Are you aware of the positive impact case studies can have on your business? You’ve set up a pretty good website, you have a few social media accounts, and you’ve even got down some of the basic principles of SEO. So, how could case studies help your business improve?
Sometimes when you’re doing everything right and still not seeing the results you want, it helps to take a closer look at case studies. We learn a lot about case studies in psychology and sociology, but they’re woefully underused in the internet marketing world. Let’s take a look at how case studies can help you maintain - and grow - your business.
Some scientific studies go wide, taking information from large samples. Alternatively, some studies go deep, taking smaller samples and studying them much closer. Case studies fall into this category.
In a case study, we look at one or two particular cases at a time. In the internet marketing world, one person’s business could be a case for study. Instead of looking at broad groups of data, a case study follows the ins and outs of its one case. So, if we’re still talking about one business, we’ll want to learn everything about that business. What kind of business is it? What bookkeeping methods does it use? What can we learn from it in terms of internet marketing? The length of each study varies, depending on the data acquired. However, some case studies can take years to finish, while others can be done in as little as a week. The point is that we watch closely -- with the business owner’s permission, of course -- and gather as much information as we can.
The benefit of performing a case study is that you get more relational, more nuanced data. This type of study works best when one needs to study the habits of people. Since humans are so varied and so interconnected, sometimes it pays to work with only one study at a time. Paying close attention this way allows us to make connections. We notice small things that can add up to significant changes.
The other benefit of a case study is that it gives us more time to ask questions like why and how. This level of thought gives us a solid foundation, and we’ve been using that foundation for years. It’s the foundation on which we built our own business, and we use the same principles when we help you strategize and figure out how you can kill it online.
Take search engine optimization, or SEO, for example. Of course, we’re going to look at broad sections of data when we study SEO, but it also helps to study individual case studies. Google, Yahoo, and Bing all use different algorithms to determine how relevant search engine users will find your website. These algorithms happen to change all the time, which can be incredibly frustrating to SEO researchers. Often it seems like the algorithms change just as you start to figure out how the whole thing works.
A broad study can give us a general idea of how the algorithms work, especially for Yahoo and Bing. Then there’s Google. Google is more difficult to figure out than other search engines. It prefers to keep its algorithm processes a secret. We can respect that. But we do need to find some insight on how we can work with the algorithms to get our clients’ websites to the top of the results pages. As a result, we turn to case studies. The individualized, nuanced approach lets us look into the methods of people who have had success with Google.
Let’s take a step away from organic searches for a minute and focus on PPC (pay-for-clicks) instead. For example, with PPC, you set up an advertisement with Google or any other search engine, and only pay when somebody clicks on the ad. When done well, PPC ads are great for businesses, but they can also be tricky. For this reason, we often advise our clients on how to best use PPC.
Once again, Google and Yahoo and Bing are all different from one another, and all of them handle PPC ads a bit differently. One great way to learn how to find success with PPC? Case studies. Sometimes we look at businesses who are struggling with PPC, apply certain solutions, and then look deeply into why one solution worked better than another one. Sometimes we look into a business that is already succeeding with PPC and ask what this business is doing that we can apply to our own work with our clients. In any case, we walk away with valuable insights that help us for years after the study ends.
When social media works, your business feels it in significant ways. In this way, social media acts a lot like search engines. Primarily, it uses algorithms to display relevant content. When looking at those algorithms, broad overview studies can be incredibly helpful.
However, social media is also very personal. The people and businesses who find the most success on social media are the ones who quickly find their own niche and stick with it. They write and share content to communicate with other people and to enhance their connections with other human beings. In other words, they write for humans, not for algorithms. As a result, a general overview can only go so far when it comes to studying the success of social media.
A case study, however, works with precision because it caters to the purpose of social media. It makes connections. A thorough study of one small sample can give us so much information to work with, further down the road.
Our very first case studies began even before we started this business. From the beginning, we knew that some people were killing it online while others were not. They were shaking their heads in confusion, wondering why none of it was working.
The key was setting aside the way that we normally look at the internet. When we go online, we interact with a series of screens, and some of those screens get attention while others don’t. Looking at it this way, it’s impersonal and cold at best. We had to internalize the idea that behind these screens are real human beings who can teach us how to use the internet to connect. From there, we learned how to interact with customers, get in touch with potential clients, and use the internet to our business advantage. And it worked. Once we started killing it online, we wanted to teach others how to do the same.
By now, we’ve studied cases from all over the world. We know what works and why. If you’re struggling with internet marketing, we’ve probably already studied a case very similar to yours. That’s why we know how we can help. Some fixes are simple, and some require several different steps. Whatever you need, we will use our expertise to develop a strategy that is specific to your online needs. Are you ready to learn more about how our case studies can help you? Contact us today, and get prepared to kill it online.
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