Found out 63% of B2B buyers read through case studies before even talking to a sales rep

I was at a marketing conference in Austin back in October, sitting through this dry-as-toast session on account based marketing, when the speaker dropped this stat that totally blindsided me. Apparently, according to some Demand Gen report they cited, nearly two thirds of buyers are already deep into case studies before they ever pick up the phone. I always thought case studies were just filler for the website, you know, something to make us look legit. But now I'm digging into our own analytics and sure enough, I see people spending 4 to 5 minutes on our client success pages. It makes me wonder if we should be writing those things differently, like more like stories and less like press releases. Has anyone else looked at their own case study data and found something that surprised them about how prospects actually use them?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_sandra14d ago

My friend Kate found their legal team had bookmarked three of their case studies for weeks before the deal closed.

the_jake14d ago

Yeah, that whole '4 to 5 minutes on client success pages' thing caught my eye. Here's the angle nobody's talking about though - those people spending time on case studies? They're probably NOT your primary buyer. In my experience, the actual decision maker is forwarding that link to their legal team or procurement person who's doing due diligence. The VP who makes the call skimmed the case study in 30 seconds just to confirm you didn't screw up. So the people reading deep are either covering their own ass or trying to find reasons to say no. Maybe write those things knowing the real reader is a skeptic, not a fan.