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5 Growth Strategy Case Studies and Key Takeaways

June 9, 2019

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“We must have spent tens of millions in signup and referral bonuses the first year,” says David Sacks, original COO at Paypal. But that initial investment worked.

“Dropbox went from 100,000 to 4,000,000 users in 15 months”

“Your customers probably won’t tell you when they hit a snag,” says Alex Turnbull, founder and CEO of Groove.

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Hacking the Case Interview

A growth strategy or revenue growth case interview is a common type of case you’ll see in your first round and final round consulting interviews. This type of case interview may look something like the following:

Your client, Coca-Cola, is looking for new opportunities to grow after years of flat growth. They have hired you to determine the best way to grow.

In this article, we’ll cover a comprehensive framework that you can use to structure the different ways a company can grow. We’ll also show you the five steps you should take to solve any growth strategy or revenue growth case.

If you’re looking for a step-by-step shortcut to learn case interviews quickly, enroll in our case interview course . These insider strategies from a former Bain interviewer helped 30,000+ land consulting offers while saving hundreds of hours of prep time.

Growth Strategy Case Interview Framework

You can think about growth through two major categories, organic growth and inorganic growth.

The most common type of growth that companies pursue is organic growth, which is growth driven by expanding output or engaging in internal activities. In other words, the company is growing through its own capabilities and efforts.

Inorganic growth, on the other hand, is growth driven by acquisitions, joint ventures, or partnerships.

These two categories form the foundation of our growth strategy case framework.

Organic growth

Organic growth can be segmented into growth through existing revenue sources and growth through new revenue sources.

Growth through existing revenue sources

Growth through existing revenue sources is either driven by an increase in quantity of units sold or by an increase in average price per unit sold. 

To increase the quantity of units sold, a company can:

• Improve their product
• Decrease prices
• Sell through new distribution channels
• Target new customer segments
• Expand into new geographies
• Invest more in marketing and sales

To increase the average price per unit sold, the company can:

• Increase prices for their products
• Focus on selling higher priced products

Remember that changing prices will impact quantity of units sold, so it is important to look at the net effect price changes have on revenue.

Growth through new revenue sources

To drive growth through new revenue sources, a company can:

• Launch new products
• Launch new services

Inorganic growth

Inorganic growth can be segmented into three categories:  

Acquisitions

• Joint ventures
• Partnerships

The first way that a company can grow inorganically is by acquiring another company. This gives the acquiring company all of the revenue that the acquisition target generates. In addition, there may be revenue synergies that the acquiring company can realize.

Acquiring a company gives the acquiring company access to the acquisition target’s distribution channels, customers, and products. The acquiring company may be able to increase revenues by cross-selling products, up-selling products, or bundling products together.

The advantages of making an acquisition are that the company increases its revenues immediately. They also have full control over how they want to manage and operate the acquired company. 

The main disadvantages are that acquisitions are expensive and there could be difficulties fully integrating the acquired company.  

Joint venture

In a joint venture, two or more companies enter a business arrangement in which they pool together resources and share risk in accomplishing a particular task. Each company in the joint venture is responsible for profits, losses, and costs associated with the project.

Joint ventures are beneficial to companies because they can share resources, expertise, and can decrease costs due to scale. Additionally, joint ventures are much cheaper than acquisitions. 

A disadvantage of a joint venture is that it will take time to generate revenue. Also, the company does not have full control over the operations of its partners.

Partnership

A partnership is an association between two or more companies that provides some kind of benefit to each partner. This is slightly different from a joint venture because in a partnership, companies do not necessarily have to combine resources or efforts. They just need to be associated with each other.

One advantage of a partnership is that it is most often cheaper than a joint venture since resources don’t necessarily need to be contributed. Also, all partners get the benefit from the brand names and customer access of their partners.

Similar to joint ventures, one disadvantage of a partnership is that it takes time to generate revenue. Also, companies do not have full control over their partners’ operations.

5 Steps to Solving a Growth Strategy Case Interview

Follow these five steps and you’ll be able to solve any growth strategy or revenue growth case that you get.

1. Understand what the company is trying to grow

The first step to solve any growth strategy case is to identify what the company is trying to grow. Are they trying to grow revenues, profits, number of customers, or something else? 

Growing revenues versus growing profits can lead to very different strategies. Understanding what the company is trying to grow will help you determine what growth strategies will be most effective.

Interviewer: Your client, Coca-Cola, is looking for new opportunities to grow after years of flat growth. They have hired you to determine the best way to grow.

You: Is Coca-Cola looking to grow revenues, profits, or something else?

Interviewer: They are looking to grow revenues.

2. Quantify the specific target or goal

Next, you want to quantify the goal or target that the company is aiming for. For example, if the company wants to grow revenue, how much of a revenue increase are they hoping for? In what time period are they trying to accomplish this by?

You: How much is Coca-Cola looking to grow revenue by? And in what time period are they looking to achieve this level of growth?

Interviewer: They are looking to grow revenues by $1B over the next three years.

3. Look at potential organic growth opportunities

Once you have quantified the company’s target or goal, you can walk the interviewer through your growth strategy framework. You’ll most likely want to start by looking at organic growth opportunities first because this type of growth is more sustainable than inorganic growth.

You: To determine the best opportunities to achieve a $1B increase in revenues over the next three years, I’d like to use the following framework.

First, I’d like to consider potential organic growth opportunities. This includes growth through existing revenue sources and growth through new revenue sources.

Next, I’d like to look into potential inorganic growth opportunities. Is there a particular acquisition, joint venture, or partnership that would make sense for Coca-Cola to pursue? 

Interviewer: That sounds like a great plan. How should we proceed?

You: Let’s look at organic growth opportunities first. Since Coca-Cola is a mature company that has seen flat growth, I am guessing that there won’t be significant opportunities to increase revenues from existing revenue sources.

Interviewer: That seems like a reasonable assumption.

You: Okay, so let’s look at potential new revenue sources. Are there particular drink beverage markets that Coca-Cola has no presence in that they could expand into?

Interviewer: Let me share with you these exhibits on potential drink beverage markets Coca-Cola could enter…

4. Look at potential inorganic growth opportunities

After you have thoroughly investigated the organic growth opportunities, move onto looking into inorganic growth opportunities.

Consider whether an acquisition, joint venture, or partnership would be most appropriate given your company’s situation. Each of these methods of inorganic growth have their advantages and disadvantages.

You: After looking at organic growth opportunities, we determined that Coca-Cola could increase revenues by $600M by entering three niche drink beverage markets. However, we are still $400M in revenue short of our goal. I’d like to look into inorganic growth opportunities next. 

Interviewer: That makes sense. There are a few acquisition targets Coca-Cola is considering. Let me share with you some further information…

5. Prioritize and recommend the best opportunities for growth

Once you have investigated all of the potential opportunities for growth, it is time to prioritize and recommend the ones that are best for the company.

You’ll likely need to develop some kind of rubric to evaluate each growth opportunity. You can score each growth opportunity on the basis of:

• Ease of implementation

In step two, you quantified the specific target or goal that the company is trying to achieve. Make sure that your recommendation meets these goals.

You: To achieve its revenue growth targets, I recommend that Coca-Cola enter three emerging drink beverage markets and that they acquire Company X. There are two reasons that support this.

One, Coca-Cola can leverage its existing production and distribution capabilities to gain meaningful market share in these emerging drink beverage markets quickly. They could increase revenues by $600M over three years fairly easily.

Two, the acquisition of Company X would increase revenues by $500M, helping Coca-Cola achieve its revenue growth target. Additionally, there are many revenue synergies that Coca-Cola can take advantage of to grow revenues even more over the next few years.

For next steps, I’d like to look into Coca-Cola’s market entry strategy for entering these emerging markets. I’d also like to look into whether the acquisition price for Company X is fair and reasonable.

Interviewer: Great. Thank you for your recommendation.

Final Thoughts on Growth Strategy Cases

The most important part of solving growth strategy cases is to be structured and methodical in considering all of the different growth opportunities. If you lay out a comprehensive and organized framework, the rest of the case should be a simple process of elimination.

You should pay special attention to the context of the case and the company’s circumstances. The stage of the company, how much free cash it has on hand, and the level of urgency the company is facing will help you narrow down your options.

After practicing a few growth strategy cases, you’ll notice that these cases follow a predictable pattern and you’ll be able to solve any growth strategy case that comes your way.

In addition to growth strategy case interviews, we also have additional step-by-step guides to: profitability case interviews , market entry case interviews , M&A case interviews , pricing case interviews , operations case interviews , marketing case interviews , and private equity case interviews .

Recommended Growth Strategy Case Interview Resources

Here are the resources we recommend to learn the most robust, effective case interview strategies in the least time-consuming way:

• Comprehensive Case Interview Course (our #1 recommendation): The only resource you need. Whether you have no business background, rusty math skills, or are short on time, this step-by-step course will transform you into a top 1% caser that lands multiple consulting offers.
• Hacking the Case Interview Book   (available on Amazon): Perfect for beginners that are short on time. Transform yourself from a stressed-out case interview newbie to a confident intermediate in under a week. Some readers finish this book in a day and can already tackle tough cases.
• The Ultimate Case Interview Workbook (available on Amazon): Perfect for intermediates struggling with frameworks, case math, or generating business insights. No need to find a case partner – these drills, practice problems, and full-length cases can all be done by yourself.
• Case Interview Coaching : Personalized, one-on-one coaching with former consulting interviewers
• Behavioral & Fit Interview Course : Be prepared for 98% of behavioral and fit questions in just a few hours. We'll teach you exactly how to draft answers that will impress your interviewer
• Resume Review & Editing : Transform your resume into one that will get you multiple interviews

Land Multiple Consulting Offers

Complete, step-by-step case interview course. 30,000+ happy customers.

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• Growth marketing

Impressive growth marketing case studies from Dashly clients [tactics, tools, results]

Ever wondered what it’s like to peek behind the growth hackers’ curtain? Well, buckle up! I’m the skipper at Dashly’s Growth Team and I’ve got some secrets to spill. Arm yourself with our most impressive growth marketing case studies straight from our playbook!

Cutting to the chase — these are tales of cunning tactics, cunning tools, and pretty darn good results. Sketches of how we’ve driven businesses from various sectors, SaaS companies included, to pump up their marketing game and reach those exhilarating milestones.

Through this breezy read, we’re letting you in on the nitty-gritty of how we collaborate with our customers. It’s about creating sterling strategies and celebrating stellar outcomes.

And guess what? We’re going to reveal our backstage magic — the strategies and stories of success. So get ready to dig deep into how we’ve woven growth into our clients’ stories. These bite-sized nuggets of wisdom could be the spark you need to level up your own game!

Yup, every business is its own beast, but when we face it together and learn from each other, that’s where you find the real growth. Let’s dive in!

Skyrocket marketing lead generation

+1,152 leads growth with a chatbot growth marketing case .

One of the customers’ case studies Dashly is working on is a school aimed at film production. When folks browse through their site investigating different courses, decision-making isn’t typically a rapid process.

And the fix for this?

The crew behind the digital academy figured out the preferences of the site visitors and assembled their contact details for the sales people. This opened the gateways for them to connect with the potential leads and offer guidance in selecting the most fitting course.

Qualifying leads emerge as a vital element in hacking growth as it lends you a meaningful understanding of your intended crowd.

So, they decided to integrate a Dashly chatbot on their online platform to:

👉 Kickstart chats with the guests; 👉 Put forward qualifying queries; 👉 Compile contact numbers.

This collected data is then transported to amoCRM, arming the sales folks with all the info they need to give potential students a ring and make a suitable course suggestion.

The payoff? They achieved 1,152 leads growth in a mere five months.

+12% target leads growth with pop-up quiz and chatbot

We’re weaving the saga of Seamus Bennett (CEO and co-founder of  KVR , a top-tier software development firm), who onboarded Dashly to turbocharge the lead qualification mechanics on his website, a strategic move to drive growth.

Sales heavyweights previously operated exclusively with those eager to swiftly fork out funds and dive headfirst into product deployment. But to amp up revenue and align with growth marketing strategies, the case required mastering techniques to engage with prospects requiring more nurturing time and not prepped for an instant buy. This marketing growth strategy is somewhat convoluted.

The mission of pushing for long-term sales may appear a tad alien to sales veterans whose monthly windfalls hinge on achieving preset sales targets. What’s the remedy?

1. Lead qualification pop-up quiz on product pages (since its visitors are more ready to buy.)

Thus, they can define leads that meet the ICP portrait and call them first. It’s one of the best growth marketing tips .

2. Chatbot to capture and qualify blog readers 

Each reader browsing the content within the blog articles was given the chance to interact with a chatbot following the initial 30 seconds of their session. The outcomes for the company:

👉 An increase of 12% in orders due to the integration of engaging pop-up quizzes and the chatbot into their strategy. 👉 A solid 60% of orders originating from the quizzes and the Dashly chatbot are specifically targeted.

Read the entire story

Thanks! Here’s your copy of  the growth strategy template

School for IT and Data specialists got +44% applications growth

This case study of Dashly client was grappling with an issue: An underwhelming number of applications on the course pages. A chunk of visitors bounce without sealing the deal, and inquiries of those who eventually do aren’t attended to speedily by the managing crew. Hence, the anticipated uptick in key growth marketing metrics for their business remained elusive.

Chatbot on the “Data Science from scratch” course page

The chatbot, snugly fit within the Dashly platform, doesn’t suddenly prompt you to enroll for a course. Instead, it gently evolves into a lead qualifier, presenting itself as an assistant to help carve your education journey and manage personal career hurdles.

The impact made by this implementation in their product strategy: 

• 7.5% of users disclosed their emails,
• 5.3% parted with their phone numbers.

Chatbot on the “Data Science: Advanced course” page

This particular page is tailored for seasoned pros looking to carve a niche in this industry. Here, the chatbot’s objective is to reinforce the fact that they’ve stumbled upon the perfect hotspot to satisfy their ambitions and elevate their abilities, perfectly aligning with the company’s growth goals.

Leveraging creative marketing, the chatbot dangled the bait of a complimentary career guide, a savvy marketing tactic intended to coax leads into revealing their contact information.

The results:

👉 22,7% shared emails, 👉 15,5% shared phone numbers.

Marketing case studies on how to boost conversion into signup

+70% conversion onto sign-up with a chatbot .

Teaming up with Anthony, co-founder of an  online platform for Instagram account growth , we tackled a case focused on this hiccup: incoming users ducked out before reaching the payment section. So what was the panacea for this marketing problem with room for growth?

They already had an enticing deal in place — an automated message paired with a free audit.

However, the original format of the deal wasn’t exactly cutting it. To amplify the shift from mere browsing to actual signup, we proposed tailoring this offer around the distinct pain points of the customers, and rolling it out as an engaging dialogue with a chatbot. 

Using a chatbot, they got a 70% growth in conversion to users signups. As for the overall funnel performance, it added 5% to the conversion to sign-up.

Thanks! Here’s your copy of 100 growth ideas

How growth hackers engage users to complete registration

In Dashly, we work with Freedom24 — a fintech company. They have a registration issue. After registration in a website form, users should confirm their residential address with a utility bill or any other document. Some of them find this step rather difficult and abandon registration.

Freedom24 marketing team sends them three onboarding emails :

👉 The first one describes the benefits a client gets after opening an account. 👉 The second message highlights the opportunity to get support.  👉 The third email intrigues you with 30 days of the free-of-charge Promo account.

Freedom24 marketers use the same CTA at the beginning and end of each email message to highlight the main action.

At Dashly, we’re collaborating with Freedom24 — a fintech company . They are grappling with a registration snag. Upon registration via the website form, users must verify their residential address with a utility bill or some equivalent document. Some folks find this step rather cumbersome, leading them to ditch the registration process partway.

So, what’s the resolution?

The nifty Freedom24 marketing team sets into motion three onboarding emails for users: 

👉 The initial one elaborates on the perks awaiting a client following account activation.  👉 The subsequent email underscores the provision of assistance.  👉 The final email hooks you with a tantalizing offer of enjoying a free-for-any-charge Promo account for 30 days.

To strike home their focal point, Freedom24 marketers smartly lace the same call-to-action (CTA) at the commencement and termination of each content email to capture attention. This has proved beneficial to both users and the business.

Open Rate: 23.15% CTR: 2,59%

Open Rate: 43.55% CTR: 10,51%

Open Rate: 46.61% CTR: 1,60%

Since 50% of the website traffic goes to the Freedom24 app, its users receive relevant push notifications as well:

Open Rate: 30.47% CTR: 3.65%

Open Rate: 13.55% CTR: 0.57%

Open Rate: 18.18% CTR: 0.65%

Consequently, folks who’ve signed up at Freedom24, courtesy of this strategy incorporated into the email program: 

👉 Recall the importance of initiating an account to commence their investment journey through the platform,  👉 Understand the correct pathway to seek aid for account setup,  👉 Spark an inner urge to expedite the process.

Need more inspo for your growth strategy? We’re here to help 👇

Marketing case studies about conversion to payment 

+30% free-to-paid conversion rate growth with a chatbot on pricing page.

Switching gears to our following collaborator — LeadGen App . They come armed with a form-builder service that empowers SME enterprises, digital agencies, and marketers to craft forms primed for conversion, resulting in an uptick in feedback during lead generation campaigns. Amid a sea of  growth marketing tools , data driven CEO Christopher chose to enlist Dashly platform to tackle the ensuing challenge — boost the conversion rate from free to paid users. One of the solutions we made was launching a chatbot on their pricing page:

Opting for any of the given options, like “How does LeadGen App stand out from other growth marketing services ,” you are greeted with an in-depth response. This comes as linked case content that guides visitors straight to the free account registration step:

At the end of the message customers see a link leading them to the registration and LeadGen App Pro Tariff: 

When visitors look for a certain feature, the chatbot asks them to share an email. Thus, Christopher can contact them later about the chosen feature.

Chatbots truly are a force to reckon with in various B2B growth hacking strategies . Armed with chatbots, Christopher now has a steady inflow of registrations and quality leads to follow up, effectively aligning with his strategy.

The impact : 

A surge in the number of users who interacted with the chatbot on the pricing page significantly boosted sales. This steered the company towards a substantial 31% uptick in sales transactions following the first month of  chatbot implementation in their content.

Read also: 25 Growth Marketing Books to Skyrocket Success

+$2k revenue with video pop-ups growth marketing case 

Before collaboration with Dashly, this online platform for Instagram account growth saw merely 23% of total users invest in their features.

In tandem with the client, we brought to life an onboarding system using Dashly’s toolkit. This system was designed to steer B2B users through the sales funnel, inspiring them to spring for feature purchases. Subsequently, we integrated pop-ups into the business platform, utilizing them to underline the worth of premium features.

In our most triumphant growth marketing experiment, we slipped in a video guide from the company.

The result in a month after the implementation:

• revenue amounted to $2k (the minimum price for a feature is $3, and we got 653 transactions);
• conversion to purchasing a full audit was 8% of impressions.

