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Case Studies

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28 Case Study Examples Every Marketer Should See

Published: March 08, 2023

Putting together a compelling case study is one of the most powerful strategies for showcasing your product and attracting future customers. But it's not easy to create case studies that your audience can’t wait to read.

In this post, we’ll go over the definition of a case study and the best examples to inspire you.

What is a case study?

A case study is a detailed story of something your company did. It includes a beginning — often discussing a conflict, an explanation of what happened next, and a resolution that explains how the company solved or improved on something.

A case study proves how your product has helped other companies by demonstrating real-life results. Not only that, but marketing case studies with solutions typically contain quotes from the customer. This means that they’re not just ads where you praise your own product. Rather, other companies are praising your company — and there’s no stronger marketing material than a verbal recommendation or testimonial. A great case study is also filled with research and stats to back up points made about a project's results.

There are myriad ways to use case studies in your marketing strategy . From featuring them on your website to including them in a sales presentation, a case study is a strong, persuasive tool that shows customers why they should work with you — straight from another customer. Writing one from scratch is hard, though, which is why we’ve created a collection of case study templates for you to get started.

Fill out the form below to access the free case study templates.

Free Case Study Templates

Showcase your company's success using these three free case study templates.

• Data-Driven Case Study Template
• Product-Specific Case Study Template
• General Case Study Template

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

There’s no better way to generate more leads than by writing case studies . But without case study examples to draw inspiration from, it can be difficult to write impactful studies that convince visitors to submit a form.

Marketing Case Study Examples

To help you create an attractive and high-converting case study, we've put together a list of some of our favorites. This list includes famous case studies in marketing, technology, and business.

These studies can show you how to frame your company offers in a way that is both meaningful and useful to your audience. So, take a look, and let these examples inspire your next brilliant case study design.

These marketing case studies with solutions show the value proposition of each product. They also show how each company benefited in both the short and long term using quantitative data. In other words, you don’t get just nice statements, like "This company helped us a lot." You see actual change within the firm through numbers and figures.

You can put your learnings into action with HubSpot's Free Case Study Templates . Available as custom designs and text-based documents, you can upload these templates to your CMS or send them to prospects as you see fit.

1. " How Handled Scaled from Zero to 121 Locations with the Help of HubSpot ," by HubSpot

What's interesting about this case study is the way it leads with the customer. That reflects a major HubSpot cornerstone, which is to always solve for the customer first. The copy leads with a brief description of why the CEO of Handled founded the company and why he thought Handled could benefit from adopting a CRM. The case study also opens up with one key data point about Handled’s success using HubSpot, namely that it grew to 121 locations.

Notice that this case study uses mixed media. Yes, there is a short video, but it's elaborated upon in the other text on the page. So while your case studies can use one or the other, don't be afraid to combine written copy with visuals to emphasize the project's success.

Key Learnings from the HubSpot Case Study Example

• Give the case study a personal touch by focusing on the CEO rather than the company itself.
• Use multimedia to engage website visitors as they read the case study.

2. " The Whole Package ," by IDEO

Here's a design company that knows how to lead with simplicity in its case studies. As soon as the visitor arrives at the page, they’re greeted with a big, bold photo and the title of the case study — which just so happens to summarize how IDEO helped its client. It summarizes the case study in three snippets: The challenge, the impact, and the outcome.

Immediately, IDEO communicates its impact — the company partnered with H&M to remove plastic from its packaging — but it doesn't stop there. As the user scrolls down, the challenge, impact, and progress are elaborated upon with comprehensive (but not overwhelming) copy that outlines what that process looked like, replete with quotes and intriguing visuals.

Key Learnings from the IDEO Case Study Example

• Split up the takeaways of your case studies into bite-sized sections.
• Always use visuals and images to enrich the case study experience, especially if it’s a comprehensive case study.

3. " Rozum Robotics intensifies its PR game with Awario ," by Awario

In this case study, Awario greets the user with a summary straight away — so if you’re feeling up to reading the entire case study, you can scan the snapshot and understand how the company serves its customers. The case study then includes jump links to several sections, such as "Company Profile," "Rozum Robotics' Pains," "Challenge," "Solution," and "Results and Improvements."

The sparse copy and prominent headings show that you don’t need a lot of elaborate information to show the value of your products and services. Like the other case study examples on this list, it includes visuals and quotes to demonstrate the effectiveness of the company’s efforts. The case study ends with a bulleted list that shows the results.

Key Learnings from the Awario Robotics Case Study Example

• Create a table of contents to make your case study easier to navigate.
• Include a bulleted list of the results you achieved for your client.

4. " Chevrolet DTU ," by Carol H. Williams

If you’ve worked with a company that’s well-known, use only the name in the title — like Carol H. Williams, one of the nation’s top advertising agencies, does here. The "DTU," stands for "Discover the Unexpected." It generates interest because you want to find out what the initials mean.

They keep your interest in this case study by using a mixture of headings, images, and videos to describe the challenges, objectives, and solutions of the project. The case study closes with a summary of the key achievements that Chevrolet’s DTU Journalism Fellows reached during the project.

Key Learnings from the Carol H. Williams Case Study Example

• If you’ve worked with a big brand before, consider only using the name in the title — just enough to pique interest.
• Use a mixture of headings and subheadings to guide users through the case study.

5. " How Fractl Earned Links from 931 Unique Domains for Porch.com in a Single Year ," by Fractl

Fractl uses both text and graphic design in their Porch.com case study to immerse the viewer in a more interesting user experience. For instance, as you scroll, you'll see the results are illustrated in an infographic-design form as well as the text itself.

Further down the page, they use icons like a heart and a circle to illustrate their pitch angles, and graphs to showcase their results. Rather than writing which publications have mentioned Porch.com during Fractl’s campaign, they incorporated the media outlets’ icons for further visual diversity.

Key Learnings from the Fractl Case Study Example

• Let pictures speak for you by incorporating graphs, logos, and icons all throughout the case study.
• Start the case study by right away stating the key results, like Fractl does, instead of putting the results all the way at the bottom.

6. " The Met ," by Fantasy

What's the best way to showcase the responsiveness and user interface of a website? Probably by diving right into it with a series of simple showcases— which is exactly what Fantasy does on their case study page for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They keep the page simple and clean, inviting you to review their redesign of the Met’s website feature-by-feature.

Each section is simple, showing a single piece of the new website's interface so that users aren’t overwhelmed with information and can focus on what matters most.

If you're more interested in text, you can read the objective for each feature. Fantasy understands that, as a potential customer, this is all you need to know. Scrolling further, you're greeted with a simple "Contact Us" CTA.

Key Learnings from the Fantasy Case Study Example

• You don’t have to write a ton of text to create a great case study. Focus on the solution you delivered itself.
• Include a CTA at the bottom inviting visitors to contact you.

7. " Rovio: How Rovio Grew Into a Gaming Superpower ," by App Annie

If your client had a lot of positive things to say about you, take a note from App Annie’s Rovio case study and open up with a quote from your client. The case study also closes with a quote, so that the case study doesn’t seem like a promotion written by your marketing team but a story that’s taken straight from your client’s mouth. It includes a photo of a Rovio employee, too.

Another thing this example does well? It immediately includes a link to the product that Rovio used (namely, App Annie Intelligence) at the top of the case study. The case study closes with a call-to-action button prompting users to book a demo.

Key Learnings from the App Annie Case Study Example

• Feature quotes from your client at the beginning and end of the case study.
• Include a mention of the product right at the beginning and prompt users to learn more about the product.

8. " Embracing first-party data: 3 success stories from HubSpot ," by Think with Google

Google takes a different approach to text-focused case studies by choosing three different companies to highlight.

The case study is clean and easily scannable. It has sections for each company, with quotes and headers that clarify the way these three distinct stories connect. The simple format also uses colors and text that align with the Google brand.

Another differentiator is the focus on data. This case study is less than a thousand words, but it's packed with useful data points. Data-driven insights quickly and clearly show how the value of leveraging first-party data while prioritizing consumer privacy.

Key Learnings from the Think with Google Case Study Example

• A case study doesn’t need to be long or complex to be powerful.
• Clear data points are a quick and effective way to prove value.

9. " In-Depth Performance Marketing Case Study ," by Switch

Switch is an international marketing agency based in Malta that knocks it out of the park with this case study. Its biggest challenge is effectively communicating what it did for its client without ever revealing the client’s name. It also effectively keeps non-marketers in the loop by including a glossary of terms on page 4.

The PDF case study reads like a compelling research article, including titles like "In-Depth Performance Marketing Case Study," "Scenario," and "Approach," so that readers get a high-level overview of what the client needed and why they approached Switch. It also includes a different page for each strategy. For instance, if you’d only be interested in hiring Switch for optimizing your Facebook ads, you can skip to page 10 to see how they did it.

The PDF is fourteen pages long but features big fonts and plenty of white space, so viewers can easily skim it in only a few minutes.

Key Learnings from the Switch Case Study Example

• If you want to go into specialized information, include a glossary of terms so that non-specialists can easily understand.
• Close with a CTA page in your case study PDF and include contact information for prospective clients.

10. " Gila River ," by OH Partners

Let pictures speak for you, like OH Partners did in this case study. While you’ll quickly come across a heading and some text when you land on this case study page, you’ll get the bulk of the case study through examples of actual work OH Partners did for its client. You will see OH Partners’ work in a billboard, magazine, and video. This communicates to website visitors that if they work with OH Partners, their business will be visible everywhere.

And like the other case studies here, it closes with a summary of what the firm achieved for its client in an eye-catching way.

Key Learnings from the OH Partners Case Study Example

• Let the visuals speak by including examples of the actual work you did for your client — which is especially useful for branding and marketing agencies.
• Always close out with your achievements and how they impacted your client.

11. " Facing a Hater ," by Digitas

Digitas' case study page for Sprite’s #ILOVEYOUHATER campaign keeps it brief while communicating the key facts of Digitas’ work for the popular soda brand. The page opens with an impactful image of a hundred people facing a single man. It turns out, that man is the biggest "bully" in Argentina, and the people facing him are those whom he’s bullied before.

Scrolling down, it's obvious that Digitas kept Sprite at the forefront of their strategy, but more than that, they used real people as their focal point. They leveraged the Twitter API to pull data from Tweets that people had actually tweeted to find the identity of the biggest "hater" in the country. That turned out to be @AguanteElCofler, a Twitter user who has since been suspended.

Key Learnings from the Digitas Case Study Example

• If a video was part of your work for your client, be sure to include the most impactful screenshot as the heading.
• Don’t be afraid to provide details on how you helped your client achieve their goals, including the tools you leveraged.

12. " Better Experiences for All ," by HermanMiller

HermanMiller sells sleek, utilitarian furniture with no frills and extreme functionality, and that ethos extends to its case study page for a hospital in Dubai.

What first attracted me to this case study was the beautiful video at the top and the clean user experience. User experience matters a lot in a case study. It determines whether users will keep reading or leave. Another notable aspect of this case study is that the video includes closed-captioning for greater accessibility, and users have the option of expanding the CC and searching through the text.

HermanMiller’s case study also offers an impressive amount of information packed in just a few short paragraphs for those wanting to understand the nuances of their strategy. It closes out with a quote from their client and, most importantly, the list of furniture products that the hospital purchased from the brand.

Key Learnings from the HermanMiller Case Study Example

• Close out with a list of products that users can buy after reading the case study.
• Include accessibility features such as closed captioning and night mode to make your case study more user-friendly.

13. " Capital One on AWS ," by Amazon

Do you work continuously with your clients? Consider structuring your case study page like Amazon did in this stellar case study example. Instead of just featuring one article about Capital One and how it benefited from using AWS, Amazon features a series of articles that you can then access if you’re interested in reading more. It goes all the way back to 2016, all with different stories that feature Capital One’s achievements using AWS.

This may look unattainable for a small firm, but you don’t have to go to extreme measures and do it for every single one of your clients. You could choose the one you most wish to focus on and establish a contact both on your side and your client’s for coming up with the content. Check in every year and write a new piece. These don’t have to be long, either — five hundred to eight hundred words will do.

Key Learnings from the Amazon AWS Case Study Example

• Write a new article each year featuring one of your clients, then include links to those articles in one big case study page.
• Consider including external articles as well that emphasize your client’s success in their industry.

14. " HackReactor teaches the world to code #withAsana ," by Asana

While Asana's case study design looks text-heavy, there's a good reason. It reads like a creative story, told entirely from the customer's perspective.

For instance, Asana knows you won't trust its word alone on why this product is useful. So, they let Tony Phillips, HackReactor CEO, tell you instead: "We take in a lot of information. Our brains are awful at storage but very good at thinking; you really start to want some third party to store your information so you can do something with it."

Asana features frequent quotes from Phillips to break up the wall of text and humanize the case study. It reads like an in-depth interview and captivates the reader through creative storytelling. Even more, Asana includes in-depth detail about how HackReactor uses Asana. This includes how they build templates and workflows:

"There's a huge differentiator between Asana and other tools, and that’s the very easy API access. Even if Asana isn’t the perfect fit for a workflow, someone like me— a relatively mediocre software engineer—can add functionality via the API to build a custom solution that helps a team get more done."

Key Learnings from the Asana Example

• Include quotes from your client throughout the case study.
• Provide extensive detail on how your client worked with you or used your product.

15. " Rips Sewed, Brand Love Reaped ," by Amp Agency

Amp Agency's Patagonia marketing strategy aimed to appeal to a new audience through guerrilla marketing efforts and a coast-to-coast road trip. Their case study page effectively conveys a voyager theme, complete with real photos of Patagonia customers from across the U.S., and a map of the expedition. I liked Amp Agency's storytelling approach best. It captures viewers' attention from start to finish simply because it's an intriguing and unique approach to marketing.

Key Learnings from the Amp Agency Example

• Open up with a summary that communicates who your client is and why they reached out to you.
• Like in the other case study examples, you’ll want to close out with a quantitative list of your achievements.

16. " NetApp ," by Evisort

Evisort opens up its NetApp case study with an at-a-glance overview of the client. It’s imperative to always focus on the client in your case study — not on your amazing product and equally amazing team. By opening up with a snapshot of the client’s company, Evisort places the focus on the client.

This case study example checks all the boxes for a great case study that’s informative, thorough, and compelling. It includes quotes from the client and details about the challenges NetApp faced during the COVID pandemic. It closes out with a quote from the client and with a link to download the case study in PDF format, which is incredibly important if you want your case study to be accessible in a wider variety of formats.

Key Learnings from the Evisort Example

• Place the focus immediately on your client by including a snapshot of their company.
• Mention challenging eras, such as a pandemic or recession, to show how your company can help your client succeed even during difficult times.

17. " Copernicus Land Monitoring – CLC+ Core ," by Cloudflight

Including highly specialized information in your case study is an effective way to show prospects that you’re not just trying to get their business. You’re deep within their industry, too, and willing to learn everything you need to learn to create a solution that works specifically for them.

