case study for kinds of agency

Agency Guide: How To Write a Client Case Study (With Examples)

QUICK SUMMARY:

A client case study highlights an agency's impact on a business, showcasing problem-solving skills and success. It serves as concrete evidence of expertise, building credibility and distinguishing an agency from competitors. Engaging case studies captivate potential clients, demonstrating value and encouraging further exploration. Learn to craft impactful case studies, enhancing your agency's appeal and client acquisition.

It’s an age-old question: if you want to get more clients , where should you put your content marketing focus?

Your first instinct might be to say blogging. This answer makes sense—for many years, blogging has been touted as one of the best ways to attract an audience and demonstrate your expertise. While blogging can highlight your agency's expertise, it isn’t necessarily going to be nearly as effective as showing real results to win future customers.

Instead of pouring all of your agency's time and creative energy into blog posts, another approach is to focus on client case studies that prove the effectiveness of your services.

Case studies are, in many ways, similar to blog posts. Writing them takes a similar skill set and, once finished, helps to bring in organic search traffic.

However, they have one major advantage over blog posts: they're a great way to show potential clients your agency's value proposition . They also help tell a customer story in a very different way than blog posts do.

If you haven’t written any in a while (or ever), you’re missing out on a great marketing opportunity. In this guide, we'll discuss how to write a case study to attract prospective customers.

Why Client Case Studies Are Worth the Effort

How to write a marketing case study that lands you more clients, real client case study examples.

If you’ve never written a case study, it can be challenging to figure out where to start and what to include. For example, how do you decide which clients to feature and what details to include?

While there is a slight learning curve to writing a compelling client case study, it’s not as difficult as you might think, and their benefits far outweigh the effort of creating them.

As highlighted by a study from the Content Marketing Institute , case studies are among the top three pieces of content that B2B marketers focus on in 2023:

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Case Studies Speak Directly to Your Potential Clients.

Your blog posts are probably well-written and informative, but are they driving conversions? Readers are busy, and if your latest blog post doesn’t speak to their current needs, there’s a good chance they won’t read it and you're likely seeing a high bounce rate . Use marketing attribution models to determine where your conversions are coming from accurately.

However, case studies are more likely to grab readers’ attention than blog articles. People love reading about situations like their own. If you can tell a potential client a story about how you helped a business similar to theirs, they won’t just pay attention—they’ll remember you when they’re ready to hire an agency.

Case Studies Can Do Everything Blog Posts Can Do.

Your client case study doesn’t have to be a dry, boring wall of text. It can inform, entertain, and inspire readers. You can share useful findings or advice in a case study, just like you would in a blog post. They are also ideal for displaying your expertise and positioning you as a thought leader and your company as an authority.

Case Studies Build Credibility and Trust.

Your perceived trustworthiness is an essential part of whether people decide to hire you or not. Most people will hesitate to hire an agency that didn’t have any examples of their past work on display. They also give clients a way to evaluate your competence before they commit to working with you.

Case Studies Make You Stand Out From the Competition.

Case studies are a bit more specialized and challenging to write than blog posts, which means that not everyone writes them. If you want your agency to look more professional than your competitors, writing case studies give your brand's image a boost. Be sure to use competitor analysis tools after you've created a few case studies to see how you stack up in your customer's industry.

Case Studies Make a Great Lead Magnet.

They are also useful as part of a cold email marketing strategy. For example, you can let people read the beginning (make sure it’s strong!), and offer to send the full case study in PDF form in exchange for an email sign-up.

Case Studies Work.

In the CMI's survey mentioned above, case studies were ranked in the top 3 highest performing types of content for both nurturing and converting leads:

Report Smarter, Not Harder.

Better, faster & easier client reports are just a few clicks away, 1. define the type of clients you want to attract.

Before you email any former clients or start working on an outline of your first draft, take some time to figure out who your ideal client is. Write out your ideal customer profile and ask yourself questions such as:

Is there a type of business you especially like working with?

What kind of work do you want to do more of?

Case studies, like any other type of content marketing, work best when targeted towards a specific type of reader. If you design your case study to resonate with your ideal clients’ wishes, insecurities, and goals while including relevant theories, your agency will attract more of the kind of clients you enjoy working with. Use a client profile template to ensure you're team is aligned on who your ICP actually is.

2. Gather Information and Data Points

Once you know who you’re writing your case study for, decide which project you want to write about. Pick something that your ideal client will find relatable in some way.

Always reach out to any current or former clients before you write a case study about them. You don’t want to post any potentially-sensitive information about someone else’s business online without their permission.

Many of your clients will probably be happy to be featured in a case study, as long as you make them look good and avoid giving away anything they don’t want to be public knowledge.

If your client does not want to be featured under their brand, you can decide to write the case study and highlight the metrics without using their name and simply say “A Company in [blank] Industry”. That said, a more compelling case study features a brand with customer quotes, so try to find projects and clients that are happy to have their name on your site.

Once a client agrees to the case study, set up an interview with them so you can discuss the project. A testimonial is a great addition to a case study—for example, here's what one of our case studies had to say about us:

AgencyAnalytics automated the work of two to three full-time employees. It’s been a massive savings cost-wise and efficiency-wise. It’s also been a dramatic time-saver. I’m very happy with AgencyAnalytics and what the tool offers our clients.

Gather the information and data points prior to discussing it with your client, so they have a clear idea of what will be included in the study. A great marketing case study includes visual data points of the hard numbers. Take screenshots to highlight results from previous customers to add credibility.

Create your own live Marketing Dashboard in minutes to show your potential clients your agency is doing an excellent job.  Try it free for 14 days ! 

3. Outline Your Case Study

Once you have all the information you need, it’s time to make an outline. It may help to create a content brief before you get started.

Think of your case study like a story—it needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. Present your client’s problem at the beginning, and fill in the middle with the details of how you solved it.

Cap things off with a description of how your client benefited from working with you. For example, you can call out the long-term SEO benefits of a content marketing strategy, including leads that are still being generated months after the post was published. Don’t forget; the client is the protagonist of this story, not you.

4. Be Human

As you start writing your case study, remember to keep it relatable. Don’t just rattle off a list of stats your client wanted to improve. A compelling case study will also be entertaining and enjoyable to read.

Dig a little deeper and talk about the implications of their problem. For instance, was your client frustrated that none of their strategies were working to bring in more traffic? Were they disappointed about having to delay other projects because their conversions weren’t improving? Try to zero in on a specific pain point that your potential clients may be dealing with themselves.

5. Provide Actionable Advice

An effective case study doesn’t just make you and your client look good. It also provides information or advice that anybody can use, whether they decide to hire you or not. You don’t have to give away the key secrets of your trade, but don’t be stingy either—share some of your methods, your knowledge, and any lessons learned while helping your client. Give the reader something they can take away and apply to their own work.

This isn’t as counterproductive as it might sound. Being open about your work will help build valuable trust with potential clients. And even if you’re completely transparent about your methods, most people that aren’t marketing experts will still opt to hire you instead of doing the legwork of implementing your strategy themselves.

6. Write Clearly and Succinctly (Avoid Industry Jargon!)

A great case study is easy to read and digest. These pointers will help you keep your readers interested from beginning to end.

Write concisely. Don’t bog your piece down with unnecessary details.

Avoid jargon as much as possible. Someone outside your field should be able to read and understand your case study.

Break up the page with plenty of white space. Use short paragraphs, sub-headers, and bullet points to organize your content.

Include plenty of charts and graphs. Visual content breaks up the monotony of text and keeps readers engaged.

Include a call-to-action (CTA). After you've told a compelling story to your potential customer, tell them exactly how they can contact your sales team or where they can learn more about your services.

7. Publish and Promote

Before you publish your case study, show it to your client to make sure they’re happy with everything you’ve written. Once they give you the thumbs-up, you can post the piece on your site or start using it as a lead magnet. For best results, promote your case study just like you would a blog post. A few well-timed social media posts can bring your case study a lot of extra attention, and maybe even get you a few more leads.

Locally-targeted Facebook Ads can be really effective for agencies. Using your case study or a pdf expanded version of it can be a great lead magnet to gather the email addresses of potential clients. Don’t just publish the case study and forget it. Make the most of it! One case study can be a powerful lead generation tool.

Spend Less Time Creating Reports and More Time Growing Your Agency

Looking to find a bit of inspiration too? Sometimes the best way to learn is to follow a great example. See how some of these marketers have taken a customer's success story and crafted compelling content with tangible data points for their clients.

Bounteous has an overview section that gives a great overview of the goals, approach, and results.

KlientBoost includes marketing case studies on their website that are short and to the point. The one-page piece of content focuses on results that are delivered to the clients. You can find an example case study here .

AgencyAnalytics provides another example that includes details about the client, the challenge they were facing, the best solution they used, and the ultimate result. You can read find our case studies here .

The Takeaway

Learning to write case studies is a smart investment in your agency’s future success. They help with your agency's reputation management , earn new clients’ trust, and highlight your agency’s skills in a way that most other types of content can’t. They're also a great piece to use in your client proposal arsenal. When it comes to conversions, a few targeted, high-quality case studies will go a long way, so don’t overlook this powerful marketing tool.

Grow your marketing agency by keeping track of conversions and content marketing strategies in a single platform. Get started with your free 14-day trial today.

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Joe started his career as a developer and since has created many internet businesses. He has now moved on to the position of CEO and has enjoyed all the challenges it has brought.

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Agency Case Studies: How to Write and Use Case Studies

“We move at the speed of trust.”

This statement by my mentor and friend, Betsy, was one I heard early when starting ALRAS Digital. I didn’t fully appreciate it then, mainly because I generally move at the pace of Speedy Gonzalez in all things personal and professional. 

Trust and credibility are paramount to winning and keeping clients in professional services and business development. Whether you are a first-time freelancer or a seasoned agency veteran, you’re unlikely to win a project from a prospective client if they don’t trust you can do the job. Case studies are one of the most potent tools for agencies, consultants, and freelancers to build trust, highlight tangible results for past partners, and demonstrate their ability to get things done.

For business development professionals and business owners, understanding the nuances of creating and leveraging great client case studies can be a game-changer for how they find and win new clients. This post dives deep into the significance of case studies, how they can be effectively crafted, and even shares some of our favorite examples from top Prosal agencies.

Why Do I Need Them? How Clients Use Case Studies to Select Partners

A well-crafted case study is more than just a success story; it is an engaging narrative that demonstrates your approach, expertise, and the value you bring to the table. 

Case studies have been a dominant theme in more conversations than I can remember for agencies and consultants that are struggling to break into a new industry or service, and they all usually resemble something along the lines of:

“They liked our proposal, but they went with someone else because they had experience working with the sector or type of client.”

Return to the first statement I mentioned by Betsy: “We move at the speed of trust.” The quote reveals that the client did not have enough trust in the agency to work with them and hire them for the project. It is not a question about their skills or expertise in their services. Instead, it is about the relevance of the experience and the outstanding question of whether you have worked with organizations that resemble mine in size, industry, and the challenges we face.

Clients also want certainty that you’ve tackled challenges similar to theirs and emerged victorious. Moreover, clients are also looking for proactivity in what they know they don’t know and, more importantly, what they don’t realize they need. 

One recent example I can recall was pitching for an environmental organization preparing for a rebranding. When we shared our proposal with the organization, we shared past brand guides our team had delivered to clients, one of which was for a similar environmental organization that included a messaging guide with audience information and preferred terms. When they finished reading the proposal and example brand guides, they immediately called us and asked, “Can we do something like this exact brand guide for us? Messaging is a huge problem at our organization, and if we are rebranding, we want to be able to communicate who we are and what we do effectively.” With a simple “Yes, we did it for them, and we can make an even better one for you,” we knew we won the project.

Clients also want to be confident that you can deliver results , especially when projects have an essential data component like click-through rates or orders of magnitude. For example, when looking at advertising or fundraising requests for proposals (RFPs), it is not uncommon for the RFP to say something along the lines of “Preference for agencies/consultants with experience working with budgets of over  $10,000,000” or some other order of magnitude that is reserved for larger or more specialized organizations. 

Crafting an Impactful Case Study

Based on how clients use case studies to evaluate and select their partners, your case studies should speak to each of the following elements:

• Organizational Relevance
• Challenges Faced
• Solutions Implemented
• Measurable Outcomes

A compelling case study blends storytelling, data, and strategy to address the above elements. Here is where the all-important storytelling rule of “Show, don’t tell” comes into play (and I believe this is most true for creative proposals for projects in branding, websites, and other creative industries).

There are multiple templates and options available, but our preferred format for crafting the perfect case study is the following:

This is the executive summary of your case study. In a short paragraph, ideally about 2-4 sentences, you should hit on all the core points of who you worked with, what you accomplished for them, and the significance of those accomplishments. 

Clearly outline the problem the client faced. Think of it like the plot of a story. This section will set the stage for your entire case study and, when well written, can make your solution seem all the more impressive. If there were previously failed attempts to solve this problem, you can note them here without blaming those who tried to solve it.

This is the section where you can show off the solution you ideated and implemented and how awesome you and your team are. Don’t be afraid to brag! Walk the reader through your approach and build up to the climax when you finally resolve the problem.

• Outcomes & Takeaways

This is where the all-important “What happened?!?” question is answered. It is also where you can go into great detail about the takeaways from the solution or strategic approach and the significance of the solutions implemented.

Numbers speak louder than words, so the significance is best measured quantitatively, such as new customers or time saved. However, significance can also be shared qualitatively, especially with creative projects. In such cases, “Show, don’t tell” is often the rule best followed. Include hyperlinks or embedded examples of the final product or the solutions’ outcome in the case study.

• Testimonial

Include a quote from your client. A testimonial from a satisfied client can add authenticity and depth to your case study and a face to a name if you decide to include them as a reference. My preference for testimonials is to include the name, title, and headshot when attributing the quote.

Once finished, case studies should exist in two formats: as a standalone document and as a page on your website.

Case studies should first be designed as a standalone PDF in an editor like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Canva, or some other easy tool to create, review, and edit. While the case study might be reformatted or updated for specific proposals to call out different accomplishments or fit into the style of a revised proposal, you also want something you can quickly create and review when first drafting. Once made, you can easily share it as a single attachment or append it as an appendix in a PDF.

Once finished, consider copying the material onto a webpage that you can publish on your website. Not only does this open new doors for sharing the case study, but it also offers additional materials for prospective clients visiting your site. Consider that most proposals will include between two and five case studies. However, suppose you’ve gone through this process for multiple case studies. In that case, a client who may be on the fence about hiring you and decides to visit your website will discover a library of successful projects you’ve executed, not just the ones you had attached to the proposal. 

Excellent Case Study from Agencies on Prosal

We have some fantastic agencies on Prosal, so we would be remiss not to call out some of our favorite case studies from our agency partners.

Our friends at Mixte Communications have a breadth of experience that they showcase with short and long-form case studies alongside a creative website . Their most popular case study is from an award-winning campaign to mobilize youth voters for the League of Women Voters in California .

“We use it as a case study,” Jamie shared with us, “though it doesn't look like the traditional visual format that is super simple. In our space, I think the detailed data, the approach and the lessons learned are really important to social justice advocates looking for support, and I think that's why it does better than any other ‘case study’ so far.”

Teal Media is a woman-owned, full-service creative and design agency with an extensive library of case studies , each built with incredible detail and refreshing visuals . Despite the extent of their case studies, they all follow a similar format to what we outlined, calling out the most critical elements of the project, like challenges, solutions, testimonials, and outcomes, and technology stack for each case study in an engaging article format that is full of creative highlights. Reading through their case studies feels like you are participating in the journey with them to build a new website.

The website and case studies of Purple Bunny, a global design and innovation studio, are a testament to their creativity and data-driven approach, with case study titles like Increase a B2B SaaS homepage conversions by 25% . The executive summaries and presentation rollout are not unlike Teal Media and our suggested guidance (because it works!). They also don’t stick to a single case study template and change themes, designs, and colors to show their innovative personality.

For solopreneurs and freelancers, you can find inspiration in the article-format case studies of Laura S. Quinn Consulting, a 25-year leader in nonprofit websites and digital strategy. Her article trades the traditional sections of the case studies from above for short paragraphs, multiple testimonials, and graphics highlighting her approach and success. She also leans into her subcontracting successes, like in this case study where worked with Capellic, a website consulting firm, to support the Learning Policy Institute.

These are just a few of the countless examples of remarkable case studies that exist out there. Despite their numbers, all of the best ones follow some of the same structures and guidelines to build trust, outline accomplishments, and drive new business into their companies.

Seeking Client Consent: A Must-Do

Before publishing any case study, you should always seek the client’s consent to publish and share. Any contract you signed related to the project likely included a confidentiality clause, so you may be legally bound to ask for permission before sharing. Moreover, it is not uncommon for a client to consider their business details, challenges, and results sensitive information to the point of complete confidentiality. 

On more than one occasion, I’ve been asked not to share details about a project because a client requested it. Even if a client is wholly against you sharing the project, that doesn’t mean you can’t still use elements for a case study to support your business development efforts. 

In cases where a client rejects your request for consent to publish a case study, consider anonymizing the details and keeping the case study as a confidential document that only you can share and control access to. When anonymizing, remove any specific names or data that can identify the client. This way, you can still showcase your success without compromising your privacy. Once anonymized, you can use this case study as a private reference for future pitches or proposals.