Read also: Growth marketing vs performance marketing and RevOps vs Sales Ops .

+30% features sales with triggered email for bounced free users

Apart from pop-ups, for a former client, we rolled out email drives designed to reel in users who dropped off the platform without buying features. Each of these campaigns contained a pair of emails: 👉 Email one was promptly delivered right after a user jumped ship; 👉 Email two, crafted to avoid causing annoyance, was scheduled to be sent after a two-day gap. 

If a user snagged a feature post the first email, they were spared the receipt of the second one.

Here’s a glimpse at the top-performing email, boasting a 53% Open Rate. This marketing maneuver, as part of the case, enabled the growth marketing squad to rake in a revenue north of $1.5k.

Overall email performance a month after the implementation:

• revenue — $1.5k (ARPU— $2.5, 574 transactions);
• the Conversion Rate of each email was from 7% to 15%;
• emails generated 30% of all feature sales.

User activation into a product

+33% conversion to the first application among new users (cpa network) .

This firm operates as a  CPA network affiliating bank programs, microfinance entities, insurance, and law enterprises. The company’s income is tightly linked to the activity level at which webmasters spotlight their offers.

Picture this: a user signs up on the site but is left scratching their head about your product’s workings. Typically, they might try to crack the code independently but eventually lose steam and slip into a “dormant” client mode. You can dodge this scenario, though, by immediately encouraging your clients to delve deeper and read about your product’s details.

This activation into the product is a crucial leap on the growth hacking canvas .

The solution?

Chatbot for user onboarding 👉

• Greets the webmaster on the dashboard after the signup. Qualifies users.
• Sends case studies, tool guides, and creative ideas for ads.
• Informs about bonuses.
• 1580 users interacted with the onboarding chatbot;
• The conversion rate of users to the first application has increased by 33%.

Reactivate inactive users

Every enterprise encounters customers who refrain from using its product, bypass the website, and treat communication efforts on different channels with indifference. It’s an age-old truth.

To tackle this hurdle, Freedom24 (fintech project) marketers resort to putting varied hypotheses to the test. For instance, their recent brainwave to “rekindle” interaction with such clients revolved around a combo of  app push notifications plus bonus-centric emails .

Indeed, this growth marketing tactic continues to clock in rigidly for the business, maintaining interaction with customers:

20 euro offer interested 2.95% of users who read this message in the app and 18.58% of clients who read it in email.

Marketing campaigns on how to greet and assist potential customers 

Initiate interaction with a potential client by extending a warm welcome via live chat . Slice up the audience into segments and then craft bespoke triggered messages tailored to each group for this company.

A subtle “How can we help? We’re here for you 😊” might suffice for first-timers. This approach ensures customers know precisely where to turn if they encounter a snag.

For the repeat customers, such as our boomerang buddy Mr. Yakamoto, the style can be more relaxed and chummy. Referencing a customer’s past dealings is an ace up the sleeve in terms of an engagement strategy. It allows you to resume dialogue right where you left off last.

Divvy up the audience and shoot proactive messages across varying stages of the customer journey. It ranks as one of the premier customer engagement strategies in growth marketing! Dashly client OpenCRM got aboard this tactic and witnessed a dazzling 400% surge in the total number of conversations 👇

Pro tip: you can also set up a virtual assistant. In our reality, a chatbot comes in handy for this task. 

Here’s how Dashly’s chatbot became a game-changer in guiding those visiting digital schools towards the right course choice. It’s all about the strategic “Data Science from Scratch” course page. Here, growth marketing tactics kick in and marketers start casual chats with visitors. The goal? To clear up any confusion and highlight the real value of the school’s courses.

No hard sell here — the chatbot doesn’t just blurt out “Sign up for this course” — no sirree. Instead, it gently guides and supports potential students, turning them into hot leads.

The chatbot jumps into action 29 seconds after a customer lands on the “Data Science from Scratch” course page. Its job? To aid SkillFactory customers navigate the maze of education and career decisions. So, there’s no aimless wandering around the website. Customers get the advice they need, right on the get-go, on the same page.

And the results speak for themselves:

⭐ 7.5% of visitors who got the chat message left their emails, ⭐ 5.3% of these visitors even shared their phone numbers.

What is a growth marketing case study?

A growth marketing case study is a detailed narrative that focuses on a company’s strategic use of growth marketing tactics. It chronicles how the company solved a problem, overcame a challenge or seized an opportunity, to drive significant growth or increase conversions.

How are growth marketing case studies useful for my business?

Growth marketing case studies can provide you with valuable insights into effective strategies and tactics used by other businesses. This helps you learn from their successes (or failures), trigger fresh ideas for your own strategies, and improve your decision-making process.

What information can I typically find in a growth marketing case study?

A growth marketing case study usually provides details about the subject company, its marketing objectives, the strategies it implemented, the challenges it faced, and the results it achieved. It may also provide analyses of strategy effectiveness as well as lessons learned.

Where can I find growth marketing case studies?

You can typically find growth marketing case studies on business education websites, marketing blogs, market research sites, and websites of marketing agencies. They can also be found in eBooks, whitepapers, and reports published by software providers or marketing consultancies.

How can I create a growth marketing case study for my business?

Creating a growth marketing case study involves defining your objectives and key measurements, documenting your strategies and their implementations, monitoring and recording results, and analyzing outcomes. It’s crucial to remember that an ideal case study not only highlights successes, but also provides a thoughtful evaluation of what could have been done better.

• Deep dive into growth marketing analytics with Dashly experts
• 22 SaaS growth hack Facebook tactics to boost your business
• Skyrocket your company revenue with a complete guide to  RevOps Revenue Operations
• RevOps tech stack : Guide to the best tools
• Revenue operations metrics : 10 metrics and KPIs to track your performance
• RevOps best practices : 13 tactics to implement this year
• Top 10 product led growth software your competitors use in 2023
• 10 product led growth companies that boost their development right now
• Growth marketing framework : Battle-tested insights from Dashly experts

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29 Growth Marketing Case Studies

by Samuel J. Woods

More than anything else, I regularly come across people asking for growth marketing case studies .

It’s one thing to have a list of “growth hacks” and a general sense of growth marketing methodology and process.

But quite another to learn how other companies went from zero to traction, then scale and growth.

Everyone wants to discover what other companies have done successfully. And see what’s possible, across channels, growth processes , “growth hacking”, and growth teams .

But uncovering hidden growth opportunities takes time, effort, analysis, and constant testing.

So, I analyzed and studied how a number of companies did it.

What you’ll see in this article are a wide range of companies—SaaS, apps, marketplaces, e-commerce, platforms.

Many went from small to big, fast.

Here are 29 growth marketing case studies.

Growth Marketing Case Studies Reveal a Variety of Growth Paths

Given the spread in types of companies, you can expect to learn about various growth strategies, tactics, and the path they took toward exponential growth.

Some took years, others took months. But one way or another, they tapped into a market, a need, with a product or service that solved their problems.

Growth Marketing Case Study #1: Etsy

From June 2005 to 2022, craft super seller Etsy went from a concept to nearly 14 billion in sales (in 2021), including more than 4 million sellers and almost 40 million active buyers.

Now, Etsy is a publicly-traded Nasdaq company (ETSY) with a $13 billion market cap.

How did they do it? Here’s the snapshot.

A Needed Change: Craft sellers were aggravated that eBay was so cumbersome, stingy, and seemed to lack care for sellers. These factors created an environment that was supercharged for a platform like Etsy.

They Weren’t Lazy: A marketplace is unique because it requires both buyers and sellers to be successful.

Without awesome products, there would be no need for buyers.

The founders went to every artisan flea market and craft fair to introduce them to the craft-specific selling platform.

Finding Buyers: Etsy was able to tap into a rise in the craft industry fueled by a renaissance of handmade crafters.

Some of these early product creators had built an audience but hadn’t interconnected or listed their items through an eCommerce platform.

Growing Organically: Typically, Etsy only pays for around 2-7% of their traffic (which is insane). This “grassroots” growth comes from getting out of the way of their sellers.

With 150 third-party apps and sellers who are empowered to grow their own business as they see fit, getting out of the way has led to the exponential growth of both sellers and buyers.

Continued Growth: Since its IPO, Etsy has continued to grow rapidly. Now, growth comes primarily through experimentation and a growth marketing strategy handled by teams of people.

Split testing, coming up with experiments, breaking down features, and changing small elements to gauge usefulness and user response has fueled growth.

Key Takeaways from Etsy:

• Having a keen sense of market needs can lead to initial traction and validation.
• One of the best ways to see growth in a new online business is to promote it through physical events to the public.
• Provide the right tool(s) and network with key players (that have an audience that needs your stuff).
• Figuring out ways to empower users to become brand ambassadors is a key to long-term and sustainable growth.
• Large amounts of growth are possible at every level. Strategies may change, and teams may grow, but organized experimentation, failing fast, and setting up processes will help you succeed.

Growth Marketing Case Study #2: Nasty Gal

From 2006 until 2008, Nasty Gal was an eBay business that bought and sold vintage goods for its founder (Sophia Amoruso) to try and make a living.

In 2008, she opened a stand-alone e-Commerce site, and by 2011, it hit $28 million in sales.

The following year, Nasty Gal reported $100 million in revenue and began experimenting with physical locations.

Here’s the brief on how.

Consistent Persistence: Amoruso started an eBay store (called Nasty Gal Vintage) back in 2006 to pay rent. She realized a heavy desire among millennials to dress in vintage clothes due to the unique styles of previous eras.

When she hit what would be a detrimental blow to most (her eBay store was shut down), it didn’t stop her.

That persistence led to an independent site with $28 million in revenue by 2011 (all from vintage clothing arbitrage).

Leveraging Platforms: Using share-worthy style, high margin vintage finds, and a few local models, Nasty Gal built a large following using eBay and social platforms like Myspace (well before Facebook ads).

Her strategy was simple in the early days. She made her models not only look but feel awesome and set out to “…sell things for more than you bought them.”

Perceived Value: Without even knowing what it was, Sophia knew that if she positioned clothing a certain way, it would drive up the price of the early eBay auctions.

Taking decades-old clothing and styling it on the right college-aged model with thoughtful positioning and accessories meant large profits early on and continues today. The way you present can alter the way products are perceived.

Initial Testing: Early eBay was a split-testing ground for Nasty Gal. Testing everything, including the headlines on auctions, the images available, product styles, and putting one article of clothing on several different models to try what hit and missed.

This experimentation led to gains week after week and a store that constantly performed better.

Raising the Stakes: Once the eBay store was shut down, the site came to life with a hefty social following and loyal fans. Selling out of merchandise led to Amoruso seeking a Nasty Gal line.

Through continued experimentation, social presence, and sticking to its core audience, the company has seen incredible growth.

With $100 million in revenue (2015), $65 million in VC funds last year, and two physical locations, the growth is set to continue.

Growth Marketing Case Study #3: Growth Hackers

This look at Growth Hackers will speak strongly to the frustrated founder who has hit a growth plateau.

The company seemingly stalled at 90,000 users. Then, after a little focus and only 11 weeks, that number reached over 150,000.

Get ready for a straight dose of data as we look at how they did it.

High Tempo Time: Testing different growth strategies had slowed, and goals weren’t being met. These two factors led to a stagnant user growth chart and a company not living up to its name. Recognizing this was a huge first step to setting a goal of three experiments per week.

Defining Experiments: The types of things Growth Hackers identify as experiments aren’t just a simple split test (even though those are included). New initiatives, new/revamped product releases, and other things were included to test.

It Takes a Village: A team of people was gathered from around the company to be involved with generating the ideas for experimentation.

The Hackers cited that if one person is in charge of the idea process, the number of experiments to be tested will run out without seeing the type of growth that is desired.

Their efforts resulted in hundreds of ideas that had to be prioritized by potential benefit and ease/speed of implementation.

Pace Yourself (and Meet Often): Some of the experiments took more effort than others (which is normal). However, when these larger tests were run, it caused the crew not to hit their three-a-week goal.

This problem required that they set weekly meetings to identify problems and methodically sort through their experiment list.

The Process Works: Growth Hackers was able to grow the number of users (62,000) within 11 weeks. That same number of users took 32 weeks for the company to attain during launch.

Growth Marketing Case Study #4: Slack

If you love growth stories, you’ve heard of slack. This would-be game company that turned its focus to team communication has received an incredible amount of attention.

From 15,000 users at launch (February 2014) to over 10 million daily active users now, their story is nothing short of amazing.

Here are the highlights of their early traction.

Defining a New Tool: For slack, defining itself was an issue at first. It was when they defined an entire software category that existed(but really didn’t) that they found their focus.

Offices around the world were using dozens of different tools to communicate with other team members and colleagues which made slack a no-brainer to create.

Selling the Dream: Slack is a useful tool, but offices had to be convinced they really needed it (borderline couldn’t live without it).

Since they were able to identify a whole new market, they also had to deal with educating their ideal customers and convincing them it was a need.

Once they were able to get this across, traction came like a flood.

Focus is Key: Early on, the slack founders were influenced to pick out the software’s key features and just do those as well as they possibly could.

Winning big where they won instead of even focusing across the board.

Features weren’t wholeheartedly denied, but an incredible level of care was spent perfecting file sharing and search synchronization (incredibly important to highly connected teams).

Once offices saw the results, word of mouth caused growth to catch fire again.

Give it Away: Slack followed suit of some of the most popular organization apps and offered a free service that was incredibly useful. Teams who saw that value would get the better options to a tune of a 30% conversion rate (free to paid).

A freemium model was a huge factor in the early growth that brought all of the media and VC attention, but the app itself kept paying customers.

Smooth Onboarding: Since it is a useful tool, slack had to be careful not to create a cumbersome learning curve for users.

The development of a simple and intuitive interface that allows teams to be created seamlessly and communicate immediately helped more people hit the ground running.

Growth Marketing Case Study #5: New Relic

New Relic is an analytics company that reveals the deepest secrets of cloud software and apps.

From their start in 2008 until now, they’ve managed to gain 15,400 clients (as of 2020) and monitor over 1 million websites and 1 billion (with a b) apps.

Their customers range from startups to Fortune 500s and government agencies. Their growth is incredible.

So how’d they do it? Here’s how.

Solve a Problem: The basic rule of entrepreneurship is to solve a need, and New Relic knew that they would have to create something great for a market as picky as a development community.

Early traction can almost all be traced by the quality of their product and its usefulness, making their focus on providing an excellent tool worthwhile.

Create Salespeople: Early marketing efforts were heavily focused on not only selling to large development firms but specifically Ruby on Rails programmers.

This approach was different in the sense that New Relic went after people instead of agencies, leading to popularity among those who would actually use their product.

Things like t-shirts for users and meetups led to a sense of community all built around their excellent product.

Give It Away: A freemium model would give skittish developers a chance to view their program’s analytics, enticing them to upgrade to paid.

New Relic’s marketing was simple, convince prospects to sign up and deploy to get a t-shirt and let the product do the rest.

Spending Money: In addition to shirts, the company is spending money on social ads and traffic at a high rate to gain relevant traffic. The brand is also employing multiple tools and SaaS products to gather the data they need to grow even faster.

Addictive Personality: With the product just being so dang valuable, their customers actually get dependent on the insights gained from it.

This need for the data has led to an almost unheard of negative churn rate (meaning their customers spend more year over year).

This rare occurrence happens due to the amount of data created and the space taken up on servers. Talk about growth.

Growth Marketing Case Study #6: Tinder

Shrouded in scandal and misinformation, tinder has a truly fascinating story.

Their growth has come from a mix of newsworthy attention as well as innovation in a stale and competitive market.

From the start in late 2012 until now, they’ve garnered 75 million monthly active users.

All those people use the iconic “swipe” feature over 1 billion times per day.

How much they’re worth and how much trouble they’ve seen maybe cloudy, but the best story is in their growth.

Here’s the snapshot.

Ground Game: Online dating is a notoriously tough niche, but tinder knew what it needed to succeed.

A large number of females using the app would then entice guys to join, but the supply of potential dates had to be there first.

They met this problem from sorority houses, getting girls to sign up one dorm at a time. Next, you just had to tell the college guys there were girls.

Make It Fun: The need for loads of users in each town led to the gamification of the tinder app itself.

By creating the ability to keep “swiping,” you create a sense of wonder and hope that you’ll hit the jackpot with another flick or two. This feature has been a huge factor in the overall success.

Make It Better: Tinder was able to not only create an app in a crowded market, they were able to highlight some common issues with the giants and make them better. Ladies are less likely to get heckled by countless heathens with features built into the app, making more women use (and even enjoy) the app.

Keep Going: To keep people’s profiles fresh and used, tinder continues to add features and tweak them into a more social experience (without losing its core value).

Add-ons like ‘matchmaker’, which allows someone to introduce two friends through the app, or ‘moments’, which allows a user to share edited visuals with matches.

Growth Marketing Case Study #7: Stripe

If you want to create a company that attracts investors like a bug zapper on a front porch, listen to stripe’s story.

A couple of guys (with previous success) managed to create an online payment processor that attracted the attention of the guys who made one of the first (PayPal).

With a current market cap of more than $94 billion, Stripe processes billions more every year.

How’d it happen? Let’s see.

Addressing Elephants: While payment processors existed, they were incredibly cumbersome.

Connectivity and customers were growing at a far greater rate than the ability to take payments. This obvious problem led the three founders to have a simple goal, make it easy for ecommerce businesses to take payments.

Being Different: Figuring out the frustration of other popular processors (PayPal, Google), Stripe was able to develop a platform that was business friendly.

Features that set them apart included the ability for customers to stay on the seller’s site for the entire transaction, and reducing backend features that were confusing and difficult to navigate.

Close Customer Base: Stripe used its surroundings to find it’s first loyal customers. Since the company was part of a community of companies from an incubator, they were able to use that as leverage (most of them needed a payment processor).

Organic Growth: The product spoke well to online business owners and received incredible word of mouth exposure during it’s early days.

To accelerate this advocacy, stripe sent care packages, including shirts and stickers, to developers who used the product. There were also meetups and community events that fostered loyalty.

Constant Improvement: Stripe knows who their customers are and have continuously created new solutions for developers to keep them happy and talking.

From offering specialized support for all popular programming languages, to adding new features, there is always a better stripe in development. They’ve even begun to tackle mobile payments which almost ensures more growth in the coming months.

Growth Marketing Case Study #8: Spotify

Spotify. You’ve probably heard the name. You’re likely one of the 406 million users.

The company was valued at $10 billion in just six years on the market.

Now, it’s publicly traded with a more than $20 billion market cap.

This story is incredible. We’ll take a quick look at the key ingredients to this explosive growth.

Be Different: Music is a giant industry, and the competition couldn’t be tougher.

However, there was a gaping hole in the market. Spotify launched in the U.S. with the simple, yet powerful difference of all the music you want for a low monthly fee.

From a per album and track pricing method to unlimited is almost the definition of disruption. Growth was immediate.

