The 5 Different Types of Case Studies
Not only are case studies—written with SEO and story—the most impactful organic marketing strategy… there are also different types of case studies to choose from!
As a case study copywriter, I’m aware that there are different types of case studies available to you. But you may not know about them. I’m remedying that with this Short-n-Sassy episode! I’m sharing the 5 most common types of case studies I write for myself & clients.
It’s important to note that which case study you choose to write totally depends on why you want to write it. So identify your “why” & then see which case study type will suit your needs best. You’ll find case study examples mentioned in the show and linked below!
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
Why you should write different types of case studies
How many case studies you should have on your site
When to write these different types of case studies
What knowing your “why” has to do with writing a case study
How to write a case study about yourself
If you can write a case study for affiliate marketing
Don’t forget you can submit a question that will get answered in an upcoming podcast!
Links & Mentioned Resources:
Donna x Akashic records readings (blog)
Case Study Training Program (starts 4/29)
Related Episodes:
Justin’s SEO case study interview
Donna’s SEO case study interview
Celi’s G.A.B. case study interview
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
There are a variety of types of case studies. I know, might be surprising. In this short-and-sassy episode, I'm gonna share several different types of case studies you might want to share on your site. And I'm just gonna get right into it. Case studies are, of course, you've heard me talk about it ad nauseum, a way to give the full story to share the nuance. And the most common case study type that we think of are those client features. A client or a student came into your world,
They had a great experience working with you, and they have some amazing results of some sort that we want to share. But there are five ways you can get even more specific with which case studies you want to share, especially if you discover you want to share more than one case study, which I recommend. And actually, I find that many, many clients, many students like the number three. They seem to just like to share case studies in chunks of three, so keep that in mind.
But here they are. These are the five different types of case studies that you might want to consider sharing. The first one is different offers. This is a pretty obvious one, and I'll use myself as an example here. I've got two main offers. I have done for you case study copywriting and I have my SEO help me packet. Those offers are very different and I want to be able to go in depth explaining each of them. So.
even just take the podcast, for example, I've had Donna and Justin on the podcast to sh- Mm-mm. Sorry, Leah. So I've had Donna and Justin on the show to talk about their experience with the SEO packet, and soon I'll be having guests on to talk about their experience with the case study copywriting as well as the program, so the Done For You and the program, and then turning those podcasts into blogs for the podcast.
and eventually full-blown case studies. I want people to be able to try before they buy. As soon as I came up with that phrase recently, and I have not stopped saying it because it really is, there's nothing that does this better for service-based businesses than case studies. We get to actually take people through our entire process. So it's pretty freaking cool. The second type of case study you might want to consider offering or sharing, rather, are different types of clients.
Brittany Herzberg (02:22.602)
So I recently worked with a client of mine, this gets very meta over here, who wanted to showcase the different client personas she works with. Some people have gone through a program like hers before, some are completely new to the online business world, et cetera. So there's differentiating, there are different circumstances. People are coming into her world with, you know, different backgrounds, different businesses that they want to go into. There's...
just a lot there, right? And there's different personas. So we have three with this client. I have three different client personas we're writing and sharing about. This really allows readers to connect with someone they identify with. It makes them, the reader, feel very seen and that leads to conversions. When we connect with someone and we feel like we're reading our own story and we get that feeling like, wow, this could really work for me too because look, that's
That's just so powerful. In my mind, there's just nothing that compares to that. Then we have the origin stories. This is the third type of case study. This is where you could share what inspired you to start something or to launch something. And that something could be your business, a product, a program, or even maybe there's a major shift going on in your business. Maybe you used to offer.
x service and now you're over here offering y service. Even with me, that happened with going from just being a massage therapist to being a copywriter. So this case study like this really help you bring people along for the big transition. It helps someone understand you, better understand you, or even better connect with the why or the mission behind the program or the business or the offer.
And when we connect with things, we feel more invested in it, especially millennials. And therefore, we're already more intrigued in joining or buying the thing or working with someone, you, in some capacity someday. It might not be immediate, but even just like planting this seed in someone's brain by having them read the case study, there could be long term payoff for you. I know I've-
Brittany Herzberg (04:46.078)
read a post or read a case study and been in someone's world for a while after that because I just really liked what they had to say, what they were offering. I liked their vibe. I liked their mission and I stuck around. So you never know. This is, this could be a long-term play. It could also be something that works just like that really fast. The fourth type of case study you could consider are what I call the whoopsie stories or the failure stories. And I'm doing air quotes as I'm saying this.
I have a great, great example. So just like, hold on, I'll share that in a second. But these are those fails. They are epic fails or they are tiny little ones. And again, I'm doing the same quotes because I don't feel like there's ever any failure that we can't learn something from, that we can't glean something from and take it and make things better. It sucks in the moment. Maybe you feel...
like an idiot, but there's definitely something that can come from this that can be great. So why share these stories? Well, it shows you're human and people really are loving that right now. Knowing that you're human, knowing that you have faults as well, knowing that you're not up on some pedestal, you know? It allows you to talk about why you changed something or what inspired you to do things a little differently.