Cloudflight does a splendid job at that in its Copernicus Land Monitoring case study. While the information may be difficult to read at first glance, it will capture the interest of prospects who are in the environmental industry. It thus shows Cloudflight’s value as a partner much more effectively than a general case study would.

The page is comprehensive and ends with a compelling call-to-action — "Looking for a solution that automates, and enhances your Big Data system? Are you struggling with large datasets and accessibility? We would be happy to advise and support you!" The clean, whitespace-heavy page is an effective example of using a case study to capture future leads.

Key Learnings from the Cloudflight Case Study Example

• Don’t be afraid to get technical in your explanation of what you did for your client.
• Include a snapshot of the sales representative prospects should contact, especially if you have different sales reps for different industries, like Cloudflight does.

18. " Valvoline Increases Coupon Send Rate by 76% with Textel’s MMS Picture Texting ," by Textel

If you’re targeting large enterprises with a long purchasing cycle, you’ll want to include a wealth of information in an easily transferable format. That’s what Textel does here in its PDF case study for Valvoline. It greets the user with an eye-catching headline that shows the value of using Textel. Valvoline saw a significant return on investment from using the platform.

Another smart decision in this case study is highlighting the client’s quote by putting it in green font and doing the same thing for the client’s results because it helps the reader quickly connect the two pieces of information. If you’re in a hurry, you can also take a look at the "At a Glance" column to get the key facts of the case study, starting with information about Valvoline.

Key Learnings from the Textel Case Study Example

• Include your client’s ROI right in the title of the case study.
• Add an "At a Glance" column to your case study PDF to make it easy to get insights without needing to read all the text.

19. " Hunt Club and Happeo — a tech-enabled love story ," by Happeo

In this blog-post-like case study, Happeo opens with a quote from the client, then dives into a compelling heading: "Technology at the forefront of Hunt Club's strategy." Say you’re investigating Happeo as a solution and consider your firm to be technology-driven. This approach would spark your curiosity about why the client chose to work with Happeo. It also effectively communicates the software’s value proposition without sounding like it’s coming from an in-house marketing team.

Every paragraph is a quote written from the customer’s perspective. Later down the page, the case study also dives into "the features that changed the game for Hunt Club," giving Happeo a chance to highlight some of the platform’s most salient features.

Key Learnings from the Happeo Case Study Example

• Consider writing the entirety of the case study from the perspective of the customer.
• Include a list of the features that convinced your client to go with you.

20. " Red Sox Season Campaign ," by CTP Boston

What's great about CTP's case study page for their Red Sox Season Campaign is their combination of video, images, and text. A video automatically begins playing when you visit the page, and as you scroll, you'll see more embedded videos of Red Sox players, a compilation of print ads, and social media images you can click to enlarge.

At the bottom, it says "Find out how we can do something similar for your brand." The page is clean, cohesive, and aesthetically pleasing. It invites viewers to appreciate the well-roundedness of CTP's campaign for Boston's beloved baseball team.

Key Learnings from the CTP Case Study Example

• Include a video in the heading of the case study.
• Close with a call-to-action that makes leads want to turn into prospects.

21. " Acoustic ," by Genuine

Sometimes, simple is key. Genuine's case study for Acoustic is straightforward and minimal, with just a few short paragraphs, including "Reimagining the B2B website experience," "Speaking to marketers 1:1," and "Inventing Together." After the core of the case study, we then see a quote from Acoustic’s CMO and the results Genuine achieved for the company.

The simplicity of the page allows the reader to focus on both the visual aspects and the copy. The page displays Genuine's brand personality while offering the viewer all the necessary information they need.

• You don’t need to write a lot to create a great case study. Keep it simple.
• Always include quantifiable data to illustrate the results you achieved for your client.

22. " Using Apptio Targetprocess Automated Rules in Wargaming ," by Apptio

Apptio’s case study for Wargaming summarizes three key pieces of information right at the beginning: The goals, the obstacles, and the results.

Readers then have the opportunity to continue reading — or they can walk away right then with the information they need. This case study also excels in keeping the human interest factor by formatting the information like an interview.

The piece is well-organized and uses compelling headers to keep the reader engaged. Despite its length, Apptio's case study is appealing enough to keep the viewer's attention. Every Apptio case study ends with a "recommendation for other companies" section, where the client can give advice for other companies that are looking for a similar solution but aren’t sure how to get started.

Key Learnings from the Apptio Case Study Example

• Put your client in an advisory role by giving them the opportunity to give recommendations to other companies that are reading the case study.
• Include the takeaways from the case study right at the beginning so prospects quickly get what they need.

23. " Airbnb + Zendesk: building a powerful solution together ," by Zendesk

Zendesk's Airbnb case study reads like a blog post, and focuses equally on Zendesk and Airbnb, highlighting a true partnership between the companies. To captivate readers, it begins like this: "Halfway around the globe is a place to stay with your name on it. At least for a weekend."

The piece focuses on telling a good story and provides photographs of beautiful Airbnb locations. In a case study meant to highlight Zendesk's helpfulness, nothing could be more authentic than their decision to focus on Airbnb's service in such great detail.

Key Learnings from the Zendesk Case Study Example

• Include images of your client’s offerings — not necessarily of the service or product you provided. Notice how Zendesk doesn’t include screenshots of its product.
• Include a call-to-action right at the beginning of the case study. Zendesk gives you two options: to find a solution or start a trial.

24. " Biobot Customer Success Story: Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida ," by Biobot

Like some of the other top examples in this list, Biobot opens its case study with a quote from its client, which captures the value proposition of working with Biobot. It mentions the COVID pandemic and goes into detail about the challenges the client faced during this time.

This case study is structured more like a news article than a traditional case study. This format can work in more formal industries where decision-makers need to see in-depth information about the case. Be sure to test different methods and measure engagement .

Key Learnings from the Biobot Case Study Example

• Mention environmental, public health, or economic emergencies and how you helped your client get past such difficult times.
• Feel free to write the case study like a normal blog post, but be sure to test different methods to find the one that best works for you.

25. " Discovering Cost Savings With Efficient Decision Making ," by Gartner

You don't always need a ton of text or a video to convey your message — sometimes, you just need a few paragraphs and bullet points. Gartner does a fantastic job of quickly providing the fundamental statistics a potential customer would need to know, without boggling down their readers with dense paragraphs. The case study closes with a shaded box that summarizes the impact that Gartner had on its client. It includes a quote and a call-to-action to "Learn More."

Key Learnings from the Gartner Case Study Example

• Feel free to keep the case study short.
• Include a call-to-action at the bottom that takes the reader to a page that most relates to them.

26. " Bringing an Operator to the Game ," by Redapt

This case study example by Redapt is another great demonstration of the power of summarizing your case study’s takeaways right at the start of the study. Redapt includes three easy-to-scan columns: "The problem," "the solution," and "the outcome." But its most notable feature is a section titled "Moment of clarity," which shows why this particular project was difficult or challenging.

The section is shaded in green, making it impossible to miss. Redapt does the same thing for each case study. In the same way, you should highlight the "turning point" for both you and your client when you were working toward a solution.

Key Learnings from the Redapt Case Study Example

• Highlight the turning point for both you and your client during the solution-seeking process.
• Use the same structure (including the same headings) for your case studies to make them easy to scan and read.

27. " Virtual Call Center Sees 300% Boost In Contact Rate ," by Convoso

Convoso’s PDF case study for Digital Market Media immediately mentions the results that the client achieved and takes advantage of white space. On the second page, the case study presents more influential results. It’s colorful and engaging and closes with a spread that prompts readers to request a demo.

Key Learnings from the Convoso Case Study Example

• List the results of your work right at the beginning of the case study.
• Use color to differentiate your case study from others. Convoso’s example is one of the most colorful ones on this list.

28. " Ensuring quality of service during a pandemic ," by Ericsson

Ericsson’s case study page for Orange Spain is an excellent example of using diverse written and visual media — such as videos, graphs, and quotes — to showcase the success a client experienced. Throughout the case study, Ericsson provides links to product and service pages users might find relevant as they’re reading the study.

For instance, under the heading "Preloaded with the power of automation," Ericsson mentions its Ericsson Operations Engine product, then links to that product page. It closes the case study with a link to another product page.

Key Learnings from the Ericsson Case Study Example

• Link to product pages throughout the case study so that readers can learn more about the solution you offer.
• Use multimedia to engage users as they read the case study.

Start creating your case study.

Now that you've got a great list of examples of case studies, think about a topic you'd like to write about that highlights your company or work you did with a customer.

A customer’s success story is the most persuasive marketing material you could ever create. With a strong portfolio of case studies, you can ensure prospects know why they should give you their business.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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Blog Graphic Design

15+ Professional Case Study Examples [Design Tips + Templates]

By Alice Corner , Jan 12, 2023

Have you ever bought something — within the last 10 years or so — without reading its reviews or without a recommendation or prior experience of using it?

If the answer is no — or at least, rarely — you get my point.

Positive reviews matter for selling to regular customers, and for B2B or SaaS businesses, detailed case studies are important too.

Wondering how to craft a compelling case study ? No worries—I’ve got you covered with 15 marketing case study templates , helpful tips, and examples to ensure your case study converts effectively.

Click to jump ahead:

• What is a Case Study?

Business Case Study Examples

Simple case study examples.

• Marketing Case Study Examples

Sales Case Study Examples

• Case Study FAQs

What is a case study?

A case study is an in-depth, detailed analysis of a specific real-world situation. For example, a case study can be about an individual, group, event, organization, or phenomenon. The purpose of a case study is to understand its complexities and gain insights into a particular instance or situation.

In the context of a business, however, case studies take customer success stories and explore how they use your product to help them achieve their business goals.

As well as being valuable marketing tools , case studies are a good way to evaluate your product as it allows you to objectively examine how others are using it.

It’s also a good way to interview your customers about why they work with you.

Related: What is a Case Study? [+6 Types of Case Studies]

Marketing Case Study Template

A marketing case study showcases how your product or services helped potential clients achieve their business goals. You can also create case studies of internal, successful marketing projects. A marketing case study typically includes:

• Company background and history
• The challenge
• How you helped
• Specific actions taken
• Visuals or Data
• Client testimonials

Here’s an example of a marketing case study template:

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, business case studies can be a powerful resource to help with your sales, marketing, and even internal departmental awareness.

Business and business management case studies should encompass strategic insights alongside anecdotal and qualitative findings, like in the business case study examples below.

Conduct a B2B case study by researching the company holistically

When it comes to writing a case study, make sure you approach the company holistically and analyze everything from their social media to their sales.

Think about every avenue your product or service has been of use to your case study company, and ask them about the impact this has had on their wider company goals.

In business case study examples like the one above, we can see that the company has been thought about holistically simply by the use of icons.

By combining social media icons with icons that show in-person communication we know that this is a well-researched and thorough case study.

This case study report example could also be used within an annual or end-of-year report.

Highlight the key takeaway from your marketing case study

To create a compelling case study, identify the key takeaways from your research. Use catchy language to sum up this information in a sentence, and present this sentence at the top of your page.

This is “at a glance” information and it allows people to gain a top-level understanding of the content immediately. 

You can use a large, bold, contrasting font to help this information stand out from the page and provide interest.

Learn  how to choose fonts  effectively with our Venngage guide and once you’ve done that.

Upload your fonts and  brand colors  to Venngage using the  My Brand Kit  tool and see them automatically applied to your designs.

The heading is the ideal place to put the most impactful information, as this is the first thing that people will read.

In this example, the stat of “Increase[d] lead quality by 90%” is used as the header. It makes customers want to read more to find out how exactly lead quality was increased by such a massive amount.

If you’re conducting an in-person interview, you could highlight a direct quote or insight provided by your interview subject.

Pick out a catchy sentence or phrase, or the key piece of information your interview subject provided and use that as a way to draw a potential customer in.

Use charts to visualize data in your business case studies

Charts are an excellent way to visualize data and to bring statistics and information to life. Charts make information easier to understand and to illustrate trends or patterns.

Making charts is even easier with Venngage.

In this consulting case study example, we can see that a chart has been used to demonstrate the difference in lead value within the Lead Elves case study.

Adding a chart here helps break up the information and add visual value to the case study. 

Using charts in your case study can also be useful if you’re creating a project management case study.

You could use a Gantt chart or a project timeline to show how you have managed the project successfully.

Use direct quotes to build trust in your marketing case study

To add an extra layer of authenticity you can include a direct quote from your customer within your case study.

According to research from Nielsen , 92% of people will trust a recommendation from a peer and 70% trust recommendations even if they’re from somebody they don’t know.

So if you have a customer or client who can’t stop singing your praises, make sure you get a direct quote from them and include it in your case study.

You can either lift part of the conversation or interview, or you can specifically request a quote. Make sure to ask for permission before using the quote.

This design uses a bright contrasting speech bubble to show that it includes a direct quote, and helps the quote stand out from the rest of the text.

This will help draw the customer’s attention directly to the quote, in turn influencing them to use your product or service.

Less is often more, and this is especially true when it comes to creating designs. Whilst you want to create a professional-looking, well-written and design case study – there’s no need to overcomplicate things.

These simple case study examples show that smart clean designs and informative content can be an effective way to showcase your successes.

Use colors and fonts to create a professional-looking case study

Business case studies shouldn’t be boring. In fact, they should be beautifully and professionally designed.

This means the normal rules of design apply. Use fonts, colors, and icons to create an interesting and visually appealing case study.

In this case study example, we can see how multiple fonts have been used to help differentiate between the headers and content, as well as complementary colors and eye-catching icons.

Marketing case study examples

Marketing case studies are incredibly useful for showing your marketing successes. Every successful marketing campaign relies on influencing a consumer’s behavior, and a great case study can be a great way to spotlight your biggest wins.

In the marketing case study examples below, a variety of designs and techniques to create impactful and effective case studies.

Show off impressive results with a bold marketing case study

Case studies are meant to show off your successes, so make sure you feature your positive results prominently. Using bold and bright colors as well as contrasting shapes, large bold fonts, and simple icons is a great way to highlight your wins.

In well-written case study examples like the one below, the big wins are highlighted on the second page with a bright orange color and are highlighted in circles.

Making the important data stand out is especially important when attracting a prospective customer with marketing case studies.

Use a simple but clear layout in your case study

Using a simple layout in your case study can be incredibly effective, like in the example of a case study below.

Keeping a clean white background, and using slim lines to help separate the sections is an easy way to format your case study.

Making the information clear helps draw attention to the important results, and it helps improve the  accessibility of the design .

Business case study examples like this would sit nicely within a larger report, with a consistent layout throughout.

Use visuals and icons to create an engaging and branded business case study

Nobody wants to read pages and pages of text — and that’s why Venngage wants to help you communicate your ideas visually.

Using icons, graphics, photos, or patterns helps create a much more engaging design. 

With this Blue Cap case study icons, colors, and impactful pattern designs have been used to create an engaging design that catches your eye.

Use a monochromatic color palette to create a professional and clean case study

Let your research shine by using a monochromatic and minimalistic color palette.

