Joel Klettke, Case Study Buddy – InnovaBuzz 233

Joel Klettke, Case Study Buddy

In this episode, I’m really excited to have as my guest, Joel Klettke, conversion copywriter, founder and Case Study King of Case Study Buddy, a done-for-you case study writing service that gives B2B businesses (like SaaS and agencies) an easy way to capture and share customer success stories. Their case study specialists take care of everything, from interviewing your customer to writing the study and managing revisions. 

As Joel points out in the interview, case studies are an asset whose value is enormous, yet often overlooked. Case studies can be used in all parts of the customer marketing journey.

In our discussion, Joel talked to me about:

• What makes a good case study – it’s about human connection and the story
• He pointed out that “the story you tell will be the story you attract”
• Transformation – the before, during, and after, framework of the case study process he and his team use.

Jason Resnick on episode 224 introduced us to Joel.

Listen to the podcast to find out more.

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Show Notes from this episode with Joel Klettke of Case Study Buddy

Key points and takeaways from this episode include:

• Case studies are way harder to do than people expect and are way more valuable than people understand.
• Every company needs success stories in their marketing and sales arsenal.
• People can copy your message, your design, and your processes but your customer success story will always be uniquely yours. It is your massive differentiating factor.
• Case studies can be used across the entire funnel where other assets are limited in terms of where they can have an impact.
• Case studies allow you to delve into the problem and challenges that someone might be feeling and explore them in more detail.
• Businesses are just people. People run businesses. People have challenges and to every business challenge, there is a human component.
• What is equally important to what you did is why you did it in the first place. It is not just about how you solved the problem. It is the approach you took and why you took that approach.
• People don’t just want a solution. What they care about and what gets them invested is when they see that you’ve thought through those challenges they have and you’ve tailored your approach to someone like them.
• A testimonial is like a bite-size social proof that is positive and very results-driven. A case study, on the other hand, lets you really tell the whole story about coming in to help solve that problem, and what it looked like and felt like to have that problem solved.
• Purchase decisions are as much emotional as they are rational. We like to work with people we like and we evaluate these human aspects when deciding whether or not we trust somebody and want to work with them.
• A great case study can talk about something that went wrong in the course of providing the solution. Not everything has to come across as flawless because it is a real story and real stories are relatable.
• Before you go about asking people whether they have a story, you need to have a strategy. Think about what your goals are and where you are going as a business, and given those goals, figure out what type of stories you want to tell and who you need to talk to. From there, it becomes less about you and more about those people.
• So much of a story hinges on a great interview. If you don’t run a great interview, you won’t have a good story. You can’t tell a customer success story without the customer being a part of it.
• Running a great interview means asking about experiences and not opinions.
• When you are able to capture a customer’s experience, record it, listen back to it, and analyse the language that they used. Get a sense of their priorities and how they talked about it, and use that same language in your marketing and sales. It’s like showing your customers a mirror where they can see themselves in your sales copy and the way you talk about their problems is the way they talked about their problems. It’s a massive empathy-building exercise.
• The only way that customer experience gets better over time is by having conversations with your customers.
• Don’t try to sell to everybody. Be brutally honest about who is the best fit for where you want to go and be specific about your goals. 
• The stories you tell will be the stories you attract.
• Work on your process first before bringing in people. Everybody wants entrepreneurial people on their team, but you need to give these entrepreneurial people boundaries and constraints with which to iterate and innovate.

The Buzz – Our Innovation Round

Here are Joel’s answers to the questions of our Innovation round. Listen to the interview to get the full scoop.

1. #1 thing to be more innovative – Talk to people. Have structured conversations with people.
2. Best thing for new ideas – Get in groups with people who have multiple different perspectives and more importantly are not afraid to tell you that your ideas are bad. 
3. Favourite tool for innovation –  Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman
4. Keep project / client on track – Having someone in charge of owning that process to enforce things and keep projects on track by bringing your processes to life.
5. Differentiate – Figure out how to show people that you have thought through their problems and that you can solve them. Do more teaching and sharing, and worry less about the return.

To Be a Leader

Talk to people. Connect with people and have deliberate conversations. When you listen to people and when you take the time to try to get in their shoes, that’s when you start getting those insights that lead to innovative ideas. Be open to new things, new ideas, and things that may scare you a bit because that’s where innovation and experience come from.

Reach Out

You can reach out and thank Joel through their website, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Suggested Guest

Joel suggested I interview Samar Owais, email conversion strategist, Eman Zabi, the Founder of The Scribesmith, and Joey Coleman, the author of Never Lose a Customer Again. So Samar, Eman, and Joey, keep an eye on your inbox for an invitation from us to the InnovaBuzz podcast, courtesy of Joel Klettke.

Links

• Website– Case Study Buddy
• Twitter – @JoelKlettke
• LinkedIn

Cool things about Joel

• He penned his first poem “What Will You Do in Winter” at the age of 3.
• He grew up and earned a BComm from the Haskayne School of Business in Calgary.
• He worked in an accounting department to pay his way to university. 

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