Okay, so my story is pretty hilarious. And one day, you know what, I should probably have Ashley on the podcast so we can talk about this together. But what had happened was Ashley hired me to do a Done For You case study. And Ashley and this client had recorded the interview. So I took Ashley through my process. I had her fill out a questionnaire. I watched the interview. I pulled the quotes. I created the story arc and I just started writing. And I got through the entire first draft.
and I had my copy editor look at it. I felt so good about it. I was like on cloud nine. I was stoked. I sent the draft off to Ashley and then we started workshopping the draft where, you know, I'll have clients come back and give me feedback on, you know, I want to add this in or I want to downplay this a little bit more or, you know, I thought this was going to be something great for the story but it's really not so could we pull it? Things like that. So we had a couple emails and um...
Brittany Herzberg (07:10.53)
Voxer exchanges and you know just tweaking the Google Doc. And at some point Ashley Voxered me and she's like, okay, I really I was really trying to work with this draft, but it's just not going to happen. And you know, here's where we're at. I had written the entire case study for the wrong deliverable. The entirely wrong deliverable. And it's comical now and even then we laughed but at the time I was like, oh my gosh, what?
I felt bad, she felt bad, and really it was just like, okay, this is where we're at. I was able to salvage most of the case study, but like I really needed to write that case study for the correct deliverable because she, the way she's using this case study is she has ads running and then it sends people to this case study and then, you know, the hope is that they buy into the program. So, yeah. So the thing that I learned from this experience was that...
I need to send off the story arc, the before, during, after. I need to send that out to my clients before I start drafting the case study. So that was a really great lesson for me to learn. And again, it's funny at the moment, I was like, I did what? But it was amazing. And now I have this checkpoint and now my clients also have like an additional time where I'm checking in with them.
sharing something and it kind of keeps the excitement high anyways. So that can be the power of sharing and writing one of those like whoopsie or failure case study stories. The last type of case study you might want to consider sharing is a case study about yourself. So there's a few different ways we can break this down. So this is one, but there are three different examples. And Dallas Travers, I think, said it best.
At some point last year, I think she shared something on Instagram where she said, you might be your own best case study. You having taken yourself through your framework had great success. And then you were like, I have to share this with people, whether that's in a like one-to-one capacity or a group capacity or whatever it is. Maybe you took yourself through your framework first.
Brittany Herzberg (09:31.19)
had that success, had those results, and then you're like, I know I have to share this. So that could be something, that could be one example of a case study about yourself that you share. The second way you might wanna think about using yourself as a case study, and I really love doing this, is where you write about your experience in a program or your experience using a product or working with a service provider. And I have a couple of examples. My experience with Donna for Akashic Records readings.
There's a blog I wrote on my website. I will make sure to include that link. And then the second one, which is a recent podcast episode I did, is working with Selly as my business and mindset coach. And I had her on the podcast. That was one thing I really wanted to talk about with that episode. And then it will turn into a blog, and then it will turn into a full-blown case study, like I said, on my website. But you could think of.
any reviews that you've written, products that you've really liked and why you liked them and how they changed your life or impacted your life, what you've gained by using them, things like that. Just think through, I mean, there's products that I've used, like there's a sticker company I absolutely love where they did custom stickers. There's just like so many things if I think about it. Products for my dog Jack where he's like really picky with the types of supplements that he'll take and I found this one company.
Pet Lab Co. and I absolutely love them and he does too. And anyone who's out there who hears like, oh, you have a picky dog too, like your ears just immediately perk up when someone shares a story about something they love. So the third type of case study about yourself that you could write, it's, it's kind of along these same lines of there's a program you've gone through or a product you bought or someone you've worked with, and you're an affiliate for them. Let's say that happens and then you share the case study of
using that actually, you know what, I did this with my friend Yasmine on the podcast and I'll make sure that is linked below too. But if you're an affiliate for something and you share your experience, I've also done this with Styled Stock Society. I've shown people how I've used the images and the templates. Like when I love something, I am going to be out there talking about it, you know? I am going to be sharing in any way, shape, or form that I possibly can.
Brittany Herzberg (11:49.774)
pretty endless for the types of case studies that you can share. I would encourage you just to open your mind and let inspiration strike. And as a quick recap, you've got these five different types of case studies and probably many more available to you. You have different offers, different types of clients. Remember those client personas. You have the origin stories of your products, your programs or your business. You have the whoopsie or the failure stories, and then you have case studies about yourself.
So if you're intrigued and you're like, all right, what do I do now? What's next? You have a few different options. If you've identified some ideas for case studies, but you want to get prepared for the interviewing part of the process, join the mini interview training. It's gonna start on March 24th. It's a four day email course experience with a live call with me. And it walks you through identifying who to interview, how to approach them, and how to structure an interview, as well as...
the exact questions to ask during the interview. A second option would be if you want someone to write the case studies for you, that's a done for you service that I offer and I'll make sure the link is below. And thirdly, if you know that you want case studies but you want to learn how to write case studies from idea to published post on your website, the case study training program opens April 22nd and the party officially starts on April 29th.
The sales page is under construction at the moment. There are a few last minute tweaks I wanted to make, but I'll have it live very, very soon. And when I do, I'll make sure that link goes below as well. In the meantime, if you've got questions about the program, you can always reach out to me on Instagram. Regardless, I hope this inspires you to pick out some case studies, pick out some clients or students that you wanna feature and share those stories. Share them on your website, on social, on your podcast, in your emails. Get the word out because these are really, really powerful.