The Case Study Problem

Reviewed an agency's website a few months ago as part of a wider diagnostic. Good team, strong client list, decent creative work. The case study section had four projects in it, the most recent from 2022.

I asked the founder why. She said they'd been meaning to update it. They'd done some brilliant work since then, including a campaign that had won a couple of industry awards. But nobody had written it up, the client hadn't been asked for permission, and the internal marketing had been consistently deprioritised in favour of client delivery.

This is one of the more common patterns in agencies between about two and ten million. They're very good at building other companies' brands and quite bad at building their own. The marketing function, if there is one, tends to consist of someone junior who also does something else, and the founder's attitude is usually that the work should speak for itself.

The work doesn't speak for itself. It sits on an internal server and the prospect who's found your website sees four projects from three years ago and draws their own conclusions.

She committed to publishing one case study a month. Not elaborate productions. A few paragraphs, a clear description of the problem and the result, a client quote where possible. The kind of thing that takes half a day to put together if someone actually schedules the time.

Four months later the website had ten current case studies and the conversion rate on the contact page had roughly doubled. Not because the work had improved. Because the prospect could finally see it.