Welcome to Leveling Up!

In today’s email:

• How to write a case study that transforms your business

• Using Google Bard to grow your brand

• A kid went from idea to $11M in only 18 months

• And much more…

Here are the top 10 most interesting links to check out this week:

1. 🤖 Google Bard is already surprisingly good at CRO

2. 🕵️‍♂️ Here’s how brands are starting to mitigate AI fraud 

3. 🤯 IBM deleted 80% of their marketing, then this happened

4. 🔎 Is this the future of SEO? (and why it’s not dying)

5. 🤑 This kid went from idea to $11M in only 18 months

6. 📦 9 digital product ideas (with successful examples)

7. 📃 Google Ads audit template: a complete checklist

8. 🔒 This is the best way to build trust with your customers

9. 🥇 Why it pays to be a generalist in today’s digital golden age

10. 🏦 Bankrate.com’s results after letting AI write 100s of articles

Deep Dive

How to Write a Case Study that Converts Prospects into Buyers

Case studies are the most effective way to turn your prospects into buyers:

Despite the positive impact of customer case studies, many brands do not take advantage of this marketing asset which works like a charm. And even when they do, the case studies do not tick the right boxes.

This deep dive will make the case study writing process painless.

Step 1: What’s in it for the customer?

Not every customer will agree to your request to feature them in your case study. But you can break this hesitancy by offering something in return.

Here are some benefits you can offer to make your case study prospect consider working with you:

Brand exposure

Every brand wants to get its name out. They want people to know them.

That’s why you must be specific when you propose brand exposure to a case study prospect. For example, rather than saying something generic, mention that they will get in front of your:

• 11,322 Twitter followers

• 19,781 Facebook followers

• 1,346 Instagram followers

• 1 million people from your paid promotion efforts

Backlinks or website traffic

Backlinks will remain a top-ranking search engine signal for a long time. So if you have a high domain authority (DA) website, you could educate your case study prospect on the monetary value of a single backlink.

Note: Although Google is against paying for links, it is still a common sight.

As per Ahrefs: The average cost of buying backlinks in 2018 was $361.44 (or $77.80…plus content). This amount increased by 2.4% from 2016.

In 2023, the situation is different, since the costs of backlinks are much higher.

After pitching a website with a domain authority of 70+ to write a guest post. We got a response on how their guest posting process works.

And for the sake of discretion, we’ll rename the packages:

• Basic: Publication wait time – 4 months. Free

• Standard: Publication wait time – 4 weeks. $500

• Pro: Publication wait time – 1 week. $1,000

Offering this feature to customers will save them the extra cost.

Product discount or free updates

An enterprise client that uses your product might budge if you offer a sweet product discount.

This strategy works especially well for course creators.

Since the recipient has gotten value from the current course, they can be sure that the updates will be excellent. Plus, they will get it at zero cost.

Step 2: Ask the right questions

You need to write an extensive list of questions to ask after your customer agrees to collaborate on the case study.

After writing the questions, identify those related to success metrics and send them to the customer. This gives the customer an idea of what to expect. It also reduces or eradicates the need for unnecessary follow-ups by allowing the customer to think about and prepare their answers.

Your email should also state that the questions are to give them an idea of what you need. You don’t want to scare or overwhelm the customer into backing out of working with you.

Problem questions

These questions examine your customer’s situation before they found your brand – and remember to seek answers that are as specific as possible:

• What specific challenges did you/your team encounter with [the problem]?

• In your opinion, how did these challenges impact your revenue?

• Did you try other ways to solve the problems before coming to us?

• Why do you think the other products/services didn’t work?

• How did you find us [the solution]?

Solution questions

These questions identify the problems that your solution solved and why it is unique to this customer:

• What were your initial thoughts about [your solution/brand]?

• What was the differentiating factor that made you opt for [your solution/brand]?

• Did any of our marketing materials like case studies, free e-books, email, etc., convince you to work with us?

• How quickly did you start getting results?