By sticking to one color, and leaving lots of blank space you can ensure your design doesn’t distract a potential customer from your case study content.

In this case study on Polygon Media, the design is simple and professional, and the layout allows the prospective customer to follow the flow of information.

The gradient effect on the left-hand column helps break up the white background and adds an interesting visual effect.

Did you know you can generate an accessible color palette with Venngage? Try our free accessible color palette generator today and create a case study that delivers and looks pleasant to the eye:

Add long term goals in your case study

When creating a case study it’s a great idea to look at both the short term and the long term goals of the company to gain the best understanding possible of the insights they provide.

Short-term goals will be what the company or person hopes to achieve in the next few months, and long-term goals are what the company hopes to achieve in the next few years.

Check out this modern pattern design example of a case study below:

In this case study example, the short and long-term goals are clearly distinguished by light blue boxes and placed side by side so that they are easy to compare.

Use a strong introductory paragraph to outline the overall strategy and goals before outlining the specific short-term and long-term goals to help with clarity.

This strategy can also be handy when creating a consulting case study.

Use data to make concrete points about your sales and successes

When conducting any sort of research stats, facts, and figures are like gold dust (aka, really valuable).

Being able to quantify your findings is important to help understand the information fully. Saying sales increased 10% is much more effective than saying sales increased.

While sales dashboards generally tend it make it all about the numbers and charts, in sales case study examples, like this one, the key data and findings can be presented with icons. This contributes to the potential customer’s better understanding of the report.

They can clearly comprehend the information and it shows that the case study has been well researched.

Use emotive, persuasive, or action based language in your marketing case study

Create a compelling case study by using emotive, persuasive and action-based language when customizing your case study template.

In this well-written case study example, we can see that phrases such as “Results that Speak Volumes” and “Drive Sales” have been used.

Using persuasive language like you would in a blog post. It helps inspire potential customers to take action now.

Keep your potential customers in mind when creating a customer case study for marketing

82% of marketers use case studies in their marketing  because it’s such an effective tool to help quickly gain customers’ trust and to showcase the potential of your product.

Why are case studies such an important tool in content marketing?

By writing a case study you’re telling potential customers that they can trust you because you’re showing them that other people do.

Not only that, but if you have a SaaS product, business case studies are a great way to show how other people are effectively using your product in their company.

In this case study, Network is demonstrating how their product has been used by Vortex Co. with great success; instantly showing other potential customers that their tool works and is worth using.

Related: 10+ Case Study Infographic Templates That Convert

Case studies are particularly effective as a sales technique.

A sales case study is like an extended customer testimonial, not only sharing opinions of your product – but showcasing the results you helped your customer achieve.

Make impactful statistics pop in your sales case study

Writing a case study doesn’t mean using text as the only medium for sharing results.

You should use icons to highlight areas of your research that are particularly interesting or relevant, like in this example of a case study:

Icons are a great way to help summarize information quickly and can act as visual cues to help draw the customer’s attention to certain areas of the page.

In some of the business case study examples above, icons are used to represent the impressive areas of growth and are presented in a way that grabs your attention.

Use high contrast shapes and colors to draw attention to key information in your sales case study

Help the key information stand out within your case study by using high contrast shapes and colors.

Use a complementary or contrasting color, or use a shape such as a rectangle or a circle for maximum impact.

This design has used dark blue rectangles to help separate the information and make it easier to read.

Coupled with icons and strong statistics, this information stands out on the page and is easily digestible and retainable for a potential customer.

Case Study Examples Summary

Once you have created your case study, it’s best practice to update your examples on a regular basis to include up-to-date statistics, data, and information.

You should update your business case study examples often if you are sharing them on your website .

It’s also important that your case study sits within your brand guidelines – find out how Venngage’s My Brand Kit tool can help you create consistently branded case study templates.

Case studies are important marketing tools – but they shouldn’t be the only tool in your toolbox. Content marketing is also a valuable way to earn consumer trust.

Case Study FAQ

Why should you write a case study.

Case studies are an effective marketing technique to engage potential customers and help build trust.

By producing case studies featuring your current clients or customers, you are showcasing how your tool or product can be used. You’re also showing that other people endorse your product.

In addition to being a good way to gather positive testimonials from existing customers , business case studies are good educational resources and can be shared amongst your company or team, and used as a reference for future projects.

How should you write a case study?

To create a great case study, you should think strategically. The first step, before starting your case study research, is to think about what you aim to learn or what you aim to prove.

You might be aiming to learn how a company makes sales or develops a new product. If this is the case, base your questions around this.

You can learn more about writing a case study  from our extensive guide.

Related: How to Present a Case Study like a Pro (With Examples)

Some good questions you could ask would be:

• Why do you use our tool or service?
• How often do you use our tool or service?
• What does the process of using our product look like to you?
• If our product didn’t exist, what would you be doing instead?
• What is the number one benefit you’ve found from using our tool?

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Business school teaching case study: can green hydrogen’s potential be realised?

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Jennifer Howard-Grenville and Ujjwal Pandey

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Hydrogen is often hyped as the “Swiss army knife” of the energy transition because of its potential versatility in decarbonising fossil fuel-intensive energy production and industries. Making use of that versatility, however, will require hydrogen producers and distributors to cut costs, manage technology risks, and obtain support from policymakers.

To cut carbon dioxide emissions, hydrogen production must shift from its current reliance on fossil fuels. The most common method yields “grey hydrogen”, made from natural gas but without emissions capture. “Blue hydrogen,” which is also made from natural gas but with the associated carbon emissions captured and stored, is favourable.

But “green hydrogen” uses renewable energy sources, including wind and solar, to split water into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis. And, because there are no carbon emissions during production or combustion, green hydrogen can help to decarbonise energy generation as well as industry sectors — such as steel, chemicals and transport — that rely heavily on fossil fuels.

Ultimately, though, the promise of green hydrogen will hinge on how businesses and policymakers weigh several questions, trade-offs, and potential long-term consequences. We know from previous innovations that progress can be far from straightforward.

Wind power, for example, is a mature renewable energy technology and a key enabler in green hydrogen production, but it suffers vulnerabilities on several fronts. Even Denmark’s Ørsted — the world’s largest developer of offshore wind power and a beacon for renewable energy — recently said it was struggling to deliver new offshore wind projects profitably in the UK.

Generally, the challenge arises from interdependencies between macroeconomic conditions — such as energy costs and interest rates — and business decision-making around investments. In the case of Ørsted, it said the escalating costs of turbines, labour, and financing have exceeded the inflation-linked fixed price for electricity set by regulators.

Business leaders will also need to steer through uncertainties — such as market demand, technological risks, regulatory ambiguity, and investment risks — as they seek to incorporate green hydrogen.

Test yourself

This is the third in a series of monthly business school-style teaching case studies devoted to responsible-business dilemmas faced by organisations. Read the piece and FT articles suggested at the end before considering the questions raised.

About the authors: Jennifer Howard-Grenville is Diageo professor of organisation studies at Cambridge Judge Business School; Ujjwal Pandey is an MBA candidate at Cambridge Judge and a former consultant at McKinsey.

The series forms part of a wide-ranging collection of FT ‘instant teaching case studies ’ that explore business challenges.

Two factors could help business leaders gain more clarity.

The first factor will be where, and how quickly, costs fall and enable the necessary increase to large-scale production. For instance, the cost of the electrolysers needed to split water into hydrogen and oxygen remains high because levels of production are too low. These costs and slow progress in expanding the availability and affordability of renewable energy sources have made green hydrogen much more expensive than grey hydrogen, so far — currently, two to three times the cost.

The FT’s Lex column calculated last year that a net zero energy system would create global demand for hydrogen of 500mn tonnes, annually, by 2050 — which would require an investment of $20tn. However, only $29bn had been committed by potential investors, Lex noted, despite some 1,000 new projects being announced globally and estimated to require total investment of $320bn.

Solar power faced similar challenges a decade ago. Thanks to low-cost manufacturing in China and supportive government policies, the sector has grown and is, within a very few years , expected to surpass gas-fired power plant installed capacity, globally. Green hydrogen requires a similar concerted effort. With the right policies and technological improvements, the cost of green hydrogen could fall below the cost of grey hydrogen in the next decade, enabling widespread adoption of the former.

Countries around the world are introducing new and varied incentives to address this gap between the expected demand and supply of green hydrogen. In Canada, for instance, Belgium’s Tree Energy Solutions plans to build a $4bn plant in Quebec, to produce synthetic natural gas from green hydrogen and captured carbon, attracted partly by a C$17.7bn ($12.8bn) tax credit and the availability of hydropower.

Such moves sound like good news for champions of green hydrogen, but companies still need to manage the short-term risks from potential policy and energy price swings. The US Inflation Reduction Act, which offers tax credits of up to $3 per kilogramme for producing low-carbon hydrogen, has already brought in limits , and may not survive a change of government.

Against such a backdrop, how should companies such as Hystar — a Norwegian maker of electrolysers already looking to expand capacity from 50 megawatts to 4 gigawatts a year in Europe — decide where and when to open a North American production facility?

The second factor that will shape hydrogen’s future is how and where it is adopted across different industries. Will it be central to the energy sector, where it can be used to produce synthetic fuels, or to help store the energy generated by intermittent renewables, such as wind and solar? Or will it find its best use in hard-to-abate sectors — so-called because cutting their fossil fuel use, and their CO₂ emissions, is difficult — such as aviation and steelmaking?

Steel producers are already seeking to pivot to hydrogen, both as an energy source and to replace the use of coal in reducing iron ore. In a bold development in Sweden, H2 Green Steel says it plans to decarbonise by incorporating hydrogen in both these ways, targeting 2.5mn tonnes of green steel production annually .

Meanwhile, the global aviation industry is exploring the use of hydrogen to replace petroleum-based aviation fuels and in fuel cell technologies that transform hydrogen into electricity. In January 2023, for instance, Anglo-US start-up ZeroAvia conducted a successful test flight of a hydrogen fuel cell-powered aircraft.

The path to widespread adoption, and the transformation required for hydrogen’s range of potential applications, will rely heavily on who invests, where and how. Backers have to be willing to pay a higher initial price to secure and build a green hydrogen supply in the early phases of their investment.

It will also depend on how other technologies evolve. No industry is looking only to green hydrogen to achieve their decarbonisation aims. Other, more mature technologies — such as battery storage for renewable energy — may instead dominate, leaving green hydrogen to fulfil niche applications that can bear high costs.

As with any transition, there will be unintended consequences. Natural resources (sun, wind, hydropower) and other assets (storage, distribution, shipping) that support the green hydrogen economy are unevenly distributed around the globe. There will be new exporters — countries with abundant renewables in the form of sun, wind or hydropower, such as Australia or some African countries — and new importers, such as Germany, with existing industry that relies on hydrogen but has relatively low levels of renewable energy sourced domestically.

How will the associated social and environmental costs be borne, and how will the economic and development benefits be shared? Tackling climate change through decarbonisation is urgent and essential, but there are also trade-offs and long-term consequences to the choices made today.

Questions for discussion

Lex in depth: the staggering cost of a green hydrogen economy

How Germany’s steelmakers plan to go green

Hydrogen-electric aircraft start-up secures UK Infrastructure Bank backing

Aviation start-ups test potential of green hydrogen

Consider these questions:

Are the trajectories for cost/scale-up of other renewable energy technologies (eg solar, wind) applicable to green hydrogen? Are there features of the current economic, policy, and business landscape that point to certain directions for green hydrogen’s development and application?

Take the perspective of someone from a key industry that is part of, or will be affected by, the development of green hydrogen. How should you think about the technology and business opportunities and risks in the near term, and longer term? How might you retain flexibility while still participating in these key shifts?

Solving one problem often creates or obscures new ones. For example, many technologies that decarbonise (such as electric vehicles) have other impacts (such as heavy reliance on certain minerals and materials). How should those participating in the emerging green hydrogen economy anticipate, and address, potential environmental and social impacts? Can we learn from energy transitions of the past?

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How to Write a Great Business Case

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• Case Teaching

C ase studies are powerful teaching tools. “When you have a good case, and students who are well prepared to learn and to teach each other, you get some magical moments that students will never forget,” says James L. Heskett, UPS Foundation Professor of Business Logistics, emeritus, at Harvard Business School (HBS). “They will remember the lessons they learn in that class discussion and apply them 20 years later.”

Yet, for many educators who want to pen their own case, the act of writing a great business case seldom comes easily or naturally. For starters, it’s time consuming. Case writers can spend substantial time visiting companies, securing a willing site, conducting interviews, observing operations, collecting data, reviewing notes, writing the case, revising the narrative, ensuring that teaching points come through, and then getting executives to approve the finished product.

The question, then, becomes: Where do you begin? How do you approach case writing? How do you decide which company to use as the subject of the case? And what distinguishes a well-written case from a mediocre one?

We asked three expert HBS case writers—who collectively have written and supported hundreds of cases—to share their insights on how to write a great business case study that will inspire passionate classroom discussion and transmit key educational concepts.

Insights from James L. Heskett

UPS Foundation Professor of Business Logistics, Emeritus, Harvard Business School

Keep your eyes open for a great business issue.

“I’m always on the prowl for new case material. Whenever I’m reading or consulting, I look for interesting people doing interesting things and facing interesting challenges. For instance, I was reading a magazine and came across a story about how Shouldice Hospital treated patients undergoing surgery to fix inguinal hernias—how patients would get up from the operating table and walk away on the arm of the surgeon.

6 QUALITIES OF GREAT CASE WRITERS

Comfort with ambiguity, since cases may have more than one “right” answer

Command of the topic or subject at hand

Ability to relate to the case protagonists

Enthusiasm for the case teaching method

Capacity for finding the drama in a business situation and making it feel personal to students

Build relationships with executives.

“When writing a case, it’s helpful to start as high in the organization as possible. It helps assure mid-level managers that they can share the information you need with an outsider. It also helps when it comes to getting the case cleared for use. Serving on corporate boards can help in building relationships with senior executives, but there are other ways to make those connections. For instance, you can approach speakers at business conferences if you think their presentations could form the basis for a good business case. If you want to write about a company where you don’t have any personal connections, you can always check with your colleagues to see if any of them have a personal relationship with the CEO or sit on a board where they could introduce you to the right person who would be able to facilitate the case. My colleagues and I make a lot of these introductions for each other.”

“If you make the case into a crossword puzzle that takes five hours to solve, it’s not really fair to the students and will most likely cause them to lose focus.” James L. Heskett

Skip the curveballs and focus on key issues.

“Cases don’t have to be obvious. As a pedagogical objective, you might want students to look beyond a superficial issue to say this is the underlying topic that we need to address, and these are the questions we need to pose. Still, I think it’s unhelpful if cases contain real curveballs where ‘unlocking’ the case depends on finding some small piece of information hidden in an exhibit. Give students a break! They may have to read and digest three cases per day, so they probably won’t be able to devote more than a couple of hours to each one. If you make the case into a crossword puzzle that takes five hours to solve, it’s not really fair to the students and will most likely cause them to lose focus.”

