I recently met up with Dr. Simon Moore, a respected business and consumer psychologist who specializes in brand experience.

He is a master of unearthing the reasons consumers behave the way they do, and using those insights to help brands improve engagement.

I wanted to understand what it was that made case studies so useful in sales and marketing, and suspected that the answers lay in psychology.

I wasn't disappointed.

It turns out that effective sales and marketing is all about understanding the underlying emotional drivers of buyer behavior. And, when applied, those insights can help supercharge content.

This is what I learned.

How to Craft a More Compelling Case Study

For children across the world, stories are an integral—and, more important—enjoyable part of their bedtime ritual. So, it's not surprising that we are conditioned to like stories.

Trained as we are from a very early age, our brains have learned to process information through the medium of stories and to remember them.

But it goes much deeper than that.

Simon Explains

"Stories are psychologically friendly because the way they're structured is very neat. They have a start, middle, and end, which is easy for the brain to process. This is essential because despite having a huge amount of untapped potential we don't have unlimited brain power."

It's also why you should never present someone with a list of facts. That's really hard on the brain. There's no way of ordering it.

But you want people to remember what you told them. And when you put information in the context of a story, their brain is already geared to remember it.

Power Up 1

When committing your case studies to the page or video, concentrate on the narrative. Case studies already have a three-part story structure built in: the problem, the solution, and the result. Use that structure to tell a compelling story.

When you do, you make your case study eminently more enjoyable to read or watch, and easier to digest, process, and recall.

People will remember it, internalize it, and work out its relevance for them; and, just as important, they will also be able to pass it on.

How to Move From 'Me Too' to 'Perfect Partner'

In psychology, it's called empathetic intelligence, and it plays a major role in our enjoyment of stories.

It's our ability to listen to a story about somebody else—and put ourselves in their shoes.

As a result, you can experience events that you may never witness yourself, and you get a feel for what it would be like to be there. You can travel to various periods in history, experience life on far-flung planets, and encounter people you would likely never have the chance to meet.

More important for your sales and marketing, you give your market the opportunity to play out scenarios that they may be personally experiencing, and so also assess the (positive) outcome you promise.

Simon Explains

"Stories allow you to safely test scenarios without the risks. You automatically play the action back to your own situation. You tweak what you are watching or reading or hearing to fit your own circumstance and play them out as if you were the one in the story."

Empathetic intelligence is the reason soap operas are so popular: When watching them, we are asking what we would do were we in that situation. You automatically put yourself in that situation—assessing both risk and potential gain or loss for you.

Power Up 2

Tell your client's story. Outline the challenges they wanted you to fix and why those challenges were occurring. Explain how you helped to fix problems and describe what life/work was like for your client after the solution was implemented.

In a world where trust is hard to win, your client's story will not only help your prospect safely play out the resolution of their own challenges but also position you as the perfect option as a provider of the solution.

The more relatable the story, the more your prospects will connect with it.

How to Increase Urgency

In some ways, we are simple creatures. Despite having accomplished incredible things scientifically, we remain very close to the cave psychologically.

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The Psychology of Case Studies: Five Ways to Amp Up the Impact of Your Customer Stories

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Alex Moscow

Alex Moscow is the owner of 9mm Public Relations, a boutique communications consultancy that helps B2B businesses build profile, pipeline, and profit. Check out its case study audit tool.

LinkedIn: Alex Moscow