What is a Case Study and How to Write It

What is a case study, what are case studies good for, why do you need one, and how to write it? Find all the answers in our detailed guide!

What is a Case Study?

Have you ever come across a business walk through a real customer’s pain point, needs, and how they solved them? That’s a case study.

Case studies are detailed stories of customer experiences and are one of the most vital and effective tools for demonstrating a value of a product or service. They also play a huge role in a content marketing plan. Case studies involve a detailed look at a real-world problem and how it was addressed.

Case studies provide valuable and detailed insights into your business and allow businesses to carry out further research. A case study comes down to a few important things. They are:

1. A case study is a robust tool for exhibiting your hard work and the success that your customer has achieved.
2. It helps businesses identify specific problems and develop targeted solutions based on real-world evidence.
3. Case studies are “used by businesses as strategic tools to bolster marketing efforts, streamline their operations, and enhance customer efforts”.
4. A case study provides valuable and solid data a business needs to make guided decisions.
5. Case studies are both internal and external.

If you’re still unsure about what a case study is, these examples will make you understand better.

How Long is a Case Study

Knowing how long is a case study is the first step to writing it.

While many ask what are the three types of case studies, there are actually more types of case studies.

How long is a case study depends on the type of case study you are writing. Here’s a look at the type of case studies and their ideal word length.

How Long is a Case Study

                         Type                                                   Words

What is a Case Study and How Do You Write It

Internal Case Study Examples (Ideal word length: 300-600 Words)

Internal case studies stay within the organization and are used for process improvement, learning, and internal decision-making. Some internal case study examples include:

• The HR department noticed that new employees are taking considerable amount of time to become fully productive. A case study gets conducted, analyzing a successful onboarding experience from another department to assess what worked. The process discovered in the findings what standardized across the company, reducing the time it took employees to become fully productive by 30%.
• A business discovered that its promotional emails had low open rate (5%). It did an A/B testing for the subject lines for personalization and optimized the send time based on user engagement data. Resultantly, open rates increased to 20% in a month, while CTR increased by 30%.

These are two examples of an internal case study. An internal case study follows this format:

1. Title: “Internal Case Study: Improving Promotional Email Open Rates”.
2. Background: Here, the brief overview of the problem is mentioned.
3. Challenge: This part highlights the effect of the problem on the business.
4. Objective: The objective states what the team aimed to achieve, such as increased engagement.no
5. Action Taken: Summarizes the actions taken to address the problem.
6. Results: Mentions what was achieved after action was taken.
7. Learning/Next Steps/Conclusion: A brief conclusion of the whole case study. For example, this part will write, ‘Taking simple strategic steps and changing the timings of the emails sent had a big impact. The marketing team intends on applying this testing approach to future emails and campaigns for continuous improvement’.

External Case Study (Ideal Word Length: 500-800 Words)

Moving on further in our blog on what is a case study and how to write it PDF or word, the next sub-topic we’ll briefly cover is an external case study.

• The business designed a website for a local business. The client had an outdated website with poor navigation and mobile responsiveness, which led to a significant decline in online orders. As a result, the business redesigned the website prioritizing a mobile first design, improved SEO and product descriptions, and also added an online ordering system. The results were a 70% increase in mobile traffic, orders doubling up within a month, and improved customer feedback. An external case study will highlight this step-by-step.

External case study format:

• Title
• Overview of the client
• The problem
• The result achieved
• Ideally a client testimonial
• CTA

We hope these case study examples enhanced your understanding of what a case study is. We also hope you are now better equipped to write one. In the next section, we’ll provide an exact example of how you can write a case study with an easy-to-understand example.

How Do You Write a Case Study

Now let’s move on to how do you write a case study. For our case study example, we’ll write an external case study. However, if you want us to cover internal case study examples, do let us know in the comments below!