Planning Your Next Case Study

Case studies are more than just success stories; they're a testament to an agency's expertise, approach, and value proposition. For professional services agencies and consultants, they're not just a nice-to-have but a necessity. 

Consider revisiting your client management process if you’ve struggled to put together a good case study. Keep detailed records of your work process, such as tasks in a project management tool or regularly recording meetings and check-ins, to make it easier to craft a good case study down the road. Similarly, keep an open and regular line of communication with your client so they can provide updates and insights into their satisfaction and success metrics. If you've been speaking to them regularly, it will be much easier to ask for a testimonial.

By understanding their significance, ensuring client collaboration, and crafting them with care, agencies can position themselves as leaders, winning trust and securing more business opportunities.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alfredo Ramirez

Alfredo is the COO and CMO of Prosal. He has nearly 10 years of experience working with nonprofits and foundations, and was the founder of a successful consulting business. He is an avid mountain biker and snowboarder and enjoys anything that takes him outdoors.

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In this post

Agency Case Studies: How to Craft Client Stories That Sell Your Services

• Reasons agency case studies are beneficial
• How agency case studies differ
• The story depends on the service you provide

Approaching clients for a case study

• How to write them
• Produce your best case study

Digital agency case studies are a great way for potential clients to view your success stories. In fact, the Content Marketing Institute found that case studies were the second most popular type of content B2B marketers use, with 47% stating case studies were the most effective:

Agency case studies are highly beneficial because…

They let you show current clients with impressive results

Establish yourself as an expert in the services you provide by showing the brands you’ve worked with and the results achieved. The more recognizable the brand name, the better. Doing this also helps you stand out from your competition.

You can demonstrate your strategy

For potential clients, showing what you’ve done for current clients is an opportunity to understand how your processes work — and what they could expect working with you.

Finding a great agency can be challenging for many clients

You can establish trust with clients by showing your agency has worked with brands in their industry. For instance, a SaaS company would want to see case studies from other tech-based clients, not a consumer packaged goods company (vice versa).

How agency case studies differ from other case studies

Digital marketing agency case studies help you generate more leads by focusing on how you have helped clients meet their marketing goals. Instead of focusing solely on the client itself, your agency case study should demonstrate the goal of the campaign, approach, and results.

Marketing agency, Bounteous , showcases client case studies on their website detailing each campaign’s overall goals:

Example case study on Bounteous:

Before you begin producing your agency case studies, consider the following:

Your ideal client

Whether it’s a stated goal or not, you should always attract clients you want to work with. That way all aspects of your content marketing strategy, including case studies, should be tailored towards your ideal clients.

If you don’t already have an ideal client profile, refer to your services and who would be willing to purchase those services. If you offer a multitude of services with varying types of clients, you can create different case studies aimed at specific customers. For example, using one case study on web design, one for Google Ads, one for SEO and so on.

Using different case studies

Your case studies will vary depending on who you serve. You may assume that a single case study will represent all the services you provide. However, it’s more beneficial to use at least one case study for each service as your ideal client may not be the same.

By showing potential clients that you get results in the service they need, you establish credibility and position yourself as a leader in that sector.

The basis of your case study depends on the service you provide

For each service you offer, create a detailed case study relating to specific aspects of each service. Here are some tips to craft a unique case study for each service you offer:

If your services include PPC/SEM, then you may include statistics on conversion rates, revenue, or money saved. Using clear and specific statistics aids the reader’s understanding and showcases your results without confusion.

Agency 51 uses this approach to highlight the results they achieved for York Coffee Emporium. They detail their goals, solution, methods, and results to deliver a case study showcasing a 22% increase in Google shopping orders using a dedicated PPC campaign and conversion optimization audit:

Agency case studies detailing web design services may show your results based on a professional design, usability, mobile optimization, and more. Forge and Smith, for instance, highlights their client Sky Helicopters to demonstrate how they enhanced site architecture and navigation :

Email marketing

Email marketing case studies can highlight market research data, subscriber rates, open rates, conversion rates, or leads.

Pure 360 showcases their email marketing expertise by highlighting the 225% increase in email open rates they helped Watchfinder achieve. Notice how the agency uses a customer quote to enhance their credibility:

Content/blog writing

Content writing customer stories should focus on how your content has achieved their overall goal. The client’s goal may be to enhance brand awareness, increase conversions, boost leads, or increase web traffic. You can showcase results by measuring unique visits, bounce rates, page views, number of conversions or leads, social shares, and more.

This Jawfish Digital case study highlights specific traffic results the agency achieved for a specific article to highlight their content creation services:

Social media

Agency case studies that tout social media services may highlight your expertise in a variety of platforms, social trends, utilizing new features to achieve campaign success, and using paid campaigns to generate ROI.

Cardinal has an extensive case study on their social media work for pizza chain Papa Johns. The agency uses statistics to quantify their results, specifically a 374% boost in revenue and a 426% increase in orders:

It’s likely that your customers will be happy to be featured on your website, especially if you offer to link to their site in return.

Once you finish working on a successful campaign and decide you want to feature the client in a case study, kindly ask them for permission. Don’t publish personal information without gaining the consent first.

If your client declines your invitation, you can create a case study without using their name and details. It just won’t be as believable as showing the client’s brand name.

You can state, for example, ‘a finance company’ or ‘a company in the X market’ and detail your campaign. However, the most engaging agency case studies feature the brand’s name and logo as using well-known brand names can help establish you as a leader and provides social proof.

How to write a compelling case study

You need more than facts to create a compelling story. To attract clients, you should also…

1. Hone in on your client’s pain points

Some questions to ask as you write the client story:

• What problems were they struggling with before they employed your services? (Be specific.)
• How were these problems affecting their business?
• Why were their original strategies failing?

Once you’ve addressed the pain points, discuss how the campaign’s goal related to these struggles, and how your agency’s services helped them overcome these problem areas.

For a laser hair removal client, Single Grain states how their client was struggling with competition and the sensitive nature of the hair removal topic:

2. Don’t just tell, show

Images are quicker to process than text so using charts or graphs in addition to data can help make your case studies more engaging to the prospect. Visual content also breaks up text making the information easier for your audience to comprehend.

Amp Agency uses photographs in their Maybelline case study detailing how they introduced a Color Studio Tour to bring the exclusivity of New York fashion to consumers:

Meanwhile, Cardinal uses charts, graphs, and infographics to showcase their strategy and results for Tropical Smoothie Cafe:

3. Make it easy to read

In addition to visual content, headers, subheaders, and splitting up your page into sections keeps readers interested. Organized content with clear sections, featuring an objective, method, and results to show how your client benefited from your services will help engage those with minimal understanding of what you do.

You could also link to a lead capture page to encourage potential clients to reach out and request a consultation.

Hex Digital formats their case studies into distinct sections using headers and imagery to help prospects understand the full story:

4. Provide actionable advice and results

You don’t need to go into explicit detail when detailing your methods but stating what you did and how you implemented your strategy can be helpful to your audience. Being honest is a no-brainer here.

From the Cardinal example earlier, they explain how they worked on a PPC strategy for DentalWorks to ensure a return on investment:

5. Share the finished product

Once you’ve published your customer success stories, promoting them is the next step. Promote your case studies in the same way you would promote an article — use social media. Make them the focal point of an email campaign. Repurpose them in blog posts or PDF format. Anything you can do to bring attention to them is beneficial here.

Produce the perfect case study

Establish your agency as an expert who gets results by creating exceptional case studies that showcase your best examples. Remember to focus on results that addressed pain points, provide stats and client quotes when possible, and make the stories visually compelling.

By following the suggestions above, you’ll be on your way to crafting case studies that attract potential new clients. In addition to case studies, sign up for an Instapage Enterprise demo .

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The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Case Studies

Everything you need to know about creating effective marketing case studies that will help you convert more leads.

FREE DOWNLOAD: CASE STUDY TEMPLATES

Showcase success using compelling case studies.

Updated: 12/02/21

Published: 02/16/16

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and imagine you were considering purchasing a new product.

Would you be more inclined to:

A) Chat with a salesperson — while trying to block out the tiny voice in your head reminding you that they’re working on commission?

B) Review a case study about a customer who used that product to solve a problem similar to yours?

Probably option B, right? That’s because we put more trust in word-of-mouth marketing than we do salespeople.

The way people consume information has changed, and buyers have all the resources they need to make decisions about what to purchase. Companies can either continue marketing the old, less effective way … or they can embrace these changes and let their customers do the work for them through testimonials, reviews, word-of-mouth marketing, and marketing case studies.

Customers trust other customers — the companies that recognize this will benefit in the long run and grow better.

Plenty of companies have already proven how beneficial marketing case studies can be. They are the most popular form of self-promotional marketing used by marketing agency executives in the U.S. Additionally, 88% of surveyed B2B marketers say that customer case studies are considered to be their most impactful content marketing tactic.  

While chatting with a salesperson can be helpful, and even preferable for some, it’s clear that having marketing case studies on your website can be beneficial. Case studies answer potential customers’ questions, demonstrate success, build company-wide credibility, increase conversions , and most importantly, eliminate bias so your customer can make a confident decision to buy your product.

What Is a Marketing Case Study?

Marketing case studies analyze the ways that a customer uses a product or service. They describe a challenge the customer faced, the solutions they considered, and the results they experienced after their purchase. Strong case studies can compel others to buy a product.

Benefits of Case Studies

Converting Leads with Case Studies

Choosing a Case Study Format

Conducting a Case Study Interview

Benefits of Marketing Case Studies

The use of marketing case studies is beneficial to companies of all sizes and customers of all backgrounds. Well-crafted marketing case studies provide potential customers with engaging content that excites them to buy your product.

They Tell a Relatable Story

Case studies often involve an interview with a customer that has had success using your product. Before choosing a customer for an interview, consider who you’re targeting. Your case studies should appeal to your buyer persona .

When your target customer feels connected to your case studies, they will feel more confident in their purchase.

Consider this: You’re buying a new software for your team. You have a few possible options in mind, so you head to their respective websites to do your own research. The first two options sound good on paper (or rather, on screen), but you want a solution you can really trust. Something that is preferably not written by the company itself.

The third site you go to has a landing page that includes a few case studies. One of the case studies features an interview with an employee at a company similar to yours. You listen to that person describe challenges that they faced prior to getting the software — challenges that sound a lot like the ones you and your team currently face. The interviewee then talks about the ways that their software purchase resolved their pain points.

Wouldn’t the case study you found on the third website make you feel confident that the software could help your team, too?  

The key to creating relatable case studies is considering your buyer personas. That means considering demographics, company size, industry, etc. and selecting a person that the majority of your potential customers will feel a connection.

They Demonstrate Success

Take a look at HubSpot’s case study landing page . Check out the wide range of case studies listed. Notice how these case studies cover all types of industries, a wide variety of locations, different company sizes, and more.

If there are so many companies using HubSpot — to solve a vast array of challenges — then wouldn’t you assume HubSpot has a solid product that you could trust, too?

Case studies demonstrate success by showing potential customers that current customers — who once had challenges similar to their own — solved their pain points by making a purchase.

They Help Build Credibility

Credibility is what gives the people around you a reason to trust you.

For example, let’s say you’re looking at a product on Amazon , and you scroll down to the customer review section. You find that almost everyone has given the product a five-star rating or has written a positive comment about their experience. These comments and ratings build credibility for that product and brand.

Marketing case studies help your company build credibility. They also convince prospects to give your product a try when they see how many people already trust you, love your products, and believe in your mission.

They Help You Convert Leads

Case studies are a bottom-of-funnel strategy that will help you convert more leads . If a prospect is on the fence about your product, case studies are the marketing technique that will push them closer to that purchase decision.

For example, if a potential customer visits your website and they watch (or read) multiple case studies explaining the ways that customers have had success with your product, then they too may feel excited to become a customer.  

If that same prospect just left your competitor’s website where there were no case studies, your solution then becomes an easy sell … and your competitor becomes obsolete.

Marketing case studies retain value over long periods of time — meaning the same study has the potential to convert leads for years . Unless you have a revamp or a complete update of the product being referred to in your case study, it can remain on your website as long as you see fit.

Marketing Case Study Template

Now that we’ve reviewed the reasons why you should have case studies on your site, you might be wondering how to actually create a marketing case study.

First, it’s no secret that video content is more effective than written content. So, if you can create a video case study, do it. If not, be sure to include images throughout your written case study to break up the text and provide visual stimulation for readers.

Second, remember one size does not fit all when it comes to creating case studies. They vary in length, format, content, and style based on what experience you want to provide for your potential customers.

Keep this in mind as we go through the following example … some of the content here might work perfectly in your case study, and some might need to be modified.

If you need some guidance, check out HubSpot’s Case Study Creation Kit .

1. Choose Your Case Study Format

To determine which format you want to use for your case study, think about what type of content would be most beneficial for your buyer personas. You should consider what challenges your buyer personas might face, what types of industries they work in, their locations, and their business demographics.

Two commonly used marketing case study formats to consider include an exposé and a transcription.

An exposé is an interview technique that covers specific details about a topic, event, or individual. If you look back at the case studies on the HubSpot landing page , you’ll see the exposé format in action. The director, or author, is conducting the interview, leading conversation, and asking the interview subject questions about their interactions with HubSpot.

Tip: When you’re recording a video interview for your case study, make sure the interview subject repeats your question before providing an answer.

For example, if you ask them, “What challenge did our product help you overcome?” you don’t want them to simply say “organizational challenges.” The editing process will cut your voice out of the interview, and their response won’t make sense. Instead, make sure they answer all questions as a complete statement such as, “This product helped us overcome several organizational challenges.”

Transcription

This is a simpler case study format. It’s a transcription of an interview with your customer , meaning there is typically a significant amount of text for potential customers to read through.

Be sure to include the interview questions throughout this type of case study so readers know exactly what the interview subject is referring to. Lastly, feel free to pair your transcription with a series of images or even video to break up the text.

2. Conduct the Interview

The interview is the most important part of the case study … and quality matters. Strong interviews and videos take time . It’s not unusual to conduct a one to two-hour interview just to get a solid two minutes of video to use in your case study.

During the interview, you should ask your customers about their lives prior to purchasing your product, what it was like to acquire your product, and how their company’s future has changed because of their purchase.

If possible, record the interview. If not, be sure to use a transcription or audio recording device to ensure accurate quotes and statements throughout your case study.

Here are some sample questions for you to consider:

Ask about the customer’s life prior to your product.

• Who are you? What is your title? What does your company do?
• What challenges were you experiencing that made you realize you needed a solution?
• Why was finding a solution to this challenge important?

Ask what it was like finding and purchasing your product.

Capture general commentary — information that anyone could understand — from your interview subject in this section so potential customers can relate no matter their background or experience.

• How did you find our product? What was your experience like while purchasing our product?
• Ask about your customer’s criteria during their search for a solution. What was crucial versus what was nice to have?
• What were the results that came from using our product? How did our product solve your challenge?
• Ask for numerical results and hard data. Get proof of these from your interview subject (or even your own company if you have records).
• What were you able to start doing as a result of our product working for you? What are the intangible results of our product?

Ask about the impact that the product has had on your customer’s life.

• How did our product change your view of your company’s future?
• What are you excited about moving forward?
• What would your future be like without our product?

After conducting your interview, it’s time to actually put your case study together.

Edit your interview down to the most important, relevant information for potential customers to learn about your product. Cut that hour-long video interview down to a minute or two of the best clips.

If your interview is going to become a written case study, include the very best quotes. Make it easy to read by separating your information with the help of headers, bulleted lists, images , and bold or italicized text.

3. Incorporate Your Case Study in Your Marketing and Sales Processes

Determine how to best use the case study in your marketing and sales processes. Here are a few ideas:

Create a case study library.

By creating a case study library on a landing page — similar to the HubSpot landing page or this page by Fractl — you provide your potential customers with an easy way to learn about your products and company as a whole.

Source : Fractl

A case study library or landing page will prevent potential customers and leads from having to dig around on your website for any product information they’re searching for. If this information is not easily accessible, they could lose interest, become frustrated, leave your website, or even find an alternative solution on a competitor’s site.

Case study landing pages and libraries also help build credibility, look official, and typically bring in a lot of traffic — both through people searching for your company’s website and organic search.

According to Fractl , their case study landing page is the second most-visited page on their entire website. Additionally, it is their fourth most-visited page through organic search. Lastly, they’ve seen a huge boost in converting visitors to leads since the creation of their case study landing page — half of Fractl’s leads view at least one of their case studies.  

Surround your case studies with social proof.

If so many people are saying it’s true, then it must be true — this is how companies use the theory of social proof to their advantage.

Social proof theories say that people let the actions, behaviors, and beliefs of those around them impact their own. For example, some theories say most people would answer “yes” to the question: “If all of your friends jumped off of a bridge, would you?”

Social proof — or in this case, your friends all jumping off of the bridge — influences people to make decisions based on the expectations and behaviors of the people around them, even if their decision would be different if they were alone.

Companies use social proof in the form of customer reviews, logo walls (that is, the logos of companies that have purchased their products), or long-form videos. Social proof acts as a supplement to the information in a case study.

By showing potential customers how your products have changed the lives of other individuals, teams, and companies, prospects are more likely to buy into your claims and believe your product could help them, too.

Add product overviews to the case study section on your site.

If you’re editing down your case study interview and realize your interviewee said something vague or made a comment that a potential customer may not necessarily understand, you can add a product overview or reference guide next to that case study.

