of the case study process, we have identified 10 helpful steps that can get you started.
- Select the customer stories that will best highlight your brand’s offering. Identify stories of success and focus on conveying how customers or employees achieved outstanding results using your product or service. Choose stories that align with your marketing goals and that resonate with your target audience. This will include stories from satisfied customers, but you should also consider stories that address specific consumer pain points and how they were solved by your products.
- Choose the style of your case study and how many you would like to produce. The two most common styles of case studies are transcriptions, which is simply a transcription of a customer interview overlayed with a series of images, or an exposé, which involves a director from your brand leading an on-camera interview with a customer. On average, we recommend creating one to three case studies for each of your buyer personas.
- Conduct interviews with the featured customers or employees to capture their testimonials and insights. Ask them to share about their lives before and after using your products. Encourage them to share their real experiences and challenges, as well as the impact your product or service made on their lives. This authenticity is paramount in building trust with your audience.
- Capture and keep track of direct customer quotes that can be incorporated into video case study voiceovers, social media posts, and other video campaigns.
- Gather strong metrics while conducting customer interviews or via post-interview follow-up emails. These metrics might include ways your products saved a customer time or money.
- If finding willing participants is difficult because customers are hesitant to appear on camera, consider incentivizing them with direct discounts on future products or with free gifts or swag.
- Include the storyteller’s name and your brand logo in your video case study. This builds upon the authenticity of the story and, in the consumer’s mind, connects your brand with outstanding results.
- Incorporate relevant images into your case study, including pull quotes, customer or employee headshots, photos of the product or service, and charts or KPIs (key performance indicators) to support the customer’s story.
- Once you have communicated your product’s value, don’t forget to include a strong CTA (Call to Action). Inviting viewers to engage with your brand by contacting you, watching another case study, booking a demonstration, or viewing related products is key to converting audiences from inactive viewers to active participants and buyers. Consider integrating unobtrusive but highly effective slide-in CTAs on product pages that link to related case studies. This way, consumers who are already browsing your products can see them in action.
- Decide where your video case study will launch. By using video case studies, businesses not only increase their conversion rates by 80% (Vidyard), but they are also up to 53 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google search results (Forrester), showcasing the compelling impact of this approach on both engagement and online visibility. You might choose to develop a case study library on your landing page, dovetail a case study into a well-timed email campaign, or sneak a case study into an email signature to move warm audiences further through the sales funnel.
Challenges of Case Study Production
While finding participants may be difficult at first, brands often find that identifying measurable metrics is one of the most difficult parts of producing video case studies. You might be excited to dive right in and get started, but don’t neglect numbers 1 and 2 from our list above. Solidifying stories that align with your marketing goals is the best way to ensure successful case studies.
Customers can become one of your brand’s greatest marketing tools if you take the time to connect their stories with your marketing goals in a way that makes sense to viewers. Case studies offer social proof that a brand’s products and services really work. Some brands choose to create their case studies in-house and spend upwards of 12 hours actively creating each one, while others decide to save time and energy by partnering with a marketing agency like (spark). Our team of experts at (spark) can guide you through the daunting task of video case study planning, creation, and execution. We are a full-service production agency with the speed, agility, and collaborative spirit to take your video campaigns to the next level. Reach out today to learn how a partnership with (spark) can help your brand make media moments that matter.