Deliver the Goods: There were other services, but with no options. These early versions were more like radio and lacked to ability to create a soundtrack to your life.

Spotify allowed people to be in control of their music, a feature that many would pay for instead of being fed music.

Free Growth: The freemium model is one often used to help disrupt industries. Spotify does this by delicately placing ads and limiting features as not to upset users or be classified as pirating (70% of ad income goes to song rights holders).

Multiple Launches: Before launching in the U.S. in 2011 (partnering with Facebook which was another huge proponent to early growth), the company beta launched and then officially launched in multiple European countries. These tiered released allowed them to hone their message and buyer personas.

U.S. and Facebook: Launching in the U.S. (after finding their voice) caused Spotify to explode, increasing web traffic well over a million visitors a month within four months time.

Their partnership with Facebook and integrating with the social network garnered another exponential growth session gaining 1 million new users within one month.

Growth Marketing Case Study #9: Airbnb

Necessity may be the mother of all invention, but AirBnB almost didn’t succeed.

Sometimes it takes real tenacity to see growth and it worked out well for the lodging giant.

Now worth $100 billion and responsible for more stays than anyone else in the hospitality industry, this company has seen itself through tough times to sit on the top of an industry in record time.

We’ll give you the highlights.

Hustle Fund: Well before their 450 million in funding, the founders of AirBnB had to raise their own capital. Creating a couple of politically geared cereals (Obama-O’s and Cap’n MCcain’s) the team was able to raise 30k of crucial funds.

Using Your Skills: One of the most questionable factors to Airbnb’s growth is their pillaging of Craigslist.

These gifted developers engineered a solution that was able to pirate both visitors and rental listers from the popular community site.

This tactic isn’t easy and is borderline taboo, but was used to create the largest vacation property site on the internet.

Do What You Gotta: Early on, too many properties were struggling with revenue.

The problem was traced to bad pictures which created less interest. The solution was very hands on; renting an expensive camera and taking high quality photos of every property in New York.

The income doubled and eventually became an expensive (yet effective) program. AirBnB now employees 2000 freelance photographers and revenue has hit exponential growth since the program’s introduction.

Removing Fear: There are obvious concerns when renting your home to strangers (and vice versa).

The company realized that removing fears of those who were interested in using AirBnB (yet hadn’t rented or listed) was a crucial element of growth.

Introducing social integration allowed visitors to see connections and social proof of those who had stayed in a particular location.

Going WorldWide: With so many beautiful locations around the world, AirBnB has started to see another round of huge growth from international stays. This outlet will also be a focus for continued increase in the coming years.

Growth Marketing Case Study #10: WhatsApp

WhatsApp started as a company that stuck to its guns to do one thing (allowing people to message inexpensively) and do it without ads.

This initial goal helped them attract users for the messaging app quickly, but had them second guessing any funding.

After some tenacious VC’s the app now boasts over two billion users and 1 million more daily!

Here’s the brief story of how it happened.

Pivot Power: Most companies don’t reach success offering their service they way it started. WhatsApp started as an app to let others know you weren’t available by phone. This idea failed to catch fire, until push notifications were invented.

This new feature allowed WhatsApp users to alert friends of their status instantly across the world, giving life to the idea for a messaging app.

Principle Power: The app’s founder has a note taped to his desk professing “no ads” among other things. Their product doesn’t use ads and is free for the first year($0.99 cents/year thereafter).

These core principles are still alive and set WhatsApp apart from dozens of competitors aiming for ad revenue and other gimmicks.

Pricing Power: WhatsApp is such a low-cost alternative to many other carriers and services in other countries that international growth is faster than most other famous startups combined (Facebook included). Pricing to scale is a popular feature among startups.

Timing Power: WhatsApp had expenses for the free service that required a paid option. This problem led to the $1 price point it has today, but the timing of the paid option came with an ability to share pictures which meant growth stayed steady.

Facebook Power: The app has been purchased by Facebook, which has more than added to the growth (to the tune of 25 million users a month). However, the change does come with skepticism due to Facebook’s privacy concerns.

Growth Marketing Case Study #11: LinkedIn

Executives, middle class job seekers, and networking connectors love LinkedIn.

Within a year of going live (2003) the networking social platform had half a million users, and the growth didn’t slow down there.

It’s now a publicly traded company (LNKD) that boasts well over 810 million users and thousands of employees worldwide.

Here’s the quick look at their growth story.

Start With a Need: The need for quality prospects on both the employer and employee sides of the job coin warranted a solution.

While there were other options in the early 2000’s, none offered a place for executives and decision makers to find the connections they needed. The opportunity that LinkedIn capitalized on.

Niching Down: While the startup did find resistance in the beginning (tech bubble trouble), they were able to focus on Silicon Valley and find executives eager to fill their sparse staffs with qualified talent and connect with others.

This choice would eventually garner the acceptance of the professional community.

Not So Free: While LinkedIn did remain free, they weren’t making significant revenue from ads. When they added paid features like job listings, subscriptions, and more recently and ad platform, their revenue began to take shape.

Focus on Strength: Monitoring analytics allowed LinkedIn to notice that they were very good at engaging the initial traffic reaching their site, but not as good connecting with a cold email audience. This fact led them to focus on their homepage conversions rather than email, a difficult but effective solution that led to exponential growth.

Testing to Virality: Before the company would concentrate on revenue it had to secure its growth. To do this there was a heavy period of good old growth hacking experiments, tests, and analytics until they reached a planned viral loop.

Audience Before Business: Building a large and engaged community of users before concentrating on revenue gave LinkedIn the opportunity to build a business model around an audience they already knew (and had in their pocket).

This knowledge has led to acquisitions (Slideshare) and content platforms (Pulse) that are driving continued growth.

Growth Marketing Case Study #12: Yelp

If you love a good not-so-underdog story, then Yelp’s story is probably one you’ll enjoy.

In a world of social review sites, yelp managed to rise above some big branded names and boasts over 95 million reviews.

The site received an average of 85 million views in the fourth quarter of 2015 on mobile devices alone.

It started from humble San Fran beginnings and has gone on to become a publicly traded company worth around $5 billion.

Openly Different: Yelp decided early on that reviews wouldn’t be anonymous (like the other review sites). Instead, users have profiles and are empowered to share more reviews becoming a valued member of a community.

Fostering Quality: Other review sites are often full of overly negative and one time reviewers. Yelp has created a system to reward regular reviewers with titles, ranks and other goodies to encourage a constant and accurate stream of reliable reviewers.

Start Small: Starting in the local San Francisco scene, the Yelp team was able to fix issues and gather a tight knit community. Afterwards, it was easier to take on city after city which made growth naturally exponential.

Genuinely User Friendly: So many review sites have to cater to advertisers. The problem with this model is that most ads are for the companies being reviewed (an obvious conflict of interest). However, Yelp has managed to keep the focus on a democratic review system and is seemingly unbiased.

Natural Growth: When you can create a user generated environment that allows visitors to genuinely find the best place to spend their money, you will have the type of growth that Yelp has seen. This growth has in turn spread to the businesses that deserve it. Local places that have the reviews see a jump in revenue.

Growth Marketing Case Study #13: GitHub

Programmers and developers love the idea of open source, but had a cumbersome process to add value and create.

Seeing this need has led GitHub to an incredible amount of success.

From initial traction of 100,000 users in a year, to now having over 73 million active users with thousands more every day.

Here’s how it took shape.

Make Something Easier: The problem with using open source software was the process of downloading, making changes, and then actually seeing them used.

Essentially, it was the entire process that was broken. Creating a hub for git repositories that could easily be worked on and shared was the answer (namely GitHub).

Let It Ride: With developers loving the now easier (but not perfect) way to develop open source, it became a place that offered many new programs.

This supply led to those seeking (demand) and you had a rapid growth process that would eventually be a full audience of people developing solutions and others who needed them.

Making Money: Startups that offer a freemium model often times run into trouble getting users to pay for premium memberships. GitHub had a natural solution come to them. Businesses and other developers wanted a private repository and were willing to pay for it.

This structure created an entirely different membership that the company could charge to use.

Open Popularity: Since open source software is a huge deal, GitHub was in the perfect place to become the poster child of a movement. This position was in some ways deliberate, but in all ways has led to crazy user gains.

Fast Delivery: GitHub doesn’t linger on new features. The developers find a way to deliver things quickly and then work to improve it after feedback. This quality has led to continued growth and loyalty from existing users.

Growth Marketing Case Study #14: Upworthy

While Upworthy may not be a SaaS app, or other type of software tool, its story is just as grandiose.

Scrolling through your Facebook feed you’ve seen posts from this popular viral site (or others who are emulating their success).

Endearing stories, funny videos, or multitudes of other entertaining posts are created to influence social users to visit the site.

Shortly after their launch (in 2012), Upworthy was seeing traffic to the tune of almost 90 million visitors a month (by November 2013).

Here’s how they did it.

Fast Changes: Originally, Upworthy wanted to capitalize on an election year and cover mainly political topics.

The team quickly realized that this material wasn’t getting them the traction that they needed, and switched to other topics that were already popular.

Strictly Wants: Instead of providing a need, Upworthy provides the types of content that people seem to naturally gravitate toward. Instead of text based articles, they concentrate on visual content that speaks to human emotions and behaviors.

Solid Formula: While they can’t bottle virality, they sure are good at it. Their success has come from a solid formula of curating content from around the web as well as a proprietary system of editing and evaluating it.

It essentially comes down to using data to find the content, tweaking (again by using the data), and analyzing it after it’s published (creating more data to use).

Conversions: Without a steady base of social traffic, the site wouldn’t have nearly as many visitors. To gain a steady increase of likes and followers, the team has had to A/B test various methods. These experiments have led the site’s facebook page to nearly 5 million likes since launch.

Emotions Driven: Since the click is performed by a human and the content isn’t a need, emotions play a major role in getting a visitor to the site.

The need to compel leads to tests of material, but more importantly headlines.

The click is the most important aspect so those few words that are shown are the most vital aspect (along with the image).

Future Growth: With mobile being the future, the brand has made changes to make mobile users just as click happy. In addition to mobile, the international market is ripe, but needs different forms of content and more testing is needed to see the growth already achieved in the states.

Growth Marketing Case Study #15: HubSpot

Unless you’ve been under a rock over the past few years, you’ve heard the term “inbound marketing”.

You can thank HubSpot for that. On top of crafting a new term, they’ve become a billion dollar company.

Their story is great for those who have high dollar products, but still want to see rapid growth.

With each client bringing in an average of over $6000, they’ve managed to see incredible gains in a short time.

Here’s how.

Inbound Marketing: It’s no surprise that HubSpot practices what it preaches and uses inbound as an incredible source of growth.

Having multiple blogs (that provide intense levels of value) and a great overall compelling online presence, has given them a ton of success (and continues to do so).

Free Stuff: There are few other sources online (at least for marketing) where you can find so much value completely for free.

Guides, courses, templates, you name it and it’s there. One of their most successful drivers is the free website grader (it search 4 million sites in five years).

Tailored CTA: HubSpot offers multiple types of content (as mentioned), but if you read a blog post, your offer is going to be catered to that topic. Most B2B companies have one guide, whitepaper or resource for their ideal clients.

HubSpot continues their content marketing with content specific calls to action which increases conversions (and growth).

Webinars: Early adopters in the webinar game, HubSpot was able to tap into internet savvy companies and give them free tips in an online presentation.

Webinars are a key proponent of their social growth as well as the overall success of their brand.

Growth Marketing Case Study #16: Evernote

If your company is fledging or even on the brink of shutting down, maybe you can derive a little inspiration from Evernote.

After almost closing their virtual doors, they’ve went on to gain 75 million users and a lot of VC attention (now 225 million).

They had to start somewhere and so do you, so let’s see what factors led to their success.

Surviving Trouble: Evernote was born in the midst of a world of social and new websites (not apps). This early trouble led them to only have a few weeks worth of funds in their accounts at any one time.

Fortunately, a lone user loved the product and at the last available minute wired enough funds to keep them going.

Good and Bad Timing: Evernote launched in the modern app era (2008). There were millions of users ready to download, and not a whole lot of other apps which helped early growth.

The team would also work hard to be in the new app stores on the first day opened. The funding factor wasn’t as good with the economic situation being so awful.

Useful and Impressive: Evernote desired to create an app that could act as your memory, storing anything of any size from anywhere.

On top of that, they wanted an interface that was easy to use, functional and enjoyable. Making something useful and easy are always key metrics for growth.

Freemium: One of the early adopters of the freemium model, Evernote used a basic free version of the app to entice new users.

The genuine usefulness of the product has led to a financial success to the tune of a billion dollar valuation. The value of the product increases with use, and so can the revenue.

Brand Ambassadors: Many companies hope to create advocates for their brand, but Evernote does it. Naming a select few from prominent industries as ambassadors for the app has led to incredible word of mouth and user success.

Meetups are held where the ambassador answers questions and shares the usefulness of the product in that particular field.

Continuous Improvement: In an effort to keep growth levels, Evernote has continuously put out new features and entire apps that make their initial success more useful. Every new product or acquisition has the same goal: to be useful, and beautifully functional which in the end can sell itself (with a little testing).

Growth Marketing Case Study #17: SnapChat

Sometimes your products aren’t used the way you intended and it can lead to problems.

The Snapchat founders understand that, but it didn’t lead to their growth stalling.

In fact, the popular picture/video sharing app has went from starting in 2011 to now having about 300 million users.

Provide Freedom: So often many young people feel the need for expression that can’t be obtained on most social channels. SnapChat offers users the ability to post a very expressive product that is live in real time with no lasting ramifications.

The freedom that comes from the ability to just hop on and share a moment (that won’t last) is a compelling feature that drives both engagement and growth.

Controversial Growth: Meant for colleges, the app found its start in high schools. It seems teenagers were attracted to the idea of messages that could be shared with friends and not be seen by anyone else (and no evidence).

However, the app received negative (potentially unwarranted) early press centered around the new “sexting” phenomenon. Growth continued.

Competitive Help: Facebook saw the popularity of Snapchat as a threat and created their own similar app (called Poke). The attention only gave more fuel to SnapChat’s popularity sending their growth even higher while Poke declined.

Natural Engagement: Due to the nature of the app, messages sent between users are rarely unopened. The wonder of what could be inside makes most open the messages they receive and compels them to send their own. This engagement also creates an excellent word of mouth.

Social Acceptance: More recently, heavy hitters in the online community (namely Gary Vaynerchuck among others) have begun to adopt the platform. This popularity has online audiences running to the platform and sure to equal growth.

Growth Marketing Case Study #18: Uber

Continued growth on an exponential level is a rare thing when it comes to billion dollar brands.

Uber continues to amaze, more than doubling growth year after year even after they boast a $63 billion market cap.

Not to mention they’ve done all of this since 2009 starting out as a small local service.

Let’s take a brief look at how they accomplished so much.

Monopoly Buster: Cabs are terrible. Uber fixes that problem. While it’s not perfect, this new transportation method has become the very face of modern business disruption.

The added bonus of shaking an industry is not only the joy of being useful, but the media attention (negative and positive) that further fuels growth.

Strategic Launch: If you’re going to provide a service, it’s best to give it to those with platforms. Choosing San Francisco to be the first Uber city was a strategic choice.

A place of notoriously bad taxis and people who loved new technology and had blogs and audiences of their own (people like Tim Ferris).

Driver Love: Obviously, the travel brings the revenue. However, Uber understands that they are a liaison service between two parties (one being the driver). With better pay and putting laid off drivers back to work they created instants advocates in each new city.

Focused Launches: Each city isn’t just an expansion for Uber, it’s a new place to dominate. Taking each new location seriously has led to continued growth.

This tactic doesn’t mean slow growth, they have expanded rapidly as well as meticulously across the globe.

Testimonials: Word of mouth is still one of the biggest growth drivers in the world, but Uber gets it from those who have used their service. By someone sharing their experience with someone else (a testimonial) it becomes even more compelling.

Uber also gives free rides to have more and more people telling their story.

Creating Wow: Uber loves testing different experiences for their customers. Trying to ever improve the ride has led to some great experiments and an almost guaranteed good time across town (which creates more testimonial situations).

Growth Marketing Case Study #19: Belly

Everyone hates it when customers leave. The average churn rate of a company can destroy growth.

Belly Card started out to help small and medium sized businesses increase the retention rate of clients.

A unique business model that isn’t well known, but has over 1 million users and 5000 business clients.

The neatest part about them, is that it all happened in about 15 months!

Market Research: A key driver to growth is starting with something valuable. A lot of times it’s a hunch from a founder, but not in the case of Belly. The team hit the pavement and talked with hundreds of merchants to figure out how to improve customer loyalty for local businesses.

Getting It In: After creating the product to help, they got to work. Selling in person, on the phone, and other “traditional” methods helped get them their early traction and user base. Belly worked Chicago until people and merchants were talking about their service.

City by City: With a few successful city launches under their belt, the Belly team was able to roll out that strategy in new cities with the same success. Soon after, the word of mouth took off as users and merchants loved the engaging elements (gamification) that the product provided.

Selling by Data: While national chains of independent owners are a lucrative market, selling the owners equals a slowed rate of growth and selling to the chain may not be as effective either.

However, Belly was able to take the data of the independent owners that were already using the programs (places like Subways and Chic-Fil-A’s) to entice the chains to use the service.

This process would increase sales for Belly and (in most cases) chains/franchisors as well as garner loyalty for the owners themselves (win-win-win).

Growth Marketing Case Study #20: Square

Software companies can be one of the most attractive-looking ventures, but Square was able to do something different.

The company applied a payment processing company behind an attractive and conversation-starting trend centered around their hardware.

The growth is amazing, from starting in 2009 to being one of the most popular small business payment processors with more than 8000 employees.

Here’s a quick look at how they gained traction.

Needed Change: Square makes it possible for anyone to take credit payments. With the hardware (see next point), it had never been easier for small businesses to take multiple forms of payments and sell more stuff.

Whether it would be at flea markets, or in their home office everyone could take credit. Something that was needed and wanted and that created an environment for growth.

Physical Hardware: One of the most revolutionary things about Square is the invention of it’s iconic credit card processing hardware. It’s simple, easy and opens up credit payments to a world of entrepreneurs and business owners.

The company is still doing this with iPad integrations and register POS systems today. The wow factor and talking points definitely helped them with early traction.

Happy Customers: In addition to small business owners getting an easy way to take multiple forms of payments, they like it for other reasons too. Not only is the product useful, but incredibly attractive and hip.

Business owners often know others like them, fueling the number of people who are using the new device (and the processor of course).

Founder Foundation: Jack Dorsey (also cofounded Twitter) was an obvious piece to the early growth of the platform. It wasn’t just his name, but his approach. He wrote a list of those who may be interested in funding the startup.

The list laid out 140 reasons why the company may fail as well as their counterpoints. The gimmick worked and it has garnered significant investment and popularity.

Growth Marketing Case Study #21: Canva

Back in the day, if you needed to come up with a flyer, a banner, or any design and you weren’t a designer, you had two options.