For example, imagine HubSpot is conducting a case study interview and an interview subject goes into detail about the specific functions of Workflows . A potential customer may not know much about HubSpot’s Workflows, so a detailed discussion about their features may not be relatable and could even raise some questions.

By including an overview or description of Workflows next to the case study where the product was mentioned, HubSpot can provide clarity for the viewer. You will also avoid making potential customers feel confused or uninterested.

Keep your sales team in the loop.

Once your case study is complete, you should notify your sales team so they can use them when reaching out to potential customers. They will be able to incorporate this information into their sales enablement kits — which include the technologies, processes, and content that allows them to sell efficiently and effectively.

By learning about the ways that real customers are using and benefiting from the products they are selling, sales teams can share relatable stories with potential customers and leads. These will help build trust and, most importantly, increase sales.

To help your sales team narrow the vast amount of information that typically comes from an in-depth case study, provide them with key takeaways that they can share with potential customers and leads. These key takeaways should include information about the interviewee’s background, title, and experience level and details about their company’s size, industry, and potential annual revenue.

This data will allow the sales team to tailor the information they share with potential customers and leads, organize it for future conversations, and make more efficient and impactful sales.

4. Determine How Many More Case Studies You Need

As I mentioned, every company is different and every product they sell is unique. Not every company will need the same number of case studies on their website to have an impact. To determine the right number of case studies for your company, think about the following tips.

Cover all of your bases.

A good rule of thumb is to have at least one to three case studies for each of your buyer personas.

To do this, cover a range of industries and types of companies, and interview people of different backgrounds, titles, demographics, and experience levels. You should make sure there is something for everyone who visits your website.

If your company targets customers all over the world and has offices located around the globe, this is especially important to consider. Think about what works for your buyer personas, your company’s location, and your goals when deciding how many case studies you need.

Sometimes, less is more.

Having an extensive list of case studies sounds like something everyone should have … right?

Not always. Think about it this way — if your company is on the smaller side and is relatively new, there’s a chance you haven’t given your customers much time with your products yet. There is also a chance that you don’t yet have a wide range of customers.

If your company then takes the time to create dozens of case studies, potential customers may feel you are being inauthentic and even unconvincing. It may also be a waste of resources that you can’t quite afford as a new business.

To be effective, try to make every one of your case studies relatable and helpful for your personas. Cover multiple use cases in each of your case studies when possible. You’ll not only simplify your own life, but you also keep your case study library clean and impactful.

Case studies are powerful marketing tools. They tell your potential customers relatable stories, demonstrate your company’s success, and help you build credibility. Case studies will help you reach your audience in a way that no sales pitch, email, newsletter, or advertisement will.

Plus, if your company made such a positive impact on a customer that they want to share their experience with others, why not broadcast that story?

Now it’s time to start creating content that matters to your potential customers and converts more leads.

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How To Create Compelling Case Studies For Your Digital Marketing Agency

Podcast: Embed

Making captivating client case studies is the solution if you’re seeking a game-changing tactic to establish yourself as an industry authority and draw a constant stream of clients.

Case studies provide a special chance to back up your expertise with hard evidence, and companies are naturally drawn to agencies that can show a successful track record. You can effectively demonstrate your expertise by using video-based case studies to present an engaging story that connects with your audience.

In this blog article, we introduce The Case Study Builder, a thorough, step-by-step method that may be used to create exceptional case studies.

You’ll have a comprehensive knowledge of how to produce compelling client case studies at the end of this video, which will help your digital marketing agency reach new heights.

Learn more by watching the video now below:

Outline of This Episode

• [0:35] The Agency Growth System™
• [2:28] 5 steps to take to leverage case studies
• [4:50] The two types of testimonial formats
• [6:29] Focus on format and flow
• [8:44] Ask the right questions
• [9:27] Demonstrate real-life impact
• [10:24] How to promote case studies

Why Case Studies Matter

Client case studies hold immense significance in establishing credibility and attracting potential clients.

These studies serve as tangible evidence of your ability to deliver results. By presenting real data, you can validate your claims and highlight your achievements.

Businesses are naturally drawn to agencies that can demonstrate their expertise through documented success stories, making case studies a vital tool in your marketing arsenal.

The Power of Video-Based Case Studies

When you hear the phrase “case study” you likely think of a long PDF doc that includes screenshots, data points, etc. that’s boring. That’s not what you should do.

Unlike written case studies, videos allow you to weave a compelling narrative, engaging viewers on a deeper emotional level.

By incorporating visuals, testimonials, and real-life scenarios, you can bring your success stories to life, making a lasting impression on potential clients.

5 steps to take to leverage case studies

We want to help our clients grow and succeed. So we’re always geared toward getting them good results. You want to create an amazing experience with stellar results so the clear impact you have in their business is astounding. Start every client relationship with the intention to knock it out of the park.

• Step #1: Knock it out of the park for every client
• Step #2: Use a simple interview framework
• Step #3: Outline the questions you’ll ask and how they’ll flow
• Step #4: Design your syndication strategy
• Step #5: Leverage the case studies to attract ideal clients

The two types of testimonial formats

Each of these formats has its place.

• Option #1 : The client testimonial interview: You can do the interview via Zoom, ask your questions, edit them, and syndicate. This is more informational and emotional.
• Option #2 : Video-based results case study: You pull up their website, where they’re ranking, initial reporting, and then the effect after you’ve worked together. This is more analytical.

I recommend running a mix of both of these styles of interviews.

Focus on format and flow

Keep things simple.

• Conduct the interview via Zoom (or you can use Restream and broadcast it live)
• Let them know in advance the questions you’ll be asking
• Capture audio and video at the same time (it’s easy to transcribe)
• If it’s long enough, turn the interview into a podcast
• Post the content on social media and in groups
• Physically mail the testimonial to your dream 100 list

Live client case studies and interviews can be powerful. Why? You can do a Q&A at the end and people can get their questions answered in real time from real clients.

Ask the right questions

I’ll share a list you can use, but the main questions you want to tackle include:

• Ask who they are and what services they provide
• What problems were they looking to solve?
• Why did they choose your company?
• What did you implement?
• What has the outcome been? How has it positively impacted them?

This will lead to a powerful and compelling case study that you can leverage. You have to be able to demonstrate how your company took them from where they were to where they wanted to be. Demonstrate real-life impact.

How to promote case studies

You can send this out via email and post it on social media. My favorite play is getting the case studies in front of your ideal client by running Facebook ads. You should run Facebook ads to your target audience. It’s one of the best things you can do. If they opt-in, you know they’ll be influenced by the results you produce. They’re giving you their name and email and entering your funnel.

When you’re promoting these case studies on social media, these people will subconsciously see you as an expert in the industry.

Resources & People Mentioned

• Get a FREE Case Study Builder
• Roofer Marketers

Connect With Josh Nelson

• Josh’s  Coaching Page on Facebook
• The Agency Success Facebook  Group
• www.SevenFigureAgency.com
• Seven Figure Agency  on YouTube
• Josh on Twitter:  @joshnelsonimc
• Josh on  LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Seven Figure Agency on  Apple Podcasts , on  Android , on  Google Podcasts ,  RSS

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Table of Contents

Topics discussed in the episode:, presenting sponsor: zenpilot, resources mentioned in this episode:, episode transcript:, what makes a great agency case study with joel klettke.

Joel Klettke the Founder of Case Study Buddy, a specialized team completely focused on helping B2B companies capture, share, and cash in on customer success stories across multiple marketing channels and media. Clients like Docebo, Varonis, and agencies of all sizes trust Case Study Buddy to deliver a polished, professional experience and assets that drive real ROI.

• Tips for Creating an Effective Agency Case Study
• The Benefits of a Great Agency Case Study
• What is an Ideal Agency Case Study
• Tips for Conversion Copywriting
• What Makes A Great Case Study

ZenPilot helps agencies build more productive, profitable, and healthy teams by streamlining their operations in ClickUp. As ClickUp’s largest implementation partner, we’ve served over 2,300 agencies and would love to help you scale operations. Learn more about our agency solutions .

• Joel Klettke on LinkedIn
• Joel Klettke on Twitter
• Case Study Buddy Website
• Joanna Wiebe on LinkedIn
• Jonathan Dane’s Agency Journey Episode
• Joel Klettke’s Newsletter
• KlientBoost Website
• Gray MacKenzie on LinkedIn
• Andrew Dymski on LinkedIn

Gray MacKenzie

Welcome into another week’s episode of Agency Journey. This is Gray Mackenzie from ZenPilot. This week, I’ve got the pleasure of bringing on Joel Klettke, who is a conversion copywriter. He’s also the founder at Case Study Buddy. We’ll dig into what that is? Joel, welcome to the podcast. Yeah.

Joel Klettke

Thank you so much for having me.

I’m excited to dig in to the story. I don’t know if people catch it right away. You’re located up in Calgary. Is that right?

Calgary. Yes.

I was listening to a podcast or an interview on YouTube. Rather that you were on. And the moment you said process, I was like, yes, I know where Joel is located. That was a giveaway for me right away. I’m excited to dig into your background. So you started out, I think, way back in the day. Were you an SEO first?

Copywriting.

Yeah. Every job I’ve had other than my first accounting Gopher type of job is a field I didn’t even know existed until I kind of worked in it. So I fell kind of backwards into SEO as my first job. Agency side. I spent almost five years there kind of working on all kinds of different accounts, and it was in my work at the agency I had always loved, never saw a career in it. I never wanted to be a journalist. Fiction was not predictable, viable career path in my mind.

So I did a business degree just mostly as like, well, use it for something, I’m sure. But through the agency of my eyes, we’re kind of open to the whole world of digital marketing. And the big thing that stood out, though, for me, was the whole as the entire industry started to turn its head towards content and started to pay attention to content actually mattering. And being an integral part of that, we’ve worked with some freelancers who wrote site, copy and blog and that sort of thing.

And I thought, ultimately, why not me like, this is what I’m good at, what I love to do. So in 2013, I went out of my own and originally was doing most of the content side of things promptly crashed right into the world of conversion copywriting, which scared the hell out of me, didn’t really know it was a thing. Know more about the direct response side of things, which I always thought was a little bit greasy because my exposure to it was like alternative cancer cures and the ugly stuff.

But when I came across fellow Canadian and Queen Bee of the conversion world, Joanna Weave, that’s where I really saw the potential to do good with this stuff and that it wasn’t that intimidating, that it was something that I could do and could do. Well, so kind of about a year and a half, two years in sort of really focusing on the conversion side, I was able to get a lot of good traction with that. It was on the back of a project on the conversion side with WP engine, where someone who sat on their board said, hey, I’ve got a little company I advise who just needs a case study.

Is that something you do and have a guy you just don’t say no to? Yeah, sure. I’ll figure that out. And that’s where kind of if you trace the origin story of case study, especially all the way back, that’s where the kernel of the idea started.

So you launched Case 2016?

Yes. That always gets up in my mind. We’ve been around over five years at this point. So one of the two, let’s say 2016 to be seen.

So building that out, what was the initial offer? Build you one case study, I assume one time project. And how different is that process at that point? Because you’ve been copywriting. You already have a good sense for what makes great content. But what’s been the evolution, I guess, from that initial offering to what the service looks like today?

Yeah. Initially, the idea was very productised. It was okay. I’ll have a particular format because I didn’t really know any better at the time. I thought I’ll have a particular format and I already knew having done the conversion work, a lot of the questions and insights that we look for are customer story driven anyways. Like what was going on in the business, what made the experience so positive and valuable for them? What kind of ROI are they seeing and how they talk about it. So it was really for me, the reason it made sense beyond the business case for it, which I can also talk about.

But these are assets that were hard to do but could be productize. There’s no ownership internally for a lot of companies. And so I thought, Well, originally the idea was I will do kind of a productised service. I will have a sort of set case study, and it will be one at a time. I wasn’t thinking down the road of how did they get buy in for these? And so the complexity of it occurred to me as I started doing it more and more. But originally, the idea was just a product service around a pretty well defined content asset project to project.

What did that first one look like when you I mean, I’m assuming you structured like, hey, I’m going to go interview your customer. I’m going to have one conversation with them. I’m going to write the draft, send it to you for review, send it to the client or your client for review, Polish it up and publish it. Was that the first iteration or was it simpler or more complex than that?

It was more or less like that, right? I did do my homework. I looked at a bunch of case study. I identified what I liked and disliked. Like, I really didn’t like the super high level, just a bullet point list of, like, here’s what we did. But from the beginning, I really did see the potential for telling the story better. I wanted them to be more human assets, which meant an interview was non negotiable. There was no reality in which I was going to go, no, I’ll just interview you and you tell me because number one, I didn’t want to get suited to oblivion.

Number two, I want them to be better human. More interesting stories. So the original offer, I first shopped it to my friends and network quietly. I didn’t go, like, here’s, new business. I just kind of said I’m working on this. I’ll give you a really good deal, but I want to kind of fine tune the process. It was through doing that. This came together as well. And my idea, I knew enough to know I didn’t know enough. So originally, the offer was I’ll do an interview with your customer, I’ll write the draft, I’ll get your approval, I’ll get their sign off, I’ll deliver the draft, and off you go within very short order within the process of doing the first few, some things became abundantly clear.

Number one, the huge opportunity for the final designed asset, because literally everyone was like, Can you put this in? So that right away I was like, yeah, definitely got to get a design sort of portion of this. But what became readily apparent is that with case study, the hardest part of doing them. I mean, there are lots of hard parts of doing them, but it’s the administrative side in a lot of cases, being on top of persistently following up and checking in and getting that approval.

And so again, the pieces started to come together where it’s like, Well, we really need if this thing is going to fly, we’re really going to need to be on top of that sort of project management piece as well. And then before that, too, you kind of realize again, going in. I had kind of just a pretty simplistic brief, but with each successive story, new questions got added to that brief. In terms of what do we really need to know what’s going to make for the best possible story?

How do I make sure, for example, that the next call I get on the response when I ask about metrics isn’t going to be you know what? I don’t have any of those. Let me go get them for you. And then I never hear from a person again. So by doing it myself, hands on in the weeds from start to finish, you start to see for yourself why these are so difficult and why the problem that you want to solve exists. And I got to start to engineer the process and the offer more toward the nuances of doing these really well.

Right. Well, you made two points there that are helpful. And then I’ve got a follow up question of it. But one of the last points that you’re making there is that there’s a big chunk of a lot of the stuff that looks really cool on the outside. That is the workhorse type stuff. It’s like, no, it’s the admin, the project management type stuff. That’s actually a huge pain and huge piece of the problem. And I think oftentimes if you actually get into the details on what makes anything tick, a lot of it is the fundamental stuff.

It really is a lot of the basic building blocks. It’s not more complex than that in all cases. But the other piece that you mentioned, I love that you came in with a point of view. You had an opinion on how case study should go, and I’d assume that’s a piece of what’s made case study successful has been we’ve got a perspective on what we want case study to look like as a client you don’t design. We’ve got a format that we want to follow and a method that works in our opinion, from what we’ve seen.

And now we want to go apply that to the businesses who are willing to get in line with the type of case study that you produce. I know there’s more flexibility than that, but coming into a marketplace with a point of view is powerful, too. Yeah. And maybe talk a little bit more about that point of view, too. I’ll let you jump in with whatever thoughts you had there. But also, I’d love to hear kind of what is a great case study looks like in Joel’s opinion.

Yeah. That’s where I was going. I think again in the early days, a lot occurred to me, and that was part of what excited me about the opportunity. And what made this business sexy to me is not just these are hard to do assets, and every B to B company on the planet needs them. And there’s not a lot of ownership internally and so on and so forth. But when I looked at a couple of things, how they’re coming together, right? Most case study are boring. They’re narcissistic they’re tough to believe because the people putting them together either never involve the client, or they only cherry pick their very best cases.

And don’t give a lot of depth or clarity on how that win was made possible. And so when I was kind of surveying landscape, the stories that I liked best were the stories where the customer was truly at the heart of the customer success story. It was never look at us raw, raw, bullet point list of what we’ve done. It was all about here’s what the customer was going through, what drew them to us here. Our values played out in real life in a story. And so in my mind, what makes a great customer success story if we’re breaking it down kind of section by section, we all know the challenge solution results formula for a lot of people.

That’s where it starts and finishes. But the mistake that gets made and the opportunity that’s there is in the challenge section, you don’t just want to talk about what was broken. You want to talk about mistakes. What would happen if this hadn’t gotten solved? Why was this personally frustrating or painful for the individual? We forget that people in B to B are under pressures of their own. A marketing manager has KPIs they need to hit, they have goals they need to reach, and so on. And that’s what people ultimately relate to.

In the solution section, everybody talks about the what, but to me, a great story. The solution section is about the why not just what you did? Why did you take that approach? Especially for agencies. Everybody wants to know we did this. We did this. We ran this as a campaign. That’s wonderful. But why did you push the client towards those services and not others? What did you do within that campaign that made it a success? Why did you choose that particular angle and not another? That’s what elite is really interested in.

It’s not just what when did you get for someone else, but how does your thinking work? So that when you bring that to me, when you bring that to bear for my account, I’ll see a great result. And then in the results section, everyone loves this sexy metric. Some of my favorite stories we’ve ever done, though, have no metric at all. And that’s because it’s about pains alleviated outcomes achieved. That’s not always numerical, but in the results section. A great story, in my opinion, doesn’t just talk about the result.

