If your potential buyer is seeking a case study, that means you’re close to a sale. They want to see how your solution has been implemented and the result. To convince your buyer your case study needs to answer their questions without being too text-heavy.
Instead of listing the “problem” and “solution,” we need to show the reader the bigger picture. To fast-track buyer’s decision-making processes, a whitepaper needs social proof, big-picture stories, emotional connection, and of course, data.
It’s human nature to prefer to think about the easy things rather than the hard things, this is known as cognitive fluency, and it can impact a buyer’s willingness to convert. In fact, the easier it is to understand, the higher the trust. The Boston Globe explains it as: Easy = True. That means your content writer needs to choose words with care.
Always write for skim readers as human attention spans are short. The less information the reader needs to process, the more cognitive resources they have for taking the next step and clicking the call to action. We often find that three paragraphs can be transformed into a few easy-to-read sentences.
Get rid of jargon and always use the simpler word. Instead of ‘purchase’, we use ‘buy’, instead of ‘complimentary’, we use ‘free.’ If you write how people talk, they will be able to remember your message and talk about you to others. Word of mouth is still the holy grail in the marketing world, always has been, always will.
We always put the results upfront and explain the how and the why secondary. Why? Because numbers are attention-grabbing. They are easier to understand, more convincing, and they help set the framework, making it easier for the reader to understand the why.
Mid-report CTA’s are commonly overlooked. The point of the case study is to gain new clients, so you need to tell your reader what you want them to do next, and always give them options mid-report to take action early.
It’s also common to see the ending of an industry report rushed and incomplete. It’s important to summarize the end – what happened, what was achieved, – and conclude with a call to action that guides the potential customer to the next step in their journey.
There’s no hard and fast rule. Some online resources will say 500 to 1,500 words, and others say 5-15 pages. We always recommend keeping your case study to 2 pages. We achieve this by keeping it very metric-driven and recommend engaging a designer to create graphs, charts, and tables to illustrate results. Since your customer is in the final stages of consideration, we keep it short and write efficiently. If your preference is for a more descriptive case study, our content writers can deviate accordingly.
Traditionally whitepapers tend to be around 5,000 words, which is 10-single spaced pages. This can mean up to 15-20 pages once the design work is completed. But nowadays, whitepapers are getting shorter and shorter, often averaging 2,500-3,000 words.
Whitepapers can take 4-8 weeks by a team of content writers and designers to prepare, so we usually recommend producing one whitepaper quarterly, or half-yearly. Usually, whitepapers address long-term macro trends so a well-written whitepaper can be used for some time. We would only recommend producing more frequent whitepapers if you were creating a whitepaper that was targeting a different product, audience or industry.
Both. A case study and a whitepaper serve very different purposes. We think case studies are better suited to those at the bottom of the sales funnel looking to evaluate a solution and make a purchase. Whereas a whitepaper is better suited to those at the middle of the sales funnel and considering credible researched-based content to drive them to intent. If however, you wish to write your case study or whitepaper targeting other stages of the sales funnel our content writers can do so.
Yes, even though we specialise in copywriting and SEO, Etymon has a team of freelance designers who are experienced in designing industry reports. If you prefer, you can also engage your own-in house designer or freelance designer, and only engage us for the content writing services. We do recommend engaging our designers as it is often more efficient when the designer and content writer can work together, particularly when it comes to proofreading.
Etymon can provide desktop-based research using secondary sources, and we are open to interviewing your customers or employees. This, combined with the material our clients typically provide is usually sufficient. However, you may want to consider surveying your audience in-house or engage a third party for this aspect. We can assist with the copywriting for emails or social media posts to engage survey respondents.
