Joel Klettke is an expert on copy and case studies for SaaS and B2B.
His love for writing started at a young age, and he can even point back to his fourth-grade teacher as someone who got excited about his writing and encouraged him.
After working for an agency where he was focused heavily on SEO, he decided to capitalize on the industry’s need for content and he struck out on his own in 2013. This is when he learned about Joanna Wiebe’s method and approach to writing, and he was hooked.
He started with websites, landing pages, and email series, and has now narrowed his focus to be on SaaS and B2B. He credits his early days in SEO for helping him see the full picture and understanding that it is a complement to your content, never the guidepost.
“My job is to get people to take action.”
Understand Your Customer
Great conversion copy has to be rooted and driven by the customer. You have to have an intimate relationship with customers.
“It’s like compiling all of the lego blocks… stacking them is easy, but putting them together, that’s the fun part. The hard part, the time-consuming part, is getting in a frame of mind, getting to a place where you understand what to build in the first place.”
Joel says you can’t be a great writer without being a great researcher.
Case Study Buddy
Joel started Case Study Buddy to help B2B companies reap value from and share customer success stories.
When one of his clients at Business Casual asked him to do a case study project, he agreed and learned about the space in the process. He realized that case studies are an evergreen asset that could be produced efficiently by a repeatable system. Most importantly, nobody was owning the space.
He tapped a former agency colleague to partner with him in the business, and they launched it quietly to his network so that they could refine the process before taking it public.
Refining the process allowed them to focus on the moments that were holding the process up, and helped them make it more efficient and easier for everyone involved. And now, they’re taking it from a side hustle to a full-fledged business focused on case studies.
“They work, they are important, they’re persuasive and they can be used across the entire funnel which is relatively unique.”
The Efficient Process of Case Study Buddy
- Who are you trying to reach?
- What are you trying to sell them?
- How do you want to engage with them?
- Getting buy-in from the business by sharing how case studies will benefit them.
- Putting it together – doing the interview with open-ended questions and capturing details and context of story.
- Tell the story in a format that is effective for the business’s use.
- Put it to use in a way that it is visible and valuable.
Joel shares that encouraging the business in the buy-in stage is hard. The company is often afraid of legal side effects, bad results, or a time-consuming process. However, the reality is that the company will have total control over the story and it will take less than an hour of their time.
How to use the case studies:
- Cold outreach emails: they are telling a story and have been shown to improve open rates and response rates.
- Repurpose the content on your blog.
- Upsells: a short case study nudges a customer into the next level and encourages them as they invest.
- Email onboarding content: keeps customers interested and always coming back for more.
When should you start using them?
When you have a good story, tell it. He’s seen how ebooks and blogs help, but no writer is ever going to be as compelling as a customer.
Challenge:
Set up a thank you survey that asks: “What was going on in your life that brought you to us today?”
Contact:
Twitter: Joel Klettke
LinkedIn: Joel Klettke
Case Studies: Case Study Buddy
Copywriting: Business Casual Copywriting
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