It talks about the impact, and especially for agencies. The worst results section you can have is like an analytics graph where it’s like, look up to the right. Nobody cares, nobody cares or understands what you’re showing them. The big thing is okay. Let’s say you got a 20% lift in traffic where you got a 100% increase in conversions. What did that make possible for the business? How did it change their day to day? What can they do now that they couldn’t do before? So a real string goes that one layer more to really get into the human side of it and beyond, just kind of the surface level wind, which most companies never do.

So I’ve been on the other side of case study. I’ve been on both sides looking at we’ve done historically a terrible job with telling the story of client engagement and client wins. That has gotten a lot better in the past year, but a lot of that is used as sales assets. We do very little. We’re starting to push out more stuff, but there’s still a big gap. So looking at hiring case study buddy to come and help us, but also being on the flip side where HubSpot is one of your clients right now.

And I was just on the other side of a case study for the HubSpot’s Payments product. And that interview conversation very tightly run 30 minutes conversation from case study buddy. I smiled when I saw after HubSpot reached out ask about the case study and then introduced us. Yeah, this is going to be fun to see what the service is like on the other side, but 30 minutes, it was not scripted and robotic, but there’s clearly a script. You guys have a process for what questions are going to get asked and what the follow up questions look like?

Which someone in my line of work appreciates a lot being the process there. But a lot of questions around, obviously, what was the situation? What were you feeling during that situation? The emotion tied to the situation outcome as well. And then from a results perspective, what does that mean in terms of cost savings? What does that mean in terms of time savings? Was that mean in terms of your ability to go focus elsewhere? And what’s the impact of the time? It’s not just how much time did you save, but what did you actually do with that time?

It’s like the second order, third order questions that are impactful. So that is a huge tip and takeaway. I think we talked about this when I originally had a conversation with your team from the hiring side, but living through it on the other side, being asked, that question is like, oh, this is cool to see happen on the back end of it. So that piece of kind of how do we get those questions and pull it together? Obviously, you’ve got a script and some training there.

How do you train or how do you convey that back to, like, what are the practical ways that you give your copywriters and you give your account management team and you give the interview like, each person project management, each person on the case study body team get them looped in so that they are building high converting or high, very effective case study.

Yeah, I think importantly, I wouldn’t necessarily call this script. We have a formula. Our formula is BDA before during after, and we have kind of questions that we go to. But one of the things that I hated about most case study and listening to other interviewers because we would have clients over time, parachute interviews that they’ve done, and they’re very wouldn’t. And it’s obvious that it’s like, these are the questions that I planned, and I shall not deviate. We made a decision very early to separate interviewing and writing on the team.

We have interviewers who just interview. We have writers who just write it’s not because both sides can’t do it with some bandwidth wins and things like that. But when we look for interviewers, one of the things that we want is that ability to get into the muck of an industry and understand what makes the question meaningful, where to push in, where to pull back within that BDA sort of framework for the whole team. And this is one of the things honestly that we’re continuing to work on, because as we grow, it gets harder and harder to make sure it proliferates through everybody.

But one of the things that we look for and try to communicate from the beginning is, hey, as a North Star, we’re trying to tell a human focused impactful story. The customer is always at the center of their experience, is always at the center. Focus means we’re not asking about everything that happened. We’re trying to zero in on a particular aspect, which makes for a much better story. And then empathy means that we’re trying to get captured the full 360 view of that. What did it look like?

What did it feel like? What did it make possible? Part of the challenge that we have with so many different roles, taking part, the account manager, the project manager, the interviewer before an interviewer even gets on a call. The Am, the PM have touched that project. We are hiring towards AMS who understand the world of storytelling and can look at a brief, identify a gap, push in and make sure that we’re asking the right questions. One of the things that we’re working on between the M and PM team, and it’s a constant working process is how do we make that interviewee feel as prepared as possible to tell a really great story?

So, for example, we were trying to make a really concerted effort to get our clients when they’re making the ask and then our PM team when they’re making the introductions, saying we would really love it if you could speak to these elements of your store. So that interview me comes in confident knowing this is the type of thing I might be asking. These are metrics that I might reference when it gets down to the creation team. There it’s about again, we set a vision, we set a North Star.

This is what a great piece looks like. This is what the right level of detail looks like. Everything up till then, from the brief to the way that the PMS and Ms engage has been oriented around, how do we make sure we get not only the detail but the context? So that when we pass this off the interviewer, who can do what they do best and the writer can take that great interview and all of the rich detail pulled out of it and turn it into a story that’s worth telling and worth reading.

So it is a concerted effort. It gets harder to do as we grow, but we have a lot of checks and balances throughout each stage to make sure that we’re not dropping context off a cliff. And to close this thought out, that can be challenging because the reality is, in the case study side of things, most of our customers, even the big ones, are relatively unaware. They think case study are case study, a case study? Why don’t you just ask the same stock question? But then when they see the potential for something focused and strategic aligned with the business goal, rich in context, then they start to get it.

And then we start to get better briefs and have better outcomes and so on.

I have a couple of very practical questions to ask. One is around the medium you guys do. Obviously the text, you can put it on your blog, you can have a PDF, you can have a short snippet, you get short video or long video. What is most popular right now? Obviously, video is expensive to do, but are more expensive to do. But has there been a big rise in the number of companies who want to go video or is Tech still the winner?

So we launched as a written only service. I think that’s really important to say we’re late comers to video, we’ve got a video team. Now we’re continuing to grow and deepen our offering there. So for us, the bulk of the work we do is still on the written end. I think there is a misconception. I love video, and I think it’s amazing, but there are times when a written asset is simply better. If you want to get into the guts of a story, the guts of execution.

A video testimonial is wonderful when you want just the customer’s perspective. Here the accolades hear their experience. When you want to communicate what you did as an agency as part of that story or what you did as a software company as part of that story, a written asset allows for a depth that you would need a five minute video for. And in that case, I can promise you nobody’s watching a video longer than two and a half minutes in most cases. So we have seen, especially through the pandemic and explosion in demand for the remote video side of things.

I think people are realizing, depending on your brand, remote video can still be pretty polished, but the raw aesthetic as well, even if it’s not for some brands, it makes a ton of sense when you think of the coaching space. When you think of markets where you serve freelancers or different industries where you don’t need that high production on location shoot video doesn’t have to be that expensive, and it can be a wonderful medium. So we’ve seen a big increase in video. But what I would say and what’s encouraging to me, because this is how the company has changed and kind of what we’re hanging our hat on.

So whether it’s the tail wagging the dog or not, I don’t know, but we are seeing an enormous increase in people kind of recognizing that. Hey, these aren’t just bottom of funnel sales assets. They’re not just give the PDF to the sales team or throw it on the blog. People are starting to recognize these can be full funnel assets. We can use an audiogram for lead acquisition. We can use a video in our cold outreach. We can use a one sheet on social media, or we can use a narrative version of the study on our site.

And so if there’s anything that we’re seeing, it’s definitely an uptrend in the video side of things. The written is not going away. It’s growing as well. But we are seeing more companies look at doing more formats because these are hard won assets. There’s a lot of moving parts. If you’re going to do them anyways, make it an investment and get as much collateral from it as you possibly can to use everywhere. So we’re seeing a lot more companies kind of choosing multiple formats as well.

That makes sense. This is not related to I mean, this is related to your experience in copywriting. This is probably more for the copywriting clients that you got. Is there a hierarchy of copywriting? We’ll take an agency as an example. Like, the first thing you nail is your home page, then your services page, then your welcome email, then you’re about then your case study. Like where do case study fit in the hierarchy? And what are the things? If you go to ZenPilot 90% of the stuff on the main core pages I wrote, I enjoy writing.

I’m not a conversion copywriter. If you were to come in and say, hey, we should fix this up. Do you have a standard order that you look at solving those issues in?

I think it’s less a hierarchy and more a conveyor belt because you can have, for example, a wonderful homepage get leads in the door. But let’s say you’re a software company and you have no nurture at all. Well, that’s wonderful. One part’s working. The next part is completely broken. So when I think through it, when I’m working with clients, I try to diagnose where the conveyor belt is broken and focused there. But specific to agencies. The front end site is a huge deal. I mean, there are companies you reach a certain point where your brand name carries you forward.

And at some point people want to work with you because of who you are and what you’ve done and what you work on. And that’s great. I’ve worked on a lot of agency sites. I’ve consulted to a lot of agencies, and I would say the three most critical pages without fail every single time. The home page is obviously important because it’s where you point your flag. I promise you agencies who are listening to this. If you go to your analytics and you bring it up and you look at what’s the second most visited page on the whole site, the vast majority is going to be our about US page vast majority.

And people go there. And why do people go there? And why do we spend so much time working on those pages that’s where your client figures out, not just okay. You’re an agent. They figure out they like you. And if they see you mirroring the values they have, and if they see you having the proof that it takes to get them over the lines. For example, when I worked on Era, we spent a lot of time on nailing that about US page because that was the place.

Yeah, the homepage is where you make it obvious who you are, what you do, what you’re about. But the About US page is really more an about you page for the client. It’s why we are the best fit to serve you. So the home page, the About US page. And then when you get into your services pages, I mean, the contact page. There’s a lot of, like, shoelace tripping that happens there, making things like either needlessly complicated or not. Vetting leads well enough. So I’ll spend a fair amount of time on that front when you get into the services pages, though being aware of how aware your customer is makes a huge difference, because let’s say you’re an SEO agency.

Odds are, unless you’re serving small businesses, you don’t need a section saying, what is SEO they know, right? It’s more about how do you execute that? How do you take care of the client through that what makes the way that you approach that unique or best for the audience that you serve. What I will say now, and this is I’m wearing my bias on my sleeve, but because I get to live in both worlds, on the conversion side and on the case study side of things, social proof is the ultimate differentiator in that regard.

Like other agencies can steal your headlines, they can steal your design, they can steal your service in a world that’s saturated. And everyone’s saying we’re an extension of your team, a story that shows that is going to beat the pants off an agency that says that every single time. And so a really critical area of an agency site is the results page. There’s a company called Client Boost. Go look at how they let people filter their case study because I’m not just saying it because I recommend it to them.

It’s really smart. They don’t just have bins or whatever. It’s like. Show me companies who were really small or had a small budget or are unicorns now or whatever. So I would say start on the front end because that’s your identity. But I honestly believe right after that point. If you’ve got leads coming in the social proof side of things, especially for an agency, that’s where the rubber hits the road in terms of differentiation and really getting people lined up to contact you.

Client Boost is we make sure we like those in the show notes, too. That’s an awesome example. We’ve had Jonathan on the podcast before, but yeah, they collect so many reviews. It’s absurd. The ability to filter it down and find a bookable. Stuff is really helpful. One of the things that is undervalued about that approach, too, is that takes a lot of the heavy lifting off of your sales team. This agency came from there an ecommerce that is 40 people, and they came from Asana to look up.

This agency had a process problem and we fixed their process as part of that clickable. There’s pains. There’s agency size, there’s agency industry, there’s a new geography, and a lot of that right now is on the shoulders of our sales team to know what pieces to prescribe at which stage in the process. Oh, here’s the agency. That’s like that versus having all of that public and all developed. It becomes a lot easier for clients just to go find that stuff on their own, which is a better prospects to go find it on their own, which is a better experience.

You’re stress on the about page. Here’s the next business for you. About page, buddy. We need to work on the name a little bit, but that would kill everyone stress. Is there a more stressful page to write than your about page? We did web design at our agency for a number of years and everyone stressed about the about page.

Oh, yeah, because you stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back. You’re like, what do I say about myself? They’re hard to do because you almost need to be an arm’s length from yourself. And that’s why my conversion work. For example, yes, I talk to the boardroom, I get in with the market. I do internal interviews. That’s still very important to me. I want to understand the perspective of the company, but you are who your customers say you are, and it’s good that you have goals and you want to evolve that and we incorporate that.

But if you’re stuck on your about page, the place to start is not the blinking cursor. It’s close words or close WordPress or close whatever. Go talk to customers and ask them what made you choose us. What did you find exceptional about working with us? If you were telling other people about us? The great thing is, if I was to ask someone to recommend their agency, why did you choose the agency? They’re not going to rattle off a list of 20 reasons they’re going to have to.

They’re going to say they communicate really well, and we just love the experience they had in Fintech, for example. Great. Your customers distill down your value offering automatically on their own. Naturally, go cherry pick that. How do they talk about it? And that’s a good way to get started about us. Page side of things and further to your point as well in terms of enabling sales. The thing is, stories are ammunition. When we’re in a position to say someone comes in, a lead, comes in and says, I’m really interested in moving to click.

But I’m worried about the migration times. You know what? Actually, we just dealt with a customer very similar to you. Similar situation. We were able to migrate them in six months. A story is going to again beat the pants off. In that case, a metric area or migration is, on average, faster. That’s fine. But to be honest, I know Tom at X Company, and we just did a very simple migration. Here’s the story that is ammunition for the sales team and further, too, right in the agency world, especially the thing that people are always critical of communication reporting was I kept in the loop.

Did I feel like they had my back? Do I feel like they went to bat for me? Stories are always going to be better at proving that to be true than anything you can say as a founder or an owner or a sales rep or a customer success team.

I’ve got two last questions for you here. First one is around tooling, any tools that stand out for you guys that are not somewhat lesser known tools? Not that we use Google for email or whatever, but are there any tools that according to your process in terms of it, could be how you’re recording interviews? It could be what you’re using for transcriptions project manager, any of those platforms?

Yeah. Ironically, we’re in the process of overhauling a lot of our delivery stacks. So we’re automating and changing some things. I’d say there’s some tools that are especially for the interview side of things facilitating the transcription side. I mean, we’re in love with the script. Fantastic tool. The ability for our writers to be able to select parts of text and drag it, and you’ll be able to listen back and for our transcription is to go in and be able to make text changes and all that. And even as we progress into video, to have the ability for someone who is not necessarily tech savvy to go in and make cuts and say these are the best responses.

The best takes and then pass to the video team or whatever. The script is so incredibly versatile. So we do a lot of work in there. Beyond that, the stack, it’s nothing super proprietary or special. We’re certainly working. I think on our end, like I say, to automate and do some more kind of tech enablement for the team because we’ve just grown to the point that that’s necessary. But I’d say Descript, especially is one that we really like.

That’s helpful. I know the script is not super old, but for as long as it’s been around, I think you’re the first person who’s brought it up on the podcast, so that’s a great recommendation.

The team there knows what they’re doing. And like I said, for me, the ability to visually edit audio and video is magic.

Yeah. Second one is around. Where do people go? What do they do? So first piece is for someone who wants to learn about case study buddy, case study, buddy. Com obviously. Is there any specific page you point people towards or anything that they should specifically check out on the site?

Yeah, I would say again, the sites in the process of being overhauled as we grow. I would say the whys page gives a good kind of sense of why we are passionate about this and why we’re specialized and why that makes sense for a lot of companies not having to wrangle multiple freelancers or deal with that unpredictability and that sort of thing. But two, I would say probably the best place to see how our brains work is in the blog. We write a lot about issues you don’t even know.

You have yet with customer success stories that I can guarantee or crash into if you decide to make them a priority. So those would be places that I’d look. We have our process on the written studies and video studies pages, so that’ll give you a good sense from a high level of how we work. But I would say the blog is if you really want to be good at this stuff or you want to see, well, how complex can it be like, how much really is there to know?

I promise you, you’ll find some insight that surprises you on the blog, so I biased. But I would say check that out.

You’ll learn something for sure on point people one in their place, which is Twitter at Joel Klettke on Twitter. Congratulations on your first name, last name, but you’ve got in your bio, pray for competitors after you hire me. They’ll need it, which I know has been taken and repurposed by many people many times over. I’m sure at this point, but you’re pretty active on Twitter and a good follow there as well.

Is there anywhere else you’d point people every so often when I’m not currently drowning and growing the business as it is. I do try to share on LinkedIn and I have a newsletter as well. It’s Linked from Twitter. I haven’t been as active on the newsletter, but my philosophy towards all of those channels has always been just give it away. Share as much as I can. I rarely try to sell anything. My mentality has always been if I can show people how I think either they’ll go do something better on their own or they’ll think I might be a good person to help them do it.

So I’d say probably LinkedIn or the newsletter also pretty decent places where I try to share useful things and be a useful human.

First, I’ve talked around renaming this podcast from Agency Journey to Agency Operators and intentionally kind of shifting this to very much what’s the operations component of the business. But your newsletter name is one of my favorite newsletter names. Isn’t it legitimately useful? The newsletter is called at some point in time.

Yes, I don’t know I think I’ve called it.

I don’t think it’s the formal name of the newsletter, but I think the call to action, maybe from your site was like, Join Joel’s legitimately useful newsletter or something.

It’s likely I have neglected, neglected that stuff. I hate newsletters where it’s like, every single thing is like, buy my course, find my thing. I’ve always been of the mentality. For me, it’s like kind of the pen pal inbox where it’s like, I go there when I’m like, I have something I want to teach people or share or an idea. And I genuinely want people to write back to it. And when people actually do, I’m like, this is the best. It’s great. So, yeah, it’s not that I never saw anything.

I do believe in what I know and whatever. But most of the time, I’m just trying to help people do this stuff better because I think the world benefits when communication gets better all around.

For sure, that’s a great way to wrap it up. Cool. Thanks. Coming on. I appreciate your time today. Be willing to share with us as well.

Yes, yours. Thank you. Bye.

Thanks for listening to the  Agency Journey  podcast. Visit Agency Journey Insiders to join the podcast community and be sure to subscribe for future episodes.

