Recently, I talked to the sales director of a $50 million Healthcare company.
We talked about lead generation and he shared something cool. 80% of their leads come from one thing: Case studies.
The funnel is simple:
- Pay for ads on Adwords/Facebook
- Send people to a landing page where they can download a case study after they share their email address
They’ve tested that against a bunch of lead generation strategies. But this continues to be #1.
This wasn’t a surprise to me. I’ve had clients in the fitness and online business markets who had similar success. And every time I go on Facebook, I see case study ads from industry leaders like Tony Robbins, Todd Herman, etc.
If you want to start building your list with case study ads and lead magnets, there’s something important you should do.
Few people do this with their case studies. But it makes them extremely powerful.
Don’t do what everyone else does and just report before/after information. Things like “Jenny was struggling and broke but now she’s rich and fit and happy. Yay!”
Instead, share a story. Specifically, go over the key low point and highlight moments of your customer’s journey.
Lowpoint moments are when things are at their darkest. When they realize things can’t continue as they are and something has to change.
Some lowpoint moments I’ve included in my case studies include:
- A woman in her mid-20’s on her knees in the snow crying out to the universe for help because she was broke and didn’t know what to do with her life.
- A woman who had just gotten a divorce. At the same time, a major project at work she spent 3 years on fell apart. She felt like a massive failure and walked through the office with her head down. And the only person she felt she could talk to was her 5-year-old niece because she knew that was the only person who wouldn’t judge her.
- A man on his way to a Superbowl party until he got double vision and felt so dizzy he had to find the nearest building and sit inside. Turned out he had Cranial Nerve Palsey brought on by his diabetes. After that, his wife wouldn’t even get in the car with him driving anymore. That’s when he decided he had to do something about his diabetes.
See how that is much more intriguing than just talking about the problem? It’d be way weaker if I said something like “Leslie was unfulfilled at her job and wanted to find work that paid well and she was passionate about.”
Yawn. That sounds like everyone else.
Tell a story and you’ll sound unique and draw more people in with the drama.
Of course, you don’t want to be a bummer. People want to feel good at the end of your story. And if you’re trying to sell, then you want to them to feel inspired and hopeful about their future.
So you also want to include highlight moments of the journey. Use that same level of detail when you talk about what it was like to work with you/go through your program/use your product, as well as exciting moments when they got results they wanted, and moments from their day-to-day life that are possible now but weren’t before.
All this is part of my 7-Step Formula to create Hero’s Journey Case Studies.
To learn how to do these yourself — and how to use them to generate a massive list of quality leads, check out my book Case Studies That Close Sales. It’s free on my homepage: Marketingwithbrian.com
It shows you the questions to ask, how to put the case study together, and 25+ ways to use it to generate leads and sales.