Build a discussion plan while writing the case.

“In case method teaching, the teacher is not in complete control. Students teach each other and learn from each other. On any given day, there will likely be somebody in the room who knows more about the company featured in the case than the professor does. So a professor can’t walk into the classroom and expect to impose a lesson plan that goes in a strict linear way from A to B to C to D. The case ought to be written to allow students to jump from A to D and then come back later to B if that’s how the discussion plays out. At the same time, the case should be structured so that the instructor can collect student comments on a board, organizing them as a coherent set of related ideas, and then deliver a 5-to-10-minute summary that communicates whatever essential concepts the case has covered. This summation can be a very powerful teaching and learning experience.”

Focus on quality over quantity.

“Cases don’t have to be too long. Some good cases are only two or three pages. Students may give more scrutiny to these brief cases than they would a 20-page case.”

Advice from Benson P. Shapiro

Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing, Emeritus, Harvard Business School

Take out the chaff in advance.

“You don’t want students to spend too much time separating the wheat from the chaff. If a case has 12 pages of text and 10 pages of exhibits, even the smartest MBA students will likely lose interest. Writers who try to capture a situation from every angle and in every detail end up with sprawling narratives that usually do not make a good case. When writing cases, you need to set good, strong boundaries. Avoid superfluous, flowery, or poetic material that may contain interesting anecdotes or factoids, but that could distract readers from the case’s core topics. Include only those important and useful details that can help students make decisions and understand key issues that the case explores.”

Work in layers and metaphors—subtly.

“The best cases work on multiple levels. A case should focus on a specific situation—for example, whether or not to introduce a certain product. But it should also serve as a metaphor for broader issues in the background: How do we think about introducing new products? Are we introducing enough products? Are new product introductions a source of competitive advantage in our industry? How should we organize and manage new product development? You want the case to encourage students to think broadly about the various cultural, financial, and strategic impacts that managerial decisions have on a company.”

“Writers who try to capture a situation from every angle and in every detail end up with sprawling narratives that usually do not make a good case.” Benson P. Shapiro

Encourage emotional engagement.

“Case writing is an interesting literary form—it needs to be very engaging, but also educational. Great cases revolve around points of contention on which intelligent people can hold different points of view: What should you do? Why? How do you get it done? Ideally, students should have to choose between two very attractive alternatives or two terrible alternatives. The best cases involve questions that get students emotionally engaged so that they really care about choices and outcomes. When you see students physically leaning forward and following what their peers are saying, you know that they have a visceral feel for the importance of the subject. When you hear them debating after class— You were out in left field! You missed what was really important here! —that’s how you can tell you succeeded in developing a great case.”

Lessons from Carin-Isabel Knoop

Executive Director of the Case Research & Writing Group, Harvard Business School

Don’t forget the classroom component.

“Cases are deliberately incomplete documents. What a case writer leaves out of a case is often just as important as what he or she puts into it. Cases are designed to be completed through classroom instruction and discussion. While drafting the case, try to develop the classroom process in parallel. Work on the assignment questions and classroom content. Keep in mind that the case should be able to adapt to your classroom and course needs.”

Hone your elevator pitch.

“Before getting started, always have clear, succinct learning objectives in mind. Don’t start developing the case until you are able to summarize these objectives in less than five minutes.”

Case writing is a relationship, not a transaction.

When choosing a case site, be clear with executives that you are developing a teaching tool and that you will require their time and candor—and eventually their data. Put them at ease, and manage the authorization process, right from the start. Indicate that quotes will be cleared before publication and there will be time for individual review. During the creation process, ask their advice. This creates a process of engagement and helps bring home that this is a pedagogical tool, not gotcha journalism. At HBS, we oftentimes invite someone from the company to attend class. Finally, once the case is done, stay in touch with your case protagonists. They will move to other organizations and spread the good word about their experience with case writing.

Invite disagreement in case discussions.

“The case study method is based on participant-centered learning. The students all start from the same base of 11 (or however many) pages in the case, but they bring different knowledge and experiences into the classroom. So they can take the same facts and disagree about what course of action to pursue. We want students to behave like decision makers, and it can be painful to make decisions. Some critics deride the case teaching method as being unrealistic, but someone who just lectures about marketing doesn’t help students realize how difficult it is to choose between two plausible options to meet the same marketing objectives. For students, a big part of the education process is learning from discussions with classmates who think differently and advocate for different solutions. Witnessing a robust case discussion reminds us of the potential for collective learning to emerge from contrasting views.”

“Faculty don’t just write cases for teaching purposes, they write them to learn.” Carin-Isabel Knoop

The Case Writing Process Is a Worthy Effort

Researching, writing, and publishing cases is well worth the time and effort. “The case research and writing process is important for faculty development,” Knoop adds. “While developing field cases, faculty go to site visits and meet with decision makers. The case writing process helps connect scholars to practitioners and practitioners to the academic world. Faculty case writers get to explore and test how their academic theories work in practice. So faculty don’t just write cases for teaching purposes, they write them to learn. The case method is an integral part of faculty development.”

There’s another big bonus to becoming a case writer, especially for younger educators. “Young business instructors face a credibility gap with their students,” says Heskett. “It’s not uncommon to have MBA students in a class who have more experience than the instructor on a particular subject. Once you go into the field and write a case, you will know more about that subject than anyone else in the class. A primary way for professors to establish their credibility on a topic is to have written the case the class is discussing that day.”

James L. Heskett is UPS Foundation Professor of Business Logistics, emeritus, at Harvard Business School. He completed his Ph.D. at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and has been a faculty member at The Ohio State University as well as president of Logistics Systems, Inc. Since 2000, he has authored a blog on Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge website .

Benson P. Shapiro is the Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing, emeritus, at Harvard Business School where he taught full time from 1970 to 1997. Since 1997, Shapiro has concentrated his professional time on consulting, giving speeches, serving on boards, and writing. He continues to teach at Harvard and has taught in many executive programs and has chaired the Sustainable Marketing Leadership for Mid-Sized Firms Program.

Carin-Isabel Knoop is the executive director of the Case Research & Writing Group at Harvard Business School. She is also coauthor of Compassionate Management of Mental Health in the Modern Workplace .

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How to write a case study — examples, templates, and tools

It’s a marketer’s job to communicate the effectiveness of a product or service to potential and current customers to convince them to buy and keep business moving. One of the best methods for doing this is to share success stories that are relatable to prospects and customers based on their pain points, experiences, and overall needs.

That’s where case studies come in. Case studies are an essential part of a content marketing plan. These in-depth stories of customer experiences are some of the most effective at demonstrating the value of a product or service. Yet many marketers don’t use them, whether because of their regimented formats or the process of customer involvement and approval.

A case study is a powerful tool for showcasing your hard work and the success your customer achieved. But writing a great case study can be difficult if you’ve never done it before or if it’s been a while. This guide will show you how to write an effective case study and provide real-world examples and templates that will keep readers engaged and support your business.

In this article, you’ll learn:

What is a case study?

How to write a case study, case study templates, case study examples, case study tools.

A case study is the detailed story of a customer’s experience with a product or service that demonstrates their success and often includes measurable outcomes. Case studies are used in a range of fields and for various reasons, from business to academic research. They’re especially impactful in marketing as brands work to convince and convert consumers with relatable, real-world stories of actual customer experiences.

The best case studies tell the story of a customer’s success, including the steps they took, the results they achieved, and the support they received from a brand along the way. To write a great case study, you need to:

• Celebrate the customer and make them — not a product or service — the star of the story.
• Craft the story with specific audiences or target segments in mind so that the story of one customer will be viewed as relatable and actionable for another customer.
• Write copy that is easy to read and engaging so that readers will gain the insights and messages intended.
• Follow a standardized format that includes all of the essentials a potential customer would find interesting and useful.
• Support all of the claims for success made in the story with data in the forms of hard numbers and customer statements.

Case studies are a type of review but more in depth, aiming to show — rather than just tell — the positive experiences that customers have with a brand. Notably, 89% of consumers read reviews before deciding to buy, and 79% view case study content as part of their purchasing process. When it comes to B2B sales, 52% of buyers rank case studies as an important part of their evaluation process.

Telling a brand story through the experience of a tried-and-true customer matters. The story is relatable to potential new customers as they imagine themselves in the shoes of the company or individual featured in the case study. Showcasing previous customers can help new ones see themselves engaging with your brand in the ways that are most meaningful to them.

Besides sharing the perspective of another customer, case studies stand out from other content marketing forms because they are based on evidence. Whether pulling from client testimonials or data-driven results, case studies tend to have more impact on new business because the story contains information that is both objective (data) and subjective (customer experience) — and the brand doesn’t sound too self-promotional.

Case studies are unique in that there’s a fairly standardized format for telling a customer’s story. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for creativity. It’s all about making sure that teams are clear on the goals for the case study — along with strategies for supporting content and channels — and understanding how the story fits within the framework of the company’s overall marketing goals.

Here are the basic steps to writing a good case study.

1. Identify your goal

Start by defining exactly who your case study will be designed to help. Case studies are about specific instances where a company works with a customer to achieve a goal. Identify which customers are likely to have these goals, as well as other needs the story should cover to appeal to them.

The answer is often found in one of the buyer personas that have been constructed as part of your larger marketing strategy. This can include anything from new leads generated by the marketing team to long-term customers that are being pressed for cross-sell opportunities. In all of these cases, demonstrating value through a relatable customer success story can be part of the solution to conversion.

2. Choose your client or subject

Who you highlight matters. Case studies tie brands together that might otherwise not cross paths. A writer will want to ensure that the highlighted customer aligns with their own company’s brand identity and offerings. Look for a customer with positive name recognition who has had great success with a product or service and is willing to be an advocate.

The client should also match up with the identified target audience. Whichever company or individual is selected should be a reflection of other potential customers who can see themselves in similar circumstances, having the same problems and possible solutions.

Some of the most compelling case studies feature customers who:

• Switch from one product or service to another while naming competitors that missed the mark.
• Experience measurable results that are relatable to others in a specific industry.
• Represent well-known brands and recognizable names that are likely to compel action.
• Advocate for a product or service as a champion and are well-versed in its advantages.

Whoever or whatever customer is selected, marketers must ensure they have the permission of the company involved before getting started. Some brands have strict review and approval procedures for any official marketing or promotional materials that include their name. Acquiring those approvals in advance will prevent any miscommunication or wasted effort if there is an issue with their legal or compliance teams.

3. Conduct research and compile data

Substantiating the claims made in a case study — either by the marketing team or customers themselves — adds validity to the story. To do this, include data and feedback from the client that defines what success looks like. This can be anything from demonstrating return on investment (ROI) to a specific metric the customer was striving to improve. Case studies should prove how an outcome was achieved and show tangible results that indicate to the customer that your solution is the right one.

This step could also include customer interviews. Make sure that the people being interviewed are key stakeholders in the purchase decision or deployment and use of the product or service that is being highlighted. Content writers should work off a set list of questions prepared in advance. It can be helpful to share these with the interviewees beforehand so they have time to consider and craft their responses. One of the best interview tactics to keep in mind is to ask questions where yes and no are not natural answers. This way, your subject will provide more open-ended responses that produce more meaningful content.

4. Choose the right format

There are a number of different ways to format a case study. Depending on what you hope to achieve, one style will be better than another. However, there are some common elements to include, such as:

• An engaging headline
• A subject and customer introduction
• The unique challenge or challenges the customer faced
• The solution the customer used to solve the problem
• The results achieved
• Data and statistics to back up claims of success
• A strong call to action (CTA) to engage with the vendor

It’s also important to note that while case studies are traditionally written as stories, they don’t have to be in a written format. Some companies choose to get more creative with their case studies and produce multimedia content, depending on their audience and objectives. Case study formats can include traditional print stories, interactive web or social content, data-heavy infographics, professionally shot videos, podcasts, and more.

5. Write your case study

We’ll go into more detail later about how exactly to write a case study, including templates and examples. Generally speaking, though, there are a few things to keep in mind when writing your case study.

• Be clear and concise. Readers want to get to the point of the story quickly and easily, and they’ll be looking to see themselves reflected in the story right from the start.
• Provide a big picture. Always make sure to explain who the client is, their goals, and how they achieved success in a short introduction to engage the reader.
• Construct a clear narrative. Stick to the story from the perspective of the customer and what they needed to solve instead of just listing product features or benefits.
• Leverage graphics. Incorporating infographics, charts, and sidebars can be a more engaging and eye-catching way to share key statistics and data in readable ways.
• Offer the right amount of detail. Most case studies are one or two pages with clear sections that a reader can skim to find the information most important to them.
• Include data to support claims. Show real results — both facts and figures and customer quotes — to demonstrate credibility and prove the solution works.

6. Promote your story

Marketers have a number of options for distribution of a freshly minted case study. Many brands choose to publish case studies on their website and post them on social media. This can help support SEO and organic content strategies while also boosting company credibility and trust as visitors see that other businesses have used the product or service.

Marketers are always looking for quality content they can use for lead generation. Consider offering a case study as gated content behind a form on a landing page or as an offer in an email message. One great way to do this is to summarize the content and tease the full story available for download after the user takes an action.

Sales teams can also leverage case studies, so be sure they are aware that the assets exist once they’re published. Especially when it comes to larger B2B sales, companies often ask for examples of similar customer challenges that have been solved.

Now that you’ve learned a bit about case studies and what they should include, you may be wondering how to start creating great customer story content. Here are a couple of templates you can use to structure your case study.

Template 1 — Challenge-solution-result format

• Start with an engaging title. This should be fewer than 70 characters long for SEO best practices. One of the best ways to approach the title is to include the customer’s name and a hint at the challenge they overcame in the end.
• Create an introduction. Lead with an explanation as to who the customer is, the need they had, and the opportunity they found with a specific product or solution. Writers can also suggest the success the customer experienced with the solution they chose.
• Present the challenge. This should be several paragraphs long and explain the problem the customer faced and the issues they were trying to solve. Details should tie into the company’s products and services naturally. This section needs to be the most relatable to the reader so they can picture themselves in a similar situation.
• Share the solution. Explain which product or service offered was the ideal fit for the customer and why. Feel free to delve into their experience setting up, purchasing, and onboarding the solution.
• Explain the results. Demonstrate the impact of the solution they chose by backing up their positive experience with data. Fill in with customer quotes and tangible, measurable results that show the effect of their choice.
• Ask for action. Include a CTA at the end of the case study that invites readers to reach out for more information, try a demo, or learn more — to nurture them further in the marketing pipeline. What you ask of the reader should tie directly into the goals that were established for the case study in the first place.