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22 Marketing Agencies Shared Their Top Case Studies. Here Are the Precise Strategies They Used.

Table of contents

Enjoy reading this blog post written by our experts or partners.

If you want to see what Databox can do for you, click here .

If you want to create an inbound machine for yourself or clients, you need to be ready to look at every step of your process with a critical eye.

That is the lesson I learned after reviewing the top case studies from 22 marketing agencies.

I found the best results came from marketing leaders who were NOT looking to replicate the same old inbound formula. Instead, they looked at their client’s existing metrics, and delivered services based on gaps in the client’s funnel.

They looked at different levers they could pull, like:

• Changing buying process to fit specific buyer personas
• New gated content to fit specific blogs
• Improving nurturing processes
• Redefining KPIs
• …and many more.

Usually, leads were dropping off due to a single, persistent gap in the funnel. So, I decided to organize the strategies based on the metric they were able to improve. You can check out each category to help you identify solutions when part of your funnel underperforms.

Increasing Traffic

Improving lead conversion rate.

• Improving Visitor-SQL or Visitor-Customer Ratio

Redefining the Target Customer

Susan LaPlante-Dube Owner, Precision Marketing Group

Story: “In late 2015, it became obvious that Management Mentors’ audience wanted more of the good stuff they were already getting. That meant digestible, helpful articles that were easily understandable and sharable.

With inbound, we all write so much content but the key is making sure it gets eyes! Of course, you need best practices for optimization but those are getting more challenging so we chose to focus on increasing blog subscriptions to make sure their content is being seen.

Increasing blog subscriptions by 20% and, over an 11-week period, racking up over 31,000 views on blog posts were major accomplishments. Though it flies in the face of  common long-tail keyword SEO advice, focusing on high-volume relevant keywords worked!”

Results: 31,000 views in 11 weeks, 20% more blog subscriptions

Full Case Study Here

Elyse Flynn Meyer President, Prism Global Marketing

Story: “Natera was seeking a way to better connect with their growing global audience. While they already had an engaged audience, Natera was looking for an email solution that allowed them to increase engagement further.  The traditional “batch” email was not very effective because their global audience opened emails at wildly different times. For example, while sending one batch email at 12PM to a subscriber in the U.S. might seem like an optimal time, that same email could be sent to a subscriber in Asia during the middle of the night. Further, they saw that recipients even in the same time zone had very different email habits.

Email is a really critical channel for Natera, even as the company runs personalized and advanced marketing campaigns through other channels. So, continuing to innovate with email marketing, a relatively traditional method of marketing, was key.

By leveraging send-time personalization, Natera has also been able to re-engage contacts who had once been active, but went dormant. By personalizing email send times , Natera has re-engaged approximately 15% of their total contacts. These contacts, prior to re-engaging, had not been active in email communication since 2015.”

Results: “Re-engagement rate of 15% of dormant contacts by email marketing/automation using Seventh Sense & HubSpot in 6 Months”

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• Conversions by page title. Which pages convert the best?
• Bounce rate by page title. Which pages encourage visitors to read further?
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Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Mike Lieberman Founder, Square 2 Marketing

Story: “When we first partnered with the client, we started by conducting persona research and laying out each customer type’s top pains and questions asked throughout the buyer’s journey.

We fine-tuned the company’s messaging with an updated look and feel that would differentiate its brand. Plus, we developed a keyword strategy that included keyword recommendations for core website pages and content.

Only after these initial strategy steps did we move on to choosing content topics. We created an editorial calendar with a set of new inbound marketing offers for the awareness, consideration and decision stages of the buyer’s journey, targeted to the personas’ pains.”

Results:  The client increased web visits by over 1000% within 2 months. They closed a $1 million dollar deal that originated from the site.

Andrea Panno Content Marketing Manager, Sagefrog Marketing Group

Story: “ Recently, the client’s market opportunity was amplified after a federal healthcare mandate required all healthcare organizations to use Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and move away from paper records. This led to an influx of content and information on the web about EMRs and EHRs, making it exceedingly difficult to not just produce unique content, but have it reach and subsequently influence the Company’s buyer personas to move along their buyer journey.

To effectively reach decision-makers, Sagefrog developed various buyer personas including:

• IT professionals,  focused on product integration and system architecture
• Clinicians and other healthcare professionals,  focused on patient needs
• Management executives , focused on trends and cost savings

The persona-based content featured blogs and webinar summaries as well as premium assets such as infographics, case studies and whitepapers.  “

Results: 164% increase in web visitors, 600% increase in leads compared to previous year

Mitchel White Director, LeftMedia

Story: “Manufacturing businesses often “don’t do marketing.” They do really but often it isn’t measured. In an ongoing campaign with a packaging manufacturer in Greater Manchester we have seen fantastic results measuring organic search marketing metrics.

Using keyword research and mapping keywords to the buying journey we have been able to increase organic search traffic to key pages and blog content. The campaign saw a 57% increase in organic search traffic within the first month.

The site is now ranking #1 for keywords including “manufacturing packaging solutions” and “returns management solutions” which are highly competitive keywords within the packaging industry.”

Results: 57% increase in organic traffic in the first month

Randy Milanovic CEO, Kayak Online Marketing

Story: “We advised Omni Circuit Boards to do away with their industry-standard 90+ field quote form and replace it with a much simpler quote request with a file upload form. Fortunately, they agreed.

By eliminating the fields and asking the customer to upload their file, we shifted the task of gathering technical details to Omni’s in-house team, drastically simplifying the quote process for the buyer.

Instead of being confronted with dozens of questions, interested buyers only needed to answer a few questions to receive a quote. And, given that Omni received the artwork files (the source of technical data previously gathered via the form), the project could go into production almost immediately upon quote approval. The new site and improved lead capture approach ballooned leads by 600% almost immediately, converting at 50%. Within the next 3 months, leads increased an additional 250% and conversions leapt to 70%.”

Results: 800% more leads, 70% conversion rate

Matt Lee Partner, Adhere Creative

Story: “Our client produced incredible research in the multifamily apartment industry but did little to generate new sales leads for their software as a service called ‘Ratings Tracker’.

We took their most recent research and turned it into a lead generating e-book and webinar presentation. It was promoted through their email contact list, through social media, and via industry trade publications. The campaign was a huge success resulting in 502 total new leads and 9 new customers with an ROI of 756% on marketing spend.”

Results: 756% ROI over 3 months

Lucy Jones Head of Content, Strategic Internet Consulting

Story: “As an infrastructure training specialist, the client was already seeing a good level of site traffic: 9,000 organic visitors per month.  However,  the challenge was: ‘How to turn this traffic into an increase in conversions?’

To achieve this, work included:

• Conducting a full Inbound Marketing campaign using HubSpot
• Implementing Lead Flows to improve organic conversion
• Using the HubSpot Ads Add-On tool to promote content and attract relevant visitors
• Using HubSpot Lists, and the Linkedin Sales Navigator integration to assess the quality of leads, and conduct follow-up activities on LinkedIn.

In a 3 month timeframe, through LeadFlows we saw 1238 leads, 21 MQLs, and 19 customers, with a top Lead Flow conversion rate of 16%.”

Results:  2000 contacts & a 16% Lead Flow conversion rate over a 3 month period.

Ashley Perron Marketing Automation Specialist, Denamico

Story: “The client lacked clarity and direction when it came to online lead generation. They knew they needed to rely on their website more, but didn’t know how to develop a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy.

That’s when our inbound marketing blueprint made sense. The blueprint is a strategy for inbound marketing and a specific plan for execution.

• First, we gathered information about the client’s marketing and sales goals, key buyer personas, current marketing tactics, website functionality, domain authority, and existing content assets.
• Next, we identified ways to target and attract their key buyer personas, which turned out to be restaurant owners and auto repair shop owners.
• Then, we followed up with strategies for website improvements, content creation, conversion optimization, marketing automation, email marketing, social media engagement, and search engine ranking opportunities.”

Results: Our efforts over the past 19 months have increased their contacts by 625%.

Jordi Navarette Partner, Cos Design Studio

Story: “The client had considerable marketing assets (interactive calculators, samples of panels) which worked excellently in bringing in visitors, but failed to work as conversion points.

The client was worried that when its assets were turned into conversion elements, they would not be as effective and the users of its calculators and panel samples would not want to share their data.

The final results show that this was not so; with the new design completed, the visits stayed level and the conversion index became spectacular.”

• Average leads/month before the new design:  155
• Average leads/month after the new design:  6,000
• Previous conversion rate:  0.15 %
• Target conversion rate:  0.35 %
• Achieved conversion rate:  2.9 %

Kelly Jackson CEO, Jaxzen Marketing

Story: “When we started working with the client in 2015, we conducted in-depth persona research, which has helped guide our content creation from the beginning. This information continued to prove useful in our efforts to increase lead generation.

Armed with a clear understanding of our audience, we were able to narrow down the audience who would see our advertising on LinkedIn by identifying the correct job titles for various kinds of HR professionals. We were also able to exclude ads from employees who worked for competitors, which allowed us to get the best results out of the ad budget.

The LinkedIn ads presented useful content offers on topics such as ACA and FLSA compliance and best practices for time and attendance management and record-keeping.”

Results: “LinkedIn advertising boosted existing inbound strategy to increase leads by 236% in one quarter”

Tom Burgess Director of Multimedia, Revenue River

Story: “Previously rooted in traditional marketing techniques like print and mailers, we supported our client’s transition to digitally-focused initiatives.

From their website registration and outreach to their promotion and fulfillment of the annual seminar series, we created and helped implement a refreshed strategy that included:

• Image-based, smart CTAs
• City-specific social media marketing – geo-targeted PPC campaigns
• Seminar “vlog” teasers – registration reminder videos
• Automated promotional emails

Results: “Improved lead conversion rate for an annual seminar series by 90% from 2013 to 2017”

Sam Zastrow Digital Marketing Manager, Madison Marketing

Story:  “We began an inbound marketing campaign to help the generate generate the volume of sales leads needed to meet their 2016 revenue goal.

• Cut off the company’s ineffective Google AdWords campaign
• Reinvested the money saved from AdWords in content creation and a modest LinkedIn advertising campaign to help extend its reach among a targeted audience
• Improved and optimized the client’s site and the overall campaign strategy based on a set of performance metrics related to traffic, lead generation, and inbound sales”

Results: “Marketing ROI – achieved 30x Marketing ROI in 2016”

Louise Armstrong Senior Digital Strategist , Bonafide

Story:  “Our client was looking to break into the oil and gas landman niche. They knew their product could help this targeted audience, but this old-school group was hard to reach from a digital standpoint.

We identified that there wasn’t a lot of educational content online that didn’t come from industry associations, so we created both an infographic to feature on the client’s blog and a 30+ page eBook with helpful information for people in the landman industry. We also created supplemental blog content designed to push landman contacts down the funnel to ultimately download our eBook.

Using inbound tools, we were able to generate thousands of views and over 1000 niche leads that helped our client break into the segment and to this day it generates a significant amount of monthly contacts.”

Results : “Leads, 1,045 niche leads generated since the eBook launched”

Improving All Funnel Conversions

Amanda Nielsen Internal Marketing Associate, New Breed Marketing

Story:  “ Pwnie Express started with our Digital Onboarding workshop to define their primary buyer personas. Once we understood who we needed to attract to the website and target for conversions, we needed to understand what made these leads more qualified for a sales conversation.

The new configuration of their revenue operations via HubSpot tools has generated tremendous efficiency improvements and true visibility into their pipeline. Now, leads are actually progressing through the funnel as they should. Previously, they were jumping right from lead to customer. In the six months prior to working with New Breed, Pwnie’s funnel had huge holes:

Subscribers – 219 Leads – 2,486 MQLs – 0 SQLs – 0 Opportunities – 0 Customers – 0

In the six months following our implementation of MQL criteria and all of the corresponding assets, we were able to bring Pwnie’s funnel to life: Subscribers – 2,609 Leads – 27,416 MQLs – 1,015 SQLs – 260 Opportunities – 81 Customers – 12″

Results: 90% increase in leads generated over 6 months.

John Aikin CEO, Web Canopy Studio

Story: “Our revenue grew from $90,000 in 2014 to over the $1mil mark in 2017. We bought into the idea of inbound marketing and searched for gaps in the market that we could fill. Once we found an opportunity for collecting a steady flow of leads (in our case, it was the HubSpot Agency Marketplace ), we decided it was time to build a nurturing funnel around these leads, segmenting them into different channels based off of their interest and engagement.

From there, we started selling small, introductory services rather than trying to feature a 12-month $75,000/yr agreement. We turned those small starter services into trusted relationship, and eventually landed the retainers because of our service team. The rest is history.”

Results: 1000% revenue increase from 2014 to 2017

Gabriel Marguglio CEO, Nextiny Marketing

Story: “We worked with a retirement community in Sarasota, Florida. Typically the demographic groups associated with retirement communities are presumed to not be tech savvy or to have a high interest in technology. Because of this, the obvious challenge was  determining whether the community’s ideal customers were even online .

We began a  full inbound marketing strategy  including:

• Social media promotions
• Email marketing and workflows
• Full content strategy including offers for the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel

As it turns out, while we were both pleasantly surprised by the results of our inbound marketing success, there is other research supporting that older adults are spending more time online. This is partially in thanks to the  addition of the tablet  to the smart device family.

Pew Research has determined that older adults (ages 65+), who are affluent, are more likely to use the internet. In the case of the client, a retirement community whose costs average $750,000 per resident, this is precisely their Buyer Persona.”

• Website used to generate only 15-20% of customers. Now it generates 50% of their customers.
• $15mil revenue closed in 1 year.

Story: “Six months into our partnership with Clare Controls , after the processes were set up and things were moving in the right direction, we were asked to sit down with some of the top salespeople to show them how things were going so far – leads generated, processes established, etc.

Just as we would start any normal client meeting, we started with the Sources report (now Analytics tool). Little did we know that would be our first foot in the grave for this meeting. This high level view of performance for the last 6 months was way too much information for them to take in.

We knew we needed to change the way we presented data. Instead of providing that 10,000 foot view of all visits, all leads generated, etc we changed the conversation. We tailored the data by creating a custom report using  Databox , that represents the numbers that are most important to them.

Their dealer onboarding process has three steps. A dealer must complete their application, make their first purchase, and complete training before they are considered an authorized dealer. For us, it was important to cut out the noise and show clear data. It was no longer about how many leads have been generated in total. It was about how many leads have been generated vs how many have actually been closed following the correct process.

When we first produced this report, the number at the bottom of the funnel was 9. Nine dealer leads out of the hundreds had made it all the way through the funnel. This was no longer data to question, but data that sparked action.”

Results: “With all of these combined efforts, in one month we have seen the number of Opportunities converted into customers who have gone through the three steps of the onboarding process go from 9 to 34. All of this was done with opportunities that were already there in the system.

By establishing a process, providing education and tools, and creating custom reports, almost 4 times as many dealers were closed within one month of this custom report being presented.”

Nathan Butcher CMO, Spinfluence

Story:  “The client faced several challenges online:

• Referrals were their only source of leads
• They had minimal organic traffic to their website
• Their dated website did not reflect the modern values of the business
• Their sales process was fragmented and cross-sell opportunities were being lost.

While the client website was functional, it was not built to support inbound marketing initiatives like lead generation.

We began to create premium content assets at every stage of the funnel to generate leads. These took multiple formats, such as webinars, eGuides, videos and interactive micro sites.

Our premium content assets were supported with strategic campaign fuel in the form of blog content, and videos -each with a call-to-action to a relevant landing page, and each amplified using HubSpot social tools.

We created email workflows with sophisticated branching logic to nurture these leads down the funnel with supplementary content offers and calls-to-action.”

• From 0 to 50 SQLs per month from the website
• From 700 website visits per month to 4000-5000 visits per month
• Winner of 3 coveted Australian Accounting Awards, including  Marketing Program of the Year 2017.

Laura MacPherson Blog Manager, LeadG2

Story: “While the client did have leads coming through the website, they wanted and needed more qualified leads in order to make a dent in their new revenue business.

They not only aimed to generate new leads and revenue, but they also needed to find ways to shorten and strengthen their existing sales process. In the words of the client’s Director of Sales: ‘We know that the majority of people are doing research online before ever calling or making a purchase. Having resources on our website that they can go to and learn about on their own time was huge for us.’

We set them up on HubSpot as step one. We integrated this tool with their existing website, making it easier to create a blog and landing pages for lead generation. Using HubSpot also allowed the client to have their entire database in one centralized location, while having access to tools for email marketing, social publishing, forms, keyword tracking, reporting, database management, and much more.

After surveying their existing customers to create a detailed Target Persona Profile, we were able to then develop a customized content strategy which included blog posts and premium content which would be gated for our lead generation efforts.”

• “Ranking for 129 keywords in the top 3, and 195 keywords in the top 10
• 198% growth in traffic overall, which includes 175% growth in organic traffic and 750% growth in social traffic
• 362% growth in leads generated on their website, which includes over 500 blog subscribers and over 12,000 views to their blog posts
• $500,000 in new business revenue  in 18 months”

Chris Fell Founder, g2m Solutions

Story: “ Prospective customers would approach our client and say “Wow, you are fantastic, how come we have never heard of you?”

We ran 2 workshops and developed a full plan than linked their business revenue goals to their specific campaign tactics allowing them to precisely measure daily, weekly and monthly campaign results to revenue goals”

Results: “In terms of new business acquired that is directly attributable to the website, we have covered their costs for the next 12-24 months.”

