How to Create a Compelling Case Study for Home Buyers
A case study about a great home buying experience can help solidify your credibility in the eyes of prospective customers. Here are some tips for creating and marketing a buyer case study.
Why and How it Works
Custom homes are visual, personal products requiring a significant investment of money, faith and time. It can be hard to capture interest from prospective buyers without showing them what you are capable of building. Case studies of previous work can provide clear insight into what a buyer can expect when they choose your residential construction company for their new home.
Whether you call it a “case study,” “customer story” or “buyer’s journey,” the idea is to harness the power of previous customers to secure new ones. Collect quotes, photos, videos and testimonials from past customers who were pleased with their custom homes and assemble them in compelling pages that tell their stories from start to finish.
Your case study should be an engaging testimonial told in story form from the perspective of a customer. It can be written as a document or published as an embedded video under a “Customer Stories” section on your website. Anyone visiting your site will want to hear what past customers have to say about their experiences working with you. Photos complete the picture by delivering visual proof of your home-building expertise.
Steps to an Effective Case Study
While there are plenty of opportunities to be creative in a case study, it’s generally best to stick to a basic format:
Start with an “about” section. This should be a brief paragraph describing the buyer. It can include some background information, such as the size of the buyer’s family. It should also contain details about what the buyer wanted in his or her new home. While it can be tempting to include a lot of information, you should keep things short, simple and straight to the point.
Follow with a section focusing on “the challenge.” Here you want to explain how you met the buyer’s challenge to create the home of their dreams. Include any creative ways you addressed certain requests. It’s ok to get a little technical as long as your target audience will understand what you are saying. In essence, you want to show how you used your building expertise to satisfy each of the customer’s needs.
Write about the “customer’s results.” Here you want to take things from the customer’s perspective. Talk about how happy they were with the results. Include images and video clips of the home itself and the buyer’s reaction to seeing their property. Include testimonials from the customer to add credibility to your case study.
Again, it’s perfectly fine to be creative with your case study, as long as you follow a basic structure. Once you’ve completed your case study, you should add it to your marketing plan, including it in print materials, email newsletters and place it on your website.
If you choose to make a video case study, the basic structure will be the same, starting with an about stage, a challenge stage and a final results section. Just remember that buyers are going to be more focused on the emotional and visual aspects of the video and less interested in the technical details. While it’s fine to add some technical information in the video, you want to avoid confusing, overwhelming or boring your viewers.
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