Template 2 — Data-driven format

• Start with an engaging title. Be sure to include a statistic or data point in the first 70 characters. Again, it’s best to include the customer’s name as part of the title.
• Create an overview. Share the customer’s background and a short version of the challenge they faced. Present the reason a particular product or service was chosen, and feel free to include quotes from the customer about their selection process.
• Present data point 1. Isolate the first metric that the customer used to define success and explain how the product or solution helped to achieve this goal. Provide data points and quotes to substantiate the claim that success was achieved.
• Present data point 2. Isolate the second metric that the customer used to define success and explain what the product or solution did to achieve this goal. Provide data points and quotes to substantiate the claim that success was achieved.
• Present data point 3. Isolate the final metric that the customer used to define success and explain what the product or solution did to achieve this goal. Provide data points and quotes to substantiate the claim that success was achieved.
• Summarize the results. Reiterate the fact that the customer was able to achieve success thanks to a specific product or service. Include quotes and statements that reflect customer satisfaction and suggest they plan to continue using the solution.
• Ask for action. Include a CTA at the end of the case study that asks readers to reach out for more information, try a demo, or learn more — to further nurture them in the marketing pipeline. Again, remember that this is where marketers can look to convert their content into action with the customer.

While templates are helpful, seeing a case study in action can also be a great way to learn. Here are some examples of how Adobe customers have experienced success.

Juniper Networks

One example is the Adobe and Juniper Networks case study , which puts the reader in the customer’s shoes. The beginning of the story quickly orients the reader so that they know exactly who the article is about and what they were trying to achieve. Solutions are outlined in a way that shows Adobe Experience Manager is the best choice and a natural fit for the customer. Along the way, quotes from the client are incorporated to help add validity to the statements. The results in the case study are conveyed with clear evidence of scale and volume using tangible data.

The story of Lenovo’s journey with Adobe is one that spans years of planning, implementation, and rollout. The Lenovo case study does a great job of consolidating all of this into a relatable journey that other enterprise organizations can see themselves taking, despite the project size. This case study also features descriptive headers and compelling visual elements that engage the reader and strengthen the content.

Tata Consulting

When it comes to using data to show customer results, this case study does an excellent job of conveying details and numbers in an easy-to-digest manner. Bullet points at the start break up the content while also helping the reader understand exactly what the case study will be about. Tata Consulting used Adobe to deliver elevated, engaging content experiences for a large telecommunications client of its own — an objective that’s relatable for a lot of companies.

Case studies are a vital tool for any marketing team as they enable you to demonstrate the value of your company’s products and services to others. They help marketers do their job and add credibility to a brand trying to promote its solutions by using the experiences and stories of real customers.

When you’re ready to get started with a case study:

• Think about a few goals you’d like to accomplish with your content.
• Make a list of successful clients that would be strong candidates for a case study.
• Reach out to the client to get their approval and conduct an interview.
• Gather the data to present an engaging and effective customer story.

Adobe can help

There are several Adobe products that can help you craft compelling case studies. Adobe Experience Platform helps you collect data and deliver great customer experiences across every channel. Once you’ve created your case studies, Experience Platform will help you deliver the right information to the right customer at the right time for maximum impact.

To learn more, watch the Adobe Experience Platform story .

Keep in mind that the best case studies are backed by data. That’s where Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform and Adobe Analytics come into play. With Real-Time CDP, you can gather the data you need to build a great case study and target specific customers to deliver the content to the right audience at the perfect moment.

Watch the Real-Time CDP overview video to learn more.

Finally, Adobe Analytics turns real-time data into real-time insights. It helps your business collect and synthesize data from multiple platforms to make more informed decisions and create the best case study possible.

Request a demo to learn more about Adobe Analytics.

https://business.adobe.com/blog/perspectives/b2b-ecommerce-10-case-studies-inspire-you

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/business-case

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/what-is-real-time-analytics

6 Brilliant Small Business Case Study Examples For Marketers

Explore case study examples for small businesses. Additionally, find strategies for handling common challenges and solutions for growing your business.

Every business starts small.

The success of a business lies in its strategy to overcome any challenge during its journey.

If you are trying to take your business to new heights, start identifying challenges and create solutions.

The best way is to learn from sundry success stories.

There are several case studies of different businesses that can teach you which strategy to take for selling your product and attracting the target audience.

In this article, we will discuss some of the top case study examples that can assist in upscaling small businesses.

Let’s begin.

Challenges Faced by Small Businesses

As far as businesses go, there are always hurdles that need to be defeated. Starting a business is itself a big achievement for entrepreneurs, but the main challenge is maintaining one.

There are three common challenges businesses need to overcome. These include managing the expenses, hiring people, and following new trends to develop a customer base.

1. Increased Expenses

Every business revolves around money. There are different areas where businesses have to spend their money. But the issue is handling the financial hurdles. With an unplanned budget and financial advice, businesses will be spending more than they need to.

Keeping an eye on expenses is important because the expenses determine the profit the business will make.

However, it is not easy to reduce the expense. It’s affected by demand and supply. If businesses need to keep up with the market’s demands, then the chance of increasing expenses is 100%.

2. More and Skilled Manpower Required

Businesses don’t run themselves. They need manpower with skills to handle different departments. Generally, the number of employees in a small business ranges from 1 to 500 people. Getting this manpower is easy but getting a skilled one is difficult and time-consuming.

Whenever looking for manpower, businesses need to decide what skills they want in their candidate. The problem is candidates can’t always fulfill all the requirements. Besides, hiring manpower also increases the expenses.

3. Keeping Up With the Latest Trends

The market is fluid. It changes and introduces new trends. Small businesses need to keep up with the changing trends to keep their business growing. But this is where many businesses start to fall apart.

The thing about new trends is that businesses need to sell their products at the right time. It means they have to keep on studying the market to speculate their next products. If a small business fails to deliver during the peak of the trend, then it will suffer a heavy loss.

Solutions to Grow a Small Business

The best thing about businesses is that there is an attempt to find a solution for every challenge. It brings out the competition in the market, which is huge for surfacing different kinds of solutions a business can adopt.

1. Reduce the Expenses

When it comes to expenses, businesses are focused on spending huge sums on communication because communication is the key element of increasing customers and revenue. It’s not a big problem for big companies, but it is expensive for small businesses.

Fortunately, the cloud telephony system has removed the dilemma while making business budgets because cloud phone services are cheaper than plain old telephone services.

It reduces the initial cost of new businesses up to 90%. Recent surveys suggest that over 74% of businesses prioritize cloud phone systems as their urgent investment.

The same goes for marketing which is necessary to attract potential customers. Small businesses don’t have enough budget to advertise their products.

The best solution for this is using social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. to promote and sell their products .

Case Study: Coffman Engineers

Coffman Engineers clearly states that although the cost of using a virtual phone number adhered to cloud phone is 50% more per employee, it still provides overall 25% more savings than plain old telephone service (POTS).

Coffman Engineers have been relying on cloud phones ever since their one office location faced a disaster. Now they have a disaster recovery feature built into their cloud phone system. It helped them to be ready for any disasters without losing communication with employees.

Not just that, they found all the necessary features bundled into one subscription package in a VoIP phone system. Such a facility enabled them to handle all their business communication using only one platform.

Key Takeaways

• Small businesses must invest in cloud telephony for business communication.
• Extensive use of social media to promote and sell your products/service.

2. Improve Employee Productivity

As we have already discussed earlier, manpower is a big challenge for small businesses. Hiring more employees doesn’t mean higher productivity. Businesses need to hire the right candidates to keep their expenses in check and improve productivity.

There are different tools available that can monitor what the employees are doing. Time tracking tools and workforce management tools are key components every business needs.

Especially in remote working scenarios, these tools are crucial to getting the full effort for the employees. Companies have seen a 35%-40% rise in productivity in employees working remotely with the use of tracking tools.

Case study: On The Map Marketing

On The Map Marketing , a digital marketing agency, used time tracking tools that showed that remote working employees tend to work more hours since they can work at flexible hours.

On The Map Marketing first started using the time tracking tool when they were opening their office in Riga, Latvia. The CTO of the company wanted the time spent on different tasks on his computer as well as managing the remote working employees.

Using a time tracking tool , they were able to track their productivity with a detailed report of their daily activities during office hours. It helped them calculate salary bonuses. They also found the productivity level of each employee to determine their value for the company.

• Small businesses should use a time tracking tool to make sure employees focus on their office work.
• Small businesses can track the performance of each employee at office locations or remote working locations.

3. Reward Your Customers

A business becomes successful when it can keep its customers happy. In efforts to upscale a small business quickly, the marketplace has seen a decline in the quality of products and services. It is a primary reason for customer dissatisfaction.

About 45% of business professionals rate customer experience as their top priority for growing a business.

Survey says more than 85% of buyers are willing to spend more for a better customer experience. Therefore, small businesses need to focus on improving their quality of products and services, which is a powerful indicator of customer experience.

Case study: Starbucks

Starbucks introduced a Reward Loyalty Program in which customers collect stars to get exciting rewards. This program drives 40% of Starbucks’s total sales .

By adapting the gamification method, Starbucks added a reward loyalty program to their already established app. This move drastically increased sales and digital traffic. They brought mobile payment, customer loyalty, and content partnership in one powerful app.

Customers started registering for My Reward via their app. They are given stars(points) in exchange for their interaction in the app or purchase made. The higher the number of stars a customer gets, the better rewards they get.

• Small businesses can give different forms of rewards for more customer engagement.
• Improvement in customer service can drive more sales and attract more customers.

4. Build Your Brand

Small businesses should learn to build their brand image . While marketing any product or service, the brand image is a key factor for understanding how people view your business.

A brand image must first include mission, vision, and values. It also requires a brand positioning statement that can set your business apart from the competitors.

It’s important to create a unique brand personality. For this, businesses need to design a good logo because customers are most likely to recognize a business looking at a logo. They will have to identify their target audience to craft a good brand image.

According to a study, around 89% of users stay loyal to a business with a good brand image .

Case study: Apple

Apple logo is a well-recognized design that reflects the brand value. Over the years, the Apple logo has gone through several design changes.

The most important rebranding of the company came when Steve Jobs changed the logo which impacted the overall personality of the company. Now, this logo is the most recognized logo in the world.

Looking at the Apple logo, customers can feel a sense of trust, reliability, and innovation . It is the main reason for the huge sales of all Apple products across the globe.

• Branding helps a business build strong relationships with prospects and attract them to be loyal customers.
• Small businesses need to create a strong brand image to sell their products efficiently.

5. Prioritize on Partnerships

Partnerships and collaboration can lift the businesses to maximize their cost savings. It allows businesses to strengthen their programs using available resources and tools.

This has a direct effect on improving the efficiency of their operations. It improves the credibility of the business in the marketplace.

Case study: RENAULT & NISSAN

Renault and Nissan have a strong partnership in automobiles. Their partnership made a remarkable achievement of making up 10% of new car sales worldwide .

Renault and Nissan chose to make an alliance rather than a merger because an alliance has many stronger benefits than a merger would give.

With an alliance, they can access more geographical areas where foreign investments are restricted. These companies got better chances to enter each other’s territory where they were already established companies because of the alliance.

Although they faced numerous challenges including fluctuation in price share, they managed to resolve issues and succeed.

• Small businesses can collaborate with other businesses to increase their chances of higher product sales and profit for everyone.
• Partnership with other businesses allows all parties to take benefits from each other’s strong areas.

6. The Right Marketing Strategy

Every business requires to sell its product and services to the market. Without marketing, a business cannot compete in the marketplace. The first thing about marketing is knowing your target audience and competitors.

When small businesses know who they are competing against, it will help them to see how the competitors are executing their business and attracting their customers.

One such way is to grow your website traffic which can bring you more leads and eventually customers. And how do you increase your website traffic? SEO. If done right, Search Engine Optimization can drive huge traffic to your website to reach your marketing goals.

Case study: Zapier

Zapier used an SEO strategy revolving around long-tail keywords for generating organic traffic to their website. They created 25,000 unique landing pages for unique keywords.

Zapier had a structure and layout for each page including well-optimized human written content. They outsourced SEO content and focused on a playbook for the onboarding process and launched new apps so that they can get partners to write content for them.

On top of that, they also outsourced link building to their partners. These partners wrote valuable guest post content of Zapier on their site and gave a backlink to Zapier. It helped Zapier to get new users as well as drive their website traffic.

• Small Businesses should improve their website traffic by adding more landing pages with relevant content.
• Backlinks through guest posts on other websites can drive more website traffic and attract more prospects.

Now that we have discussed these examples, let’s see how you can create these studies.

Now that you have a fair idea of the business challenges and solutions, there is a good chance of delivering a good strategy for growing your small business.

On top of that, the case study examples above will help you view how other businesses overcome their situation to take their business to new heights.

The most important aspect of upscaling a small business is understanding the customer’s needs. Therefore, you should design a persuasive marketing strategy to attract customers and compete with other businesses in the market.

And a good marketing strategy for any business must include social media. And to make the most of your social media marketing efforts try SocialPilot for free today.

Frequently Asked Questions

🌟 How do you upscale a small business?

Upscaling a small business is a very challenging process. Whether it's making a budget or hiring employees, you have to focus on things that are best for your business. Planning, targeting prospects, marketing strategy, etc. are crucial steps for upscaling businesses and competing with big companies.

🌟 What is a small scale business?

Small scale businesses or Small scale industries (SSI) provide products and services on a small level. Normally in the US, a small business consists of less than 250 employees. Also, it has small capital investments and less office space.

🌟 Why do entrepreneurs find it difficult to scale up?

New entrepreneurs find difficulty in scaling up their businesses because they don’t know what to do. Even if they know, they have to face many challenges like market research, finding loans, allocating space, etc. Also, legal matters are always a major concern for making changes.

🌟 Why is scalability important in business?

Scalability is important because it directly impacts business competition, profitability, brand image, and product quality. Since small businesses have huge growth potential and high return on investment (ROI), they have to properly focus on scalability.

🌟 When should you scale a business?

A small business should look for upscaling its business if it has achieved a minimum annual growth of 20% over 2-3 years with only 10 or more active employees.

About the Author

Sujan Thapaliya

Sujan Thapaliya is the CEO and Co-founder of KrispCall . He has a wealth of computer, communications, and security experience. Through KrispCall, he aspires to make business communication safer, reliable, and more affordable.

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Technology in Business. 5 Successful Cases When Companies Succeeded in Digital

• Domino’s Pizza

What About Small Businesses?

Let the journey start.

We have compiled a list of bright stories and case studies on how technology in business helped improve KPIs and achieve better returns. Enjoy!

Domino’s Pizza

Context: Domino’s Pizza is one of the biggest pizza restaurant chains in the world. This is an international business operating in more than 83 countries . The business started its journey pretty successfully. In 2007, the stock price of Domino’s Pizza was $32.25. This was a good rise compared to $14.70 in 2004. But in 2008, things started to change. Domino’s experienced a steady decline. In October of the same year, their stock price was only $5.95. The team started to look for ways to revamp the business and grow again.

Challenge: Drop in demand and decrease in popularity. Domino’s Pizza had to transform their service delivery and bring more value to customers.

