Writing a Case Study for Marketing Class

Case studies will never lose popularity. Even in conditions of increasing content shock, it’s always interesting to “spy” on someone. It’s much more interesting than reading another collection of theoretical articles.

But writing cases is a chore. You do not want to do this, because everything is already spinning or vice versa – it’s dead. And sometimes there is no desire to “reveal” the findings. Let’s try to figure out whether it’s easy to write a clear case and how to do it better.

Why Writing a Case Study at All

Most probably you are writing a marketing case study because you have an assignment to deal with for a marketing class. However, you should know that it is not just some useless task.

Marketing cases work. In a global study in 2016, 65% of marketers called them effective, and 82% of the surveyed experts considered the publication of cases the main tactic in marketing for the B2B market. Such expectations do not seem overstated, because published cases provide real advantages:

• Convince the potential client in your expertise. This is the best social proof that you can truly solve the problems indicated in the case.
• Help show the value of a service that can not be touched. For example, the development of slogans, the attraction of leads, marketing analysis or site audit are all works that look weightless in the eyes of an unprepared customer.

  But if you describe in detail the stages and number of employees, it will be easier to justify the price.

• People want to share cases. They are well distributed by groups in conditions of a lack of normal copyright content.

The Best Marketing Cases to Elaborate on

• Receiving an expensive contract. Advertising, promotion of services, negotiation work, correct arguments and searching for customer’s pain points are all interesting for your reader, who also wants the same contracts.
• Receiving better revenues than usual. Analyze why this happened, which actions were taken. If seasonality or an accidental factor played a role, explain how to use this lever next time to double the effect.
• Making serious mistakes. Stories of failures are even more interesting than marketing happy endings.
• Discovering a more efficient way of working.

  Reducing costs, launching a new technology, noticing mistakes in old business processes and correcting them — everything will do. First, give the results and later present the forecasts for the future.

How to Write a Marketing Case

A universal formula is the benefit through complexity. Whether your work is read and appreciated depends on the first paragraph — intro. Its task is to explain what the case is about, what has been done, which complexities has been solved and how much money they spent. Everything must be put in a couple of sentences.

Use this list of questions to provide your professor with a perfect case study.

• Who is the customer? What kind of company?
• What is the mission of the project —who needs it?
• How did everything work before?
• What did not suit you?
• Is there something unusual in the problem?
• Are there any restrictions to the project — money, time, personnel, laws?
• Did everyone do it in a standard way or developed an individual solution?
• Describe the team working on the project.
• What difficulties did you expect? What happened?
• How much was the customer dragged into the project?
• What instruments attracted? What is their own experience, what did they borrow?
• What does the result look like?
• Is this good or bad?
• What does the customer say?
• Does customer work with it or just figured out how to do it?
• What exactly has changed?
• And what would happen if you did nothing?
• And if it did not work out?
• How much does the work cost?
• Was it quickly managed?
• What had to be done differently?

Of course not every case study will contain answers to all this these questions, but you can use them to guide you through the writing process smoothly. Marketing case is a history from the very beginning. It doesn’t matter whether it is the story of success or failure. Therefore, the elements of storytelling should be, not to turn the narrative into a heap of tables and diagrams.

Whichever treasure they store, it will be boring to deal with them.