Helping BITS Display its Broad and Deep Expertise to its Marketplace

Business IT Solutions (BITS) is an IT services and solutions company that supply and implement reliable IT Solutions and extensive IT support services to businesses and organisations across Ireland and in the UK.  Their many areas of expertise include Cloud Solutions, Hardware, Security and Server solutions.

The Challenge

BITS had grown over the years to service clients in a wide variety of sectors - Hospitality, Accountancy Firms, Radio Stations and Nursing Homes to name just a few.  Their MD, Gavin Dixon, was pleased that they were doing valuable work for these clients but he now wanted an effective way for other prospective clients in those same sectors to be able to easily see how BITS was helping its clients with their IT needs.

One common way of doing this is to put a list of clients on one’s websites.  That is worthwhile – but lacks any real detail.  Another way is through testimonials – but for reasons of brevity testimonials can only really gloss over things – and tend to focus purely on the feelings of the client after the project is complete.  This results in testimonials typically lacking context, lacking background challenges, and lacking in detail on the solution and its resultant benefits.

The Solution

The solution decided upon was to produce a portfolio of case studies using text, graphics and photos in order to capture the detail of the solutions BITS have been putting in place for their clients.  BITS and Brendan worked together on a standard branded template to be used.  Then it was simply a case of identifying which clients’ stories would be of most interest to BITS’ target market, getting the agreement of those clients for their stories to be told, and then for Brendan to produce the case studies.

The growing portfolio is now on the BITS website – with each case study also including a downloadable and printable version.  Each case study illustrates the real business challenges being felt by real clients, the detailed technical solutions BITS provided, and the tangible business benefits that have accrued for those clients.

The Benefits

The case studies have allowed BITS to display the range and depth of issues that they are able to provide solutions for.

The BITS website now shows prospective clients how others in their same sector have dealt with very real IT challenges.  The prospective clients see the BITS approach – thereby allowing BITS to differentiate themselves from their competition.

The “story” element of case studies allows potential customers to have a better sense of what BITS can do than they would get by just reading a list of “services”.

Each new case study or “story” is unique – thereby allowing BITS to generate a continuous stream of fresh and engaging content to assist their marketing efforts.  As the portfolio of case studies expands over time, BITS has new raw material to use in their own Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) efforts.

The depth of the information contained in the case studies gives the prospective customer more confidence in what BITS can do than they would have from just seeing the name of the BITS clients.

Printed pdf versions of the case studies can be used in direct sales efforts in sales meetings and as accompaniments to sales letters.  They can also serve as promotional aids in BITS’ PR work – as well as allowing website visitors to easily download the case studies for offline reading.

“When we decided to start purposefully using case studies as a marketing tool we looked no further than Brendan Cullen.  We already had worked with Brendan for writing some digital content for our site and it was an easy fit to involve Brendan again.  The case studies work has gone very smoothly – we discussed the project with Brendan and he was able to “get” what we meant and get our message across in a very accessible way.  It’s an extremely important part of how we engage with our clients and potential clients so it had to be presented in a very professional and straightforward way – and Brendan achieved that for our business.” Gavin Dixon, Managing Director, BITS