A case study program that turned client work into sales proof

The challenge

When I joined, there were around 10 case studies on the website. They were helping a little with SEO, but they weren’t being used much anywhere else. They weren’t promoted through email or social media, and they only came up in a few sales emails.

That was a missed opportunity. In the Content Marketing Institute’s 2025 research, 53% of B2B marketers said case studies and customer stories produced their best results, second only to video.

The stories we had also told more than they proved. They needed numbers, quotes, and real detail about how we worked, so a prospect could see themselves in them.

My approach

I set it up as a process. A good case study depends on getting the right people talking at the right time, so most of my effort went into what happened before anything was written.

I pushed for hard numbers in every interview. Research from Daniel Oppenheimer and colleagues, published in Psychological Science, found people read precise numbers as a sign the source knows what it’s talking about.

I wrote two documents to guide the program. The first was the process: how we find, request, create, and approve each case study. The second was the structure every case study follows, so they read consistently and each section does a clear job.

What I built

A reminder after every won deal. I built a HubSpot workflow that reminded me eight weeks after a client was won. By then, projects were usually close to launch and moving into support. The negotiation and handovers were done, the client was getting on well with their account manager, and there was enough work to talk about.

I then asked the account manager to plant the idea of a case study with the client, and followed up every week. Some projects ran for six to nine months, so if the timing wasn’t right I paused and set a reminder to come back later. With one of our largest clients, that meant years of following up and new versions of the case study as the project grew.

Client interviews run by sales. I organised for our co-founder and head of sales to interview the client over Zoom, rather than the account manager. The client then had a second relationship in the business if anything went wrong, and sales had a reason to stay in touch.

I wrote him a set of questions that followed the same order as the case study:

1. Why did you choose us, and why over other options? (This gives prospects the reasons to choose us, in a client’s words.)
2. What problem were you trying to solve, or what opportunity were you going after? (This helps prospects recognise their own situation.)
3. What was it like working with us? Which steps did we take, who did you work with, and how long did it take? (This answers prospects’ questions about how we work before they ask.)
4. What did we deliver, and what changed as a result? Do you have any numbers?
5. Is there anyone in your network who might need something similar, or any work coming up for you?

Clients knew the interview was being recorded for marketing, and that nothing would go live without their approval, so they could speak freely.

Interviews with our own team. Clients can explain the problem and the outcome, but they can’t always explain how we did it. So I also interviewed the people who did the work, asking them to walk me through the project, the tools and frameworks they used, and what happened along the way. They filled in the technical detail the client interview couldn’t.

A set structure for every case study. Each one followed the same outline:

1. Title. The most important part. No point having great content if nobody clicks on it.
2. Summary. Who it was for, what we did, and the outcome, for anyone who won’t read on.
3. Introduction. A short lead-in to the story.
4. About the client. Who they are, what they do, and where they sit in their market.
5. The problem or opportunity. What they came to us to solve.
6. The process. The steps we took, how we worked together, and who was involved.
7. The solution and results. What we delivered, the outcomes and numbers, with links and imagery.
8. Conclusion. How things went and what’s next, ideally the next project we were working on together.

AI drafting, grounded in real words. This is where I used AI. I don’t think AI should write content from scratch, but it drafts well from enough of the right input. I gave it the client and team transcripts, the structure document (with what each section should do, how long it should be, and where keywords should sit in the headings), our tone of voice guide, and examples of past case studies. It turned the transcripts into a structured draft using the client’s and team’s own words, including direct quotes.

I then edited every draft. I checked it against the transcripts, optimised it for SEO, and added links to the client’s own site, one or two relevant service pages, the matching industry page (healthcare, for example), and a call to action.

Social posts and testimonials from the same interviews. I used the transcripts to create at least three LinkedIn posts for each case study, each with a clear hook, the client’s own words, a call to action, and a link back. These went out across three months, so we had a couple of case study posts each month without repeating the same story back to back. When they went live, I tagged the client and the people we worked with, and those posts reached far more people than our usual content.

I also pulled out the strongest quotes, sometimes combining a few into one testimonial the client could use on review sites. I mocked up how that testimonial would look on our website, with their headshot and logo, so they could see it in place.

Imagery. I created the feature images by placing the finished product into laptop or mobile mockups on a coloured background with the client’s logo. I kept a Figma board of every past feature image as a template, so I could produce new ones quickly, and the design team checked them or suggested better screens when they had time.

Publishing in Webflow. I built a case study template in our Webflow CMS. For each new story I created a staging page, added the content and images, sized the images, checked it on mobile, tablet, and desktop, and added alt text, schema, title tags, and meta descriptions.

One approval pack. I drafted an email for our head of sales to send. It included:

• the staging link, so they could see exactly how it would look
• a Word version they could edit directly
• the feature image
• the suggested testimonial, with the option to use their own words instead
• the testimonial mockup, asking permission to use their headshot and logo
• links to leave a Google review and a Clutch review

Our social posts went through internal approval at the same time. The team leads for each specialty approved posts on their topics.

Most clients approved with minor edits or none at all. Large enterprise clients sometimes needed sign-off from their own management, which took longer.

Going live, and keeping it going. Once approved, I published the case study, scheduled the social posts in HubSpot, and added the client’s logo and testimonial to the relevant industry page (and to the homepage for larger or more representative clients). I set up fields in HubSpot to track whether each client had left a review, so if a case study was live and the review hadn’t come through, I was prompted to follow up with sales. Reviews mattered for how we were found online. In G2’s 2021 research, 86% of B2B software buyers said they turned to peer review sites to reach a final decision.

Results

I rewrote the 10 existing case studies with quotes, numbers, and new imagery, and created around 20 new ones through the same process, with about 25 published in total.

Visits to our case studies roughly doubled, comparing my first six months with my last six: from about 100 users a month to about 210.

Each interview also fed:

• the case study itself
• at least three LinkedIn posts over three months
• a testimonial for our website and for review sites
• Google and Clutch reviews
• case study sections on the matching service and industry pages
• ABM nurture emails and sales sequences, chosen by industry
• our newsletter
• pitch decks and sales documents
• examples sales could point to, from the first call through to the proposal

Healthcare is where I saw them do the most. We already had a strong set of healthcare case studies, which was part of why I tested healthcare campaigns in the first place, and they gave our healthcare ads, ABM emails, and sales conversations proof from organisations like the ones we were talking to. Healthcare became one of the business’s main sources of clients, and the new projects gave us more healthcare stories to tell.

Sources: Content Marketing Institute, B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Outlook for 2025, Association for Psychological Science on Oppenheimer’s precision research, G2 2021 B2B Software Buyer Behavior Survey via Demand Gen Report.

What I’d do next

• Track the influence on deals. Report on which deals viewed a case study before closing, so the program’s effect on revenue can be measured.
• Confirm approval steps early with enterprise clients. Knowing upfront who needs to sign off saves work on stories that can’t be published.
• Use more of the interview recordings. Short video clips of clients in their own words would add another format, and video is the one content type B2B marketers rated above case studies.