Greg Linnemanstons President, Weidert Group

Story: “We created a new inbound-focused and persona-optimized website with aggressive use of CTAs.

• Launched blog a with an initial 10 posts and continued blogging 2X/week,
• Created persona-focused gated content
• Created workflows based on personas and buyer journey stage,
• Developed social media plans and protocols to distribute and promote content
• Worked with client staff to create SLA with specific goals, definitions, processes, tools, and protocols to leave nothing in lead management to chance.”

Results: “We improved SQLs. They went from virtually zero to 100 (cumulative) in first 5 months of program”

Raylee Melton Dir. of Client Services, SparkReaction

Story: “At first, the client felt like they needed some extra help with content creation to drive the organic traffic results they were looking for. This became the first goal for our partnership with the client: producing excellent, engaging, innovative content to reach and educate more church leaders and ministry minds.

Our results after 3 months were phenomenal, but we soon reached a pivotal point in our work: No matter how much blog and social media traffic we drove, we knew we needed to nurture and guide these new leads through the buyer’s journey.

When the client’s marketing team came to us seeking more visitors, we responded with lead generation strategies and nurture techniques that would ensure a consistently fed funnel full of qualified, marketing-ready leads.”

Results: “ Before working with SparkReaction, the client had no comprehensive lead conversion process. They generated leads but strategy to move these leads through the marketing and sales funnel.

We established nurture workflows stemming from premium content offers, like eBook redesigns and other helpful guides tailored to the client’s buyer personas. Soon, the client increased marketing qualified leads by over 10% per offer, and top-performing landing pages began seeing a 45% conversion rate. In just the first six months of our partnership, we increased the client’s MQLs, SQLs, and opportunities by 14.9%.”

Fernando Coimbra Lopes Partner, Nivel Horizontal

Story:  After 2 years working on content, blogging, and SEO, we developed some new offers, one of them was a big hit. It was a bottom of the funnel offer very aligned with the customer needs that jumped new customers in 565% in a one year period.

Results:  Improved New Customers per Month from 6 to 40 in 1 Year

Mollie Wiener New Business Coordinator, Adept Marketing

Story: “This client had always been a B2B marketer. They asked us for a strategy that could address a new, consumer audience. They knew they needed one website that could do both—but our data exploration revealed additional growth opportunities with outstanding ROI potential.

We first built a website, using persona research and qualitative data to ensure that it supported the user journey for both B2C and B2B buyers. Once the website was launched, we drove traffic to the site using paid search, shopping ads, remarketing, and ongoing search engine optimization to attract relevant traffic.”

Results: Increased revenue by 48% over 18 months.

Chris Hawkins Business Development Manager, SPROUT Content

Story: “We discovered a new persona during our strategy process: Customer Success Steven. The client had never focused on it, but we found out that this person played a key role in decision-making.

By discovering this “new” persona, we began to create content that appealed to a non-technical buyer. We also recommended that the client create a non-technical blog to sit alongside the technical version they had been writing for the previous 3 years. This opened a whole new segment of content and focus to another potential buyer.

Since we implemented this persona in Dec 2014, more than 6,000 leads identified with this persona over a 2-year period (to Dec 2016) vs. 1300 for Marketing Mike and 1000 for Data Scientist Dan, which were their original personas. The client, Wise.io, was eventually purchased by GE (late 2016)!”

Results:  Over a 2-year period, 121% increase in generated leads with 550 new contacts from a top of funnel guide specific to their Customer Success Steven persona.

Quickly Diagnose Marketing Issues

So, here is the million-dollar (at least) question:

How do you know when you have a marketing issue that is significantly affecting your business?

For every case study in a post like this, there are probably 10 other cases where businesses think everything is going just fine. In reality, they are shooting themselves in the foot with a broken marketing + sales process.

Here are a few ideas for where to start:

• Benchmark against industry standards for numbers like lead conversion rate, click rates and others. We put together a series of resources on KPI benchmarks .
• Post in a forum like DigitalMarketer.com or inbound.org and get some feedback from other practitioners in your niche. Or, you can search to see if anyone else has posted a similar query.
• Look at industry-standard best practices, and determine whether you are following along. For example, if HubSpot recommends that you use lead, MQL and SQL as stages, but you only use lead and SQL… you may be skipping valuable steps that will improve your funnel.

After that, you can determine whether you have the tools in-house to solve the problem, or if you need to consider a digital agency. Obviously, this is a good list to start your search.

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Hey, we’re Databox. Our mission is to help businesses save time and grow faster. Click here to see our platform in action. 

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Home > Faculty Scholarship > Books > 28

Cases on the Law of Agency

Floyd R. Mechem , University of Michigan Law School Follow

Download Full Text (171.7 MB)

Download Front Matter (173 KB)

Download Preface (149 KB)

Download Cases Reported (1.0 MB)

Download Cases Cited (4.3 MB)

Download 1.1: Definitions and Divisions (2.4 MB)

Download 1.2: For What Purposes An Agency May Be Created (2.5 MB)

Download 1.3: Who May Be Principal (8.5 MB)

Download 1.4: Of the Appointment of Agents (6.9 MB)

Download 1.5: Of Ratification (22.6 MB)

Download 1.6: Of Delegation of Authority (4.4 MB)

Download 1.7: Of the Termination of the Relation (16.5 MB)

Download 2.1: Of the Nature of the Authority (6.1 MB)

Download 2.2: Of the Construction of the Authority Generally (1.3 MB)

Download 2.3: Of the Construction of Authorities (9.2 MB)

Download 3.1: In General (282 KB)

Download 3.2: Of the Execution of Sealed Instruments (2.5 MB)

Download 3.3: Of the Execution of Simple Contracts (3.1 MB)

Download 4.2: Of the Duties and Liabilities of the Agent (7.8 MB)

Download 4.3: Duties and Liabilities of Agent to Third Persons (4.0 MB)

Download 4.4: Duties and Liabilities of Principle to Agent (4.1 MB)

Download 4.5: The Duties and Liabilities of the Principal to Third Persons (7.1 MB)

Download 4.6: Duties and Liabilities of Third Persons to the Agent (472 KB)

Download 4.7: Duties and Liabilities of Third Persons to Principal (4.9 MB)

Download 5.1: Of the Office (6.8 MB)

Download 5.2: Of Auctioneers (2.4 MB)

Download 5.3: Of Brokers (1.2 MB)

Download 5.4: Of Factors (8.8 MB)

Download Index (4.4 MB)

Description

The following collection of cases has been prepared, at the request of several leading educators, to accompany the writer’s treatise on the law of agency, the purpose being to illustrate the text by object lessons gathered from the reports. Nothing in the way of annotation has been attempted, beyond an occasional reference to similar cases, as it is thought that the text of the treatise supplies all that is needed in that direction. To make a selection of cases from the great number upon the subject is a difficult task and one in reference to which opinions will necessarily differ. The attempt here has been to select such as contained clear statements of the principles or furnished striking illustrations of them, and were not too much involved with other matters or too long for reproduction. Some cases which might otherwise have appeared have been omitted because the substance of them has been sufficiently stated in the text or notes of the treatise. In many cases matters irrelevant to this subject have been omitted. Cases on the law of master and servant have also been omitted as they sufficiently appear in other available collections. Many of the cases given are too recent to constitute what may be termed leading cases, nor has there been any attempt to include all that might properly be so designated. As the volume is intended primarily for the use of students, for whom the making of their own abstracts is a most valuable exercise, the cases are printed without head notes. It is believed, however, that they will be thereby rendered no less useful to others who may desire to consult them, as a full index furnishes a ready guide to their contents.

Publication Date

Callaghan & Company

University of Michigan Law School, Cases, Casebooks, Law students, Agents, Contracts, Treatises

• Disciplines

Agency | Commercial Law | Contracts | Legal Education

Recommended Citation

Mechem, Floyd R. Cases on the Law of Agency . Chicago: Callaghan & Company, 1893.

Since January 18, 2016

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Is It Time to Rethink the Agency Case Study?

Creating case studies for agencies comes with its own special set of challenges.

First, agency customers are a particularly skeptical bunch because they’ve either been burned by an agency in the past or heard horror stories.

Maybe they didn’t get the results they wanted. Or the work was poorly performed. Or communication was terrible.

Whatever the problem was, they’re not likely to be won over by cheery case studies that consist of a laundry list of tasks performed and summary of results.

They’re also savvy enough to recognize that most case studies sound the same. They see that case study subjects are cherry picked and results are presented without substantial proof that it was the AGENCY that drove the results.

In other words, they view case studies as narcissistic, dry and extremely suspect!

Second, agencies themselves are often frustrated with their own case studies .

They don’t think their current case studies are performing as well as they should, and they want more bang for their buck.

Which is why it’s time to rethink the agency case study.

It’s time to write them in a way that’s more persuasive, more carefully targeted — and where agencies get more value.

So if you’re an agency, here are five ways to rethink your case studies:

1. Show how you think

Sadly, most agency case studies are narcissistic and shallow.

They go from “first we did this, and then we did that, and then we achieved this” without covering the “why” and “how” behind the “what.”

But agency customers don’t just hire you for the results you can get.

They also hire you for HOW you think and HOW you deliver .

When you show prospective customers not only what you’re capable of, but also how you think and deliver, you can overcome their skepticism.

Creating a strong narrative with lots of rich detail that walks them through your strategy helps ease their concerns.

It’s the best way to convince prospective customers that yes, you truly do know what you’re talking about.

So let the case study explain WHY you proceeded the way you did. WHY did you take that strategy? WHY was that the right path for this client?

In other words, show the strategic thinking behind the results.

Then, talk about how you deliver those results. How do you communicate? How do you strategize?

Do you keep customers in the loop? Will they have to hunt you down? Will they be equal partners with you?

Your case study should show all aspects of how you think and perform .

Show that you’ve got your approach nailed down—and you can replicate that success for THEM.

2. Show some vulnerability

Many agencies are guilty of showing only their very best work in their case studies.

Every project went perfectly. The customer was delighted from start to finish. Great results were achieved.

It’s unlikely that this is a true reflection of all your projects.

And your customers know it.

Most projects aren’t so perfect.

So what happens when things go wrong? How do you respond? How do you get things back on track?

Because it’s these kinds of situations that prove your mettle. Perfect projects are easy to manage. What really demonstrates your skills and ability is when things go wrong.

So it pays to show some vulnerability in your case studies.

Show the failures and struggles that happened along the way to achieving great results.

Talk about the surprises, the things you had to adjust for, and the times you had to pivot.

Including these doses of reality adds credibility to your case study. Prospective customers are more likely to be persuaded.

Not all agencies are willing to do this. Some think that admitting to any bumps in the road scares off prospects.

But sometimes it’s exactly what’s needed to win them over.

3. Let your customer speak

Sometimes, agencies are guilty of making their case studies about themselves instead of their customers.

So they tell stories of how they “rescued” customers, instead of how they helped their customers rescue themselves.

Or as we like to say around here, we want to portray the customer as a hero with a problem—not an idiot with an issue.

Part of this means letting your customer speak and tell the story from their perspective . Let him/her drive the narrative, partly in their own words.

Again, telling stories from the customers perspective helps to persuade tough audiences. They start to imagine themselves as the hero of their own story.

It also makes future customers more likely to participate in your case studies down the road.

4. Create different versions for different audiences

Too often, agencies order one type of case study and think that’s all they need.

But it pays to think more broadly.

If you want to reach different audiences, you need to create slightly different versions for those audiences.

Take CEOs, for example. CEOs and other high-level decision makers typically don’t have time to dive into every detail of a project. They just want to get to the results.

So in this case, your case study can safely gloss over the what, hows and whys to get to the end results.

But if your audience is boots-on-the-ground people who will be working directly with your agency, then those details are important. They WANT to know what happened, how you did things and why you did them that way.

They’re looking for concrete evidence of how your agency works and that you’ll be a good fit for them. So you have to show the details.

These case studies need to be more meaty, with more quotes and details.

That’s why we often recommend that our clients order two different case study versions: narrative and snapshot .

It’s not just that one format is longer than the other. The big difference is that they’re aimed at different audiences and serve different purposes.

5. Repurpose

Another mistake we see is that agencies tend to throw case studies up on their site and not deploy or repurpose them.

It’s a wasted opportunity!

It’s not enough to have a case study sit on the resources section of your website.

Use it in presentations, share it on social media, and post it on social media.

Case studies also make excellent fodder for Q&A blog posts and “how to” type blog posts.

You can also use the “byproducts” of case studies to create entirely new assets, such as audiograms .

Is it time to rethink your case studies?

If you feel your case studies aren’t winning over new customers or that you’re not getting enough value out of them, it’s time for a rethink.

Because when you do, you’ll win over even the most hardened agency skeptic.

Let’s talk about agency case studies.

Contact us to start the conversation.

Joel Klettke

Joel founded Case Study Buddy to bring companies an end-to-end partner in tackling the challenges of case studies and testimonials. He's passionate about seeing B2B companies systematize, scale, and reap the rewards of customer success stories.

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14.1: Introduction to Agency and the Types of Agents

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Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Understand why agency law is important.
• Recognize the recurring legal issues in agency law.
• Know the types of agents.
• Understand how the agency relationship is created.

Introduction to Agency Law

Why is agency law important, and what is an agent.

An agent is a person who acts in the name of and on behalf of another, having been given and assumed some degree of authority to do so. Most organized human activity—and virtually all commercial activity—is carried on through agency. No corporation would be possible, even in theory, without such a concept. We might say “General Motors is building cars in China,” for example, but we can’t shake hands with General Motors. “The General,” as people say, exists and works through agents. Likewise, partnerships and other business organizations rely extensively on agents to conduct their business. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that agency is the cornerstone of enterprise organization. In a partnership each partner is a general agent, while under corporation law the officers and all employees are agents of the corporation.

The existence of agents does not, however, require a whole new law of torts or contracts. A tort is no less harmful when committed by an agent; a contract is no less binding when negotiated by an agent. What does need to be taken into account, though, is the manner in which an agent acts on behalf of his principal and toward a third party.

Recurring Issues in Agency Law

Several problematic fact scenarios recur in agency, and law has developed in response.

Consider John Alden (1599–1687), one of the most famous agents in American literature. He is said to have been the first person from the Mayflower to set foot on Plymouth Rock in 1620; he was a carpenter, a cooper (barrel maker), and a diplomat. His agency task—of interest here—was celebrated in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Courtship of Miles Standish.” He was to woo Priscilla Mullins (d. 1680), “the loveliest maiden of Plymouth,” on behalf of Captain Miles Standish, a valiant soldier who was too shy to propose marriage. Standish turned to John Alden, his young and eloquent protégé, and beseeched Alden to speak on his behalf, unaware that Alden himself was in love with Priscilla. Alden accepted his captain’s assignment, despite the knowledge that he would thus lose Priscilla for himself, and sought out the lady. But Alden was so tongue-tied that his vaunted eloquence fell short, turned Priscilla cold toward the object of Alden’s mission, and eventually led her to turn the tables in one of the most famous lines in American literature and poetry: “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” John eventually did: the two were married in 1623 in Plymouth.

Recurring Issues in Agency

Let’s analyze this sequence of events in legal terms—recognizing, of course, that this example is an analogy and that the law, even today, would not impose consequences on Alden for his failure to carry out Captain Standish’s wishes. Alden was the captain’s agent: he was specifically authorized to speak in his name in a manner agreed on, toward a specified end, and he accepted the assignment in consideration of the captain’s friendship. He had, however, a conflict of interest. He attempted to carry out the assignment, but he did not perform according to expectations. Eventually, he wound up with the prize himself. Here are some questions to consider, the same questions that will recur throughout the discussion of agency:

• How extensive was John’s authority? Could he have made promises to Priscilla on the captain’s behalf—for example, that Standish would have built her a fine house?
• Could he, if he committed a tort, have imposed liability on his principal? Suppose, for example, that he had ridden at breakneck speed to reach Priscilla’s side and while en route ran into and injured a pedestrian on the road. Could the pedestrian have sued Standish?
• Suppose Alden had injured himself on the journey. Would Standish be liable to Alden?
• Is Alden liable to Standish for stealing the heart of Priscilla—that is, for taking the “profits” of the enterprise for himself?

As these questions suggest, agency law often involves three parties—the principal, the agent, and a third party. It therefore deals with three different relationships: between principal and agent, between principal and third party, and between agent and third party. These relationships can be summed up in a simple diagram (see Figure 14.1).

In this chapter, we will consider the principal-agent side of the triangle. In the next chapter we will turn to relationships involving third parties.

Types of Agents

There are five types of agents.

General Agent

The general agent possesses the authority to carry out a broad range of transactions in the name and on behalf of the principal. The general agent may be the manager of a business or may have a more limited but nevertheless ongoing role—for example, as a purchasing agent or as a life insurance agent authorized to sign up customers for the home office. In either case, the general agent has authority to alter the principal’s legal relationships with third parties. One who is designated a general agent has the authority to act in any way required by the principal’s business. To restrict the general agent’s authority, the principal must spell out the limitations explicitly, and even so the principal may be liable for any of the agent’s acts in excess of his authority.

