Technology

Random Notes on Technology and Marketing

Case studies are influential, yet often underestimated, marketing tools that help a company create credibility with potential customers.

Used on a website, as an email, or as a leave-behind for salespeople, a well-written case study illustrates how you resolved a specific problem or met a need. By letting a customer speak about the results they receive as a result of your product and solution, you gain credibility as you educate potential customers on how your product or service works.

You build even more credibility when your case study gets published in an industry publication, as has happened with previous Canright clients. For example, one of our case studies that examined how one of our clients grew its business without increasing staff was published in AFP Exchange, the journal of the Association of Financial Professionals, the treasury industry’s primary professional group.

The Canright Process 

The Canright process of crafting a compelling case study involves a handful of important steps, including a questionnaire and outline. A comprehensive Case Study Research questionnaire and outline gives a framework for researching product and service case studies that interest and educate. Most case studies do not need this much detail, but the more you have the better you can show how your product or solution helps clients achieve their business goals. 

During the questionnaire and interview phase, we spend time meeting with clients to understand their vision for the case study. We like gathering background information about the client and information related to project challenges, solutions, costs, benefits, and results.

From there, we begin plugging that information into an outline and flushing out the content until we have a completed, refined piece.

Client Case Study Spotlight

Canright writes frequent case studies for the North Central Terrazzo Association (NCTA). Often times these case studies spotlight the completion of large-scale projects or trending news in the terrazzo industry. One of our recent NCTA case studies covered a terrazzo project at the Clinton Airport in Arkansas. Titled “Over an Arkansas Sky Captivates Visitors to the Clinton Airport,” the process of writing the case study included a brief questionnaire, interview, and outline before its completion.

For more information on how Canright writes case studies, read our “Outline and Questions for Case Study Research.”

Communications Conversations is a weekly recap of the solutions and themes we’ve been working on. At Canright Communications, we’ve spent decades helping clients market and sell their ideas, innovations, products, and solutions through clear technical communications and marketing writing.  

Contact us if you’re interested in our services at collin@canrightcommunications.com

Random Notes on Technology and Marketing

Ad agencies have long relied on creative briefs to provide assignment basics. Often structured in the form of a questionnaire, briefs give communications teams a common understanding of the requirements and key considerations that drive campaign deliverables. In our experience, the best briefs, whether for advertising campaigns or technical content, extract insights from project or campaign research, adding new layers of meaning.
 
Why

• Provide new insights and priorities, and bring teams together.

Use Cases

• Create alignment between product, development, and communications teams.
• Develop product documentation for external and internal audiences.
• Present new products or services to the market.

Method

• Complete a content brief questionnaire for assignments. You can find creative brief templates online or download the Canright Content Brief. 
• Include statements of organizational purpose, mission, and goals. Use what comes with the understanding that the project’s context may help refine them. 
• Answer all of the traditional project questions while keeping an organizational context in mind. This may help refine your initial project purpose and goals. 
• Research the product and service’s competitive market to further refine your content and communications project.  
• Add any insights that the organizational, project and market contexts spark in the final write-up and share it with the product, creative, and executive teams. 
• Gather and analyze responses and reactions. These may point to needs for product and service refinement, additional competitive analysis, or new communications directions.

Communications Conversations is a weekly recap of the solutions and themes we’ve been working on. At Canright Communications, we’ve spent decades helping clients market and sell their ideas, innovations, products, and solutions through clear technical communications and marketing writing.  

Contact us if you’re interested in our services at collin@canrightcommunications.com

Random Notes on Technology and Marketing

This week we focus on how to deliver information and content to stakeholders in a clear, concise format. The following methods detail how we transform the raw material of interviews and discussions into concise, easy-to-understand documents.

Knowledge Briefs

This week Jess describes how to give stakeholders the information they need in a simple, clear format.

Why

• Breaking down concepts for the layperson helps business professionals understand the importance of technical work.

Use Cases

• Pitch decks, explainers, and other internal communications

Method

• Conduct research to get a clear technical understanding of the subject matter. Using a journalistic framework (who, what, where, when, why, how), break it down into pieces that make concepts simple to understand no matter the expertise of the reader. Aiming for broad readability without talking down, these briefs help boil down technical speak for non-technical audiences.

Creating a Digital Knowledge Base 

Ryan shows how our digital content creation strategy helps stakeholders benefit from a business and organizational standpoint.

Why

• Give the team content in a digital format that is searchable, filterable, and acts as a knowledge base. Improving productivity and reducing training time.

Use Cases

• Write new help content and revamp legacy content to fit an organization’s digital transformation. Making information more accessible to the end-user.

Method

• Determine the audience which can include internal, existing customers, and new customers.
• Plan for new content to be written into the digital knowledge base.
• Add resource pages based off of the aspects the audience wants to learn in relation to products and organization. 
• Create visuals in the content to clarify the message.
• Make sure the site is easy to navigate.
• Customize content based on the topic to help the end-user better grasp the concepts.

Communications Conversations is a weekly recap of the solutions and themes we’ve been working on. At Canright Communications, we’ve spent decades helping clients market and sell their ideas, innovations, products, and solutions through clear technical communications and marketing writing.  

Contact us if you’re interested in our services at collin@canrightcommunications.com