The most persuasive thing you can publish is someone else's words about you.
I interview the people whose lives your work has changed (customers, members, beneficiaries, employees, volunteers), and turn what they tell me into case studies and stories that give your next client, donor, funder, or member a reason to say yes.
Why it works
Whatever you call them, the underlying logic holds: a real person speaking honestly about their own experience is more convincing than anything you say about yourself. They have no reason to overstate the outcome, and your audience knows it.
Case studies replace vague praise with specific, lived experience, the kind that builds genuine confidence in what you do.
What a case study can be
Case studies aren't just for B2B sales. Any organisation that needs to demonstrate real-world impact can use them. Whatever the subject and whoever the audience, every piece follows the same Challenge-Solution-Impact structure, with the proof woven throughout.
Customer success stories
How your product or service solved a real problem, told in the customer's voice. The format that turns browsers into buyers and prospects into clients.
Beneficiary stories
The human account that funders, trustees, and donors need. What changed for someone because of your work, in their own words, with enough specific detail to carry weight in a grant application or impact report.
Member profiles
The story of why someone joined, what they found, and why they stayed. Structured to do what a testimonial can't: give a prospective member a complete picture of what belonging actually feels like.
Volunteer profiles
What drew someone to give their time, and what that experience has meant to them. Useful for recruitment, for impact reporting, and for showing the human side of how your organisation works.
Employee stories
How someone found their role, what they've built, and what keeps them there. The kind of content that attracts candidates who are the right fit, because they've already read what working there is really like.
Community and social impact studies
How a programme, initiative, or intervention changed something in the real world. Structured for credibility, written for people.
Where case studies fail before they get read
They sound like the organisation wrote them.
Because the organisation did. The result reads like a press release, polished, vague, and instantly forgettable. Real people rarely talk like that, and most readers notice.
They have no proof in them.
"Life-changing" and "transformative" are not outcomes, they are placeholders. Without a specific detail, the story carries no weight, whatever decision it's meant to support.
They never actually get written.
The customer agreed months ago. The member said yes at the last event. Nobody has had time to design the interview, make the call, and turn the transcript into something worth publishing. So it stays on the list.
I handle the whole thing, from interview to finished piece. You receive something ready to use, not a transcript that still needs work.
The structure that makes a story do its job
Every story and case study follows the Challenge–Solution–Impact framework. It creates recognition in a reader, earns credibility through someone else's experience, and delivers the proof that moves a decision forward — whether that decision is a business contract or a first purchase.
Challenge
The problem, in their words
The problem, in their words. Specific enough that your next customer, donor, or member reads it and thinks: that is exactly where I am right now.
Solution
What actually changed
What actually changed. Your work described through someone's lived experience, not your feature list or mission statement.
Impact
The result that makes it real
The result that makes it real. The sentence a prospect quotes to a colleague, a donor shares before they give, or a prospective member sends to a friend who's been thinking about joining.
How I pull the proof out of an interview
Customers often describe satisfaction rather than outcomes. My interviews are designed to move past answers like "it was brilliant" and find the specific detail or figure that gives the story its weight – whatever form that takes for your customer.
Before / After
The comparison that lands
What did this look like before? How long did it take? What did the old approach cost or involve? The before is what makes the after feel real.
"We used to spend half a day on this every week. Now it takes twenty minutes."
Cost avoided
What they didn't have to spend
What would they have done instead, and what would that have cost — in money, time, or effort? Sometimes the most powerful proof is what someone avoided.
"Without this we'd have needed at least two more people in the team."
The specific outcome
What is different now
Not "I feel better" but what, concretely, has changed. For a business that might be a figure. For a consumer it might be a habit, a relationship, or something they stopped worrying about.
"I haven't thought about it once since. That sounds small but it was taking up real space."
The referral moment
When they told someone else
Who did they recommend it to, and what did they say? The language someone uses when recommending something unprompted is the most credible copy you will ever have.
"I told three other founders about it before I'd even finished the first month."
Case studies in a B2B sale
In a B2B sale, the person you're speaking to is rarely the only person who decides. Your contact has to take your proposal to a procurement team, a finance director, a board, or a CEO who has never heard of you. A case study is what they hand to that room.
That means it has to work without you in it. It needs to answer the questions a sceptical decision-maker will ask before anyone has had a chance to ask them: what problem did this solve, what did it actually cost, what changed as a result, and who else has done this.
The proof that does that job is specific. Not "significant efficiency gains" but "we cut the time spent on this from three days to four hours." Not "reduced costs" but "we avoided hiring two additional people." Not "improved performance" but "revenue from that segment grew 40 percent in the first year." Those numbers come from the interview. Most customers have them. Most interviewers never find them, because they don't know how to ask.
A B2B case study also has to survive being skimmed. The decision-maker in the buying committee may read only the headline figure, the pull quote, and the summary box. The structure I use makes sure those three things carry the whole argument, so the full piece rewards a careful reader and the summary works for everyone else.
Named results carry more weight than anonymised ones. Where a client agrees to be named, I write the piece accordingly, with their company, their sector, and their specific numbers. Where they prefer to remain anonymous, I work with them to find the level of detail that protects confidentiality without draining the proof out of the story.