Solution: Domino’s team understood that making tasteful pizzas is not enough in the competitive environment. Technology and business had to be brought together to produce extra value. This value would help the company stand out and immediately attract client attention. The team knew that if you offer customers a better service at the same price, they will choose you over the competitors. This was the point when Domino’s turned into a tech-savvy company. Business technology was one of the tools that helped the business fight crisis. They started to integrate business technology to improve agility .

The company’s concept of Domino’s Anyware enables clients to order their favorite pizza via dozen of channels. This makes it very convenient for people to make an order regardless of where they are. Namely, you can order via Smart TV, Facebook Messenger, Alexa, and even Twitter! Twitter is probably the most impressive and unusual place to make orders. But it works. And here is how:

Domino’s Pizza makes this possible with the help of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Smart chatbots integrated into different digital channels process big volumes of data. They are also capable of automating order fulfillment. All you need to make use of Domino’s Anyware is to have your Pizza account registered. All the information, including the one about your favorite orders, will be automatically extracted from the account. Chatbots enable users to place and track their orders, speed up order processing, and improve the service based on client feedback.

When the pandemic attacked humanity, Domino’s also found a way to adjust. They offered the so-called Carside Delivery  option. It is the delivery method that enables clients to choose a side of the car where their order will be delivered. If, for instance, a customer sits in the front seat, the delivery person will put the order in the back seat.

Value: How does technology help business? Let’s see. With technology, Domino’s has become a company delivering multi-experience client service. Customers truly enjoy the convenience that Domino’s offers. The opportunity to order pizza nearly anywhere makes the business a part of a customer’s daily routine. Clients see the presence of the business in many channels. This sets a robust connection with the audience. Figures point to great results, too. This year, Domino’s increased their stock price to $396.96 .

Context: Michelin is the second largest tire manufacturer in the world. The company has a long history. It was founded more than 130 years ago. Since then, Michelin carries their best practices and values through time. Yet, the tech advancements of modern times don’t allow such a big business to stand aside. The company’s goal is to grow and self-improve together with their clients. As vehicles get smarter and more advanced, the businesses that serve car owners’ needs should keep pace with them as well.

Challenge: Stay competitive in the age of smart manufacturing and production.

Solution: Michelin decided to build an effective digital growth strategy with three focus areas. First, streamline and speed up business operations. Second, offer a personalized experience to their B2B clients and end users. Third, use technology to build new business strategies and models.

The company has an R&D department that constantly looks for ways to bring innovation to their business. Researchers extensively test AI capacities to streamline manufacturing and improve client experience. AI-powered data circulation across different areas of business enables the Micheline team to accelerate decisions and build a performant collective business intelligence all departments can rely on. What’s more, the company uses collaborative robots that automate routine jobs, save time, and alleviate the workload.

Value: With top-notch technology, Michelin reaches better ROI, gets more safety and comfort, and improves performance. AI-powered data storage, visualization, and the creation of new models allow the team to spend fewer physical resources on testing. They can test a new service delivery model with the software, create digital twins, and anticipate cost-prohibitive issues. This, in turn, reduces the risks and leads to more precise decision-making.

Context: As a leading retail giant, Walmart has a deep sense of market changes and the importance of technology for business. The need to transform the way clients interact with the brand became evident to Walmart’s team. Moreover, the company had enough capabilities to invest in digital transformation and upgrade back-office operations.

Challenge: Bring innovation, fight competition, and digitize the shopping experience.

Solution: The challenge of the use of technology in business had two sides. On the one hand, Walmart wanted to renovate the services they deliver to a customer. On the other hand, the team needed to revamp the way they run management, administration, and other in-house processes. In 2018, Walmart invested more than $11 billion in tech renovation. As a part of their business growth strategy, they decided to partner with leading tech companies. These were Google ( voice-enabled commerce ) and Microsoft (cloud computing).

Because of the changing consumer demands, Walmart also decided to strengthen their social media presence. Omnichannel retailing was a strategy for reaching a millennial audience and fully satisfying their needs. As for the back-office innovations, these included the modernization of the supply chain and inventory management. This enabled the company to lower the costs and service prices by optimizing and balancing them in various digital channels. AI-powered data analytics integrated into their supply chain solutions give the company access to data about a customer. Understanding client needs helps them to adjust their marketing effort and make data-driven decisions .

Walmart invested in Data Café , the data storing and management hub that processes data collected from more than 20 000 Walmart stores and more than 200 internal sources. In Data Café, Walmart data experts visualize, manipulate, and interpret data for faster decision-making and better ROI. The company also integrated artificial intelligence technologies for business as well as blockchain. This improved the traceability of products down the supply chain.

This is how the company’s digital transformation looked from the tech side:

Value: Walmart digitized their supply chain management, CRM , marketing and sales, and other aspects. This enabled the company to reach efficiency and reduce expenses. Faster inventory processing reduces time to market and enables the team to diversify client experiences. Walmart becomes a highly technological company with most of the processes running digitally.

Context: Nike is one of the leading apparel manufacturers that always put innovation and client comfort in the first place. This is rooted in the very mission of the company and the digital transformation strategy they follow. When the pandemic started, the company fully realized the need to go digital and work on online audience engagement. The team saw the gaps that had to be covered to build a robust ecommerce strategy.

Challenge: Update the ecommerce strategy so that online retail becomes a robust revenue channel.

Solution: In 2017, Nike decided to move away from wholesale and build a strategy for directly connecting with their clients. Direct access to the target audience has become a priority for Nike’s team. The decision to exit wholesale was tricky as 80% of Nike’s profit came exactly from it. Other businesses probably wouldn’t take such a risk. But Nike did. The company’s desire to differentiate itself pushed them to build and improve their digital channels.

To increase the significance of Nike’s digital channels for a user, the brand needed to build an ecosystem. Like Apple’s example, Nike used the capacity of business technology to build applications that extend the company’s services. These are Nike Run Club and Nike Training Club apps that can be downloaded to mobile devices:

Users of these apps get access to various training programs. They become members of Nike’s community. Clients now think of the company not as a retailer but as a brand cultivating a healthy lifestyle and making perfect clothes and footwear for doing sports.

Value: Ecommerce sales of Nike were estimated at 43% today . Though, the company expects them to reach 50% by the end of the year. Understanding client needs that go beyond primitive shopping habits lies at the core of Nike’s recent success. The company managed to integrate business technology into building a direct and personalized connection with their audience.

Context: From the very beginning, Tesla knew how to use technology in business to stand out. Tesla was not among the typical industry representatives. The positioning of the brand included transformational and innovative ideas. The bunch of benefits the company offers to the audience impresses. Tesla cars are highly innovative, eco-friendly, future-proof, and easy to maintain. How does Tesla manage to achieve such a great result? With effective technology, of course.

Challenge: Use top-notch technologies to redefine the way people see cars and their functions.

Solution: Tesla is the only car manufacturer in the world that introduces software updates over the air. To get safety, performance, or convenience updates, a client doesn’t need to put effort. The manufacturer automatically improves the vehicle’s characteristics and capacities. All you need to do is to download a software update using Wi-Fi and launch the installation.

What’s more, a person doesn’t have to visit a showroom to purchase a car. The company uses online channels to enable online car purchases across the globe. As in the case of the pizza ordered from Domino’s, you can fill in the form and order a Tesla car. Such a simple approach to sales simplifies the way one has to go through to decide if they need a new vehicle.

Sure, the opportunity to visit a showroom and run a test drive is available. This automotive company also plans to integrate AR technology into the manufacturing process. AR is expected to ensure quick data access for manufacturers across the factory. The workers will easily get the images they need in front of their eyes to ensure an uninterrupted and smooth production chain process.

Tesla regularly introduces new interesting features to their infotainment software system. There are popular apps integrated into the system. These include streaming platforms and video portals like YouTube, Netflix, or Hulu. What’s the most exciting is that you can turn the arcade mode on and use your steering wheel buttons for game navigation. Sure, this function is unavailable when driving. But as soon as you park the car, you can enjoy the multi-dimensional experiences that the smart vehicle gives you.

Value: For Tesla clients, the company has turned from a car manufacturer only to a brand with a consistent mission and significant impact on the market. Tesla Motors managed to set an uninterrupted connection with their audience. By offering unique opportunities for clients, they got rid of the need to have a mediator between them and their customers. Tesla directly influences the audience. This reduces the time needed to present a product to the market.

Besides, the company transformed people’s view of the function of cars. In addition to primitive values like transportation ability, a car has become a place where you enjoy a high comfort level and entertainment opportunities.

Hearing success stories of well-known brands is truly inspiring. But what if you are a small-size company that plans to grow and digitize? We would say that it’s even better. When you are on the market for a long time, it’s harder for you to revamp your processes in the company. It’s hard to teach people to work differently and to teach clients to perceive your business and your values differently. This is why growing businesses can digitize their operations with fewer risks and losses.

The use of technology in businesses is a win-to-win solution. You can perform many types of work and roles with technology. If you want to conduct a full-scale digital transformation, contact our team and we will do it together. If you are wondering what to start with, we’ll give you a few ideas of useful software tools that can upgrade and modernize your work.

• Project management software. If you have several teams that deal with different processes, a project management tool can be a useful addition to the communication software you use. It helps managers to track everyone’s activity daily, assign new roles and tasks to remote workers, set goals and plans, track progress, prevent delays, schedule video conferencing, etc.
• CRM system. A custom relationship management system enables marketers and sales departments to manage their customer information and relationships with clients digitally. With such software programs, you’ll know when it’s the right time to get in touch with your clients not to lose them.
• HR management system. Such a system is used for managing work schedules, time offs, sick leaves, announcing important dates, etc. You’ll keep track of how your company grows, how many teams you have and what team composition is, and much more. Combining HR systems with management information systems can give you clues on how to improve your organization’s key metrics.
• E-signature tools. A perfect choice if your employees work remotely. Such tools enable your team to sign documents and agreements online. All you need is to create an electronic signature in such a tool and provide your email address to sign and receive documents.
• Accounting and automated reporting software. Managing incomes, taxes, invoices, and automated generation of reports is possible with accounting systems. You’ll reduce the workload of your accountants, prevent fraud, and eliminate mistakes in calculations.
• Password management tool. More and more people choose this type of software. There’s no need to worry about the security of all your accounts. A password management system allows you to store all your passwords safely in one place and ensures the safety of remote work.
• Data backup software. A secure data backup tool allows you to protect your data in case of a system vulnerability or crack.

In this article, we explained how technology helps business growth. No matter how big your business is, there are plenty of ways new tech can help you grow. For big enterprises, investing money in full-scale IT renovation can be a way to become more efficient and performant. For small business owners that plan to grow, digitizing their business function will also mean process optimization and more opportunities to scale up.

Forbytes is a software product engineering company with cross-industry experience in the business world. We can help you customize the software to fully meet your needs or build a solution from scratch. Our products are user-oriented and capable to prepare your business for tomorrow.

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B2B Brand Awareness: Examples both big (integrated, geo-targeted marketing campaign) and small (bootstrapped startup’s new image)

Try this prompt using the Conversion Pro expert assistant in MECLABS AI to get ideas for improving your landing pages and homepage. It's totally FREE to use, for now (MECLABS is MarketingSherpa’s parent organization):

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Quick Case Study #1: How software development company increased leads 33% with a non-traditional B2B marketing approach focused on its industry’s geographic concentration

“In this project, for which the SOFTSWISS Marketing Team received recognition at the EGR Marketing Innovations Awards 2023, we employed a creative solution uncommon in the technology industry,” said Valentina Bagniya, CMO, SOFTSWISS .

SOFTSWISS is an international tech product company with 15 years of experience. While the iGaming software provider’s target audience in general is globally dispersed, the team focused this campaign on Malta.

“Despite having a population of less than half a million, Malta's stature as an online gambling leader is notable, especially considering that 10% of the world's online gaming companies are registered and represented there,” she said.

Lest you think this case study only applies to this industry, remember, there are many industries that have a geographic concentration:

• Technology and innovation in Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, and Bangalore
• Entertainment and film in Hollywood, Bollywood, and Kollywood
• Finance on Wall Street
• Automative in Detroit
• Wine in Bordeaux
• Pharmaceuticals in Basel
• Diamonds in Antwerp

And of course, industry events cause a geographical concentration in certain locations for brief periods as well (another aspect covered in this case study).

BEFORE: Traditional industry approach results in low brand awareness in Malta

In previous marketing communications, the company focused on the rational benefits of the product and used only traditional digital channels.

Creative Sample #1: Example of previously used digital banners highlighting rational brand features

AFTER: Non-traditional B2B campaign strategy with a simple message and eye-catching visuals

The gambling software development company realized that thanks to its industry’s concentration in Malta, it could take approaches that were non-traditional for B2B, and more like the FMCG industry.

“The high concentration of B2B iGaming audiences in Malta and, hence the high affinity of media channels that are typically not very relevant for B2B TA, prompted us to adopt a non-standard approach for B2B in choosing the mix of channels,” she said.

The team launched the campaign in October with an eye on the key industry event of the year – SiGMA Europe 2022 – that was held in November.

Step #1: Channel selection

Competitors limited their non-digital promotion methods to participation in various iGaming events. Which meant the SOFTSWISS team could stand out in channels like OOH advertising, radio, in-mall ads, flight magazines, and airport advertisements.

The choice of channels was based on the below research.

Step #2: Teaser campaign

To stand out even more, the team went with a high-concept branding approach for its teaser campaign that was more typical of B2C brands. The ‘Bringing the Heat’ creative concept was developed, with a message rooted in urban slang, meaning ‘adding power.’

But before they launched that main campaign, the team launched a teaser campaign with similar visuals and coloration – the team chose a hot pepper as the key symbol of the campaign – with the line 'Blazing In.'

Creative Sample #2: Key visual featuring the chilli pepper

 “Traditionally, it's understood that B2B and B2C target audiences have different needs and preferences. However, in this campaign, we proceeded from the understanding that regardless of what is being purchased, the final decision is made by a person. And no matter the context in which a person makes a decision, it primarily comes from understanding the value the product provides. Here, not only rational factors or reasons are important but also emotional ones,” she said.

Creative Sample #3: Social media post from Aleksei Trudov excited to see bus advertising for a gambling software provider

Step #3: Main campaign

The team chose five C-level executives from SOFTSWISS to feature in the main campaign, executives that the target audience could then recognize at industry events or around Malta.

Creative sample #4: Key visuals featuring the C-level

The creative campaign also featured below-the-line, in-person experiential activations. For example, the team offered unique ice cream with spicy flavors such as chilli-mango and strawberry chilli (yellow and red, representing the brand colors of SOFTSWISS) near the offices of 29 potential clients for two days, serving 800 people.

Creative sample #5: Below The Line activities

And to target industry experts flying to Malta for the iGaming event, the team had five ad placements at Malta International Airport (OOH billboard, departure, arrivals, baggage areas) and in the in-flight Bizzilla Magazine.

The integrated campaign included PR, with four press and post releases, articles for iGaming media magazines, and podcast interviews.