Normally, the general agent is a business agent, but there are circumstances under which an individual may appoint a general agent for personal purposes. One common form of a personal general agent is the person who holds another’s power of attorney. This is a delegation of authority to another to act in his stead; it can be accomplished by executing a simple form, such as the one shown in Figure 14.2. Ordinarily, the power of attorney is used for a special purpose—for example, to sell real estate or securities in the absence of the owner. But a person facing a lengthy operation and recuperation in a hospital might give a general power of attorney to a trusted family member or friend.

Special Agent

The special agent is one who has authority to act only in a specifically designated instance or in a specifically designated set of transactions. For example, a real estate broker is usually a special agent hired to find a buyer for the principal’s land. Suppose Sam, the seller, appoints an agent Alberta to find a buyer for his property. Alberta’s commission depends on the selling price, which, Sam states in a letter to her, “in any event may be no less than $150,000.” If Alberta locates a buyer, Bob, who agrees to purchase the property for $160,000, her signature on the contract of sale will not bind Sam. As a special agent, Alberta had authority only to find a buyer; she had no authority to sign the contract.

Agency Coupled with an Interest

An agent whose reimbursement depends on his continuing to have the authority to act as an agent is said to have an agency coupled with an interest if he has a property interest in the business. A literary or author’s agent, for example, customarily agrees to sell a literary work to a publisher in return for a percentage of all monies the author earns from the sale of the work. The literary agent also acts as a collection agent to ensure that his commission will be paid. By agreeing with the principal that the agency is coupled with an interest, the agent can prevent his own rights in a particular literary work from being terminated to his detriment.

To carry out her duties, an agent will often need to appoint her own agents. These appointments may or may not be authorized by the principal. An insurance company, for example, might name a general agent to open offices in cities throughout a certain state. The agent will necessarily conduct her business through agents of her own choosing. These agents are subagents of the principal if the general agent had the express or implied authority of the principal to hire them. For legal purposes, they are agents of both the principal and the principal’s general agent, and both are liable for the subagent’s conduct although normally the general agent agrees to be primarily liable (see Figure 14.3).

The final category of agent is the servant. Until the early nineteenth century, any employee whose work duties were subject to an employer’s control was called a servant; we would not use that term so broadly in modern English. The Restatement (Second) of Agency, Section 2, defines a servant as “an agent employed by a master [employer] to perform service in his affairs whose physical conduct in the performance of the service is controlled or is subject to the right to control by the master.”

Independent Contractor

Not every contract for services necessarily creates a master-servant relationship. There is an important distinction made between the status of a servant and that of an independent contractor. According to the Restatement (Second) of Agency, Section 2, As the name implies, the independent contractor is legally autonomous. A plumber salaried to a building contractor is an employee and agent of the contractor. But a plumber who hires himself out to repair pipes in people’s homes is an independent contractor. If you hire a lawyer to settle a dispute, that person is not your employee or your servant; she is an independent contractor. The terms “agent” and “independent contractor” are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, by definition, “… an independent contractor is an agent in the broad sense of the term in undertaking, at the request of another, to do something for the other. As a general rule the line of demarcation between an independent contractor and a servant is not clearly drawn.” 1. Flick v. Crouch , 434 P.2d 256, 260 (OK, 1967).

This distinction between agent and independent contractor has important legal consequences for taxation, workers’ compensation, and liability insurance. For example, employers are required to withhold income taxes from their employees’ paychecks. But payment to an independent contractor, such as the plumber for hire, does not require such withholding. Deciding who is an independent contractor is not always easy; there is no single factor or mechanical answer. In Robinson v. New York Commodities Corp. , an injured salesman sought workers’ compensation benefits, claiming to be an employee of the New York Commodities Corporation. Robinson v. New York Commodities Corp. , 396 N.Y.S.2d 725, App. Div. (1977). But the state workmen’s compensation board ruled against him, citing a variety of factors. The claimant sold canned meats, making rounds in his car from his home. The company did not establish hours for him, did not control his movements in any way, and did not reimburse him for mileage or any other expenses or withhold taxes from its straight commission payments to him. He reported his taxes on a form for the self-employed and hired an accountant to prepare it for him. The court agreed with the compensation board that these facts established the salesman’s status as an independent contractor.

The factual situation in each case determines whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor. Neither the company nor the worker can establish the worker’s status by agreement. As the North Dakota Workmen’s Compensation Bureau put it in a bulletin to real estate brokers, “It has come to the Bureau’s attention that many employers are requiring that those who work for them sign ‘independent contractor’ forms so that the employer does not have to pay workmen’s compensation premiums for his employees. Such forms are meaningless if the worker is in fact an employee.” Vizcaino v. Microsoft Corporation , discussed in Section 14.3.2 “Employee versus Independent Contractor”, examines the distinction.

In addition to determining a worker’s status for tax and compensation insurance purposes, it is sometimes critical for decisions involving personal liability insurance policies, which usually exclude from coverage accidents involving employees of the insureds. General Accident Fire & Life Assurance Corp v. Pro Golf Association General Accident Fire & Life Assurance Corp v. Pro Golf Association , 352 N.E.2d 441 (Ill. App. 1976). involved such a situation. The insurance policy in question covered members of the Professional Golfers Association. Gerald Hall, a golf pro employed by the local park department, was afforded coverage under the policy, which excluded “bodily injury to any employee of the insured arising out of and in the course of his employment by the insured.” That is, no employee of Hall’s would be covered (rather, any such person would have coverage under workers’ compensation statutes). Bradley Martin, age thirteen, was at the golf course for junior league play. At Hall’s request, he agreed to retrieve or “shag” golf balls to be hit during a lesson Hall was giving; he was—as Hall put it—to be compensated “either through golf instructions or money or hotdogs or whatever.” During the course of the lesson, a golf ball hit by Hall hit young Martin in the eye. If Martin was an employee, the insurance company would be liable; if he was not an employee, the insurance company would not liable. The trial court determined he was not an employee. The evidence showed: sometimes the boys who “shagged” balls got paid, got golfing instructions, or got food, so the question of compensation was ambiguous. Martin was not directed in how to perform (the admittedly simple) task of retrieving golf balls, no control was exercised over him, and no equipment was required other than a bag to collect the balls: “We believe the evidence is susceptible of different inferences.…We cannot say that the decision of the trial court is against the manifest weight of the evidence.”

Creation of the Agency Relationship

The agency relationship can be created in two ways: by agreement (expressly) or by operation of law (constructively or impliedly).

Agency Created by Agreement

Most agencies are created by contract. Thus the general rules of contract law covered in Chapter 8 govern the law of agency. But agencies can also be created without contract, by agreement. Therefore, three contract principles are especially important: the first is the requirement for consideration, the second for a writing, and the third concerns contractual capacity.

Consideration

Agencies created by consent—agreement—are not necessarily contractual. It is not uncommon for one person to act as an agent for another without consideration. For example, Abe asks Byron to run some errands for him: to buy some lumber on his account at the local lumberyard. Such a gratuitous agency gives rise to no different results than the more common contractual agency.

Formalities

Most oral agency contracts are legally binding; the law does not require that they be reduced to writing. In practice, many agency contracts are written to avoid problems of proof. And there are situations where an agency contract must be in writing: (1) if the agreed-on purpose of the agency cannot be fulfilled within one year or if the agency relationship is to last more than one year; (2) in many states, an agreement to pay a commission to a real estate broker; (3) in many states, authority given to an agent to sell real estate; and (4) in several states, contracts between companies and sales representatives.

Even when the agency contract is not required to be in writing, contracts that agents make with third parties often must be in writing. Thus Section 2-201 of the Uniform Commercial Code specifically requires contracts for the sale of goods for the price of five hundred dollars or more to be in writing and “signed by the party against whom enforcement is sought or by his authorized agent.”

A contract is void or voidable when one of the parties lacks capacity to make one. If both principal and agent lack capacity—for example, a minor appoints another minor to negotiate or sign an agreement—there can be no question of the contract’s voidability. But suppose only one or the other lacks capacity. Generally, the law focuses on the principal. If the principal is a minor or otherwise lacks capacity, the contract can be avoided even if the agent is fully competent. There are, however, a few situations in which the capacity of the agent is important. Thus a mentally incompetent agent cannot bind a principal.

Agency Created by Operation of Law

Most agencies are made by contract, but agency also may arise impliedly or apparently.

Implied Agency

In areas of social need, courts have declared an agency to exist in the absence of an agreement. The agency relationship then is said to have been implied “by operation of law.” Children in most states may purchase necessary items—food or medical services—on the parent’s account. Long-standing social policy deems it desirable for the head of a family to support his dependents, and the courts will put the expense on the family head in order to provide for the dependents’ welfare. The courts achieve this result by supposing the dependent to be the family head’s agent, thus allowing creditors to sue the family head for the debt.

Implied agencies also arise where one person behaves as an agent would and the “principal,” knowing that the “agent” is behaving so, acquiesces, allowing the person to hold himself out as an agent. Such are the basic facts in Weingart v. Directoire Restaurant, Inc. in Section 14.3.1 “Creation of Agency: Liability of Parent for Contracts Made by “Agent” Child”.

Apparent Agency

Suppose Arthur is Paul’s agent, employed through October 31. On November 1, Arthur buys materials at Lumber Yard—as he has been doing since early spring—and charges them to Paul’s account. Lumber Yard, not knowing that Arthur’s employment terminated the day before, bills Paul. Will Paul have to pay? Yes, because the termination of the agency was not communicated to Lumber Yard. It appeared that Arthur was an authorized agent. This issue is discussed further in Chapter 15.

Key Takeaway

An agent is one who acts on behalf of another. Many transactions are conducted by agents so acting. All corporate transactions, including those involving governmental organizations, are so conducted because corporations cannot themselves actually act; they are legal fictions. Agencies may be created expressly, impliedly, or apparently. Recurring issues in agency law include whether the “agent” really is such, the scope of the agent’s authority, and the duties among the parties. The five types of agents include: general agent, special agent, subagent, agency coupled with an interest, and servant (or employee). The independent contractor is not an employee; her activities are not specifically controlled by her client, and the client is not liable for payroll taxes, Social Security, and the like. But it is not uncommon for an employer to claim workers are independent contractors when in fact they are employees, and the cases are often hard-fought on the facts.

• Why is agency law especially important in the business and government context?
• What are the five types of agents?
• What distinguishes an employee from an independent contractor?
• Why do employers frequently try to pass off employees as independent contractors?

Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies of 2021

Two cases about Hertz claimed top spots in 2021's Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies

Two cases on the uses of debt and equity at Hertz claimed top spots in the CRDT’s (Case Research and Development Team) 2021 top 40 review of cases.

Hertz (A) took the top spot. The case details the financial structure of the rental car company through the end of 2019. Hertz (B), which ranked third in CRDT’s list, describes the company’s struggles during the early part of the COVID pandemic and its eventual need to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

The success of the Hertz cases was unprecedented for the top 40 list. Usually, cases take a number of years to gain popularity, but the Hertz cases claimed top spots in their first year of release. Hertz (A) also became the first ‘cooked’ case to top the annual review, as all of the other winners had been web-based ‘raw’ cases.

Besides introducing students to the complicated financing required to maintain an enormous fleet of cars, the Hertz cases also expanded the diversity of case protagonists. Kathyrn Marinello was the CEO of Hertz during this period and the CFO, Jamere Jackson is black.

Sandwiched between the two Hertz cases, Coffee 2016, a perennial best seller, finished second. “Glory, Glory, Man United!” a case about an English football team’s IPO made a surprise move to number four.  Cases on search fund boards, the future of malls,  Norway’s Sovereign Wealth fund, Prodigy Finance, the Mayo Clinic, and Cadbury rounded out the top ten.

Other year-end data for 2021 showed:

• Online “raw” case usage remained steady as compared to 2020 with over 35K users from 170 countries and all 50 U.S. states interacting with 196 cases.
• Fifty four percent of raw case users came from outside the U.S..
• The Yale School of Management (SOM) case study directory pages received over 160K page views from 177 countries with approximately a third originating in India followed by the U.S. and the Philippines.
• Twenty-six of the cases in the list are raw cases.
• A third of the cases feature a woman protagonist.
• Orders for Yale SOM case studies increased by almost 50% compared to 2020.
• The top 40 cases were supervised by 19 different Yale SOM faculty members, several supervising multiple cases.

CRDT compiled the Top 40 list by combining data from its case store, Google Analytics, and other measures of interest and adoption.

All of this year’s Top 40 cases are available for purchase from the Yale Management Media store .

And the Top 40 cases studies of 2021 are:

1.   Hertz Global Holdings (A): Uses of Debt and Equity

2.   Coffee 2016

3.   Hertz Global Holdings (B): Uses of Debt and Equity 2020

4.   Glory, Glory Man United!

5.   Search Fund Company Boards: How CEOs Can Build Boards to Help Them Thrive

6.   The Future of Malls: Was Decline Inevitable?

7.   Strategy for Norway's Pension Fund Global

8.   Prodigy Finance

9.   Design at Mayo

10. Cadbury

11. City Hospital Emergency Room

13. Volkswagen

14. Marina Bay Sands

15. Shake Shack IPO

16. Mastercard

17. Netflix

18. Ant Financial

19. AXA: Creating the New CR Metrics

20. IBM Corporate Service Corps

21. Business Leadership in South Africa's 1994 Reforms

22. Alternative Meat Industry

23. Children's Premier

24. Khalil Tawil and Umi (A)

25. Palm Oil 2016

26. Teach For All: Designing a Global Network

27. What's Next? Search Fund Entrepreneurs Reflect on Life After Exit

28. Searching for a Search Fund Structure: A Student Takes a Tour of Various Options

30. Project Sammaan

31. Commonfund ESG

32. Polaroid

33. Connecticut Green Bank 2018: After the Raid

34. FieldFresh Foods

35. The Alibaba Group

36. 360 State Street: Real Options

37. Herman Miller

38. AgBiome

39. Nathan Cummings Foundation

40. Toyota 2010

Market concentration, agency cost and firm performance: a case study on Indian corporate firms

• Published: 21 June 2023
• Volume 56 , pages 2645–2693, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Ujjayini Roy 1 &
• Indrani Chakraborty 2  

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This paper explores the relationship between market concentration, agency cost and firm performance using an unbalanced panel of 1911 publicly listed manufacturing firms in India for the period 2001 to 2020. It classifies firms according to ownership types and evaluates the effects of agency cost and market concentration on performance of firms. The study considers agency costs that result from principal-agent (PA agency costs) as well as from principal-principal conflicts (PP agency cost). Additionally, it shows how the interaction between various concentration indices and agency costs (PP and PA agency prices) affects performance. Using a generalized methods of moments technique to estimate three dynamic models, the study finds that both types of agency costs have a strong negative impact on performance, market concentration has a negative impact but is limited to certain types of firms and the combined effects between concentration and agency cost are strong which shows that an increase in market concentration causes a decline in performance due to an increase in agency cost. Thus, our findings support the prediction that competition acts as a disciplining device to reduce agency costs which in turn helps to reduce managerial slack and improve firm performance. Our study has several policy implications.

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Roy, U., Chakraborty, I. Market concentration, agency cost and firm performance: a case study on Indian corporate firms. Econ Change Restruct 56 , 2645–2693 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10644-023-09529-1

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What Is a Case Study?

Weighing the pros and cons of this method of research

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Cara Lustik is a fact-checker and copywriter.

Verywell / Colleen Tighe

• Pros and Cons

What Types of Case Studies Are Out There?

Where do you find data for a case study, how do i write a psychology case study.

A case study is an in-depth study of one person, group, or event. In a case study, nearly every aspect of the subject's life and history is analyzed to seek patterns and causes of behavior. Case studies can be used in many different fields, including psychology, medicine, education, anthropology, political science, and social work.

The point of a case study is to learn as much as possible about an individual or group so that the information can be generalized to many others. Unfortunately, case studies tend to be highly subjective, and it is sometimes difficult to generalize results to a larger population.

While case studies focus on a single individual or group, they follow a format similar to other types of psychology writing. If you are writing a case study, we got you—here are some rules of APA format to reference.  

At a Glance

A case study, or an in-depth study of a person, group, or event, can be a useful research tool when used wisely. In many cases, case studies are best used in situations where it would be difficult or impossible for you to conduct an experiment. They are helpful for looking at unique situations and allow researchers to gather a lot of˜ information about a specific individual or group of people. However, it's important to be cautious of any bias we draw from them as they are highly subjective.

What Are the Benefits and Limitations of Case Studies?

A case study can have its strengths and weaknesses. Researchers must consider these pros and cons before deciding if this type of study is appropriate for their needs.

One of the greatest advantages of a case study is that it allows researchers to investigate things that are often difficult or impossible to replicate in a lab. Some other benefits of a case study:

• Allows researchers to capture information on the 'how,' 'what,' and 'why,' of something that's implemented
• Gives researchers the chance to collect information on why one strategy might be chosen over another
• Permits researchers to develop hypotheses that can be explored in experimental research

On the other hand, a case study can have some drawbacks:

• It cannot necessarily be generalized to the larger population
• Cannot demonstrate cause and effect
• It may not be scientifically rigorous
• It can lead to bias

Researchers may choose to perform a case study if they want to explore a unique or recently discovered phenomenon. Through their insights, researchers develop additional ideas and study questions that might be explored in future studies.

It's important to remember that the insights from case studies cannot be used to determine cause-and-effect relationships between variables. However, case studies may be used to develop hypotheses that can then be addressed in experimental research.