You could hire a designer or you could go through the painful process of doing it yourself on PowerPoint, or worse, use Word art.

Today you have Canva, which completely revolutionized basic graphic design for the average person.

Here’s how they’re growing.

Making it easy for everyone: There have always been other options for creating quick designs. But they had several shortcomings either in the way of UI, price, or ease of use. And these were the main things that Canva focused on since it launched.

The user interface was intuitive and had usable templates. It was web-based, so there was no need to download and install the software.

And most importantly, the free version was useful. So it was no surprise that Canva quickly became the de facto tool for anyone looking to do some quick design tasks.

Simple Pricing combined with a clear value proposition: An important aspect of Canva is that it made it easy for its users to choose to upgrade to the paid version.

The free version served the purpose of letting first-time users familiarize themselves with the platform until it became a part of their workflow. When that happened, it was a simple choice for users to upgrade to the paid version for additional features.

Also worth mentioning is that compared to their competition at the time, their pricing was in a goldilocks area for their key users.

From 0 to 15 million users: Canva’s first two years saw an impressive amount of growth. They went from 0 to 2 million monthly users.

And after seven years, they reached 15 million users, 300 thousand pro users, and are now a 3.2 billion-dollar company. To reach this massive amount of growth, they went about it with the tried and true formula of having a great product match for their audience and consistently investing in paid ads across the usual social media channels.

Growth Marketing Case Study #22: Airbnb

The word disruption is used fairly loosely nowadays. But in reality, very few businesses disrupt an industry.

Airbnb is one of the few which have. And in doing so, they grew from a three-person operation making a couple of hundred bucks a week to now reporting over 1 billion in quarterly revenue.

Today, Airbnb is a 35 billion dollar behemoth with hundreds of employees and a global presence.

Here are 6 takeaways on how Airbnb grew its business.

• Test your idea and iterate. Initially, the founders tried to make extra money by renting a spare air mattress. They took the same concept and iterated until they found the winning formula.
• They focused on finding what the bottleneck to their growth was. At first, it was about the images of the properties; later on, it became payment processing. As they kept on growing, new growth problems were solved.
• They bootstrapped and started small. Many new businesses want to immediately get funding to accelerate their growth. This is not necessarily wrong. However, AirBnb already was bringing in profits and had a working product by the time they took on venture capital. This made it significantly easier for them to raise capital and acquire investors.
• They took over the industry by being themselves. Airbnb didn’t set out to compete with hotels directly. In the beginning, they offered a more affordable option for travelers, but what really set them apart was the fact that they were selling the experience of living in the place you were visiting instead of being a tourist as you would be with a traditional hotel.
• They take care of their customers. One of the critical aspects of Airbnb is how the platform takes care of all its users. Airbnb offers a big insurance policy to their hosts so that they can have the confidence to rent out their properties.
• Upsells and cross-sells have become a major source of revenue. Instead of limiting themselves, they decided to listen to their customers and incentivize their hosts to offer additional services that would help them increase their income. A win, win, win type of deal.

Growth Marketing Case Study #23: Koala

In 2015, Koala made waves as one of the most successful businesses to launch in the recently created direct-to-consumer mattress space.

It quickly grew up to $13 million in sales in its first 12 months of operating.

During their first year, the team behind Koala did something that let them accelerate their growth. They had a laser focus on the digital marketing channels that brought them the most results.

Here’s a brief breakdown of how they went about strategizing their growth.

Have a great product and an amazing offer: To start off, Koala launched with a great product that was highly competitive compared with the traditional market. But what set them apart was the quality of the offer.

The offer was miles ahead of what their competition had at the moment. This is where free delivery, pickup, and a 120 free trial with no strings attached set them apart.

This amount of confidence in their product helped with making it easier for new customers to choose the new and innovative mattress company.

Laser-focus on what works: During their first year, Koala approached their marketing with a laser focus on one marketing channel: Facebook.

Instead of spreading themselves thin by diluting their budget across multiple channels, they decided to concentrate their efforts on dominating their chosen platform.

They did this by investing heavily in creating exciting and eye-catching ads and making the most out of Facebook’s retargeting capabilities.

This is why if you spent any amount of time browsing Facebook back in 2015, you probably came across an ad or two from Koala.

Make it easy for your customers to talk about you: The direct-to-consumer mattress business was still new and didn’t have widespread adoption back in 2015.

To address the novelty aspect of their business model, they relied heavily on having established processes that made it easy for their new customer to share their experiences.

Customer testimonials make a huge amount of difference for new businesses. They essentially shorten the amount of time needed for a new customer that is still on the fence about whether or not they want to try a new product.

Growth Marketing Case Study #24: Hip Kids

Hip Kids is a children’s toy company that carved out a niche for itself by offering a more high-quality and durable alternative to the primarily disposable toys that are commonplace in the market.

This singular attention to detail and alignment to their core values helped them take their company to the 7-figure mark in sales.

But they reached a point where, even though they had a healthy marketing budget, they just weren’t seeing the growth they expected.

This is what they did to triple the revenue and spur growth for their already well-established brand.

Define the root cause of the problem: To understand the root cause of the problem, a little context is necessary.

HipKids started as an eBay store about a decade ago. They started small, and as the demand for their products grew, they were able to open up their own website and even open up a few physical locations for their brand.

Due to their organic growth, they added additional pieces to their marketing one at a time, and often from different agencies.

First they did their website, then they added an in-house designer, then they went with a PPC agency to get targeted traffic, and finally, they also invested in their SEO.

As you can imagine, after investing in each new marketing channel, they saw an initial spur of growth that quickly stagnated. It was this fragmented approach to their marketing strategy that made it difficult for their campaigns to work in unison and build up the momentum they needed to reach their growth goals.

Efficiency and optimization are key: Once the problem was defined, it became a matter of restructuring their marketing team to make sure that it was all moving in the same direction.

With a brand new marketing structure set in place, then it was possible for the marketing team to work on optimizing their campaigns and iterating over time to attract new traffic and improve conversion rates. This is what ultimately let HipKids triple its revenue.

Growth Marketing Case Study #25: Dropbox

Dropbox has spent very little on advertising but has grown the company to $4 billion. This article shares some of Dropbox’s top techniques, specifically through word of mouth.

A decade ago, the internet was very different. To start off, it was much slower. The average download speed was only 5 Mbps.

Today, you’ll often find speeds 20x faster just about anywhere, even on mobile phones.

Due to these limitations, sharing and storing large files on the cloud was challenging and often expensive.

Cloud storage was mostly directed to businesses, and the consumer-level solutions available were clunky and unfriendly to the average user.

That is until Dropbox entered the market.

Tried and true old-school tactics: Even though Dropbox is a huge SAAS, it’s interesting to know that its initial growth did not rely on advertising of any form.

They went to the old school method of using word of mouth from their customers to reach the growth they were after.

The most valuable resource back then was storage space. So they gave out storage space to their existing customers so that they could motivate them to share their experiences with Dropbox.

This approach worked wonders, and Dropbox’s revenue quickly exceeded the $100 million mark.

Make it easy for your users: Dropbox wasn’t the first or only consumer-level cloud storage option in the market. But it was by far the easiest. Most of their competition, even those that were in the market before them, had cumbersome interfaces and poor customer support which made it difficult for users to sign up for their services.

Most of them had ads on their signup pages, so yes, it was ugly.

Dropbox, on the other hand, had a clean signup page that made it easy for users to sign up. Nothing unnecessary, and no ads were found on the signup page.

Incentivize sharing on social media: Back in 2011, social media reach was very effective in driving traffic. So to take advantage of this, Dropbox incentivized social media shares with free space. This worked out to be the perfect complement to their referral strategy. It decreased the friction in sharing and made it highly attractive for their existing users to become brand ambassadors.

Growth Marketing Case Study #26: Dollar Shave Club

The marketing behind razors, up until the launch of DSC, was pretty consistent. Every “new” razor offered the exact same thing, a better way to shave.

And it worked to some extent because razors are an everyday product for a lot of people.

They just ended up buying them the same way they had always done.

Dollar Shave Club didn’t innovate the product they sold. Their product is, albeit high quality, just about the same as everything else in the market.

So why did they become so popular? Because they innovated the experience.

Make your marketing fun and memorable: Dollar Shave Club’s initial marketing was nothing short of genius. It was fun, and it was memorable. It was a welcome departure from the idealized and mostly non-relatable approach that the traditional brands had embraced decades ago.

This more honest, down-to-earth, and witty approach gave them something that the other brands didn’t have. It gave them a relatable personality.

And the consistency of their personality across every aspect of their brand made them feel reassuringly consistent and was enough to help them differentiate themselves from the rest of their competitors.

Create an experience: Since innovation on the product side of things wasn’t much of an option, they decided to innovate on their customer’s experience.

The first hint of this is in their name. Dollar shave club is exactly what they are. They’re a club, something you can be a part of.

And this feeling of inclusion and community, paired with the direct-to-consumer model, made the experience of getting your razors from Dollar Shave Club highly attractive.

Get customers for life: One of the biggest drivers of growth behind DCS is that they have an incredibly long ratio of lifelong customers. Simply put, their business model makes it easy for their customers to want to keep on buying from them.

It’s a simple and straightforward subscription model that most users can get on board with.

This is what ultimately helped them reach a $615 million dollar valuation and ultimately be bought out by Unilever for $1 billion in 2015.

Growth Marketing Case Study #27: Casper

Casper is one of the best examples of how changing and improving the customer experience can revolutionize a segment.

Before Casper, if you were in the market for a new bed, you had to go to a physical location and well put up with being sold to.

That’s one of the reasons why so many people put up with an uncomfortable mattress.

The physical pain of a bad mattress wasn’t as bad as the pain of having to deal with the pain of going through all the hoops of buying a new mattress.

Casper changed this and led the way to a new trend of direct-to-consumer mattresses that revolutionized the entire sleep industry.

Understand your customer’s true pain: The traditional dealer-distributor model that has been in place for years made it so that buying a mattress was a less than pleasant experience for most customers.

It’s a model where salespeople were incentivized to sell but, unfortunately, got the reputation of using sleazy sales tactics.

Casper understood that this was the real reason why people wouldn’t buy a new mattress. They just didn’t want to go through that process, even though their old mattress was uncomfortable and even caused them health problems.

Casper gave its customers a much more viable alternative and had a high-quality product that their customers would be willing to try out.

Address all your customer’s concerns: One of the main challenges was to change the customer’s perception that they had to try-before-they-buy a mattress.

They tackled this head-on by offering an incredibly bold satisfaction guarantee and by providing plenty of educational content on their products so that customers could feel confident in their buying decision.

Then they followed up their product with SEO content centered around sleep and how it impacted health so that they could further establish themselves as sleep experts and gain their customer’s trust.

Leverage customer reviews: Casper did a great job at leveraging its customer reviews. They made it one of the central aspects of their retargeting and email marketing campaigns. Customer reviews are powerful tools since they provide a seemingly unbiased perspective of your product.

Growth Marketing Case Study #28: Groupon

Everyone loves a great deal. It’s a simple concept, and Groupon leveraged it to go from zero to having a $12.7 billion IPO.

Equally impressive as their valuation is the rate at which they were growing on a yearly basis. To reach this huge amount of sustainable growth, they relied on a few tried and true growth tactics.

These tactics are so effective that you’ll see that several other businesses in this article followed them to great success.

This means that you don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel but rather spend your energy on making it turn as fast as possible.

Make sharing easy: Groupon is, at its core, a social platform. And as such, it makes it very easy to be social. Groupon has always made it easy for its users to share the deals that they are interested in.

It incentivizes it because if not enough deals are taken, the deal won’t be available. So it adds an element of scarcity and perceived exclusivity.

So when FOMO kicks in, Groupon users become highly motivated to share on their social channels and increase the likelihood of their deals coming to fruition.

This, in turn, has the benefit of making sure the Groupon brand is consistently shared.

Email is still very powerful: For some reason, there’s always someone stating that email is dead. That inboxes are too cluttered and that no one pays attention to them anymore. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and Groupon knows this. This is why they have made email a key part of their marketing.

It’s important to understand that if someone voluntarily signs up for your emails, then they are giving permission to reach out to them.

Groupon makes the most out of this by sending daily emails with highly valuable content.

Copywriting makes a big difference: The quality of how you communicate with your customers makes a big difference in how effectively you can retain their attention. Groupon learned this early on and has characterized itself by sending interesting and fun-to-read emails.

It’s important to remember that nobody likes boring and bland content. Your customers will read what you have to say, but only if it’s well written and grabs their attention.

Growth Marketing Case Study #29: Porch.com

The home improvement market is enormous. It’s $500 billion and continues to grow at a steady rate.

So it was only a matter of time until a startup would try to revolutionize a market that had historically lacked innovation.

Enter the Seattle-based Porch.com. In 2013 porch set out to become the “Uber” of home improvement projects by helping connect construction professionals with homeowners that needed help in completing their tasks.

Amongst its achievements, Porch.com can mention:

• 300000 active professionals across the US.
• Nasdaq IPO in the year 2020.
• They reach approximately 66% of the homeowner market.

However, back in 2018, before they went public, their growth had started to plateau. Something had to be done. So they made a concentrated effort to improve their search engine visibility so that they could get a more sustainable and cost-efficient source of traffic. To achieve this goal, they went with the tried and true strategy of increasing their backlinks.

Link building can be transformative for your traffic: The reason why link building was chosen is that since they had started to rely on paid advertising for their lead acquisition, their cost per lead had started to increase.

This rise in cost per lead was eating into their profit margins, so from an ROI perspective, investing in cultivating high-quality backlinks was a good strategy to follow.

Porch’s marketing was able to obtain over 931 backlinks from unique domains throughout the year. This helped them make a significant boost in their organic traffic and helped decrease the total cost of their lead acquisition.

Here are some of the growth strategies they followed:

• They didn’t limit themselves to home renovation topics but rather created content across a broad range of related topics to expand the number of high-quality websites they could be relevant to.
• This broad range of content helped them land mention on television and local radio across several major cities.
• Some of the results generated by the campaign were 257 mentions from relevant publishers, 180 regional media mentions, and over 38000 social shares.

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Business growth

Marketing tips

16 case study examples (+ 3 templates to make your own)

I like to think of case studies as a business's version of a resume. It highlights what the business can do, lends credibility to its offer, and contains only the positive bullet points that paint it in the best light possible.

Imagine if the guy running your favorite taco truck followed you home so that he could "really dig into how that burrito changed your life." I see the value in the practice. People naturally prefer a tried-and-true burrito just as they prefer tried-and-true products or services.

To help you showcase your success and flesh out your burrito questionnaire, I've put together some case study examples and key takeaways.

What is a case study?

A case study is an in-depth analysis of how your business, product, or service has helped past clients. It can be a document, a webpage, or a slide deck that showcases measurable, real-life results.

For example, if you're a SaaS company, you can analyze your customers' results after a few months of using your product to measure its effectiveness. You can then turn this analysis into a case study that further proves to potential customers what your product can do and how it can help them overcome their challenges.

It changes the narrative from "I promise that we can do X and Y for you" to "Here's what we've done for businesses like yours, and we can do it for you, too."

16 case study examples 

While most case studies follow the same structure, quite a few try to break the mold and create something unique. Some businesses lean heavily on design and presentation, while others pursue a detailed, stat-oriented approach. Some businesses try to mix both.

There's no set formula to follow, but I've found that the best case studies utilize impactful design to engage readers and leverage statistics and case details to drive the point home. A case study typically highlights the companies, the challenges, the solution, and the results. The examples below will help inspire you to do it, too.

1. .css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class]{all:unset;box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-text-fill-color:currentColor;cursor:pointer;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class]{all:unset;box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;cursor:pointer;-webkit-transition:all 300ms ease-in-out;transition:all 300ms ease-in-out;outline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-fill-color:currentColor;outline:1px solid transparent;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='ocean']{color:#3d4592;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='ocean']:hover{color:#2b2358;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='ocean']:focus{color:#3d4592;outline-color:#3d4592;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='white']{color:#fffdf9;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='white']:hover{color:#a8a5a0;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='white']:focus{color:#fffdf9;outline-color:#fffdf9;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='primary']{color:#3d4592;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='primary']:hover{color:#2b2358;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='primary']:focus{color:#3d4592;outline-color:#3d4592;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='secondary']{color:#fffdf9;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='secondary']:hover{color:#a8a5a0;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-color='secondary']:focus{color:#fffdf9;outline-color:#fffdf9;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-weight='inherit']{font-weight:inherit;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-weight='normal']{font-weight:400;}.css-1l9i3yq-Link[class][class][class][class][class][data-weight='bold']{font-weight:700;} Volcanica Coffee and AdRoll

People love a good farm-to-table coffee story, and boy am I one of them. But I've shared this case study with you for more reasons than my love of coffee. I enjoyed this study because it was written as though it was a letter.

In this case study, the founder of Volcanica Coffee talks about the journey from founding the company to personally struggling with learning and applying digital marketing to finding and enlisting AdRoll's services.

It felt more authentic, less about AdRoll showcasing their worth and more like a testimonial from a grateful and appreciative client. After the story, the case study wraps up with successes, milestones, and achievements. Note that quite a few percentages are prominently displayed at the top, providing supporting evidence that backs up an inspiring story.

Takeaway: Highlight your goals and measurable results to draw the reader in and provide concise, easily digestible information.

2. Taylor Guitars and Airtable

This Airtable case study on Taylor Guitars comes as close as one can to an optimal structure. It features a video that represents the artistic nature of the client, highlighting key achievements and dissecting each element of Airtable's influence.

It also supplements each section with a testimonial or quote from the client, using their insights as a catalyst for the case study's narrative. For example, the case study quotes the social media manager and project manager's insights regarding team-wide communication and access before explaining in greater detail.

Takeaway: Highlight pain points your business solves for its client, and explore that influence in greater detail.

3. EndeavourX and Figma

My favorite part of Figma's case study is highlighting why EndeavourX chose its solution. You'll notice an entire section on what Figma does for teams and then specifically for EndeavourX.

It also places a heavy emphasis on numbers and stats. The study, as brief as it is, still manages to pack in a lot of compelling statistics about what's possible with Figma.

Takeaway: Showcase the "how" and "why" of your product's differentiators and how they benefit your customers.

4. ActiveCampaign and Zapier

Zapier's case study leans heavily on design, using graphics to present statistics and goals in a manner that not only remains consistent with the branding but also actively pushes it forward, drawing users' eyes to the information most important to them. 

The graphics, emphasis on branding elements, and cause/effect style tell the story without requiring long, drawn-out copy that risks boring readers. Instead, the cause and effect are concisely portrayed alongside the client company's information for a brief and easily scannable case study.

Takeaway: Lean on design to call attention to the most important elements of your case study, and make sure it stays consistent with your branding.

5. Ironclad and OpenAI

In true OpenAI fashion, this case study is a block of text. There's a distinct lack of imagery, but the study features a narrated video walking readers through the product.