Results questions

These questions help you understand the results this customer achieved with your solution – and remember to seek answers that are as specific as possible:

• How has your business improved since you started using/working with [your solution/brand]? Don’t just settle for “it’s much better!”; you’re looking for actual before and after numbers.

• In terms of ROI, can you place a value on the impact of our solution (percentages are fine too)?

• On a year-over-year basis, did our solution double, triple or quadruple your revenue?

• After the interview, request permission from the customer to do one follow-up call with additional questions (if any).

Step 3: Writing your case study

Now you’ve got all the information you need. In this step, you will put together everything from the interview and draft a compelling case study.

Write a Great Headline

Your title should be full of benefits and answer this question: “Why will this case study interest future prospects?”

Anything that directly impacts revenue and shows remarkable results will make a great title. Where available, use numbers and percentages, as they are excellent for attracting prospects:

Let’s examine this case study title, why it works, and who it attracts:

• “Gets More Leads”: Every business wants leads.

• “For Less Ad Spend”: This shows that the featured customer in the case study had been spending more money and getting fewer results – a common problem for many companies.

Hence, this title will interest the following prospective customers:

• Those that have failed with ads

• Those that are new to ads and do not want to fail

• Those that believe they are spending more money on ads and getting subpar results

• Those that want more leads in their business

Your title is important and could mean the difference between a read case study or one that a potential client ignores.

Every word in your title should count.

Introduce your customer

In the first two or three sentences of your case study post or page, summarize what your customer does. The following points can guide you:

• What type of business is it and what do they do?

• Who does the business serve? What is their target demographic?

• Where is the business located?

State your customer’s challenges

There are no hard and fast rules about discussing your customer’s challenges. It could be three to four sentences or more.

What’s important is identifying the significant challenges that your customer had been facing and discussing how they negatively affected their sales, revenue, growth, etc.:

Your solutions to the challenges

This is where you show how you eliminated the challenges of your customer with your specific product/service solution.

Mention every improvement you made for the customer.

The customer’s results

The case study results section should discuss percentages, year-on-year increases, number of new clients for your customer, number of increased leads, etc.

This is where you show off what you can do for prospective customers who are reading the case study:

Customer quotes

Always use direct quotes from the customer in your case study. If there are any quotes that are particularly enticing, set them off with bold type, indents, or a dialogue box.

And you can use them on any section of your case study, provided it fits.

Call to action (CTA)

Your case study shouldn’t end with “contact us,” “want to work together?” and so on. Your CTA should tell your prospective customer what the next step is and why they should take that step

If you’ve put a lot of thought into the headline of your case study, you’ll see that the CTA and the headline look similar.

How to Use Google Bard for Business

In this episode of Leveling Up, Eric Siu shares his insights on how Google Bard can revolutionize content creation and digital marketing strategies.

Tune in and don't miss this week’s video to learn:

• Will Bard destroy Chat GPT’s growth rate?

• Google Bard’s amazing features and advantages

• How can you use Bard to create social media content

• Will Bard replace your existing content creation tools?

• Is AI domination a good thing?

Click here to watch the full video.

Top 3 Available Marketing Jobs

1. Senior Paid Media Manager (Single Grain). Remote | F/T | Manage and optimize ad campaigns on Google and Facebook, develop and lead strategic presentations to clients, including media strategies, QBRs, and year-in-reviews. (Full job description here.)
   

2. SEO Manager (Single Grain). Remote | F/T | Perform ongoing keyword discovery, content strategy, expansion, and optimization. Audit client websites to identify optimization opportunities and prioritize work based on SEO impact. Develop and implement link-building strategies using competitors as a baseline and more. (Full job description here.)
   

3. CRO Manager (Single Grain). Remote | F/T | Analyze web data to monitor website performance and identify areas of opportunity. Excute CRO activities to help achieve overall marking goals and objectives for assigned clients and more. (Full job description here.)

Until next week,

The Leveling Up Team

P.S.

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• Read the Single Grain blog for actionable marketing playbooks