One story, many places.
A well-structured customer story or case study doesn't belong in just one place. The same interview material can be shaped into multiple formats and sized to the audience (600–800 words for B2C, 800–1,200 for B2B where the proof needs to land with more than one decision-maker) then adapted into whatever formats reach people at each stage of the journey from stranger to loyal customer.
Sales and pitches
The story a salesperson shares when a prospect asks who else you've worked with. Specific, credible, in a customer's own voice.
Investor and funder materials
Customer outcomes are your clearest evidence that what you offer works. A story with a real voice and a case study with a named result are more convincing together than either is alone.
Pull quotes
The two or three lines from the interview that carry the most weight on their own. Formatted for use in sales decks, email footers, or website testimonial slots.
Website
A case study or beneficiary, member, or volunteer story page that gives a visitor the proof they need to take the next step: donating, enquiring, buying, or subscribing.
Grant applications and impact reports
Funders want to know their money is changing lives. A beneficiary story provides the human account; a structured case study provides the evidence. Both belong in a strong application.
Social posts
Two or three posts built around the most quotable moments and the sharpest outcome. Written natively for LinkedIn rather than cut-and-pasted from the long piece, so they read like content, not excerpts.
Short-form version
A condensed version of the story for press releases, PR pitches, or anywhere the full case study is too long. Same structure, same proof. Just compressed.
Social and community
A customer or beneficiary story gives you something worth sharing — not a product announcement or a funding update, but a human experience that people engage with and pass on to others who need it.
Real outcomes in a customer's voice outperform invented copy at every stage of a nurture or welcome sequence — especially where someone is deciding whether to commit.
PR and press
The customer's outcome is the news hook. A well-written story can be pitched as a case study, adapted as a byline, or used as the basis of a press release.
Who commissions these?
Charities and non-profits with a fundraising or awareness goal
Beneficiary stories give donors something to connect with. Case studies give trustees and funders something to act on. Member and volunteer profiles show the human side of an organisation that statistics can't.
Companies with a considered sales process
Your prospects take time to decide, and the person you're selling to is often not the person who signs off. A customer story with a real voice and a case study with hard numbers give your team something credible to put in front of everyone in that conversation, not just your main contact.
Growing businesses that need a content library
You have been winning customers and building strong relationships. Now you need the evidence that turns that traction into proof, for your website, your sales team, and anyone who needs to understand what you do.
Businesses entering a new market
When you are trying to win customers who don't know you yet, stories from people who do are your most credible introduction. A case study lowers the barrier with decision-makers; a story lowers it with everyone else.
Membership organisations and clubs
A member story does what a list of benefits cannot. It shows a prospective member what belonging actually feels like, from someone who had no reason to join until they did.
Founders and small marketing teams
You know which customers would make great stories. You just haven't had time to design the interview, make the call, and turn the conversation into something worth publishing in any format.
Investor-backed businesses
Customer stories with real outcomes and case studies with named results are evidence that your product works in the world. A small set of well-crafted pieces can anchor a fundraising conversation more convincingly than a slide full of logos.
Your customers are getting results and having experiences worth talking about. The question is whether that evidence exists in a form anyone else can find and use.
How it works
Four steps from brief to a finished, publication-ready story. You are involved at the start and the end. I handle everything in between, including the conversation with your customer.
1. We agree on the brief
A short call to understand your business, the customer or subject, what they experienced, and what you need the piece to do. We agree on scope and format at this stage -- narrative, structured document, or both -- so the interview is shaped accordingly from the start. Typically 600--800 words for B2C and community audiences; 800--1,200 for B2B.
2. I design the interview
A tailored guide built around your objectives and this specific customer, not a generic question list. Structured to surface the challenge, the turning point, and the result, with prompts designed to find the detail that makes the piece worth reading.
3. I conduct the interview
Remotely by default, in person when it makes sense. I run the conversation, follow the threads that lead somewhere interesting, and do the work of finding the proof. Your customer leaves feeling heard, which matters if you want them to remain an advocate after the story is published.
4. You receive the finished piece or pieces
Delivered within five working days of the interview, structured around Challenge, Solution and Impact, with the proof woven throughout. Publication-ready. Two rounds of revisions is included.
A producer's instinct, applied to copy.
Customer stories and case studies can be useless. Not because the writer was bad at writing, but because the interview was bad at interviewing. Prepared questions get prepared answers. You end up with a quotes-and-numbers press release dressed up as a story, and nobody reads it past the third paragraph.
I've spent over a decade in TV documentary and branded content, and this has involved interviewing contributors from all walks of life - including families of murder victims, survivors of natural disasters and North Sea fishermen. It takes patience and a willingness to drop a question list when something interesting comes up. Generic answers are easy to get. The telling detail is always specific: a number mentioned almost in passing, or something that nearly went wrong. That's where the story usually is. It's also where the proof is, which is what the client actually wanted in the first place.
Pricing
Every project is scoped individually.
If you have a budget in mind, share it, and I’ll tell you honestly what’s possible within it.
If not, get in touch, and we’ll work it out together.
Work samples
Get in touch
Tell me a little about what you're working on, and I'll come back to you within two working days.