The lack of imagery and color may not be the most inviting, but utilizing video format is commendable. It helps thoroughly communicate how OpenAI supported Ironclad in a way that allows the user to sit back, relax, listen, and be impressed. 

Takeaway: Get creative with the media you implement in your case study. Videos can be a very powerful addition when a case study requires more detailed storytelling.

6. Shopify and GitHub

GitHub's case study on Shopify is a light read. It addresses client pain points and discusses the different aspects its product considers and improves for clients. It touches on workflow issues, internal systems, automation, and security. It does a great job of representing what one company can do with GitHub.

To drive the point home, the case study features colorful quote callouts from the Shopify team, sharing their insights and perspectives on the partnership, the key issues, and how they were addressed.

Takeaway: Leverage quotes to boost the authoritativeness and trustworthiness of your case study. 

7 . Audible and Contentful

Contentful's case study on Audible features almost every element a case study should. It includes not one but two videos and clearly outlines the challenge, solution, and outcome before diving deeper into what Contentful did for Audible. The language is simple, and the writing is heavy with quotes and personal insights.

This case study is a uniquely original experience. The fact that the companies in question are perhaps two of the most creative brands out there may be the reason. I expected nothing short of a detailed analysis, a compelling story, and video content. 

Takeaway: Inject some brand voice into the case study, and create assets that tell the story for you.

8 . Zoom and Asana

Asana's case study on Zoom is longer than the average piece and features detailed data on Zoom's growth since 2020. Instead of relying on imagery and graphics, it features several quotes and testimonials. 

It's designed to be direct, informative, and promotional. At some point, the case study reads more like a feature list. There were a few sections that felt a tad too promotional for my liking, but to each their own burrito.

Takeaway: Maintain a balance between promotional and informative. You want to showcase the high-level goals your product helped achieve without losing the reader.

9 . Hickies and Mailchimp

I've always been a fan of Mailchimp's comic-like branding, and this case study does an excellent job of sticking to their tradition of making information easy to understand, casual, and inviting.

It features a short video that briefly covers Hickies as a company and Mailchimp's efforts to serve its needs for customer relationships and education processes. Overall, this case study is a concise overview of the partnership that manages to convey success data and tell a story at the same time. What sets it apart is that it does so in a uniquely colorful and brand-consistent manner.

Takeaway: Be concise to provide as much value in as little text as possible.

10. NVIDIA and Workday

The gaming industry is notoriously difficult to recruit for, as it requires a very specific set of skills and experience. This case study focuses on how Workday was able to help fill that recruitment gap for NVIDIA, one of the biggest names in the gaming world.

Though it doesn't feature videos or graphics, this case study stood out to me in how it structures information like "key products used" to give readers insight into which tools helped achieve these results.

Takeaway: If your company offers multiple products or services, outline exactly which ones were involved in your case study, so readers can assess each tool.

11. KFC and Contentful

I'm personally not a big KFC fan, but that's only because I refuse to eat out of a bucket. My aversion to the bucket format aside, Contentful follows its consistent case study format in this one, outlining challenges, solutions, and outcomes before diving into the nitty-gritty details of the project.

Say what you will about KFC, but their primary product (chicken) does present a unique opportunity for wordplay like "Continuing to march to the beat of a digital-first drum(stick)" or "Delivering deep-fried goodness to every channel."

Takeaway: Inject humor into your case study if there's room for it and if it fits your brand. 

12. Intuit and Twilio

Twilio does an excellent job of delivering achievements at the very beginning of the case study and going into detail in this two-minute read. While there aren't many graphics, the way quotes from the Intuit team are implemented adds a certain flair to the study and breaks up the sections nicely.

It's simple, concise, and manages to fit a lot of information in easily digestible sections.

Takeaway: Make sure each section is long enough to inform but brief enough to avoid boring readers. Break down information for each section, and don't go into so much detail that you lose the reader halfway through.

13. Spotify and Salesforce

Salesforce created a video that accurately summarizes the key points of the case study. Beyond that, the page itself is very light on content, and sections are as short as one paragraph.

I especially like how information is broken down into "What you need to know," "Why it matters," and "What the difference looks like." I'm not ashamed of being spoon-fed information. When it's structured so well and so simply, it makes for an entertaining read.

Takeaway: Invest in videos that capture and promote your partnership with your case study subject. Video content plays a promotional role that extends beyond the case study in social media and marketing initiatives .

14. Benchling and Airtable

Benchling is an impressive entity in its own right. Biotech R&D and health care nuances go right over my head. But the research and digging I've been doing in the name of these burritos (case studies) revealed that these products are immensely complex. 

And that's precisely why this case study deserves a read—it succeeds at explaining a complex project that readers outside the industry wouldn't know much about.

Takeaway: Simplify complex information, and walk readers through the company's operations and how your business helped streamline them.

15. Chipotle and Hubble

The concision of this case study is refreshing. It features two sections—the challenge and the solution—all in 316 words. This goes to show that your case study doesn't necessarily need to be a four-figure investment with video shoots and studio time. 

Sometimes, the message is simple and short enough to convey in a handful of paragraphs.

Takeaway: Consider what you should include instead of what you can include. Assess the time, resources, and effort you're able and willing to invest in a case study, and choose which elements you want to include from there.

16. Hudl and Zapier

I may be biased, but I'm a big fan of seeing metrics and achievements represented in branded graphics. It can be a jarring experience to navigate a website, then visit a case study page and feel as though you've gone to a completely different website.

The Zapier format provides nuggets of high-level insights, milestones, and achievements, as well as the challenge, solution, and results. My favorite part of this case study is how it's supplemented with a blog post detailing how Hudl uses Zapier automation to build a seamless user experience.

The case study is essentially the summary, and the blog article is the detailed analysis that provides context beyond X achievement or Y goal.

Takeaway: Keep your case study concise and informative. Create other resources to provide context under your blog, media or press, and product pages.

3 case study templates

Now that you've had your fill of case studies (if that's possible), I've got just what you need: an infinite number of case studies, which you can create yourself with these case study templates.

Case study template 1

If you've got a quick hit of stats you want to show off, try this template. The opening section gives space for a short summary and three visually appealing stats you can highlight, followed by a headline and body where you can break the case study down more thoroughly. This one's pretty simple, with only sections for solutions and results, but you can easily continue the formatting to add more sections as needed.

Case study template 2

For a case study template with a little more detail, use this one. Opening with a striking cover page for a quick overview, this one goes on to include context, stakeholders, challenges, multiple quote callouts, and quick-hit stats. 

Case study template 3

Whether you want a little structural variation or just like a nice dark green, this template has similar components to the last template but is designed to help tell a story. Move from the client overview through a description of your company before getting to the details of how you fixed said company's problems.

Tips for writing a case study

Examples are all well and good, but you don't learn how to make a burrito just by watching tutorials on YouTube without knowing what any of the ingredients are. You could , but it probably wouldn't be all that good.

Writing a good case study comes down to a mix of creativity, branding, and the capacity to invest in the project. With those details in mind, here are some case study tips to follow:

Have an objective: Define your objective by identifying the challenge, solution, and results. Assess your work with the client and focus on the most prominent wins. You're speaking to multiple businesses and industries through the case study, so make sure you know what you want to say to them.

Focus on persuasive data: Growth percentages and measurable results are your best friends. Extract your most compelling data and highlight it in your case study.

Use eye-grabbing graphics: Branded design goes a long way in accurately representing your brand and retaining readers as they review the study. Leverage unique and eye-catching graphics to keep readers engaged. 

Simplify data presentation: Some industries are more complex than others, and sometimes, data can be difficult to understand at a glance. Make sure you present your data in the simplest way possible. Make it concise, informative, and easy to understand.

Use automation to drive results for your case study

A case study example is a source of inspiration you can leverage to determine how to best position your brand's work. Find your unique angle, and refine it over time to help your business stand out. Ask anyone: the best burrito in town doesn't just appear at the number one spot. They find their angle (usually the house sauce) and leverage it to stand out.

In fact, with the right technology, it can be refined to work better . Explore how Zapier's automation features can help drive results for your case study by making your case study a part of a developed workflow that creates a user journey through your website, your case studies, and into the pipeline.

Case study FAQ

Got your case study template? Great—it's time to gather the team for an awkward semi-vague data collection task. While you do that, here are some case study quick answers for you to skim through while you contemplate what to call your team meeting.

What is an example of a case study?

An example of a case study is when a software company analyzes its results from a client project and creates a webpage, presentation, or document that focuses on high-level results, challenges, and solutions in an attempt to showcase effectiveness and promote the software.

How do you write a case study?

To write a good case study, you should have an objective, identify persuasive and compelling data, leverage graphics, and simplify data. Case studies typically include an analysis of the challenge, solution, and results of the partnership.

What is the format of a case study?

While case studies don't have a set format, they're often portrayed as reports or essays that inform readers about the partnership and its results. 

Related reading:

How Hudl uses automation to create a seamless user experience

How to make your case studies high-stakes—and why it matters

How experts write case studies that convert, not bore

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Hachem Ramki

Hachem is a writer and digital marketer from Montreal. After graduating with a degree in English, Hachem spent seven years traveling around the world before moving to Canada. When he's not writing, he enjoys Basketball, Dungeons and Dragons, and playing music for friends and family.

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Use Our Resources and Tools to Get Started With Your Preparation!

Growth strategy, revenue growth is one of the most popular strategy cases in a case interview.

Usually, growth strategy cases are introduced by open-ended questions such as “A firm XYZ wants to increase their revenue. How should they go about it?”

Gather the necessary information about volume and price to determine the best growth lever

Case interviews  with revenue growth cases can be tackled by influencing two major parameters that determine growth figures. These are volume and unit price. In order to make suggestions, once again, you need to understand the client’s business and the industry. Growth strategies can focus on a product, a division, or the company as a whole. Areas you could investigate based on your hypothesis are:

• What is the client’s product mix? What is the lifecycle of each product ?
• What is the state of the respective industries? Are they growing?
• Which product segments have the biggest potential?
• What drives customer satisfaction?
• How does the client’s sales growth rate compare to that of the competitors in the market ( Benchmarking )?
• How are the client’s prices compared to that of competitors? For instance, if the product is a commodity, then prices should be similar.
• What is the customers’ price sensitivity? If the product is a commodity, then customers are likely to be  very   price sensitive .
• What are the client’s marketing and sales channel activities? Evaluate their effectiveness.
• What are competitors’ marketing and sales channel activities? Evaluate the effectiveness if they are better than the clients’ sales.
• What are the client’s available funds for growth (you can find it via balance sheet or cash flow statements )?
• What do the shareholders' demand/expect?

Choose a growth strategy and the growth vector you want to pursue

After having gathered this set of information, you will have got a feeling for the type of growth that is demanded. Based on this information, you can then decide which growth strategy to implement. Roughly, you can subdivide strategies into (1) organic growth and (2) inorganic growth. The categories can further be organized using an Ansoff matrix .

Find new customers by (Ansoff Matrix):

• Increase/switch distribution channels.
• Expand the product lines.
• Enter new markets .
• Perform a major marketing campaign.
• Increase your share of the wallet with your existing customers, e.g. by selling them add-on/bundled products.
• Lower customer churn rate by preventing unwanted customer attrition.
• Acquire other companies.

If you have thoroughly completed this BootCamp, you will notice that many case types overlap with each other. You will rarely find a case that fits only one type. Most of the strategic decisions intersect. After completing the BootCamp, you should get a feeling for those connections and be able to see the big picture. 

Related Cases

Oliver Wyman Case: Full Electrons Ahead

EY-Parthenon Case: Virtual Marketplace

Simon-Kucher Case: GST Cruise Company

FTI-Andersch AG Case: Krise im Ferkelstall

CTcon Case: Das beste Eis der Stadt!

Want to know how we think about growth strategy? Check out our insights articles and success stories below.

The Growth Academy alum network includes industry leading companies such as:

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Blog Graphic Design 15+ Professional Case Study Examples [Design Tips + Templates]

15+ Professional Case Study Examples [Design Tips + Templates]

Written by: Alice Corner Jan 12, 2023

Have you ever bought something — within the last 10 years or so — without reading its reviews or without a recommendation or prior experience of using it?

If the answer is no — or at least, rarely — you get my point.

Positive reviews matter for selling to regular customers, and for B2B or SaaS businesses, detailed case studies are important too.

Wondering how to craft a compelling case study ? No worries—I’ve got you covered with 15 marketing case study templates , helpful tips, and examples to ensure your case study converts effectively.

Click to jump ahead:

• What is a Case Study?

Business Case Study Examples

Simple case study examples.

• Marketing Case Study Examples

Sales Case Study Examples

• Case Study FAQs

What is a case study?

A case study is an in-depth, detailed analysis of a specific real-world situation. For example, a case study can be about an individual, group, event, organization, or phenomenon. The purpose of a case study is to understand its complexities and gain insights into a particular instance or situation.

In the context of a business, however, case studies take customer success stories and explore how they use your product to help them achieve their business goals.

As well as being valuable marketing tools , case studies are a good way to evaluate your product as it allows you to objectively examine how others are using it.

It’s also a good way to interview your customers about why they work with you.

Related: What is a Case Study? [+6 Types of Case Studies]

Marketing Case Study Template

A marketing case study showcases how your product or services helped potential clients achieve their business goals. You can also create case studies of internal, successful marketing projects. A marketing case study typically includes:

• Company background and history
• The challenge
• How you helped
• Specific actions taken
• Visuals or Data
• Client testimonials

Here’s an example of a marketing case study template:

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, business case studies can be a powerful resource to help with your sales, marketing, and even internal departmental awareness.

Business and business management case studies should encompass strategic insights alongside anecdotal and qualitative findings, like in the business case study examples below.

Conduct a B2B case study by researching the company holistically

When it comes to writing a case study, make sure you approach the company holistically and analyze everything from their social media to their sales.

Think about every avenue your product or service has been of use to your case study company, and ask them about the impact this has had on their wider company goals.

In business case study examples like the one above, we can see that the company has been thought about holistically simply by the use of icons.

By combining social media icons with icons that show in-person communication we know that this is a well-researched and thorough case study.

This case study report example could also be used within an annual or end-of-year report.

Highlight the key takeaway from your marketing case study

To create a compelling case study, identify the key takeaways from your research. Use catchy language to sum up this information in a sentence, and present this sentence at the top of your page.

This is “at a glance” information and it allows people to gain a top-level understanding of the content immediately. 

You can use a large, bold, contrasting font to help this information stand out from the page and provide interest.

Learn  how to choose fonts  effectively with our Venngage guide and once you’ve done that.

Upload your fonts and  brand colors  to Venngage using the  My Brand Kit  tool and see them automatically applied to your designs.

The heading is the ideal place to put the most impactful information, as this is the first thing that people will read.

In this example, the stat of “Increase[d] lead quality by 90%” is used as the header. It makes customers want to read more to find out how exactly lead quality was increased by such a massive amount.

If you’re conducting an in-person interview, you could highlight a direct quote or insight provided by your interview subject.

Pick out a catchy sentence or phrase, or the key piece of information your interview subject provided and use that as a way to draw a potential customer in.

Use charts to visualize data in your business case studies

Charts are an excellent way to visualize data and to bring statistics and information to life. Charts make information easier to understand and to illustrate trends or patterns.

Making charts is even easier with Venngage.

In this consulting case study example, we can see that a chart has been used to demonstrate the difference in lead value within the Lead Elves case study.

Adding a chart here helps break up the information and add visual value to the case study. 

Using charts in your case study can also be useful if you’re creating a project management case study.

You could use a Gantt chart or a project timeline to show how you have managed the project successfully.

Use direct quotes to build trust in your marketing case study

To add an extra layer of authenticity you can include a direct quote from your customer within your case study.

According to research from Nielsen , 92% of people will trust a recommendation from a peer and 70% trust recommendations even if they’re from somebody they don’t know.

So if you have a customer or client who can’t stop singing your praises, make sure you get a direct quote from them and include it in your case study.

You can either lift part of the conversation or interview, or you can specifically request a quote. Make sure to ask for permission before using the quote.

This design uses a bright contrasting speech bubble to show that it includes a direct quote, and helps the quote stand out from the rest of the text.

This will help draw the customer’s attention directly to the quote, in turn influencing them to use your product or service.

Less is often more, and this is especially true when it comes to creating designs. Whilst you want to create a professional-looking, well-written and design case study – there’s no need to overcomplicate things.

These simple case study examples show that smart clean designs and informative content can be an effective way to showcase your successes.

Use colors and fonts to create a professional-looking case study

Business case studies shouldn’t be boring. In fact, they should be beautifully and professionally designed.

This means the normal rules of design apply. Use fonts, colors, and icons to create an interesting and visually appealing case study.

In this case study example, we can see how multiple fonts have been used to help differentiate between the headers and content, as well as complementary colors and eye-catching icons.

Marketing case study examples

Marketing case studies are incredibly useful for showing your marketing successes. Every successful marketing campaign relies on influencing a consumer’s behavior, and a great case study can be a great way to spotlight your biggest wins.

In the marketing case study examples below, a variety of designs and techniques to create impactful and effective case studies.

Show off impressive results with a bold marketing case study

Case studies are meant to show off your successes, so make sure you feature your positive results prominently. Using bold and bright colors as well as contrasting shapes, large bold fonts, and simple icons is a great way to highlight your wins.

In well-written case study examples like the one below, the big wins are highlighted on the second page with a bright orange color and are highlighted in circles.

Making the important data stand out is especially important when attracting a prospective customer with marketing case studies.

Use a simple but clear layout in your case study

Using a simple layout in your case study can be incredibly effective, like in the example of a case study below.

Keeping a clean white background, and using slim lines to help separate the sections is an easy way to format your case study.

Making the information clear helps draw attention to the important results, and it helps improve the  accessibility of the design .

Business case study examples like this would sit nicely within a larger report, with a consistent layout throughout.

Use visuals and icons to create an engaging and branded business case study

Nobody wants to read pages and pages of text — and that’s why Venngage wants to help you communicate your ideas visually.

Using icons, graphics, photos, or patterns helps create a much more engaging design. 

With this Blue Cap case study icons, colors, and impactful pattern designs have been used to create an engaging design that catches your eye.

Use a monochromatic color palette to create a professional and clean case study

Let your research shine by using a monochromatic and minimalistic color palette.

By sticking to one color, and leaving lots of blank space you can ensure your design doesn’t distract a potential customer from your case study content.

In this case study on Polygon Media, the design is simple and professional, and the layout allows the prospective customer to follow the flow of information.

The gradient effect on the left-hand column helps break up the white background and adds an interesting visual effect.

Did you know you can generate an accessible color palette with Venngage? Try our free accessible color palette generator today and create a case study that delivers and looks pleasant to the eye:

Add long term goals in your case study

When creating a case study it’s a great idea to look at both the short term and the long term goals of the company to gain the best understanding possible of the insights they provide.