RESULTS: Growth in brand awareness and target audience engagement

The campaign was meant to be a 360-degree experience that the target audience couldn’t ignore. It achieved the following results:

• Branded keyword clicks increased 104% vs the previous period (before the campaign)
• Leads (using UTM codes to qualify leads from the campaign) increased 33%
• Organic traffic increased 45%
• Nearly all targets were achieved, spending 40% less than the projected budget

Besides the measurable KPIs, the campaign helped SOFTSWISS increase employee loyalty thanks to C-level managers’ role as the main campaign heroes. Competitors inquired about the brains behind the idea and shared photos of the C-level executives, whom they recognized from the billboards and had the opportunity to engage with at the company’s event booth.

“In a young, competitive sector like ours, unique and engaging communication can have a substantial impact. Establishing a compelling creative brand image facilitates the presentation of rational product features, making the brand more attractive and recognizable,” she said.

But what sticks out for a moment in time does not last forever. “In the context of a small Maltese audience, creative content becomes less effective over time as the audience becomes accustomed to and bored with repeatedly seeing the same banners. Planning such campaigns for the short term is recommended,” she said.

And what works in one market, does not work in every market. For instance, in LATAM, the team sees value in partnerships with celebrities and influencers. “Brazilians tend to buy from those they know and trust. It's important to them that the brand is represented by locals. This is also about the emotional connection with the brand,” she said.

Quick Case Study #2: Small remote hiring company grows clients from Facebook advertising while reducing turnover

The previous case study showed the impact of an all-in branding campaign. But even a smaller business that can’t afford a 360-degree campaign can improve results. Let’s take a look at the story of Virtustant, a remove hiring company.

BEFORE – Starting small

When the remote hiring company started, the two partners themselves were the only employees, and the logo looked amateurish.

Creative Sample #6: Remote hiring company logo (before)

“We found the clients by advertising on Facebook with my savings,” said Erik Reid, CEO, Virtustant . The CTA focused on a free consultation.

Creative Sample #7: Facebook ad for remote hiring company (before)

This got the company clients and remote workers, however the turnover rate was high. But they were young and scrappy and dedicated to improving. “We quickly adopted the strategy of ‘the aggregation of marginal gains’ by Sir Dave Brailsford. This is simply to try and grow 1% a day,” Reid said.

One way they tried to grow was by improving their brand image. When I asked Reid if anything specific catalyzed this change, he told me, “There absolutely was a specific moment, and it was when we ran out of money again, due to the high turnover bleed we experienced from both sides of the spectrum. We decided to go through one last round of low-cost work and use the entirety of the result to invest in getting at least one serious company to hire through us.”

AFTER – Rebranding for a more professional identity

The previous logo was heavy and “didn’t bring much to the table in the way of transmitting just how simple our process is.” It also conveyed a traditional sense of procedure, referencing the Greek laurels of victory, while the team considered their methods to be cutting-edge modernist.

So they created a new logo that had a more youthful approach, streamlining the many aspects of their work into one simple, friendly tick without sharp edges. “As comfortable as the couch where you can work from home,” he calls it.

The coloring also changed to represent a work focus, over a formal one, in the way that it brings to mind a traffic cone or construction area, but without the dangers (as working remotely is quite safe).

Creative Sample #8: Remote hiring company logo (after)

They hoped the new, more professional look would attract bigger, more serious clients. Since advertising is still one of the tactics the team uses, here’s an example of the new advertising look. While the message still focused on the lower cost of hiring someone from outside the United States, the CTA changed from a free consultation to a focus on the cost of hiring.

Creative Sample #9 Facebook ad for remote hiring company (after)

RESULTS – Growth and client satisfaction

In all of 2022, the team was able to get nine clients through Facebook ads. In 2024 so far, the international staffing firm has already gotten 11 clients.

And these were higher-quality clients. “We learned that good quality marketing and sales bring a better-quality customer, who is better served by the excellence of the candidates we’ve provided. This leads to recommendations to other companies they are friends with, and when their production grows, they call us back to hire more remote employees. It is a virtuous cycle to focus on those you can perceive as serious leads and not waste time with those who want to lowball,” he said.

This approach has helped the company grow from the original two co-founders to a team of 30.

EPILOGUE – Global team dynamics

In working on this story, Reid also shared with me many lessons about working with a global team, something many marketers and entrepreneurs reading this article do on a daily basis.

For one, the team pivoted from originally recruiting in Asia, which they initially focused on since Reid’s co-founder was working in Asia on a Mandarin teaching project. They found Latin America to be a better fit because the time zones better align with the United States, and there are more native English speakers.

Reid also cautioned that it’s important to understand the culture of workers outside your home market.

“It's important to have a diverse group of individuals who bring a different perspective to the job. However, sometimes the culture of where people are from is not explored enough to know that it will not mesh. America is a very unique country in the way we work, and the ‘grind’ mentality,” he said.

“We have seen many people struggle to enjoy and keep up with the hustle of American work culture.”

This article was distributed through the MarketingSherpa email newsletter .

Related resources

B2B Brand Marketing and Culture: The higher up you go, your priority becomes the people (podcast episode #88)

Strategic Branding For Small Businesses: B2C rebranding and B2B advertising case studies

4 Lessons About B2B Inbound Marketing from a Sunday Morning in the Coffee Shop

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Top 40 Case Studies of 2022-23

A case about a unique partnership to bring public toilet facilities to Indian slums earned the top spot in the 2022-23 Top 40 Yale case studies round up.

Delving into the complex project management landscape of a partnership between governments, designers, academic, and NGOs in India, the Project Sammaan case study jumped to the #1 spot this year from #30 in 2021 based largely on its strong sales to academic institutions.

Cases on the uses of debt and equity at Hertz that took the top two spots last year continued their strong showing this year at #2 and #3.

Surprisingly, the abridged version of the Toyota 2010 case leapt from #40 in last year’s roundup to #4; perennial favorite Coffee 2016 took #5 and cases involving search funds, private equity, and Cadbury, another perennial favorite, rounded out the top 10.

CRDT compiled the Top 40 list by combining data from its case store, Google Analytics, and other measures of interest and adoption.

Other year-end data for 2022-23 showed that:

• 26K case users from 156 countries and all 50 U.S. states interacted with 191 Yale cases.
• Over fifty percent of case users came from outside the U.S. with India, Tanzania, and the Philippines making up the bulk.
• 22 cases on the list are "raw" and 18 "cooked."
• The top 40 cases were supervised by 21 different Yale SOM current and former faculty members, several supervising multiple cases.

All of the 2022-23 Top 40 cases are available for purchase from the Yale Management Media store .

And the Top 40 cases for 2022-23 are:

1 Project Sammaan

2 Hertz Global Holdings (A): Uses of Debt and Equity

3 Hertz Global Holdings (B): Uses of Debt and Equity 2020

4 Toyota 2010 (Abridged)

5 Coffee 2016

6 Searching for a Search Fund Structure: A Student Takes a Tour of Various Options

7 Gardner Denver

8 Search Fund Company Boards: How CEOs Can Build Boards to Help Them Thrive

10 Suwanee Lumber Company (B)

11 Marina Bay Sands

12 IBM Corporate Service Corps

13 Shake Shack IPO

14 Children's Premier

15 Hirtle Callaghan & Co

16 Volkswagen

18 Commonfund ESG

19 Alternative Meat Industry

20 Mastercard

21 Palm Oil 2016

22 Design at the Mayo Clinic

23 Mercy Corps

24 Mike Erwin: An accidental social entrepreneur

25 DonorsChoose.org

28 The Alibaba Group

29 Giant Bicycle: Bike-Sharing in Taipei

30 American Greetings

31 Air Canada

32 Achievement First

33 Tesla in Germany

34 Nielsen: How Will the Company Maintain Its Commitments to Multiple Stakeholder Groups?

35 Climate Change Capital

36 2011 Debt Limit Crisis: How Should the Fed Respond?

37 The Future of Malls: Was Decline Inevitable?

39 Herman Miller

40 AXA: Creating the New CR Metrics

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The Secret Behind Successful Corporate Transformations

• Paul A. Argenti,
• Jenifer Berman,
• Ryan Calsbeek,
• Andrew Whitehouse

New research finds that just 22% percent succeed — and how you treat your employees can make all the difference.

There have been surprisingly few studies that set out to quantify what makes for a successful corporate transformation. Using a meta-analysis that crunched data on financial performance as well as corporate reputation, the authors examined 128 global companies that had undergone transformation between 2016 and 2020 and found that: 1) Transformation is even harder than expected (only 22% of companies in their sample were successful), and 2) Successful companies shared a common focus on initiatives that prioritized employees, including DE&I programs and support for women managers’ careers, in addition to competitive pay and access to health care.

Successful enterprise transformation has long been considered the holy grail of the corporate world — continually sought after, but difficult to grasp. More than 25 years ago, John Kotter highlighted the challenge when he made his now-famous assertion that 70% of corporate transformation efforts are doomed to fail.

• PA Paul A. Argenti is Professor of Corporate Communication at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business in Hanover, New Hampshire. He is the author of Corporate Communication , 7th edition (McGraw Hill, 2016) and Corporate Responsibility (Sage, 2015).
• JB Jenifer Berman is the former chief marketing officer of Insider Inc. and recently joined Goldman Sachs as the global head of content.
• RC Ryan Calsbeek is an Associate Professor of Biology at Dartmouth College.
• AW Andrew Whitehouse is the founder and managing partner of communications consulting firm Copperfield Advisory.

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Analysing Zomato’s marketing strategy: a case study of digital success or marketing fail?

By catering specifically to vegetarian customers, the company aimed to capture a niche market and differentiate itself from competitors.

By Bhaskar Majumdar

Zomato recently made waves with its introduction of ‘Pure Veg Mode’ and the subsequent controversy surrounding its colour-coded delivery service. This case presents a compelling study of whether the company’s actions represent digital success or a marketing failure.

The introduction of ‘Pure Veg Mode’ was a bold move by Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal. By catering specifically to vegetarian customers, the company aimed to capture a niche market and differentiate itself from competitors. However, the decision to use distinctive green attire and delivery boxes for vegetarian orders stirred up a storm of criticism. It’s critical to understand and consider your customers’ choices. However, a step like this is rather extreme. 

At first glance, the colour-coded strategy seemed like a savvy marketing tactic. It garnered significant media attention, sparked online debates, and even broke the charts on Google Trends. This suggests a successful execution of digital marketing techniques to create buzz and generate conversation around the brand. However, the backlash that followed painted a different picture. Critics argued that the segregation of delivery riders based on the type of cuisine they deliver was unnecessary and potentially discriminatory. The decision to backtrack and revert to the standard, red-coloured attire for all riders indicates a misstep in Zomato’s marketing strategy. Personally, am not in favour of overt engagement with a particular food preference.

From a marketing perspective, Zomato’s move can be seen as a double-edged sword. On one hand, it succeeded in generating buzz and increasing brand visibility, demonstrating the power of digital marketing in today’s landscape. On the other hand, the negative backlash tarnished the brand’s image and raised questions about the company’s understanding of consumer preferences and sensitivities.

An idea can sound great in the conference room, but when you get it out there, not so much.

Sometimes what you thought was a great idea can go wrong in so many ways. Whether it’s how it’s executed or how it’s perceived, the result can be a complicated mess that can hurt your brand. Today, marketers are exploring new channels and new media. Competition is intense and as you chase after that viral video or trending tweet, marketing fails to happen. Even the biggest, most recognisable brands make them. And these blunders can be incredibly costly. 

The timing of the announcement, just before elections, further fueled speculation about the company’s intentions. Some viewed it as a deliberate attempt to capitalise on political discourse surrounding vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism. In today’s digital era, where social media holds considerable sway in moulding public perception, brands must be cognizant of the narratives they propagate and the responses they provoke from their audience. Transparency and openness to feedback stand as fundamental tenets of successful communication strategies. Conversely, I appreciate Deepinder Goyal’s comprehensive elucidation of the rationale behind retracting the decision. This episode also underscores the significance of thorough research preceding business decisions. Whether this was a calculated move, or an oversight remains open to interpretation.

Despite the controversy, Zomato’s case offers valuable lessons for marketers. It highlights the importance of understanding the nuances of consumer behaviour and preferences. While bold initiatives can drive attention and engagement, they also carry inherent risks. Brands must carefully weigh the potential benefits against the potential backlash before implementing such strategies. 

Moreover, Zomato’s experience underscores the growing influence of social media in shaping public discourse and perceptions of brands. In today’s digital age, companies must be prepared to navigate the complex landscape of online conversations and respond effectively to feedback from consumers and stakeholders.

Another perspective suggests that Zomato may have accomplished its intended goals – garnering attention and necessary publicity. Although there isn’t empirical evidence to validate success or failure, nor clear logic to support it, the shared economy concept, encompassing companies like Uber, Ola, Zomato, Oyo, and AirBnB, is relatively recent. Within this framework, Zomato and its counterparts are even newer. By engaging in discussions and debates on social media, we inadvertently contribute to the attention and publicity that Zomato sought, indicating a well-considered strategy on their part.

Zomato’s foray into ‘Pure Veg Mode’ serves as a compelling case study of digital marketing success and failure. The interesting thing though is that the markets have liked it. Zomato is outperforming the indices by a margin. While the company succeeded in generating buzz and sparking conversations, the backlash it faced highlights the pitfalls of overlooking consumer sensitivities. Ultimately, brands must tread carefully in their pursuit of attention and engagement in the digital realm.

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The Business Leaders Guide to Climate Adaptation & Resilience

The climate adaptation guide.

The Business Leaders Guide to Climate Adaptation & Resilience supports senior decision-makers and their functional teams to integrate climate adaptation and resilience into organizational strategy, governance, and operations. Developed by WBCSD, Bain & Company, and Jupiter Intelligence, with the support of leading global businesses, the guide contains nine modules, each of which includes tools, frameworks, and case studies to facilitate action across various adaptation challenges. 

Why this Guide matters  

Climate adaptation and resilience are crucial for businesses, as the risks posed by climate change are increasing, including disruptions in supply chains and infrastructure failures, workforce displacement, increased cost of inputs, and more. Businesses must act to safeguard the resilience of workforces, key supply chains, and the communities and natural ecosystems upon which they depend, building collective resilience and avoiding maladaptation.  

The cost of inaction is enormous, and investing in resilience can have high rates of return. Now is the moment for visionary business leaders to act fast to reduce risk and benefit from an early-mover advantage.   

This guide helps business leaders build or adjust their approach to managing risk, access practical frameworks for building resilience, and take immediate next steps for their organization's adaptation journey. 

Key Themes 

Throughout the guide, three key themes emerge: 

• Act Now: The time to act is now to avoid risk, safeguard communities, and unlock new adaptation-related business opportunities. 
• Coordinated Business Strategy: Effective climate adaptation demands a coordinated transformation across all business functions, shifting from a reactive to a proactive risk management approach. 
• Local Collaboration: Collaboration with diverse stakeholders at local and national levels is essential to building collective resilience within and beyond the value chain. 

