How Do Case Studies Go Wrong? Let's Count the Ways - and How to Fix Them

During the Covid-19 pandemic, a major company hired me to write a series of case studies explaining how the business had helped some of its clients deal with the disruptions the crisis caused to their operations, supply chain, and customer relationships. The goal was laudable: the company’s clients were all nonprofits with a noble mission and interesting stories to tell.

There was one problem: so little time had passed since the work started that the outcomes were preliminary. Definitive data was missing on the difference the client’s work had made, a key element of any solid case study. The case studies had strong beginnings and lots of details in the middle, but lacked the concrete results that are the hallmark of excellence in that storytelling form.

Case studies are a content marketing writing staple. If you write nonfiction books, ghostwrite self-help or other prescriptive nonfiction, or work as a freelance journalist, you probably write case studies in some form, even if you don’t call them by that name. Case studies explain a problem or challenge that a person or entity is facing, why it matters, the course of action or the change they undertook to overcome the challenge and how they came to choose that approach, the steps they took to implement the change, and what happened as a result.

Sounds straightforward enough. But as my opening scenario suggests, case studies can easily go sideways. Here are some examples of common case study problems and ideas for how to fix them:

There aren’t enough details.

In some instances, organizations want to showcase a win but don’t want to get specific because they fear competitors will copy what they’ve done. As a result, the writer doesn’t have enough information to work with to create a decent case study. You can remedy this by getting your client to state up front what information is and is not acceptable to include. Then ask probing questions about the material that is acceptable to see how you can use it to flesh out the story. If it’s a case study about your client’s client, discuss ways to anonymize information on the latter so details about that entity aren’t identifiable while leaving you enough freedom to write about their challenges, the processes they put in place to overcome them, and the success those processes produced. Be sure to find out if your client plans to give their client the opportunity to review the case study before it’s published, so you can factor the review time into your writing schedule.

The case study is written before outcomes are determined.

In the situation I described above, it wasn’t possible to suggest that my client wait until more time had passed to write the case studies, so I had to make do with what I had. I was able to interview subject matter experts at my client and representatives of the nonprofits they worked with. That allowed me to gather as much information on preliminary outcomes as possible, and pose the sources questions about what those initial outcomes could mean for the future. If the organization you’re writing the case study for has existing case studies that involve similar challenges, situations, products, or services, you could weave in references to them to illustrate what potential outcomes could be for the case study you’re writing, and link to the existing content in the text.

There’s no data.

The best case studies share data on outcomes: within 12 months of changing the company’s business model, sales increased 20%; switching to chatbots cut customer wait times in half; training teachers on a new way to teach geometry improved students’ text scores by 10%. The best time to collect data on outcomes is on a kickoff call at the beginning of a project, especially if the people who have direct knowledge of the data are on the call. Getting data on outcomes before a kickoff call is even better, as it gives you the chance to review it and ask questions about anything you don’t understand. Reviewing outcome data in advance also gives you the opportunity to suggest charts, graphs, or other infographics that could visualize the data as part of the content. And if data isn’t available? Ask the client how long it could be until it is. Maybe by the time the case study is written, designed, and ready to publish enough information would be available to plug in at the last minute. And if numbers just aren’t going to happen, lean hard on qualitative results you have access to, including quotes or paraphrases from top officials or others at the case study organization about the effects of the changes that were made.

There’s too much extraneous information.

Sometimes a client starts the case study process by throwing what feels like an ocean of background materials at you – a 100-page slide deck, an hour-long webinar transcript, a four-page outline for a case study meant to be 500 words. This is the opposite problem of having too few few details to work with. The key to effective case studies is knowing what information is vital to the story and the parameters for telling it. Knowing which points have to be covered and how much space (if it’s a written piece) or time (if it’s a video or audio piece) you have to do it in goes a long way toward putting a case study together. Then make every word count. Aim for specific nouns and verbs that are descriptive without being flowery. Keep sentence structure simple to make digesting the information as easy as possible, especially if you’re writing about complicated topics or subjects that readers might be unfamiliar with. Case studies don’t need to be long to be effective. One business client I ghostwrite case studies for uses a template with a 65-word limit for mini case studies. That’s roughly four short sentences, one each to establish the challenge and why it needed to be fixed, and explain the approach, how it was carried out, and what happened as a result.

The background material is filled with jargon or acronyms.

Some companies love jargon, and every industry has its own. Part of a case study writing assignment is understanding the intended audience and interpreting the language accordingly. If you’re writing for a specialty audience in a specific niche, it’s probably going to be okay to include a smattering of industry terminology readers will be familiar with. More general language will likely be better if you’re writing for a more general audience. If you’re writing a case study for a client for the first time, ask your contact if they have a style guide, advice on tone and usage, or examples you could look at before you start.

There are more details about the vendor’s product or service than how the client used it.

This situation can happen when you’re writing for the company that hired you to write about how a customer or contact achieved some measure of success because of the relationship. In their excitement about their success, your client may provide you with too many details about their role in the endeavor and not enough about their customer’s situation. This is easily rectified if you can interview your client’s client for more details. If that’s not possible–and in many cases it isn’t–the next best thing is interviewing the person or people at your client with direct knowledge of the customer and can provide the missing information, or know how to get it. If it’s a company, that person could be a sales rep or account manager. If it’s a national organization, that person could be a liaison who works with local groups. If it’s not possible to interview someone with direct knowledge of the partnership, try asking your contact (who could be a marketing manager or contact marketing director) to reach out to them on your behalf; if it helps, give the person a list of questions to improve the chances that you’ll get exactly what you need.