Case Study Examples

There have been a number of notable case studies in the history of psychology. Much of  Freud's work and theories were developed through individual case studies. Some great examples of case studies in psychology include:

• Anna O : Anna O. was a pseudonym of a woman named Bertha Pappenheim, a patient of a physician named Josef Breuer. While she was never a patient of Freud's, Freud and Breuer discussed her case extensively. The woman was experiencing symptoms of a condition that was then known as hysteria and found that talking about her problems helped relieve her symptoms. Her case played an important part in the development of talk therapy as an approach to mental health treatment.
• Phineas Gage : Phineas Gage was a railroad employee who experienced a terrible accident in which an explosion sent a metal rod through his skull, damaging important portions of his brain. Gage recovered from his accident but was left with serious changes in both personality and behavior.
• Genie : Genie was a young girl subjected to horrific abuse and isolation. The case study of Genie allowed researchers to study whether language learning was possible, even after missing critical periods for language development. Her case also served as an example of how scientific research may interfere with treatment and lead to further abuse of vulnerable individuals.

Such cases demonstrate how case research can be used to study things that researchers could not replicate in experimental settings. In Genie's case, her horrific abuse denied her the opportunity to learn a language at critical points in her development.

This is clearly not something researchers could ethically replicate, but conducting a case study on Genie allowed researchers to study phenomena that are otherwise impossible to reproduce.

There are a few different types of case studies that psychologists and other researchers might use:

• Collective case studies : These involve studying a group of individuals. Researchers might study a group of people in a certain setting or look at an entire community. For example, psychologists might explore how access to resources in a community has affected the collective mental well-being of those who live there.
• Descriptive case studies : These involve starting with a descriptive theory. The subjects are then observed, and the information gathered is compared to the pre-existing theory.
• Explanatory case studies : These   are often used to do causal investigations. In other words, researchers are interested in looking at factors that may have caused certain things to occur.
• Exploratory case studies : These are sometimes used as a prelude to further, more in-depth research. This allows researchers to gather more information before developing their research questions and hypotheses .
• Instrumental case studies : These occur when the individual or group allows researchers to understand more than what is initially obvious to observers.
• Intrinsic case studies : This type of case study is when the researcher has a personal interest in the case. Jean Piaget's observations of his own children are good examples of how an intrinsic case study can contribute to the development of a psychological theory.

The three main case study types often used are intrinsic, instrumental, and collective. Intrinsic case studies are useful for learning about unique cases. Instrumental case studies help look at an individual to learn more about a broader issue. A collective case study can be useful for looking at several cases simultaneously.

The type of case study that psychology researchers use depends on the unique characteristics of the situation and the case itself.

There are a number of different sources and methods that researchers can use to gather information about an individual or group. Six major sources that have been identified by researchers are:

• Archival records : Census records, survey records, and name lists are examples of archival records.
• Direct observation : This strategy involves observing the subject, often in a natural setting . While an individual observer is sometimes used, it is more common to utilize a group of observers.
• Documents : Letters, newspaper articles, administrative records, etc., are the types of documents often used as sources.
• Interviews : Interviews are one of the most important methods for gathering information in case studies. An interview can involve structured survey questions or more open-ended questions.
• Participant observation : When the researcher serves as a participant in events and observes the actions and outcomes, it is called participant observation.
• Physical artifacts : Tools, objects, instruments, and other artifacts are often observed during a direct observation of the subject.

If you have been directed to write a case study for a psychology course, be sure to check with your instructor for any specific guidelines you need to follow. If you are writing your case study for a professional publication, check with the publisher for their specific guidelines for submitting a case study.

Here is a general outline of what should be included in a case study.

Section 1: A Case History

This section will have the following structure and content:

Background information : The first section of your paper will present your client's background. Include factors such as age, gender, work, health status, family mental health history, family and social relationships, drug and alcohol history, life difficulties, goals, and coping skills and weaknesses.

Description of the presenting problem : In the next section of your case study, you will describe the problem or symptoms that the client presented with.

Describe any physical, emotional, or sensory symptoms reported by the client. Thoughts, feelings, and perceptions related to the symptoms should also be noted. Any screening or diagnostic assessments that are used should also be described in detail and all scores reported.

Your diagnosis : Provide your diagnosis and give the appropriate Diagnostic and Statistical Manual code. Explain how you reached your diagnosis, how the client's symptoms fit the diagnostic criteria for the disorder(s), or any possible difficulties in reaching a diagnosis.

Section 2: Treatment Plan

This portion of the paper will address the chosen treatment for the condition. This might also include the theoretical basis for the chosen treatment or any other evidence that might exist to support why this approach was chosen.

• Cognitive behavioral approach : Explain how a cognitive behavioral therapist would approach treatment. Offer background information on cognitive behavioral therapy and describe the treatment sessions, client response, and outcome of this type of treatment. Make note of any difficulties or successes encountered by your client during treatment.
• Humanistic approach : Describe a humanistic approach that could be used to treat your client, such as client-centered therapy . Provide information on the type of treatment you chose, the client's reaction to the treatment, and the end result of this approach. Explain why the treatment was successful or unsuccessful.
• Psychoanalytic approach : Describe how a psychoanalytic therapist would view the client's problem. Provide some background on the psychoanalytic approach and cite relevant references. Explain how psychoanalytic therapy would be used to treat the client, how the client would respond to therapy, and the effectiveness of this treatment approach.
• Pharmacological approach : If treatment primarily involves the use of medications, explain which medications were used and why. Provide background on the effectiveness of these medications and how monotherapy may compare with an approach that combines medications with therapy or other treatments.

This section of a case study should also include information about the treatment goals, process, and outcomes.

When you are writing a case study, you should also include a section where you discuss the case study itself, including the strengths and limitiations of the study. You should note how the findings of your case study might support previous research. 

In your discussion section, you should also describe some of the implications of your case study. What ideas or findings might require further exploration? How might researchers go about exploring some of these questions in additional studies?

Need More Tips?

Here are a few additional pointers to keep in mind when formatting your case study:

• Never refer to the subject of your case study as "the client." Instead, use their name or a pseudonym.
• Read examples of case studies to gain an idea about the style and format.
• Remember to use APA format when citing references .

Crowe S, Cresswell K, Robertson A, Huby G, Avery A, Sheikh A. The case study approach .  BMC Med Res Methodol . 2011;11:100.

Crowe S, Cresswell K, Robertson A, Huby G, Avery A, Sheikh A. The case study approach . BMC Med Res Methodol . 2011 Jun 27;11:100. doi:10.1186/1471-2288-11-100

Gagnon, Yves-Chantal.  The Case Study as Research Method: A Practical Handbook . Canada, Chicago Review Press Incorporated DBA Independent Pub Group, 2010.

Yin, Robert K. Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods . United States, SAGE Publications, 2017.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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A franchise’s guide to becoming a local influencer.

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President and Owner at McKay Advertising + Activation , Florida's First Digital Media Agency.

Influencer marketing has become a key method for promoting brands and building relationships. As the head of a digital marketing agency, I've seen firsthand that in the franchise sector, marketers are experimenting with how trusted influencers can promote their products and narrate their service experiences to attract current and new customers.

Yet, there's a disconnect between the way influencers grow and monetize their online following and the geographical limitations of franchise marketing. Influencers typically aim to expand their audience broadly, which suits e-commerce well because followers from any location can make purchases. However, for franchises confined to specific areas, finding local influencers is tricky because their reach and credibility are often limited to a smaller, regional audience.

This brings us to an innovative idea for franchise marketing and hyper-local campaigns: Why not create your own influencer within a desired geographic area? Use someone from within your franchise as an influencer. The best person to represent your brand is someone deeply involved, impassioned and who knows it inside out.

Influencer Marketing By The Numbers

Before I dive into an example of how one of our clients effectively approached this strategy, let's take a look at the numbers . Why might a business want to invest in influencer marketing?

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• Market Growth: The influencer marketing industry's projected growth to approximately $24 billion by 2024 highlights the increasing investment and confidence in this strategy.

• Marketing Effectiveness: The fact that 85% of marketers perceive influencer marketing as effective underscores its pivotal role in modern advertising strategies.

• Budget Allocation: Nearly a quarter of marketers plan to allocate over 40% of their marketing budget to influencer campaigns, demonstrating the strategic importance of influencer marketing. This signifies a reallocation of resources toward methods that foster genuine connections and engagements.

A Client Case Study

One of our clients, a premier window and door installer with a new franchise in Raleigh, North Carolina, faced a challenging competitive environment dominated by established brands. These competitors had been investing in television and other media for over a decade to solidify their market presence. Furthermore, the franchise territory for this client did not cover the entire Raleigh market, creating a tough situation that demanded a unique approach.

Ashley, who owns the Triangle Area franchise, needed to become the influencer in her service area, and her message had to be delivered in a micro geography matching her franchise zips. She began to make social media videos about what the franchise offers:

• What technology and tools they use for better product delivery.

• What to keep in mind (including weather considerations) for buying windows in Raleigh, North Carolina.

These videos had great success and Ashley became known as the "window lady of Raleigh." Her efforts were powerful enough to connect her to the brand. By sharing what's unique about their business and products, Ashley became a well-loved local influencer, sharing her genuine passion and authenticity with the community.

The next crucial step for Ashley was the strategic use of her videos on social platforms like Meta, TikTok and YouTube. These targeted ads were cost-effective and reached only consumers within their service area. This approach combined hyper-local content with precision advertising, effectively setting her brand apart.

Tips For Localized Influencer Marketing

• Embrace simplicity. Start with what you know and love. Showcase daily operations, introduce your team members, and provide a peek behind the curtain of your business operations. Authentic content resonates deeply with audiences, allowing them to feel a part of your brand's journey.

• Keep content short and sweet. In an era where attention spans are fleeting, short-form content reigns supreme. Platforms like Instagram Reels and TikTok have revolutionized how we consume media, emphasizing the impact of concise, engaging videos. Aim for content that delivers value within seconds, captivating your audience instantly.

• Unleash your creativity. Don't be afraid to experiment. Embracing trends can showcase your brand's personality and keep your content fresh. Whether it's a dance challenge or a popular meme, integrating trends can elevate your brand's visibility and relatability.

• Personify your brand. People connect with people. Talk about your brand's local knowledge, influence, roots and anything that can help people identify you as their "neighbor." Highlight your team's culture, values and personalities to make your brand approachable and relatable. This connection is invaluable, transforming customers into community members.

• Be authentic through storytelling. Authenticity should be the cornerstone of your content. Share your successes, challenges and the real stories behind your products or services. This genuine approach builds trust and loyalty, encouraging deeper engagement from your audience.

• Include strategic calls to action. While authenticity and engagement are vital, converting viewers into customers is the ultimate goal. Effective CTAs guide your audience through the next steps—be it visiting your website, making a purchase or booking a service. Clear, compelling CTAs are crucial in transforming engagement into tangible outcomes.

3 Pillars Of A Successful Influencer

• Authenticity: Authenticity is the soul of influencer marketing. Influencers who maintain genuineness in their endorsements foster trust and reliability. Their followers value their opinions because they believe in the influencer's integrity and honesty.

• Reach: While the size of an influencer's following isn't the only metric of success, the ability to reach a broad or highly targeted audience is crucial. It's about connecting with the right people in a way that feels personal and direct.

• Trust: Trust is the foundation of any relationship, including that between an influencer and their audience. Influencers who have built a strong rapport with their followers can influence opinions and behaviors because their audience views their recommendations as credible and valuable. Localization of the conversation and the storytelling is critical.

The evolution of franchise influencer marketing highlights the importance of local engagement. The most impactful influencers could be within your organization, ready to forge strong, meaningful connections that elevate your brand within the community.

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We, the voters

Migrants claiming asylum can be allowed into the u.s. here's how it works.

Steve Inskeep

Ally Schweitzer

Yajaíra Peñaloza (left) and Marian Araujo pose with their children while waiting for their ride at the Casa Alitas shelter in Tucson, Ariz., on March 26. Ash Ponders for NPR hide caption

Yajaíra Peñaloza (left) and Marian Araujo pose with their children while waiting for their ride at the Casa Alitas shelter in Tucson, Ariz., on March 26.

The heart of the debate over the U.S.-Mexico border is illegal immigration.

Yet that decades-old issue is complicated by hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers claiming, under a process allowed by U.S. law, that they fear returning to their home countries.

Near the border this spring, NPR met a recent arrival who insisted that her entry was legal. She was at Casa Alitas, a cavernous shelter in Tucson, Ariz.

Yajaíra Peñaloza told us she arrived in the U.S. from Venezuela on Christmas Day last year.

"It was baby Jesus' gift," she said.

Neither she nor her travel companions had come with a visa, but Peñaloza had secured a court date in 2026 to request asylum. In the meantime, she said, she would try to find a job to support herself financially as soon as she received a federal work permit to do so.

"We are doing everything to be here legally, while we wait," Peñaloza said.

What describes the legal status of people such as Peñaloza?

NPR asked Muzaffar Chishti with the Migration Policy Institute. Our conversation follows.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Steve Inskeep: This is someone that most Americans would think of as an "illegal immigrant" since she came here without a visa. She says, "I'm here legally. I'm following the legal process." So let's begin right there. Does someone in this situation have legal status?

Muzaffar Chishti: The quick answer is no. What she and most people who are arriving at the border are doing is that they are arriving without authorization to enter the United States. She's certainly showing up at a port of entry, which makes it different than between ports of entry. But she has an appointment. At the appointment, she is basically telling a Customs and Border Protection official, "I have fear of returning to my country." So she's being placed in what we call removal proceedings and given a date with a notice to appear at her removal proceeding.

We, The Voters

How a u.s. customs and border protection veteran sees his agency's mission.

During that time, she doesn't have any real status, but she can't be removed because she is showing up for an appointment to contest her removability. At that hearing — when she will be asked, "Do you have a remedy against removal?" — she'll say, "Yes, I'm seeking asylum," and that's when the asylum application kicks in.

Inskeep: Was the United States obliged to let her in at the port of entry when she showed up without a visa?

Chishti: Yes. Anyone on U.S. soil who expresses a fear of returning to their country on the basis of five protected classifications of U.N. protocol, we have the obligation to let them in to pursue their asylum applications.

[The five protected classes are race, religion, nationality, political opinion and membership in a particular social group.]

Inskeep: I understand that people from different countries may claim different kinds of status when they get to the United States. Does this person get anything special for being from Venezuela?

Chishti: Well, she would have had a much better status if she had applied from abroad. Four countries — which include Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — President Biden last year gave them an unusually special treatment that nationals of those countries can fly in directly to the U.S. under a provision called parole.

Parole is a status. Someone who arrives on parole has lawful status, and they're also authorized to work. She could have done that, [but] for that, you need a U.S. sponsor that will support you while you're here. She didn't do that, so she doesn't fall in that category. Therefore, she has no choice but to apply for asylum.

Is it easy for migrants to enter the U.S.? We went to the border to find out

Inskeep: Does she have an opportunity to work legally during the couple of years she'll be waiting for a hearing in the United States?

Chishti: Under the law, once you put in an asylum application, within six months of that, you get the right to work.

Inskeep: Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, was impeached by House Republicans earlier this year for allegedly overusing the power of parole — actively letting people into the United States. What is the power of parole?

Chishti: The power of parole is as old as at least World War II, when we let in most refugees fleeing from Europe to enter the United States — mostly Jewish and some Pentecostals. And [the] idea is that, in the absence of any other provision of the law which will allow someone to enter — like you don't have a student visa, you don't have an employment visa, you don't have a family visa — but the administration thinks it's in the U.S. interest to let that person in, parole authority is one important authority given to the administration. It's used for humanitarian purposes or for exigent circumstances.

It's true that this administration has used the parole authority more extensively than any administration, and that is under challenge. And we'll see how the courts rule on that.

Inskeep: Has it become very simple to get years in the United States simply by showing up in any fashion and saying, "I want asylum?"

Chishti: Well, that's true. That's sort of why many people think that the border crisis is actually an asylum crisis. That just invoking the word "asylum" then lets you enter the U.S. Then you are sent for a hearing, which may [not take place for] years. And then at the end of that hearing, even if you're not granted asylum, the chances of being removed are very low. All of those factors have become pull factors. So therefore, getting the asylum processing and adjudication under control, which means efficient and timely decisions, is critical to send a message that just because you want to invoke the word "asylum" doesn't mean you will stay in the U.S. for years on end.

Inskeep: You're saying there is a legal process. It can be followed. It plausibly even could work. But the number of people arriving has overwhelmed it.

Chishti: That's right. The only thing I would add is we have rules, regulations, resources and staffing for a border challenge of the 2008 era.

That was an era when the border challenge was single Mexican males trying to sneak their way into the United States. No element of the definition is true today. More people are non-Mexicans, more people are family units, and almost all are not sneaking in but asking for asylum. That fundamentally changes the nature of the challenge.

But we don't have the resources or the laws or regulations to meet that. And I think one of the ways to reduce the backlog is not to send new cases to immigration judges. It's an overwhelmed system. To send more cases to an already backlogged system is the definition of insanity. We believe that all new asylum cases should be sent to asylum officers who are civil servants trained in country conditions, and they can finish a case in months as against years. Only then can we make a real dent in the processing of asylum cases.

Inskeep: Muzaffar Chishti, thank you so much.

Chishti: Thanks so much for talking to me.

The audio version of this story was produced by Lilly Quiroz. The digital version was edited by Obed Manuel.

Correction May 8, 2024

An earlier version of the photo caption in this story misspelled Marian Araujo's name as Marion Aroujo. It has been corrected.