Expert insights  

The Business Leaders Guide is a comprehensive resource that offers insights and tools for businesses to take adaptation and resilience action. The guide was developed with WBCSD members from different sectors and regions and was supported by an expert panel of 12 leading global companies. These companies, including Bayer, Diageo, EDF, edp, Engie, Meta, Mitsubishi, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Philips, Swire, and Swiss Re, shared their knowledge and experiences to strengthen the guide test applicability for businesses worldwide. 

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As the work towards climate-resilient businesses continues, we invite stakeholders and companies to join us on this transformative journey to accelerate action and investment in climate adaptation, to build a more resilient future for all. 

To find out more about WBCSD’s physical risk, climate adaptation and resilience work and/or to get involved, please contact Madeline Ojakovoh ( [email protected] ). 

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What Researchers Discovered When They Sent 80,000 Fake Résumés to U.S. Jobs

Some companies discriminated against Black applicants much more than others, and H.R. practices made a big difference.

By Claire Cain Miller and Josh Katz

A group of economists recently performed an experiment on around 100 of the largest companies in the country, applying for jobs using made-up résumés with equivalent qualifications but different personal characteristics. They changed applicants’ names to suggest that they were white or Black, and male or female — Latisha or Amy, Lamar or Adam.

On Monday, they released the names of the companies . On average, they found, employers contacted the presumed white applicants 9.5 percent more often than the presumed Black applicants.

Yet this practice varied significantly by firm and industry. One-fifth of the companies — many of them retailers or car dealers — were responsible for nearly half of the gap in callbacks to white and Black applicants.

Two companies favored white applicants over Black applicants significantly more than others. They were AutoNation, a used car retailer, which contacted presumed white applicants 43 percent more often, and Genuine Parts Company, which sells auto parts including under the NAPA brand, and called presumed white candidates 33 percent more often.

In a statement, Heather Ross, a spokeswoman for Genuine Parts, said, “We are always evaluating our practices to ensure inclusivity and break down barriers, and we will continue to do so.” AutoNation did not respond to a request for comment.

Companies With the Largest and Smallest Racial Contact Gaps

Of the 97 companies in the experiment, two stood out as contacting presumed white job applicants significantly more often than presumed Black ones. At 14 companies, there was little or no difference in how often they called back the presumed white or Black applicants.

Source: Patrick Kline, Evan K. Rose and Christopher R. Walters

Known as an audit study , the experiment was the largest of its kind in the United States: The researchers sent 80,000 résumés to 10,000 jobs from 2019 to 2021. The results demonstrate how entrenched employment discrimination is in parts of the U.S. labor market — and the extent to which Black workers start behind in certain industries.

“I am not in the least bit surprised,” said Daiquiri Steele, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama School of Law who previously worked for the Department of Labor on employment discrimination. “If you’re having trouble breaking in, the biggest issue is the ripple effect it has. It affects your wages and the economy of your community going forward.”

Some companies showed no difference in how they treated applications from people assumed to be white or Black. Their human resources practices — and one policy in particular (more on that later) — offer guidance for how companies can avoid biased decisions in the hiring process.

A lack of racial bias was more common in certain industries: food stores, including Kroger; food products, including Mondelez; freight and transport, including FedEx and Ryder; and wholesale, including Sysco and McLane Company.

“We want to bring people’s attention not only to the fact that racism is real, sexism is real, some are discriminating, but also that it’s possible to do better, and there’s something to be learned from those that have been doing a good job,” said Patrick Kline, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who conducted the study with Evan K. Rose at the University of Chicago and Christopher R. Walters at Berkeley.

The researchers first published details of their experiment in 2021, but without naming the companies. The new paper, which is set to run in the American Economic Review, names the companies and explains the methodology developed to group them by their performance, while accounting for statistical noise.

Sample Résumés From the Experiment

Fictitious résumés sent to large U.S. companies revealed a preference, on average, for candidates whose names suggested that they were white.

To assign names, the researchers started with a prior list that had been assembled using Massachusetts birth certificates from 1974 to 1979. They then supplemented this list with names found in a database of speeding tickets issued in North Carolina between 2006 and 2018, classifying a name as “distinctive” if more than 90 percent of people with that name were of a particular race.

The study includes 97 firms. The jobs the researchers applied to were entry level, not requiring a college degree or substantial work experience. In addition to race and gender, the researchers tested other characteristics protected by law , like age and sexual orientation.

They sent up to 1,000 applications to each company, applying for as many as 125 jobs per company in locations nationwide, to try to uncover patterns in companies’ operations versus isolated instances. Then they tracked whether the employer contacted the applicant within 30 days.

A bias against Black names

Companies requiring lots of interaction with customers, like sales and retail, particularly in the auto sector, were most likely to show a preference for applicants presumed to be white. This was true even when applying for positions at those firms that didn’t involve customer interaction, suggesting that discriminatory practices were baked in to corporate culture or H.R. practices, the researchers said.

Still, there were exceptions — some of the companies exhibiting the least bias were retailers, like Lowe’s and Target.

The study may underestimate the rate of discrimination against Black applicants in the labor market as a whole because it tested large companies, which tend to discriminate less, said Lincoln Quillian, a sociologist at Northwestern who analyzes audit studies. It did not include names intended to represent Latino or Asian American applicants, but other research suggests that they are also contacted less than white applicants, though they face less discrimination than Black applicants.

The experiment ended in 2021, and some of the companies involved might have changed their practices since. Still, a review of all available audit studies found that discrimination against Black applicants had not changed in three decades. After the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, such discrimination was found to have disappeared among certain employers, but the researchers behind that study said the effect was most likely short-lived.

Gender, age and L.G.B.T.Q. status

On average, companies did not treat male and female applicants differently. This aligns with other research showing that gender discrimination against women is rare in entry-level jobs, and starts later in careers.

However, when companies did favor men (especially in manufacturing) or women (mostly at apparel stores), the biases were much larger than for race. Builders FirstSource contacted presumed male applicants more than twice as often as female ones. Ascena, which owns brands like Ann Taylor, contacted women 66 percent more than men.

Neither company responded to requests for comment.

The consequences of being female differed by race. The differences were small, but being female was a slight benefit for white applicants, and a slight penalty for Black applicants.

The researchers also tested several other characteristics protected by law, with a smaller number of résumés. They found there was a small penalty for being over 40.

Overall, they found no penalty for using nonbinary pronouns. Being gay, as indicated by including membership in an L.G.B.T.Q. club on the résumé, resulted in a slight penalty for white applicants, but benefited Black applicants — although the effect was small, when this was on their résumés, the racial penalty disappeared.

Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination is illegal even if it’s unintentional . Yet in the real world, it is difficult for job applicants to know why they did not hear back from a company.

“These practices are particularly challenging to address because applicants often do not know whether they are being discriminated against in the hiring process,” Brandalyn Bickner, a spokeswoman for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said in a statement. (It has seen the data and spoken with the researchers, though it could not use an academic study as the basis for an investigation, she said.)

What companies can do to reduce discrimination

Several common measures — like employing a chief diversity officer, offering diversity training or having a diverse board — were not correlated with decreased discrimination in entry-level hiring, the researchers found.

But one thing strongly predicted less discrimination: a centralized H.R. operation.

The researchers recorded the voice mail messages that the fake applicants received. When a company’s calls came from fewer individual phone numbers, suggesting that they were originating from a central office, there tended to be less bias . When they came from individual hiring managers at local stores or warehouses, there was more. These messages often sounded frantic and informal, asking if an applicant could start the next day, for example.

“That’s when implicit biases kick in,” Professor Kline said. A more formalized hiring process helps overcome this, he said: “Just thinking about things, which steps to take, having to run something by someone for approval, can be quite important in mitigating bias.”

At Sysco, a wholesale restaurant food distributor, which showed no racial bias in the study, a centralized recruitment team reviews résumés and decides whom to call. “Consistency in how we review candidates, with a focus on the requirements of the position, is key,” said Ron Phillips, Sysco’s chief human resources officer. “It lessens the opportunity for personal viewpoints to rise in the process.”

Another important factor is diversity among the people hiring, said Paula Hubbard, the chief human resources officer at McLane Company. It procures, stores and delivers products for large chains like Walmart, and showed no racial bias in the study. Around 40 percent of the company’s recruiters are people of color, and 60 percent are women.

Diversifying the pool of people who apply also helps, H.R. officials said. McLane goes to events for women in trucking and puts up billboards in Spanish.

So does hiring based on skills, versus degrees . While McLane used to require a college degree for many roles, it changed that practice after determining that specific skills mattered more for warehousing or driving jobs. “We now do that for all our jobs: Is there truly a degree required?” Ms. Hubbard said. “Why? Does it make sense? Is experience enough?”

Hilton, another company that showed no racial bias in the study, also stopped requiring degrees for many jobs, in 2018.

Another factor associated with less bias in hiring, the new study found, was more regulatory scrutiny — like at federal contractors, or companies with more Labor Department citations.

Finally, more profitable companies were less biased, in line with a long-held economics theory by the Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker that discrimination is bad for business. Economists said that could be because the more profitable companies benefit from a more diverse set of employees. Or it could be an indication that they had more efficient business processes, in H.R. and elsewhere.

Claire Cain Miller writes about gender, families and the future of work for The Upshot. She joined The Times in 2008 and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. More about Claire Cain Miller

Josh Katz is a graphics editor for The Upshot, where he covers a range of topics involving politics, policy and culture. He is the author of “Speaking American: How Y’all, Youse, and You Guys Talk,” a visual exploration of American regional dialects. More about Josh Katz

From The Upshot: What the Data Says

Analysis that explains politics, policy and everyday life..

Employment Discrimination: Researchers sent 80,000 fake résumés to some of the largest companies in the United States. They found that some discriminated against Black applicants much more than others .

Pandemic School Closures: ​A variety of data about children’s academic outcomes and about the spread of Covid-19 has accumulated since the start of the pandemic. Here is what we learned from it .

Affirmative Action: The Supreme Court effectively ended race-based preferences in admissions. But will selective schools still be able to achieve diverse student bodies? Here is how they might try .

N.Y.C. Neighborhoods: We asked New Yorkers to map their neighborhoods and to tell us what they call them . The result, while imperfect, is an extremely detailed map of the city .

Dialect Quiz:  What does the way you speak say about where you’re from? Answer these questions to find out .

Reduce Power Energy Cost Using Hybrid Six Sigma Based on Fuzzy MADM: A Case Study in Mechanical Factory

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White-sounding names get called back for jobs more than Black ones, a new study finds

Joe Hernandez

A sign seeking job applicants is seen in the window of a restaurant in Miami, Florida, on May 5, 2023. Joe Raedle/Getty Images hide caption

A sign seeking job applicants is seen in the window of a restaurant in Miami, Florida, on May 5, 2023.

Twenty years ago, two economists responded to a slew of help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers using a set of fictitious names to test for racial bias in the job market.

The watershed study found that applicants with names suggesting they were white got 50% more callbacks from employers than those whose names indicated they were Black.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago recently took that premise and expanded on it, filing 83,000 fake job applications for 11,000 entry-level positions at a variety of Fortune 500 companies.

Their working paper , published this month and titled "A Discrimination Report Card," found that the typical employer called back the presumably white applicants around 9% more than Black ones. That number rose to roughly 24% for the worst offenders.

The research team initially conducted its experiment in 2021, but their new paper names the 97 companies they included in the study and assigns them grades representing their level of bias, thanks to a new methodology the researchers developed.

"Putting the names out there in the public domain is to move away from a lot of the performative allyship that you see with these companies, saying, 'Oh, we value inclusivity and diversity,'" said Pat Kline, a University of California, Berkeley economics professor who worked on the study. "We're trying to create kind of an objective ground truth here."

America Reckons With Racial Injustice

From jobs to homeownership, protests put spotlight on racial economic divide.

The names that researchers tested include some used in the 2004 study as well as others culled from a database of speeding tickets in North Carolina. A name was classified as "racially distinctive" if more than 90% of people with that name shared the same race.

Applicants with names such as Brad and Greg were up against Darnell and Lamar. Amanda and Kristen competed for jobs with Ebony and Latoya.

What the researchers found was that some firms called back Black applicants considerably less, while race played little to no factor in the hiring processes at other firms.

Dorianne St Fleur, a career coach and workplace consultant, said she wasn't surprised by the findings showing fewer callbacks for presumed Black applicants at some companies.

"I know the study focused on entry-level positions. Unfortunately it doesn't stop there. I've seen it throughout the organization all the way up into the C-suite," she said.

St Fleur, who primarily coaches women of color, said many of her clients have the right credentials and experience for certain jobs but aren't being hired.

"They are sending out dozens, hundreds of resumes and receiving nothing back," she said.

What the researchers found

Much of a company's bias in hiring could be explained by its industry, the study found. Auto dealers and retailers of car parts were the least likely to call back Black applicants, with Genuine Auto Parts (which distributes NAPA products) and the used car retailer AutoNation scoring the worst on the study's "discrimination report card."

"We are always evaluating our practices to ensure inclusivity and break down barriers, and we will continue to do so," Heather Ross, vice president of strategic communications at Genuine Parts Company, said in an email.

AutoNation did not reply to a request for comment.

The companies that performed best in the analysis included Charter/Spectrum, Dr. Pepper, Kroger and Avis-Budget.

Workplace Diversity Goes Far Past Hiring. How Leaders Can Support Employees Of Color

Several patterns emerged when the researchers looked at the companies that had the lowest "contact gap" between white and Black applicants

Federal contractors and more profitable companies called back applicants from the two racial groups at more similar rates. Firms with more centralized human resources departments and policies also exhibited less racial bias, which Kline says may indicate that a standardized hiring workflow involving multiple employees could help reduce discrimination.

When it came to the sex of applicants, most companies didn't discriminate when calling back job-seekers.

Still, some firms preferred one sex over another in screening applicants. Manufacturing companies called back people with male names at higher rates, and clothing stores showing a bias toward female applicants.

What can workplaces — and workers — do

Kline said the research team hoped the public would focus as much on companies doing a bad job as those doing a good one, since they have potentially found ways to remove or limit racial bias from the hiring process.

"Even if it's true, from these insights in psychology and behavioral economics, that individuals are inevitably going to carry biases along with them, it's not automatic that those individual biases will translate into organizational biases, on average," he said.

St Fleur said there are several strategies companies can use to cut down on bias in the hiring process, including training staff and involving multiple recruiters in callback decisions.

Companies should also collect data about which candidates make it through the hiring process and consider standardizing or anonymizing that process, she added.

St Fleur also said she often tells her job-seeking clients that it's not their fault that they aren't getting called back for open positions they believe they're qualified for.

"The fact that you're not getting callbacks does not mean you suck, you're not a good worker, you don't deserve this thing," she said. "It's just the nature of the systemic forces at play, and this is what we have to deal with."

Still, she said job candidates facing bias in the hiring process can lean on their network for new opportunities, prioritize inclusive companies when applying for work and even consider switching industries or locations.