Short-term goals will be what the company or person hopes to achieve in the next few months, and long-term goals are what the company hopes to achieve in the next few years.

Check out this modern pattern design example of a case study below:

In this case study example, the short and long-term goals are clearly distinguished by light blue boxes and placed side by side so that they are easy to compare.

Use a strong introductory paragraph to outline the overall strategy and goals before outlining the specific short-term and long-term goals to help with clarity.

This strategy can also be handy when creating a consulting case study.

Use data to make concrete points about your sales and successes

When conducting any sort of research stats, facts, and figures are like gold dust (aka, really valuable).

Being able to quantify your findings is important to help understand the information fully. Saying sales increased 10% is much more effective than saying sales increased.

While sales dashboards generally tend it make it all about the numbers and charts, in sales case study examples, like this one, the key data and findings can be presented with icons. This contributes to the potential customer’s better understanding of the report.

They can clearly comprehend the information and it shows that the case study has been well researched.

Use emotive, persuasive, or action based language in your marketing case study

Create a compelling case study by using emotive, persuasive and action-based language when customizing your case study template.

In this well-written case study example, we can see that phrases such as “Results that Speak Volumes” and “Drive Sales” have been used.

Using persuasive language like you would in a blog post. It helps inspire potential customers to take action now.

Keep your potential customers in mind when creating a customer case study for marketing

82% of marketers use case studies in their marketing  because it’s such an effective tool to help quickly gain customers’ trust and to showcase the potential of your product.

Why are case studies such an important tool in content marketing?

By writing a case study you’re telling potential customers that they can trust you because you’re showing them that other people do.

Not only that, but if you have a SaaS product, business case studies are a great way to show how other people are effectively using your product in their company.

In this case study, Network is demonstrating how their product has been used by Vortex Co. with great success; instantly showing other potential customers that their tool works and is worth using.

Related: 10+ Case Study Infographic Templates That Convert

Case studies are particularly effective as a sales technique.

A sales case study is like an extended customer testimonial, not only sharing opinions of your product – but showcasing the results you helped your customer achieve.

Make impactful statistics pop in your sales case study

Writing a case study doesn’t mean using text as the only medium for sharing results.

You should use icons to highlight areas of your research that are particularly interesting or relevant, like in this example of a case study:

Icons are a great way to help summarize information quickly and can act as visual cues to help draw the customer’s attention to certain areas of the page.

In some of the business case study examples above, icons are used to represent the impressive areas of growth and are presented in a way that grabs your attention.

Use high contrast shapes and colors to draw attention to key information in your sales case study

Help the key information stand out within your case study by using high contrast shapes and colors.

Use a complementary or contrasting color, or use a shape such as a rectangle or a circle for maximum impact.

This design has used dark blue rectangles to help separate the information and make it easier to read.

Coupled with icons and strong statistics, this information stands out on the page and is easily digestible and retainable for a potential customer.

Case Study Examples Summary

Once you have created your case study, it’s best practice to update your examples on a regular basis to include up-to-date statistics, data, and information.

You should update your business case study examples often if you are sharing them on your website .

It’s also important that your case study sits within your brand guidelines – find out how Venngage’s My Brand Kit tool can help you create consistently branded case study templates.

Case studies are important marketing tools – but they shouldn’t be the only tool in your toolbox. Content marketing is also a valuable way to earn consumer trust.

Case Study FAQ

Why should you write a case study.

Case studies are an effective marketing technique to engage potential customers and help build trust.

By producing case studies featuring your current clients or customers, you are showcasing how your tool or product can be used. You’re also showing that other people endorse your product.

In addition to being a good way to gather positive testimonials from existing customers , business case studies are good educational resources and can be shared amongst your company or team, and used as a reference for future projects.

How should you write a case study?

To create a great case study, you should think strategically. The first step, before starting your case study research, is to think about what you aim to learn or what you aim to prove.

You might be aiming to learn how a company makes sales or develops a new product. If this is the case, base your questions around this.

You can learn more about writing a case study  from our extensive guide.

Related: How to Present a Case Study like a Pro (With Examples)

Some good questions you could ask would be:

• Why do you use our tool or service?
• How often do you use our tool or service?
• What does the process of using our product look like to you?
• If our product didn’t exist, what would you be doing instead?
• What is the number one benefit you’ve found from using our tool?

You might also enjoy:

• 12 Essential Consulting Templates For Marketing, Planning and Branding
• Best Marketing Strategies for Consultants and Freelancers in 2019 [Study + Infographic]

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Copilot(s): Generative AI at Microsoft and GitHub

• Frank Nagle
• Shane Greenstein
• Maria P. Roche
• Nataliya Langburd Wright
• Sarah Mehta

Innovation at Moog Inc.

• Brian J. Hall
• Ashley V. Whillans
• Davis Heniford
• Dominika Randle
• Caroline Witten

Innovation at Google Ads: The Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL) (A)

• Linda A. Hill
• Emily Tedards

Juan Valdez: Innovation in Caffeination

• Michael I. Norton
• Jeremy Dann

UGG Steps into the Metaverse

• Shunyuan Zhang
• Sharon Joseph
• Sunil Gupta
• Julia Kelley

Metaverse Wars

• David B. Yoffie

Roblox: Virtual Commerce in the Metaverse

• Ayelet Israeli
• Nicole Tempest Keller

Timnit Gebru: "SILENCED No More" on AI Bias and The Harms of Large Language Models

• Tsedal Neeley
• Stefani Ruper

Hugging Face: Serving AI on a Platform

• Kerry Herman
• Sarah Gulick

SmartOne: Building an AI Data Business

• Karim R. Lakhani
• Pippa Tubman Armerding
• Gamze Yucaoglu
• Fares Khrais

Honeywell and the Great Recession (A)

• Sandra J. Sucher
• Susan Winterberg

Target: Responding to the Recession

• Ranjay Gulati
• Catherine Ross
• Richard S. Ruback
• Royce Yudkoff

Hometown Foods: Changing Price Amid Inflation

• Julian De Freitas
• Jeremy Yang
• Das Narayandas

Elon Musk's Big Bets

• Eric Baldwin

Elon Musk: Balancing Purpose and Risk

Tesla's ceo compensation plan.

• Krishna G. Palepu
• John R. Wells
• Gabriel Ellsworth

China Rapid Finance: The Collapse of China's P2P Lending Industry

• William C. Kirby
• Bonnie Yining Cao
• John P. McHugh

Forbidden City: Launching a Craft Beer in China

• Christopher A. Bartlett
• Carole Carlson

Booking.com

• Stefan Thomke
• Daniela Beyersdorfer

Innovation at Uber: The Launch of Express POOL

• Chiara Farronato
• Alan MacCormack

Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (A)

• Michael Luca
• Scott Stern
• Hyunjin Kim

Unilever's Response to the Future of Work

• William R. Kerr
• Emilie Billaud
• Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej

AT&T, Retraining, and the Workforce of Tomorrow

• Joseph B. Fuller
• Carl Kreitzberg

Leading Change in Talent at L'Oreal

• Lakshmi Ramarajan
• Vincent Dessain
• Emer Moloney
• William W. George
• Andrew N. McLean

Eve Hall: The African American Investment Fund in Milwaukee

• Steven S. Rogers
• Alterrell Mills

United Housing - Otis Gates

• Mercer Cook

The Home Depot: Leadership in Crisis Management

• Herman B. Leonard
• Marc J. Epstein
• Melissa Tritter

The Great East Japan Earthquake (B): Fast Retailing Group's Response

• Hirotaka Takeuchi
• Kenichi Nonomura
• Dena Neuenschwander
• Meghan Ricci
• Kate Schoch
• Sergey Vartanov

Insurer of Last Resort?: The Federal Financial Response to September 11

• David A. Moss
• Sarah Brennan

Under Armour

• Rory McDonald
• Clayton M. Christensen
• Daniel West
• Jonathan E. Palmer
• Tonia Junker

Hunley, Inc.: Casting for Growth

• John A. Quelch
• James T. Kindley

Bitfury: Blockchain for Government

• Mitchell B. Weiss
• Elena Corsi

Deutsche Bank: Pursuing Blockchain Opportunities (A)

• Lynda M. Applegate
• Christoph Muller-Bloch

Maersk: Betting on Blockchain

• Scott Johnson

Yum! Brands

• Jordan Siegel
• Christopher Poliquin

Bharti Airtel in Africa

• Tanya Bijlani

Li & Fung 2012

• F. Warren McFarlan
• Michael Shih-ta Chen
• Keith Chi-ho Wong

Sony and the JK Wedding Dance

• John Deighton
• Leora Kornfeld

United Breaks Guitars

David dao on united airlines.

• Benjamin Edelman
• Jenny Sanford

Marketing Reading: Digital Marketing

• Joseph Davin

Social Strategy at Nike

• Mikolaj Jan Piskorski
• Ryan Johnson

The Tate's Digital Transformation

Social strategy at american express, mellon financial and the bank of new york.

• Carliss Y. Baldwin
• Ryan D. Taliaferro

The Walt Disney Company and Pixar, Inc.: To Acquire or Not to Acquire?

• Juan Alcacer
• David J. Collis

Dow's Bid for Rohm and Haas

• Benjamin C. Esty

Finance Reading: The Mergers and Acquisitions Process

• John Coates

Apple: Privacy vs. Safety? (A)

• Henry W. McGee
• Nien-he Hsieh
• Sarah McAra

Sidewalk Labs: Privacy in a City Built from the Internet Up

• Leslie K. John

Data Breach at Equifax

• Suraj Srinivasan
• Quinn Pitcher
• Jonah S. Goldberg

Apple's Core

• Noam Wasserman

Design Thinking and Innovation at Apple

• Barbara Feinberg

Apple Inc. in 2012

• Penelope Rossano

Iz-Lynn Chan at Far East Organization (Abridged)

• Anthony J. Mayo
• Dana M. Teppert

Barbara Norris: Leading Change in the General Surgery Unit

• Boris Groysberg
• Nitin Nohria
• Deborah Bell

Adobe Systems: Working Towards a "Suite" Release (A)

• David A. Thomas
• Lauren Barley

Home Nursing of North Carolina

Castronics, llc, gemini investors, angie's list: ratings pioneer turns 20.

• Robert J. Dolan

Basecamp: Pricing

• Frank V. Cespedes
• Robb Fitzsimmons

J.C. Penney's "Fair and Square" Pricing Strategy

J.c. penney's 'fair and square' strategy (c): back to the future.

• Jose B. Alvarez

Osaro: Picking the best path

• James Palano
• Bastiane Huang

HubSpot and Motion AI: Chatbot-Enabled CRM

• Thomas Steenburgh

GROW: Using Artificial Intelligence to Screen Human Intelligence

• Ethan S. Bernstein
• Paul D. McKinnon
• Paul Yarabe

Arup: Building the Water Cube

• Robert G. Eccles
• Amy C. Edmondson
• Dilyana Karadzhova

(Re)Building a Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek

Managing a global team: greg james at sun microsystems, inc. (a).

• Thomas J. DeLong

Organizational Behavior Reading: Leading Global Teams

Ron ventura at mitchell memorial hospital.

• Heide Abelli

Anthony Starks at InSiL Therapeutics (A)

• Gary P. Pisano
• Vicki L. Sato

Wolfgang Keller at Konigsbrau-TAK (A)

• John J. Gabarro

Midland Energy Resources, Inc.: Cost of Capital

• Timothy A. Luehrman
• Joel L. Heilprin

Globalizing the Cost of Capital and Capital Budgeting at AES

• Mihir A. Desai
• Doug Schillinger

Cost of Capital at Ameritrade

• Mark Mitchell
• Erik Stafford

Finance Reading: Cost of Capital

David Neeleman: Flight Path of a Servant Leader (A)

• Matthew D. Breitfelder

Coach Hurley at St. Anthony High School

• Scott A. Snook
• Bradley C. Lawrence

Shapiro Global

• Michael Brookshire
• Monica Haugen
• Michelle Kravetz
• Sarah Sommer

Kathryn McNeil (A)

• Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.
• Jerry Useem

Carol Fishman Cohen: Professional Career Reentry (A)

• Myra M. Hart
• Robin J. Ely
• Susan Wojewoda

Alex Montana at ESH Manufacturing Co.

• Michael Kernish

Michelle Levene (A)

• Tiziana Casciaro
• Victoria W. Winston

John and Andrea Rice: Entrepreneurship and Life

• Howard H. Stevenson
• Janet Kraus
• Shirley M. Spence

Partner Center

5 SaaS Case Study Examples to Motivate You (SaaS Growth)

• Written by: Rishabh Pugalia
• Updated: July 4, 2023

Did I miss any points? Let’s connect on LinkedIn .

Popular Searches:

• Testimonial Video Templates
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SaaS has transformed the way businesses operate. They offer software applications on a subscription basis, accessible through the cloud. Its user-friendly nature and cost-effective approach have made it a go-to solution.

Some common questions that often arise when considering SaaS implementation:

• What is a SaaS case study?
• Why is a SaaS case study important?
• How can SaaS case studies benefit my business?

Throughout the article, we will answer these questions and provide valuable insights and inspiration.

We will also look into multiple SaaS case study examples, specifically focusing on B2B scenarios. They explore the strategic implementation in different industries.

We have made videos for 150+ B2B & SaaS companies.

Explainer Video, Product Demo, Remote Video Testimonials, and more.

What is SaaS?

SaaS stands for Software as a Service. It’s a software licensing and delivery model, accessed online via a subscription. This model allows data to be accessed from any device with an internet connection and a web browser.

The subscription-based model allows for rapid scaling and easy implementation . It is also a more cost-effective option than traditional software. These make it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes.

SaaS applications are also known as Web-based software, on-demand software, or hosted software. Examples of SaaS applications include Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), Salesforce, Dropbox, and Microsoft’s Office 365.

FURTHER READING

• 10 Best Client Testimonial Videos You Must Watch
• 9 Most Convincing Customer Testimonial Videos Examples

What is a SaaS Case Study?

A SaaS case study is a detailed account of how a Software as a Service (SaaS) product has been used by a business or individual. These SaaS case studies provide a real-world example of how a SaaS product or service can solve problems, deliver results, and drive business growth.

SaaS case study examples are particularly valuable in the B2B industry. They offer insights into how different businesses have used SaaS solutions to overcome challenges .

SaaS case studies focus on the use of SaaS in specific areas. For instance:;

• A B2B SaaS case study might show how a company used a SaaS product to streamline its operations, improve efficiency, or increase sales .
• A B2B SaaS marketing case study focuses on how SaaS companies market their products.
• A case study of SaaS in cloud computing might explore how a company used a SaaS solution to leverage the power of the cloud.

Click here  to learn more.

Why are Case Studies Important in SaaS Content Marketing?

Case studies are important in SaaS content marketing for several reasons:

1. Proof of Success

A SaaS case study provides honest evidence of a product’s success. They show potential customers that the product works and delivers the promised results.

2. Detailed Explanation

A SaaS case study offers a detailed explanation of how a product can be used to solve a specific problem. This helps potential customers understand how they can use the product to address their own challenges.

3. Builds Trust

By showcasing real examples of satisfied customers, the SaaS case study helps to build trust and credibility with potential customers. They show that the company is reliable and has a track record of success.

4. Highlights Features and Benefits

Saas case studies allow companies to highlight specific features and benefits of their product. They can show how these features have been used in real-world scenarios, making them more relatable and understandable.

5. Storytelling

SaaS case study examples allow for storytelling, which can be a powerful marketing tool. They can encourage readers, evoke emotions, and make the product more memorable.

6. SEO Value

SaaS case studies can also have SEO value. They can be optimized for specific keywords, helping to attract organic traffic and improve search engine rankings.

We know how to sell your story using your product UI

5 Example Case Studies to Inspire You

Next, we will take a look at the five best B2B SaaS case study examples.

Saas Case Study 1: Directiq - How To Reduce Customer Support Tickets

In this SaaS case study, let’s see how DirectIQ uses videos as a growth strategy to reduce customer support tickets. The New York-based DirectIQ offers in-depth email marketing metrics. Using their easy-to-use email marketing interface, users can sign up for free and start their email marketing campaigns.

A. Strategy

• No credit card is required for sign-up.
• Email marketers can choose from hundreds of modern email templates.
• Marketers can create new templates using an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.
• Other features include unlimited sends, A/B campaigns, and email automation.
• Premium features include Spam Doctor and Inbox Premium.

Create Beautiful Email Campaigns For Free | No Credit Card Needed

The ‘Free’ and ‘No Credit card required’ act like magic in drawing the users to try their service. That’s crossing the first hurdle in your SaaS journey!

C. Outreach

DirectIQ wanted to:

• Educate their customers about their product and improve product adoption.
• Stand out in a crowded market and differentiate itself from other companies .
• Create appealing content that gives their viewers a personalized experience about how easy to use the product.
• Use a hands-on approach from top management. Have a look at the level of their commitment to customers, as exemplified by a quote from the CEO, Mr. Baris Ergin, on their website:
• “At DirectIQ, we created the easiest to use platform for email marketing for businesses of all sizes. We listen to our clients and add new features continuously. Send us a message, and let’s talk! – Baris Ergin, Founder/CEO”

D. Takeaways

• The perfect solution to address the pain points was a series of refined and powerful videos because ‘ How-to videos ’ are the easiest way to deliver useful information about your product to a wide audience.
• The company’s far-sightedness in using a series of training videos resulted in reducing customer support tickets and increasing user adoption .

Saas Case Study 2: How Sendowl Grew Its User Base

For growing a user base, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. However, let us look at the SaaS case study and explore the growth tactics used by SendOwl. This company helps businesses send and manage orders from their online store.

We can see that SendOwl relies on a combination of two simple strategies: Content marketing and SEO .

• High-quality content that would appeal to their target audience: By creating helpful blog posts and articles that address the needs of small business owners, they are able to attract new users and convert them into paying customers.
• SEO to rank their content for the keywords that were most important to their target audience: This allows them to get high-quality traffic and build a following that would become valuable in the future.

The wise way to sell & deliver your digital goods

In Western culture, the owl is associated with wisdom. Naturally, the wise, nocturnal bird finds a prominent place on their homepage. So, it is a clever synthesis of the company name and the tagline that effectively sums up the nature of their business.

SendOwl says that their focus is on making the customers happy , and that they have relied largely on word-of-mouth publicity for their growth.

However, they also make it clear that they have nothing against some good publicity!

They even invite journalists, bloggers, and tweeters to talk about the company. The best part is that they even provide a Press Pack.

• A customer-centric approach to business.
• Clever use of digital and content marketing strategies to promote business.
• Intelligent use of the power of the words to create the brand identity.

Saas Case Study 3: Chirotouch - Transforming One-On-One Zoom Training Videos Into Effective How-To-Videos

Continuing with our examples of SaaS case studies, we present ChiroTouch, a fully customizable chiropractic practice management software. In this case study on SaaS, ChiroTouch uses videos as a growth strategy to improve the customer onboarding experience.