How a Flower Shop Sold Out of Stock in Only 2 Weeks

Client Overview:

Client: A Flower Shop

Industry: Flowers

A Flower Shop is small, individual owned flower shop in Connecticut that sells handpicked flowers. They were struggling with their customer base and wanted to grow their online presence.

The Challenge

Though the quality and collection at A Flower Shop was incredible, their customer base and online orders were declining. They had a website, however, due to their struggling customer base, they wanted to grow their online presence, particularly, on social media.

The Solution

We began with the basics:

1. Redesigned their website, clearly mentioning their social media handles
2. Set up their social media accounts, namely Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn.
3. Created fun, contemporary content around flowers, how they can brighten up your and someone else’s day, how handpicked flowers hold a more deeper value, and why quality matters in flowers.
4. Ran a $200 campaign and targeted flower lowers in Connecticut

The Results

Within four weeks:

• Their flower sales increased by 70%
• They had 10K followers on Instagram, 3K on Facebook, 12K on TikTok
• Their most viral video on TikTok got over 60K views
• They got orders from Connecticut daily, with others in nearby places asking for delivery.

Testimonial

“We weren’t aware of the impact of social media on a business until now. Everything just worked and the results were beyond our expectation”.

Takeaway

Businesses that aren’t focusing on social media, should, due to its significant impact on reach and sales. With the right tools, strategy, and content, a business can go from 0 to 20% and beyond.

Saving Your Case Study

We hope now the answer to the question ‘case study what is it’ is now clearer.

Once you’ve written your case study, its time to save it. We often get asked about what is a case study and how to write it PDF.

Well, to write a case study in PDF, you need to write it in word and then save the document as PDF.

Conclusion

If you’ve been overwhelmed by the question what is a case study, this guide should have answered that in great detail with examples. But, briefly again, what a case study is if not a robust tool that showcases actual, real-world problems that are solved using specific solutions, tools, and strategies.

A case study is a real-world story that highlights a problem, either within the business or outside, the actions that were taken to address it, and the  measurable outcomes that were achieved.

From what a case study is, to how long is a case study, and how to write it, we’ve covered everything to help you write an effective one. Plus, with our case study examples, we hope you become better equipped to write one for your business or company.

Be it using a case study internally or externally, understanding case study what it is helps businesses learn from real examples, build their reputation, and also enhance their decision-making.

Want to boost your business success without spending? Beyond the insights from case studies, explore strategies like how to get my website at the top of Google. If you’re new to the digital marketing world, learn everything you need to know about email marketing, how to write the perfect email copy, and the best email marketing tools!

FAQs

How do you write a case study?

A case study starts with the title and client situation overview. Then it outlines the challenge, your business’s solution, and the outcomes achieved. A case study is concluded with key takeaways (a conclusion) and next steps.

What is an example of a case study?

An example of a case study is a digital marketing agency helping a shoe business boost its online sales. They re-developed their website, ran social media ads and campaigns, helping the business’s sales increase by 80% in 2 months.

How do you sample a case study?

Sampling a case study means choosing a subject based on either relevance, impact, or uniqueness. Choose cases that best illustrate a common challenge, a successful strategy, or a unique scenario that provides useful insights for others.

What are the 4 types of case study?

The 4 types of case study are descriptive, explanatory, exploratory, and instrumental.

What is the sequence of a case study?

The sequence is title, overview, problem, objective, solution, results, conclusion, and optional client testimonial and call to action (CTA).

What is the structure of a case study? 

The structure of a case study is the same as its sequence: title, context overview (why the case study is being written), the challenge, goals and objectives, solution implemented, results with measurable data, conclusion, next steps/testimonial.

How many pages should a case study be? 

A standard business case study is 500-800 words or 1-2 pages. More detailed case studies are usually 3-6 pages (up to 2000 words).

What is a case study and example?

A case study is an in-depth analysis of an actual, real-world problem, how it was solved, and the results that were achieved. An example is of a social media agency that helped a plant business improve their online presence using digital marketing techniques, increasing orders by 40%.