31 August 2023 | Marketing
How to write B2B case studies that go viral on social
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Add this content format to your Swipe File ASAP ✅
If you’re selling a B2B product—like a SaaS or agency services—your customers have 2 questions.
→ What’s the ROI?
→ Who else has used this?
The best way to answer this: case studies.
Taking customer success stories and packaging them into an easy-to-ready format that conveys the ROI, and gives prospects examples of other companies like them who have had success with your product or service (my guy Adrian Alfieri talks about this a ton on Twitter – follow him if you’re in B2B).
A lot of case studies get buried so deep in the ‘resources’ tab of your website that they never see the light of day, though.
One way to solve this? Distribute on social. But even then, the best that most companies do is copy-pasting the case study URL.
Boring. And on top of that, it’ll probably get suppressed because most social platforms hate links.
There’s a better way. And this thread from my good friend Noah Tucker (CEO of Social Snowball) is perfect example.
Yes. It’s a customer case study. It promotes the Social Snowball software (the leading affiliate marketing SaaS for DTC brands). But if we look at the numbers, we’ll see:
- 97.4K views
- 33 reposts
- 271 likes
- ~20 inbound leads (source: chatted with Noah about this)
There are 3 pillars behind the success of this case study, that are all fairly repeatable for startups on social.
TAKEAWAY 1 – The case study is positioned as a story, not an obvious promotional post.
Social Snowball isn’t mentioned in the hook tweet. Instead, Noah led with metrics that DTC operators (SS’s target audience) would be intrigued by: revenue and CAC (specifically, reducing CAC). CAC = ‘customer acquisition cost,’ by the way.
Noah doesn’t mention Social Snowball until the 3rd tweet in the thread.
When he does mention it, he mentions it in the context of the story—not in an overly promotional way that shills all the features.
“The used Social Snowball to automate all of the cash commission payouts…”
“The smooth payout UX kept creators motivated to post more…”
This hits on a benefit of the product that customers actually give a crap about (not some highly technical jargon).
A lot of founders overestimate how much their audience cares about the product. Truth is, customers only care about the ROI. Speak to this in your case studies (and the rest of your content).
TAKEAWAY 2 – The thread makes the reader feel like they’re getting an ‘inside look.’
I like the framing here a lot:
*Their numbers are insane, so I sat down with the founder @faizwarsani to dive into the strategy they’re using.
Here’s what he told me* 👇“
Again, not obviously promotional. And it makes the readers feel like they’re getting a scoop that nobody else has.
Social content that presents novel, ‘secret’ information tends to do well.
TAKEAWAY 3 – The imagery supports the text and makes the thread more likely to stop the scroll.
Text-only can work. It’s one of the reasons I love X/Twitter and LinkedIn. But if we’re being real, adding graphics and or videos that show what you’re explaining in the written content is a no-brainer way to increase engagement and stop the scroll.
The good thing is, these don’t have to be highly complex, bespoke graphic assets. I’m pretty sure Noah just used standard product shots, and a headshot of the founder for one of the images. And there’s one tweet with a TikTok screenshot.
That’s it.
To round this off, I just want to emphasis how insanely simple this is. There are some nuances that helped this post perform, but it’s nothing groundbreaking. Real stats that show insane results. Simple breakdown of the story, positioned in a social-native way. Quick transition to full-case study.
Zero hard transition to ‘book a demo now please!!!”
See how this works? Social-first content wins.
And for these 3 reasons, this post is going in my Swipe File.
By the way, if you want to grab my exact Swipe File template I use to keep track of inspiration and never run out of content ideas, check it out here.