• Addressing customers’ pain points using simple and clear copy on their website.
• Talking numbers in a convincing way – “Our easy-to-use software is loved, trusted, and enjoyed by 21,000 providers and 12,000 practices – for over twenty years.”

Power your practice with ChiroTouch | It’s time to take your practice to the next level

Simple and direct. Who wouldn’t be enticed by the prospect of achieving GROWTH by being more productive?

• ChiroTouch effectively conveys the message that it’s not a practitioner’s job to worry about keeping their practice organized. Instead, they can rely on ChiroTouch’s cloud standard in chiropractic software to do it.
• Explaining to the customers that regardless of the current size of their practice, why the product is a perfect fit.

They realized that well-made customer onboarding video training was the way forward. The challenge, however, was that the videos had to appeal to a group of ‘not-necessarily-very-technical’ type of people.

Content Beta suggested a hybrid model of live training and pre-recorded video courses that the customers could refer to. Here is an example video from the series.

Making a video for B2B & SaaS products needs a different mindset.

SaaS Case Study 4: Drift - Building a Multi-Million Dollar Brand through Content Marketing

In this case study, we explore how Drift used content marketing as a key strategy to build a multi-million dollar brand. Despite entering a competitive industry of website chat, Drift managed to stand out by focusing on brand building and creating superior content .

• Targeting four specific audiences: marketers, salespeople, product managers, and entrepreneurs.
• Featuring other companies in their content, opening their content to other audiences.
• Following SEO best practices , such as – structuring URLs effectively and writing well-crafted meta-descriptions.
• Mixing content types , using images, videos, and audio clips to break up text.
• Using a high number of backlinks .

Revolutionizing Website Chat with Superior Content Marketing

They believe in creating ‘six-star content’. This commitment to quality is reflected in a quote from their website: “At Drift, we aim to create better content than anyone else. We focus on helping our audience and providing value . Let’s connect and see how we can help you! – David Cancel, Founder”

Drift aimed to:

• Reach out to different types of target audiences through different posts.
• Stand out in the crowd with content that is better than anyone else’s.
• Featuring other companies and using backlinks to drive organic traffic to their website and attract a wider audience.
• Use a mix of content types , including blog posts of various categories and podcasts, to guide the audience through their marketing funnel.
• Focusing on specific audiences can help tailor content and make it more relevant and engaging.
• A strategic approach to content creation can drive organic traffic, improve visibility, and attract viewers.
• SEO practices can significantly improve search engine rankings.

SaaS Case Study 5: The Journey of Outreach.io - From Startup to a $1.1 Billion SaaS Company

In 2011, Manny Medina teamed up with Andrew Kinzer to create GroupTalent, a revolutionary recruitment platform. However, the traction was slow, and they were running out of cash.

To solve their sales problem, they started building software to make their sales reps more productive . This software eventually became Outreach, a sales tech SaaS giant with over $60m in revenues and a valuation worth $1.3 billion.

• Pivoting to a product people actually want.
• Closing the first 100 customers door to door.
• Ignoring marketing for the first 2-3 years.
• Developing an extremely fast-paced product release schedule.
• Choosing a B2C Metric – monthly active users.
• Developing a metric-driven outbound process.

Outreach – The Sales Engagement Platform

Outreach is a sales engagement platform that helps businesses streamline their sales process, increase productivity, and drive revenue growth. It provides a suite of tools that enable sales teams to talk with customers more effectively and close deals faster.

Outreach’s approach to growth includes:

• Focusing on what they do well, which is high-velocity sales .
• Customizing their outbound process based on the persona and industry.
• Acquiring Sales Hacker to increase their online marketing presence.
• Creating a community for their customers to build relationships and reduce churn.
• Hosting an annual conference to share their vision, build relationships, and solidify partnerships.
• In the early days, work to gain initial learnings and revenue.
• Choose your growth engine and focus on it relentlessly.
• Consider acquiring an audience instead of growing one from scratch.
• Leverage customer relationships to reduce churn and increase customer retention.
• Host events or conferences to build relationships and solidify partnerships.

How to Write a SaaS Case Study?

Here’s a simple guide on how to write a SaaS case study:

1. The Headline and Subhead

Keep the headline simple, clear, and precise . It should include the customer’s name, the SaaS platform used, and the key result.

The subhead should be short and to the point. It should highlight the key points.

2. The Executive Summary

The executive summary is a short overview of the SaaS case study. It should briefly explain what the customer did and the key results they achieved .

Consider it as an elevator pitch for your SaaS case study. The goal is to pique the reader’s interest to learn more.

3. The Challenge(s)

This section outlines the issues your customer faced before using your product. Present them one by one, starting with a general topic and then providing more detailed explanations.

The challenges should be relatable to your target audience. Be specific and provide concrete examples and data .

4. The Solution

This section of a SaaS case study focuses on how the challenges were addressed:

• the plan to tackle each challenge,
• the business processes or workflows established,
• the configurations or settings used, and
• any integrations set up.

5. The Results

The “Results” section of a SaaS case study showcases the outcomes . Include statistics, value statements, or testimonials to add credibility to your case study.

6. Conclusion

The conclusion of a SaaS case study wraps up the information presented. It should summarize the key points of the case study.

7. Call to Action

End the SaaS case study with a call to action.

How can I Promote My Case Studies to Reach a Wider Audience?

Expanding the reach of your SaaS case studies can be achieved through various strategies:

1. Social Media

Share your SaaS case study on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Adapt your message to each platform’s audience for maximum engagement .

2. Email Marketing

Feature your SaaS case study examples in your newsletters or dedicated email blasts to your subscribers.

3. Blog Posts

Craft a blog post about the case study on SaaS and share it on your website. This can increase SEO and drive organic traffic to your SaaS case study.

4. Webinars or Podcasts

Discuss your SaaS case studies in webinars or podcasts. This can provide a more detailed look at the case study and reach a different audience.

5. PR and Media Outreach

Connect with industry publications or local media outlets and propose your B2B SaaS case study as a story idea.

6. Paid Advertising

Utilize platforms like Google Ads or social media advertising to promote your SaaS case studies to a targeted audience.

7. Customer Testimonials

Use quotes from your SaaS case studies as testimonials on your website or in marketing materials.

Testimonial videos are crucial for B2B credibility; they humanize client endorsements , offering real and authentic insight into the real-world impact of a product or service. With remote video testimonial services, capturing authentic client feedback across diverse locations becomes both seamless and convenient.

8. Sales Team

Arm your sales team with SaaS case studies to use in their sales pitches.

Remember, the key to successful promotion is to understand your audience and tailor your message to them.

What are the Common Mistakes to Avoid When Creating a SaaS Case Study?

When creating SaaS case studies, there are several common pitfalls to avoid:

1. Vague Results

SaaS case studies should present specific, measurable outcomes . Avoid general statements like “increased productivity” or “improved efficiency” without supporting data.

2. Excluding the Customer’s Perspective

Direct quotes from the customer add authenticity and credibility to your SaaS case study. Make sure to include their perspective.

3. Disorganized Structure

A well-structured SaaS case study is easier to read and understand. Include an introduction, challenge, solution, results, and conclusion.

4. Overlooking the Process

Don’t just highlight the end result. The journey the customer took to achieve their results provides valuable insights. It should be a part of your SaaS case study.

5. Failure to Promote the Case Study

After creating your SaaS case study, promote it through various channels like your website, social media, email newsletters, etc.

6. Outdated Case Studies

Update your SaaS case studies as needed to reflect changes .

By steering clear of these common errors, you can create an effective SaaS case study.

SaaS case studies demonstrate the potential of SaaS solutions in the B2B landscape. They provide real life examples of how businesses have used these solutions to drive growth, enhance efficiency, and gain a competitive edge. They offer valuable insights and lessons that can guide other businesses in their own SaaS journey.

The journey to SaaS success involves

• understanding the unique challenges of your business,
• choosing the right SaaS solution,
• effectively implementing the solution.

It’s about transforming your business processes, improving customer engagement, and ultimately, driving business growth.

So, always remember, the power of SaaS lies not just in the software itself, but in how you use it to solve problems, meet needs, and achieve your business goals.

A case study in SaaS is a detailed account of a company’s use of a Software as a Service product. It highlights the challenges, implementation process, and results. It serves as an example of how the SaaS solution can solve problems or improve operations.

No, SaaS growth case study examples are not one-size-fits-all. Each case study is unique, reflecting the specific challenges, strategies, and outcomes of a particular company’s experience with a SaaS product.

They provide insights and lessons, but the applicability can vary depending on a company’s specific context and needs .

SaaS growth case studies can provide valuable insights, but they have certain drawbacks:

• Creating a case study can be costly in terms of money and time.
• A case study is not a comprehensive research report but a collection of specific data points.
• It doesn’t offer an in-depth analysis of a company’s operations.

Choosing a suitable SaaS growth case study for your business involves:

• Identify case studies that align with your specific business needs and challenges.
• Look for case studies from businesses similar to yours in terms of size, industry, and goals.
• Focus on the specific problems they addressed with the SaaS solution and the results they achieved .

Creating a growth case study for your SaaS business can provide several benefits:

• It provides tangible proof of your product’s value and effectiveness.
• It showcases how your product solves real-world problems, aiding customer understanding.
• It is a great marketing tool

If you are a SaaS business owner, your case study should highlight the benefits of using your SaaS because more than 90% of customers base their purchase decision on a positive review.

Some important SaaS growth metrics include:

• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): This is the predictable revenue that a company can expect every month.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): This is the total cost of acquiring a new customer, including marketing and sales expenses.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): This is the total revenue a company can expect from a customer over the duration of their relationship.
• Churn Rate: This is the percentage of customers who stop using the SaaS product over a given period.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): This measures customer satisfaction and loyalty by asking customers how likely they are to recommend the product to others.

A compelling SaaS case study should include:

• Introduction: Briefly outline the customer’s business and their challenges.
• Challenge: Detail the specific issues the customer faced before using the SaaS solution.
• Solution: Describe how the solution was implemented to address the challenges.
• Results: Highlight the outcomes achieved, ideally with quantifiable metrics.
• Testimonials: Include direct quotes from the customer about their experience.
• Conclusion: Summarize the key points and reinforce the value of the solution.
• Call to Action: Encourage readers to take the next step.

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47 case interview examples (from McKinsey, BCG, Bain, etc.)

One of the best ways to prepare for   case interviews  at firms like McKinsey, BCG, or Bain, is by studying case interview examples. 

There are a lot of free sample cases out there, but it's really hard to know where to start. So in this article, we have listed all the best free case examples available, in one place.

The below list of resources includes interactive case interview samples provided by consulting firms, video case interview demonstrations, case books, and materials developed by the team here at IGotAnOffer. Let's continue to the list.

• McKinsey examples
• BCG examples
• Bain examples
• Deloitte examples
• Other firms' examples
• Case books from consulting clubs
• Case interview preparation

Click here to practise 1-on-1 with MBB ex-interviewers

1. mckinsey case interview examples.

• Beautify case interview (McKinsey website)
• Diconsa case interview (McKinsey website)
• Electro-light case interview (McKinsey website)
• GlobaPharm case interview (McKinsey website)
• National Education case interview (McKinsey website)
• Talbot Trucks case interview (McKinsey website)
• Shops Corporation case interview (McKinsey website)
• Conservation Forever case interview (McKinsey website)
• McKinsey case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)
• McKinsey live case interview extract (by IGotAnOffer) - See below

2. BCG case interview examples

• Foods Inc and GenCo case samples  (BCG website)
• Chateau Boomerang written case interview  (BCG website)
• BCG case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)
• Written cases guide (by IGotAnOffer)
• BCG live case interview with notes (by IGotAnOffer)
• BCG mock case interview with ex-BCG associate director - Public sector case (by IGotAnOffer)
• BCG mock case interview: Revenue problem case (by IGotAnOffer) - See below

3. Bain case interview examples

• CoffeeCo practice case (Bain website)
• FashionCo practice case (Bain website)
• Associate Consultant mock interview video (Bain website)
• Consultant mock interview video (Bain website)
• Written case interview tips (Bain website)
• Bain case interview guide   (by IGotAnOffer)
• Digital transformation case with ex-Bain consultant
• Bain case mock interview with ex-Bain manager (below)

4. Deloitte case interview examples

• Engagement Strategy practice case (Deloitte website)
• Recreation Unlimited practice case (Deloitte website)
• Strategic Vision practice case (Deloitte website)
• Retail Strategy practice case  (Deloitte website)
• Finance Strategy practice case  (Deloitte website)
• Talent Management practice case (Deloitte website)
• Enterprise Resource Management practice case (Deloitte website)
• Footloose written case  (by Deloitte)
• Deloitte case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

5. Accenture case interview examples

• Case interview workbook (by Accenture)
• Accenture case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

6. OC&C case interview examples

• Leisure Club case example (by OC&C)
• Imported Spirits case example (by OC&C)

7. Oliver Wyman case interview examples

• Wumbleworld case sample (Oliver Wyman website)
• Aqualine case sample (Oliver Wyman website)
• Oliver Wyman case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

8. A.T. Kearney case interview examples

• Promotion planning case question (A.T. Kearney website)
• Consulting case book and examples (by A.T. Kearney)
• AT Kearney case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

9. Strategy& / PWC case interview examples

• Presentation overview with sample questions (by Strategy& / PWC)
• Strategy& / PWC case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

10. L.E.K. Consulting case interview examples

• Case interview example video walkthrough   (L.E.K. website)
• Market sizing case example video walkthrough  (L.E.K. website)

11. Roland Berger case interview examples

• Transit oriented development case webinar part 1  (Roland Berger website)
• Transit oriented development case webinar part 2   (Roland Berger website)
• 3D printed hip implants case webinar part 1   (Roland Berger website)
• 3D printed hip implants case webinar part 2   (Roland Berger website)
• Roland Berger case interview guide   (by IGotAnOffer)

12. Capital One case interview examples

• Case interview example video walkthrough  (Capital One website)
• Capital One case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

13. Consulting clubs case interview examples

• Berkeley case book (2006)
• Columbia case book (2006)
• Darden case book (2012)
• Darden case book (2018)
• Duke case book (2010)
• Duke case book (2014)
• ESADE case book (2011)
• Goizueta case book (2006)
• Illinois case book (2015)
• LBS case book (2006)
• MIT case book (2001)
• Notre Dame case book (2017)
• Ross case book (2010)
• Wharton case book (2010)

Practice with experts

Using case interview examples is a key part of your interview preparation, but it isn’t enough.

At some point you’ll want to practise with friends or family who can give some useful feedback. However, if you really want the best possible preparation for your case interview, you'll also want to work with ex-consultants who have experience running interviews at McKinsey, Bain, BCG, etc.

If you know anyone who fits that description, fantastic! But for most of us, it's tough to find the right connections to make this happen. And it might also be difficult to practice multiple hours with that person unless you know them really well.

Here's the good news. We've already made the connections for you. We’ve created a coaching service where you can do mock case interviews 1-on-1 with ex-interviewers from MBB firms . Start scheduling sessions today!

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Growth strategy for a global media company

Finding new sources of profitable growth in a difficult media environment

A global media organization was struggling financially in the face of tough industry headwinds. On the plus side, they were armed with a strong brand, a diversified portfolio of holdings, and access to capital.  The questions were how and where to grow in order to re-assert profitability in the short term, while at the same time positioning itself for the future, with the increasing dominance of digital channels.

The business was currently losing tens of millions of dollars per year. 

Root causes: difficult media headwinds with declining advertising revenue and huge levels of complexity in the business. 

It was operating in multiple channels (TV, print, radio, digital, and conferences) across more than 100 countries—from Europe and the US to Russia and South Africa. Each had its own idiosyncrasies and consumer preferences for media consumption. Many times, this expansion happened via opportunistic partnerships. 

It was the classic ‘Greener Pasture’ siren that had led the business to chase short-term revenue at the expense of profitability.  Given that context, a key role for WP&C was injecting a disciplined, analytical view of growth adjacencies, where the theoretical adjacency-expansion opportunities were almost unlimited.

1: Build a new fact base

WP&C assessed and quantified the media landscape, advertising revenues, trends, competitors, and growth rates. We drilled down into individual end-markets & channels.

2: Identify strategic options

Based on the analysis, and the current position of the business, we developed a series of strategic alternatives, with a range of potential outcomes and differing capital requirements.

3: Operationalize the plan

We assessed how well the current operating model supported the strategic options. Once aligned on the growth plan, we highlighted specific changes required to execute on the plan.

• Use region-specific strategies.   Each region needs to be treated differently based on how media is consumed, and the level of return expected.
• Heavily focus on Western EU,   where brand best positioned & financial returns highest. Hold off investment in Eastern Europe.
• Generally, reduce cost to serve . Leverage existing TV assets to broaden reach and access. In Africa, achieve better scale economies by moving to a regional hub model.
• Integrate the operating model.   Historically, business was siloed by media platform: inefficient, expensive and out of step with how people consume media. Move to new operating model oriented around markets and audience, as opposed to platforms.

• In 2 years, since the strategy was launched, the business has reversed its fortunes to be once again profitable
• Revenues are up in TV, Radio, and Events —s ince launching the strategy, digital ad revenues grew more than 50%
• The business has also successfully moved to a new operating model—a multiplatform ad proposition with content at the core, which is driving sales and focusing the business on customers

Is your company ready for transformation?

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Ace the Growth Equity Case Study Interview

Intro to case studies

The growth equity case study is the source of much anxiety for candidates preparing for interviews.

In general, case studies are often the difficult part of any private equity interview — even more so than why growth equity or other  interview questions . But case studies can be especially challenging in growth equity given the wide range of case study types. In this article, I shed some light on this part of the interview and how best you can prepare.

One reason why this exercise can be more challenging than it is for private equity case studies is there are many different shapes it can take, and you don’t know which type you’ll get. That is, the exercise could focus on modeling expertise, investment judgement, or prospecting ability.

It can be difficult to know what to expect; however, most growth equity case studies fall into four different categories.

Growth equity modeling test

This usually takes place on-site. The firm will give you some source material on a company, which can range from a 10-k (if the company is public) to an internal investment committee memo (if the company is a portfolio company).

The exercise will usually last 1-3 hours; as such, to expedite things, you’ll usually be given a model template from which to build your model, however not always.

After completing the model, you may be asked to also leave time to create slides or draft a mini-investment memo. In this memo, you’ll be asked whether or not you support proceeding with the investment and why. (You knew I was going to say this, but of course, the “why” is most important).After time is completed, you’ll may be asked to present your work to investment professionals at the firm. Or, they will “grade” your work separately and get back to you on if you “passed.”

Keys to success in this type of case are:

• Technical growth equity modeling chops  – is your model right? Does it include all the required features to properly analyze the growth company?
• Investment fundamentals  – how do you think about growth investments? Does the way you’ve thought about the opportunity make sense and are you focused on the right areas?
• Ability to articulate or present your work  – are your thoughts well-organized and do you articulate them succinctly and confidently? This is very important in growth equity as I believe firms place a premium on these skills in growth
• Time management  – did you complete the entire exercise?

