Adrian Alfieri is the Founder and CEO of Verbatim, a case study agency for venture-backed B2B SaaS companies like Profound, Granola, and Siro. After spending three years in early-stage venture capital, Adrian decided he wanted to work directly with founders rather than invest in them.
To figure out where he could be most impactful as an operator, Adrian started contracting with a handful of friends running YC-backed companies. As he worked across these companies, each one independently kept coming back to him for the same type of work, creating social proof content and distributing it to drive pipeline. When Adrian looked at the broader market, he realized no one was owning case studies and social proof as a category, despite founders consistently ranking it as one of their highest ROI content investments. This insight led him to launch Verbatim over four years ago.
In this podcast, we discuss:
Why case studies are one of the most versatile content assets a company can invest in
Why building a case study requires consistency and not one-off sprints
How to twist the knife when interviewing customers to produce great and memorable case studies
How a company’s case study motion will look different depending on their maturity
How a single great case study can be repurposed dozens of times across different channels, formats, and angles
How you can evaluate the quality of a company based on talking to their customers
Episode highlights:
Adrian explains that because case studies contain quotes, metrics, and stories that different teams can use in different ways, they’re one of the few content assets that work across every part of the business. Sales teams can use them in live calls and follow-ups, marketing teams can repurpose them across landing pages, paid campaigns, and lifecycle, and champions share them internally. Each of those touch points builds trust with the buyer and removes doubt about whether the product actually delivers.
Adrian walks through how companies need volume and consistency in their case study motion in order to provide real credibility. If a buyer visits a company’s case studies page and the most recent one is from a year ago, it raises questions about whether something went wrong. The mistake he sees teams make is sprinting, producing a batch of case studies in a quarter then shipping nothing for many months, which leaves a gap that makes buyers nervous. On the other hand, a consistent drip of at least one case study per month signals that customers are continuously hitting value and are willing to go on record about it.
When Adrian interviews a customer for a case study, he prioritizes the live user who actually works in the product day to day. He starts by asking what problem led them to the product, and instead of moving on, he twists the knife and pushes deeper into their pain before adopting the tool. He asks what would have happened if they stayed with the status quo, what metrics would have suffered, and how their job would have been affected. When the live user starts reliving the pain of their old solution, their quotes get unfiltered, they give specific metrics, and the before and after becomes stark enough that a buyer reading the case study can feel the impact.
Adrian explains that the companies who have a steady, increasing stream of happy customers to hand off for case studies is a very positive signal in company quality. On the other hand, he has seen Series B companies that just raised huge rounds and can barely find any customers willing to do case studies.
By creating a well-done case study with different use cases, multiple approved quotes, and several before and after metrics, each of those elements can be pulled out as standalone content. Adrian points to Verbatim’s case study with Unify, which had enough material for him to create over a dozen unique LinkedIn posts over the past year and a half. The early investment in one great case study became a content engine that kept producing long after the interview was over.
Where to find Adrian:
Transcript details:
(03:38) Intro and Adrian’s background
(07:16) Why social proof and case studies are high-ROI content assets
(12:50) Interviewing to get the best insights
(16:38) Whether to include ROI metrics in your case studies
(17:51) Designing the format of a case study
(23:28) Consistency over sprints and why stale content raises red flags
(27:55) Why using an outside agency can actually make the process feel more professional
(29:52) How to discern a high vs. low quality case study
(33:03) How to source customers for case studies
(38:03) What running a case study agency has taught Adrian about investing
(43:06) What makes a great internal point of contact to create amazing case studies
(44:08) What Adrian has learned about building content engines
(49:30) How to maximize the value of every case study you run
(57:02) Favorite underrated tool and creative campaign and wrap up
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