Case Study:
CRM Story Driven Case Studies
Nobody shares a problem-solution-benefit case study.
Microsoft’s CRM product marketing team had strong customers and flat case studies: the usual problem-solution-benefit format.
The team’s bet: rebuild the case studies around the customer’s ‘why’ instead of the product’s ‘what’, and the stories would work earlier in the sale, not just as proof at the end. More people would read them, share them, act on them.
Leadership and the customer-evidence team disagreed. Case studies were late-stage proof. There was an established process, standard questions, and no method for turning customer interviews into stories anyone would want to read.
So the team ran a test. They invited their most compelling customers into a new format — a customer showcase — and pointed it at parts of the content plan that already had budget: events and campaign landing pages.
Using Go Narrative’s 3D Story™ framework, they built one campaign landing page the new way, starting from the customer’s story instead of the CRM product, and compared it against a regular landing page.
In the quarter that followed, the team reported 3.78x unique monthly page views and 7.35x page actions. The new format still did the old job of late-stage proof. It just stopped being only that.
Go Narrative ingredients: customer analysis, interview design, interviews, case study design and writing, 3D Story™ framework, TRIPS Storytelling™ methodology, Story MeET™ method, story design.
Microsoft didn’t have a writing problem. They had proof nobody read, because the stories started with the product instead of the customer. If your case studies only show up at the end of the sale — or nowhere — that’s the same symptom.