If these sound daunting, or you have questions about any of these areas, just remember these aren’t impossible skills to practice! In fact, I believe most, if not all, candidates can completely master these if they are truly dedicated and learn the right frameworks to apply.

In my full course, I cover in detail how to  prepare for the growth equity modeling exercise (including the differences with typical LBO/buyout models) , frameworks for analyzing growth investments, mental models for organizing and presenting your work, as well as time management rules for the case.

Prospecting exercise

This involves the firm asking you to investigate an industry (or an investment theme) and to prepare a short brief on companies in the space.

This is usually conducted as a take home assignment, where candidates can complete it on their own time but within a certain period.

I really love this kind of exercise, because it simulates one of the best parts of the growth equity job . That is, you join one of the top growth equity firms — so that you can be empowered to look into cool industries and pick the best companies!

Sure, you’ll also build models and investment committee memos on companies you’re pursuing (which is tested more directly in the modeling exercise), but I find what really sets investment professionals apart in growth equity are the skills tested in the prospecting exercise. In a future post, you’ll be able to read about how I majorly flopped my first “on the job” prospecting case study 🙂

This exercise should not be confused with what I call the “sourcing” mock interview, which is common for undergraduate hires. In sourcing interviews, you’re asked to simulate a cold call with prospective CEOs.

After you’ve submitted your work, you’ll usually be asked to discuss or present it in person or over the phone. This is where the firm will probe your thinking and make sure your investment judgement is sound.

• Market analysis  – How do you analyze markets? What are the competitive dynamics and what are the long-term growth fundamentals?
• Investment fundamentals  – Same as above. How do you think about growth investments? Does the way you’ve thought about the opportunity make sense and are you focused on the right areas?
• Ability to articulate or present your work  – Same as above. Are your thoughts well-organized and do you articulate them succinctly and confidently? This is a very important skill in growth equity as I believe firms place a premium on these skills in growth

In prospecting exercises, the investment fundamentals and the ability to present are under a microscope. However, you’ll note market analysis is also a key to success. This is slightly different than the modeling exercise, where market analysis can be important but is tested less explicitly.

Market analysis is critical in prospecting exercises because you’re not only assessing one company, but you’re making broad generalizations (and prioritizing) across multiple companies. That means, you need to step back and assess the market as a whole.

This can be tricky for candidates, especially those coming from investment banking where analysts typically focus on discrete transactions rather than pulling back and analyzing an industry. This is one of the areas, I believe management consultants can have a leg up in private equity recruiting.

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Everything you need to master growth equity interviews, mini-case exercise.

The mini-case is given to almost every interview candidate, in some form or another. It can happen at different points in the interview process, depending on the firm’s sequencing.

The mini-case involves a series of technical questions related to a single company or business problem. In my interviews with Advent International, I remember the mini-case was the most challenging aspect of the entire interview.

My interviewer started the mini-case by describing a portfolio company of theirs, the industry it operated in, and the broad strokes of an issue the company face. He explained the company was a distribution company that transported consumer packaged goods and was experiencing gross margin pressure.

Then, he asked a series of questions about what might be causing the company’s margin pressure, and ways I’d go about diagnosing the cause (hint: use data from the company’s balance sheet and P&L to diagnose unit cost, price, and volume trends then overlay industry analysis).

All told, this part of the interview will usually last 15 minutes or so. It can be prompted explicitly with a disclaimer like, “Now, we’ll spend a few minutes asking questions about a specific problem at a portfolio company which I’ll describe.” Or, the interviewer could start a mini-case less explicitly by sustaining a series of questions without the disclaimer upfront.

In any case, keys to success in this type of case are:

• Clarity of thought (under pressure)  – this is the biggest thing the interview is probing; can you work through difficult problems on the fly? How does your brain think through problems?
• Ability to articulate ideas  – it’s okay to think through problems out loud, but you want to make sure you’re able to summarize and synthesize your thinking where possible.

Mock sourcing call

Especially for analyst positions (post-undergrad), mock sourcing calls are common in  growth equity interviews . I am planning to explore this unique portion of the interview in a separate post which I will link to here once complete.

**UPDATE: Here’s my completed break down of  Sourcing and Mock Cold Call interview questions and case studies .

How important is the case study in growth equity interviews

Forget about  interviews  for a minute, and let’s think about what actually sets people apart as high performers in growth equity. At a highest level, the job is to find the highest growth markets, and then  invest in the market leaders .

When you break this down, this means success is a function of the investor’s ability to pick the right market, to source the best companies within it, to pick the best company to pursue from all the companies you’ve sourced, and then to convince the company to take you on as a partner (aka “win” the deal).

All these core competencies map to the different skills tested in a case study. That’s why it is given lots of weight during the interview process.

Granted, it can seem a bit absurd to take one discrete portion of the interview process (that may only last 1 hour), and project forward the person’s career potential as an investor. However, this all the firm has to go on, so it’s an important piece of the puzzle.

Private equity interview case studies

Case studies also play an important part in getting into private equity . However, if I had to generalize,  buyout firms  are more focused on assessing the technical and modeling ability in junior/mid-level professionals, whereas growth equity may take a more holistic view of the candidate’s overall ability as an investor.

This is driven by the more varied nature of the growth equity job, which could include developing an industry thesis, sourcing attractive investment prospects, and then evaluating and executing on opportunities.

It’s more likely, at large firms especially, that a buyout analyst or associate’s typical day is more focused on the last part (evaluating and executing on opportunities), so modeling and the ability to churn through CIM’s are usually valued at a premium at these firms!

Alright, team. That’s all I got for now! Check out my  other posts on growth equity recruiting , and sign up for the newsletter below to receive all my best tips in your inbox. For more comprehensive interview prep, check out my full growth equity interview prep course .

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Growth Equity: The Child Prodigy of Private Equity and Venture Capital, or an Artifact of Easy Money?

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Over the past few decades, growth equity (GE) has gone from an afterthought to a major asset class for huge investment firms.

Some argue that GE offers the best of both worlds: the opportunity to fund innovation and growth – as in venture capital – plus the ability to limit downside risk and invest in proven companies – as in private equity .

Others would counter that growth equity’s rapid ascent was mostly due to the easy money that persisted between 2008 and 2021.

With interest rates at ~0%, funds inevitably flowed into anything with “growth” in the name – regardless of its real growth potential:

Table Of Contents:

What is growth equity.

• The Top Growth Equity Firms

Why Did Growth Equity Get So Popular?

Growth equity vs. venture capital vs. private equity, on the job: growth equity careers.

• Growth Equity Recruiting

Growth Equity Interviews and Case Studies

Compensation and exits.

• Pros and Cons and Final Thoughts

Growth Equity Definition: In traditional growth equity, firms invest minority stakes in companies with proven business models that need the capital to expand; some firms also use “growth buyout” strategies, which are like traditional leveraged buyouts but with higher growth potential.

Most of the confusion around “growth equity” comes from the fact that it includes two different strategies, and many top firms use both.

Here are the main differences:

• Strategy #1: “Late-Stage Venture Capital” – This is what most people think of as “growth equity.” This style is about purchasing minority stakes in cash-flow-negative-but-high-growth companies that want to scale and eventually go public or sell (think: Uber or Airbnb before their IPOs). Valuations are high, the returns depend on future growth, and deals are for primary capital , i.e., new cash the business needs. There’s usually a long list of previous VC investors as well.
• Strategy #2: “Growth Buyouts” – This strategy is more like traditional leveraged buyouts because the PE firm acquires a much higher percentage of the company (or even majority control). Most companies are already profitable, the potential returns are lower, and there’s usually a large secondary component (i.e., the Founders sell some shares to take money off the table, but “the company” doesn’t get any of that cash). Debt financing is much more common, and the GE firm is often the first institutional investor.

Over time, many traditional growth equity firms have shifted to the “growth buyout” category as their assets under management have grown.

Most of this guide deals with the “late-stage VC” strategy, as dozens of other articles cover private equity strategies such as leveraged buyouts and traditional private equity .

The Top Growth Equity Firms in Each Category

If you asked the average person to name the “top” growth equity firms, you’d probably get a list like the following:

1) Primarily Late-Stage VC Deals – Examples include a16z Growth, Battery, Bessemer, Sequoia Growth, and Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV).

Most of these firms started out doing early-stage VC deals and still invest across all company stages.

2) Primarily Growth Buyout Deals – Firms like Accel-KKR, Great Hill, Mainsail, PSG, Spectrum, and TA Associates go here.

Many of these firms use debt to fund deals, and they complete bolt-on acquisitions for portfolio companies.

3) Mix of Late-Stage VC and Growth Buyout Deals – General Atlantic, Insight, JMI, Stripes, and Summit are good examples.

4) Private Equity Mega-Funds with Growth Teams – TPG Growth is the most famous example, but you could also add the growth teams at Advent, Bain, Blackstone, Permira, Providence, and Warburg Pincus (note that these are not all “ mega-funds ” according to our definitions).

You could keep going and add plenty of names.

For example, Susquehanna Growth Equity is another great firm, but it doesn’t use the traditional LP/GP structure, so I’m not sure where it fits in.

Similarly, SoftBank has played a big role in growth equity (for better or worse…) but it’s the investing arm of a corporation, not a standalone PE/VC firm.

Many other well-known VCs have also raised growth equity funds, including Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins (KPCB), and NEA.

The main factors were:

• The Rise of Tech and Software – Since so many growth equity deals involve technology, the sector’s rise over the past 10 – 20 years also drove a lot of growth equity investing.
• Companies Began Staying Private for Longer – A long time ago, startups went public within a few years of raising VC funds (see Google , Cisco, etc.). In the 2010s, startups began to postpone their IPOs, but they still needed funding.
• Tech Industry Maturation – As the technology industry matured, companies generated more predictable cash flow, but they still needed capital to scale.
• Loose Monetary and Fiscal Policy – The quantitative easing (QE) and zero-interest-rate policies (ZIRP) that existed in most countries between 2008 and 2021 spurred a lot of “growth investing,” as established/sleepy firms like Fidelity suddenly became interested in riskier investments. Many hedge funds also joined the party.

From a career perspective , growth equity appealed to many bankers and consultants who didn’t want to be “pigeonholed” in venture capital (limited exit opportunities) or suffer through “banking hours” once again in private equity.

Growth equity offered a compromise: Modeling and deal work, networking, and shorter hours than most PE roles.

This section will focus on Strategy #1 (Late-Stage VC Investing) because Strategy #2 is nearly the same as what most middle-market private equity firms do, but with higher-growth companies.

Official descriptions usually cite the following points to explain how growth equity firms differ from VC and PE firms:

• They acquire minority stakes in companies (like VC and unlike PE).
• They invest in revenue-generating companies with proven business models (like PE and unlike early-stage VC).
• They aim for cash-on-cash multiples between 3x and 5x rather than the 5x, 10x, or 100x that VCs target and the 2x – 3x that many PE firms target. The targeted IRR might be in the 30 – 40% range.
• They earn returns primarily from growth via acquisitions and organic sources.
• They do not use debt since they only make minority-stake investments. However, they often invest using preferred stock with liquidation preferences attached to limit their downside risk (similar to VCs).
• The average deal size is bigger than early-stage VC but smaller than many PE deals; the $25 – $500 million range might be the norm for U.S.-based firms.
• The main risk factor in deals is executing the growth plan, not default risk due to debt (PE) or product/market risk (VC).

Growth equity firms could invest in any industry but tend to be skewed toward technology and TMT , with some exposure to consumer/retail , healthcare , and financial services .

The specific growth strategies used by portfolio companies could include almost anything, but a few common ones are:

• Paying for employees, buildings, and equipment to enter new geographies or markets.
• Developing new products or services.
• Scaling a company’s sales & marketing by hiring more sales reps.
• Completing bolt-on acquisitions that will boost the company’s revenue and cash flow.

Unsurprisingly, growth equity careers are a mix of private equity careers and venture capital careers .

Let’s run down the average tasks an Analyst or Associate completes each day at a “Late-Stage VC” firm to demonstrate this:

• Sourcing: As in VC careers, there’s a lot of emphasis on “sourcing” or finding new companies to invest in (read: cold calling and emailing). Deals and business strategies are less complicated than in PE, so finding great companies is a competitive advantage.
• Financial Modeling: Like private equity, 3-statement models are common, as are valuations and DCF models , but LBO models are less common since not all deals use debt. Like venture capital, cap tables , liquidation preferences, and primary vs. secondary purchases come up frequently (plus, SaaS metrics , SaaS accounting , and so on).
• Portfolio Companies: You probably won’t interact with management teams quite as much because your firm won’t own controlling stakes in all its portfolio companies. You may still help with operational issues, but it’s harder to “force” companies to change in a specific way.
• Due Diligence: For similar reasons – minority stakes rather than control deals – you won’t devote quite as much time and effort to due diligence in deals.

If you do the math, you’ll see that something doesn’t add up because the modeling, deals, and due diligence are less intense than in PE, but you also work longer hours than in VC (50 – 60 hours per week up to 70 – 80 when a deal is closing).

What accounts for the difference?

At some firms, the answer is “a lot more sourcing.”

But at other firms, you might spend more time on market/industry research or get more involved with portfolio companies.

The overall career path, tiles, and promotion times are like the private equity career path , but compensation is usually lower (see below).

Growth Equity Recruiting: Who Gets In, and How Do They Do It?

The recruiting differences vs. other fields of finance are as follows:

1) Candidate Pool: Growth equity is open to a wider pool of candidates than PE roles, but not as many as VC roles. Many people still get in from investment banking and management consulting , but some also get in from VC and finance-related jobs at startups. Also, you can get in more easily from a middle-market or boutique bank .

That said, you are still highly unlikely to win growth equity offers from something like engineering at a tech company or brand advertising.

Even product management is questionable – it can work for VC roles, but probably not for GE since you need more technical skills.

Finally, you can get into GE directly out of undergrad, but it’s less common than in IB/PE, and it’s not necessarily recommended because many of these roles are “sourcing heavy.”

2) Process: At most firms, the process is closer to off-cycle private equity recruiting , where you must proactively network to find roles. The biggest GE firms and the PE mega-funds still use on-cycle recruiting, but

3) Technical Skills: People often claim that growth equity interviews are “less technical,” but this is not universally true. You could easily get asked to complete an LBO modeling test, a 3-statement model, or a DCF, and standard IB interview questions and VC interview questions could come up.

Obviously, you’ll need these technical skills if you join a team that does “growth buyout” deals.

But even if you apply to a late-stage VC team, they might still give you a modeling test to weed out candidates .

The main question categories in interviews are:

• Fit/Background – Expect to walk through your resume , explain “why growth equity,” why this firm, your strengths and weaknesses , and so on.
• Technical Questions – Everything is fair game (see above).
• Deal/Client Experience – You should review your 2-3 best deals and say whether you would have done each one, with “growth” as the key criterion.
• Firm/Portfolio Knowledge – You need to know the firm’s investment thesis, strategies/verticals, and have a rough idea of its portfolio companies. To save time, focus on 1-2 specific companies and do enough research to discuss them in-depth.
• Industry/Market Discussions – Rather than trying to “learn” the entire SaaS, AI, or hardware market, focus on one specific vertical (e.g., the top 2-3 companies, your #1 investment pick, the growth drivers, the risk factors, and the overall outlook).
• Mock “Sourcing” Calls – The firm could also ask you to role-play a call with a prospective portfolio company by introducing yourself, asking key questions, and requesting a follow-up conversation.
• Case Studies – Most GE case studies are either 3-statement modeling variants or open-ended market-research case studies, but anything is fair game ( paper LBO models , simplified or full LBO models, etc.).

An open-ended case study might give you a few pages of information on a company and ask you to draft an investment recommendation.

To do this, you will have to research the company’s market size, competitors, growth strategies, and strengths/weaknesses.

We don’t have a direct example here, but the VC case study on PitchBookGPT gives you a flavor of what to expect in a qualitative case.

For a modeling example, see our growth equity case study based on Procyon SA .

These two points depend on whether you worked on growth buyouts or late-stage VC investments .

In growth buyout teams/firms, compensation at larger firms is generally a 15 – 20% discount to private equity compensation.

So, if an “average” PE Associate earns $300K – $350K in total compensation, the average range might be closer to $250K – $300K at a growth buyout firm.

However, note that the mega-funds might still pay about the same because they may align compensation across groups.

If you work for a smaller, late-stage VC fund, expect compensation closer to normal VC levels (maybe the $200K – $250K range, though it’s hard to find specific data here).

Fund sizes are smaller, portfolio company exits takes more time, and performance is less predictable, all of which account for the lower pay.

On the other hand, some firms pay “sourcing bonuses” if you contact enough companies, and they may offer co-investments in certain details, so there are ways to increase your pay as well.

As far as  exit opportunities , you could move into standard private equity if you worked on growth buyouts, but this is much more challenging coming from a late-stage VC role.

Other opportunities include other GE firms, VC roles, startups/portfolio companies, or an MBA.

You wouldn’t be the best candidate for most hedge fund roles (traditional PE is better), but corporate development might be possible, especially if you had IB experience before entering growth equity.

Pros and Cons of Growth Equity and Final Thoughts

Summing up everything above, here’s how you can think about growth equity:

• It’s more accessible than traditional private equity roles.
• You potentially make a high impact from day one since much of the job involves finding new companies to invest in.
• You work with more “exciting” companies since your goal is to find and accelerate growth.
• Compensation is solid , especially in growth buyout teams, though it is usually a discount to traditional PE (albeit with better hours).
• There’s a good mix of exit opportunities spanning VC, PE, and operational roles.
• Some firms require extensive sourcing , including pressure to meet specific call targets, which many people do not like.
• You have limited control over portfolio companies due to the minority stakes, which means you can’t necessarily “change” specific things.
• It doesn’t necessarily offer a net advantage over joining a traditional VC or PE firm because each benefit has a drawback (e.g., shorter hours but lower compensation).
• Growth equity is highly cyclical – more so than early-stage VC or traditional PE – since late-stage funding tends to dry up quickly in down markets.

The last two points here are the most serious ones.

Even in a terrible market, plenty of early-stage VC deals still happen because people are always starting companies.

And while PE firms are less active in poor markets, they can still work on their portfolio companies, make add-on acquisitions, and pursue asset sales or divestitures .

By contrast, many growth equity firms get stuck in “no man’s land” because they write large checks but may not have majority control to implement big changes.

Growth buyout teams get around this issue if they do > 50% deals, but in many cases, you’d be better off going to a traditional PE firm first to gain a broader skill set.

If you like it, you can always shift to GE or VC afterward, as it’s much easier than the reverse move.

That said, growth equity can still be great for the right person – if you understand that combining two industries means you get the best and the worst of each one.

About the Author

Brian DeChesare is the Founder of Mergers & Inquisitions and Breaking Into Wall Street . In his spare time, he enjoys lifting weights, running, traveling, obsessively watching TV shows, and defeating Sauron.

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