Why God Made Case Studies

In a recent post on Positive Disruption, blogger and marketing veteran Tom Martin wondered why prospective clients could intuit the benefits of social media as a marketing tool, and yet still demand some proof-of-concept before committing. An excerpt:

But alas… the lack of good case studies impedes the adoption of a [social media] strategy… People need proof in order to believe. Even God needed to show proof of his being, whether it was a burning bush, parting a sea or the ultimate case study, resurrection of his son from the dead.

…While we’d like to be able to just say something is so and have others agree, case studies are the currency of persuasion.”

Photo credit: Athena's Pix

Go read Tom’s post here, if you like. I’ll wait…

Tom is dead on. It’s a lot easier for clients to take a leap of faith (i.e. divert precious time, resources or money) when they know they’ll land on their feet.

Case studies testify to that. Written like a three-act play, they describe a problem, the solution you offered and the subsequent benefits enjoyed. By the last act, your prospective customer has real-world proof that a past client not only landed on their feet, but actually profited from putting faith in you.

The problem is the solution
The problem is that benefits don’t necessarily close the deal.

To take Tom’s theme one loaded step further, not even God could get people behind his program by simply promising its benefits – and nobody can sell the bennies like God.*

Many case studies (i.e. those written by less rigorous and talented freelance copywriters) make a similar mistake. They briefly identify the problem, briefly mention a product solution, and then spend reams of text describing the benefits. Benefits, the reasoning goes, resonate emotionally with customers. And that’s true.

The problem, in part, is that we’re not reasonable creatures. Prospective customers may indeed recognize the benefits of your solution. They may even trust you can deliver those benefits. But they’re only human, and humans don’t necessarily act in their own best interests. They balk, analyze, consider and reconsider their options no matter how attractive the promised benefits, or credible the source…

Irrational? Yes.

Wise? Also, yes.

Your customers should question how long and difficult an unfamiliar path will be before it delivers on the promised benefits. Some of God’s beta customers might have something to say about a forty-year desert sojourn that was not clearly disclosed in their contract to be the Chosen Ones bound for the Promised Land.

By the time God began preparing to update his book, The Testament, he realized he needed to invest less in selling benefits and more in educating people about the practical, progressive steps that would lead to those benefits. (How lucky for him he had a kick-ass marketing professional in the family who happened to know some crackerjack copywriters.)

Alright… dead horse… Let’s wrap up…

My point is this: Illustrating a clear path to benefits can be just as persuasive to customers as the promised benefits themselves.

Case studies can and should address the unconscious assumptions that lead the doubting Thomas’s to balk. They should illustrate how simple and painless your proposed path toward a better world can be. Some often forgotten questions include:

• How long before I can expect to see results?
• How much time and money can I expect to invest up front?
• What trade-offs or lessons learned, if any, have past customers encountered?
• What staffing resources will I need to divert before, during and after implementation?
• How much will implementation disrupt my day-to-day business operations?
• How well did the vendor anticipate and/or overcome unexpected challenges during past implementations?

These are legitimate concerns, and none of them have anything to do with the benefits your solution has provided in the past.

When case studies rush to describe benefits, they miss an important and often critical opportunity to sell a smooth implementation process – which, regardless of what you’re selling, contributes just as much to building trust in new business relationships.

*Opinions voiced here are not necessarily reflected, endorsed or even tolerated by Tom Martin, who is,  I’m sure, an altogether professional, decorous fellow who only occasionally uses salty content to illustrate a point.

Are You Planting? Or Just Digging a Hole?

Those of us who write for a living like to be paid for our talents. Is it counter-intuitive then for professional writers to launch a blog that could drive prospective clients away, and never return a dime for the trouble?

Photo credit: foxtongue

Jeffrey Seglin evidently thinks so. Mr. Seglin writes a weekly column on ethics for The New York Times entitled The Right Thing. He also maintains a blog, entitled Observations, that’s associated with his column. As Seglin closes one recent blog post:

“But if you’re going to… write something for free, then make sure that whoever reads it can’t tell the difference between it and the stuff for which you got paid.”

Bravo. Couldn’t agree more.

Being a writer can be a little like being a celebrity. People love to catch you in mid-stumble. Maybe I’ve got a little of that too because, while Seglin’s blog post includes several statements that I fully endorse, like the one above, the entire piece somehow manages to fall one spell-check short of bass-ackwards.

Seglin’s post makes two assertions. First, he proposes that writing for free is a bad idea because it can breed bad habits. This implies a sort of buddy ethic, wherein writers can’t be trusted on their own, and need the constant supervision of an editor lest they damage their careers.

The risk in launching a no-income blog to showcase your work, says Mr. Seglin, is that some editor might actually read it and – gasp – find you’re a lazy writer, or that you lack talent. (Right. Best not to tip your hand until after you’re hired.)

But Mr. Seglin follows this cautionary bit of advice with an even more dire warning. He writes:

“Your work has value. If you start giving it away for free, then it diminishes that value and makes it harder for others to charge for their work as well.”

So… writing for free not only breeds bad writing, it breeds bad writing with the power to threaten the job security of competent writers, like say, NYT columnists.

Stating that blogging devalues writing is like saying Flickr devalues photography. It’s an apples to aardvarks comparison. The professional business copy I get paid handsomely to write does not serve the same function – and is therefore valued by an entirely different measure – as what a blogger writes.

Seglin flippantly dismisses any and all possible counter-arguments with the magical words: “Forget all the talk about ‘new revenue models.’”

Okay, but what about the old revenue models? Like, for example, marketing your talents by putting them on display? Or committing to a regular blog to distinguish your established freelance business from the million or so freelancing-until-my-next-real-job dilettantes out there?

According to Seglin’s model, my local baker devalues muffins worldwide by putting pre-baked samples on display. Forget those new revenue models though. Instead, he should stand idly behind his empty countertop until you sign a purchase order for his muffin-creation services.

Yes, I’m being glib. But, at least my logic is sound.

Look, as a professional writer, I aim to compose everything – from formal client proposals to Linkedin Q&A’s – so that it reflects the same standards that I apply to my paid work.

Does any of this generate a dime for me? No, not directly.

Should prospective clients ignore my writing services if I can’t compose my simplest communications articulately and well? Yes.

I launched this blog with the express intent to demonstrate just how readable my writing is. But it’s also intended to provide a signal to prospective clients that I actually study my craft, and work constantly to improve it BEFORE they ever hire me.

Mr. Seglin says my free content devalues his paid writing… I sincerely hope it does. Perhaps The New York Times will recognize talent when they see it.

Freelancing Isn’t Free

It’s almost worth launching a blog just to post this video about client relationships. Hilarious.

For the record, none of my clients are anything like this… and there’s a reason why.

Statistically, You’ll Never Read This

Some 95 percent of blogs will ultimately die from neglect, or so reported the New York Times this week:

Photo credit: Andre Charland

“According to a 2008 survey by Technorati… only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned.”

The article inspired me to do some quick Googling to find what else fails 95 percent of the time. (I often get “inspired” this way when I should be working…). I discovered that if Google is any measure – and it isn’t – 95 percent also describes the rate at which most home-based businesses allegedly fail. It’s also the percentage of people who lose weight and (supposedly) gain it back again.

Snap!

I thought, “Hey, I’ve lost weight, and then gained it back. And, I have a home-based freelance business that’s been on the verge of failure two, three – shoot, who even counts anymore?”

This is my problem with statistics. They can create a false sense of credibility, or worse. Even so, statistics make an attractive tool for writers because readers love them. Numbers are specific, which makes them inviting hooks on which to hang an article or an argument. But, as concrete as they sound, numbers can still be easily dismissible abstractions.

Consider this one:

The Social Security Administration calculates three in 10 workers entering the work force today will become disabled before they retire.

I was asked to use that stat when I was writing a brochure for disability insurance. If you write business copy for insurance clients, expect to see a lot of this sort of statistic because it inspires fear, and fear sells.

Fortunately, my client agreed with me that a common response to fear is to simply ignore the source (i.e. the brochure). Another is to displace it (e.g. disability is something that happens to “other people”). Either way, the result would be the same: business copy that failed to connect or inspire action.

Statistics are like co-dependent girlfriends: They need to be in a relationship to feel effective. (In characteristic Manhattanite fashion, the Times reporter compared the failure rate of blogs to that of restaurants.). It isn’t enough, for instance, to suggest your odds of being disabled are essentially one in three. Frankly, those are odds I can accept because my brain automatically dismisses them by applying some comforting contextual tweaks:

• 1 to 3 odds that I’ll be disabled someday = 3 to 1 odds that I won’t, and
• There’s a 100% certainty that paying for disability insurance will eat into my disposable income for golf lessons

To be an effective writer, you need to provide a context for statistics, or else your reader will find one. The target market for disability income providers is generally affluent, successful professionals. Educated, hard-working, go-getters. People who often measure success in terms of personal income. Considering this, I balanced the ubiquitous fear-based statistics with the following paragraph:

Consider what’s at stake…
Gambling with the likelihood of a disability isn’t just about the odds, it’s what you have on the table.
Remember, your income is the foundation of your financial security – all of your assets, the lifestyle you enjoy, the future goals you strive for…

So, will this blog eventually fail? Depends how you define failure, or success. The Times article quotes Technorati’s CEO, Richard Jalichandra, as saying:

“…probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs [are] generating most of the page views… There’s a joke within the blogging community that most blogs have an audience of one.”

Good enough for me. I write to better understand my craft and to practice my chops. There’s a lot more about writing for and about business that I have yet to learn. The author and his one reader welcome you along for the ride.