Melanie Deziel on B2B Case Studies, Proof, and Customer Evidence

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This article shares a Q&A segment with content marketing expert Melanie Deziel during our May 2026 Content Marketing Friday Forum featuring the latest tips, tricks, frameworks, and more to improve your content strategy for better (and provable) results.

These questions are from you, our MarketingProfs community, who attended Melanie's session and asked what was on your mind.

Check out your questions, answered!

We're a B2B cybersecurity company and many of our customers are happy to do a case study or a quote, but they want to be anonymous. What's the best way to approach a case study like this?

That's a great question and comes up a lot. I've had the privilege, or misfortune (depending on how you look at it) of working with lots of heavily regulated industries and we run into a lot of these types of issues; the same thing we might encounter with HIPAA in a healthcare environment.

The best way is to use whatever identifiers you can. Maybe that's saying you worked with a mid-size bank located in Arizona who experienced this type of scenario.

If you just said 'one of our customers,' that feels kind of vague—it feels like it might be made up. If you're giving some specifics, it feels a little more solid, it feels a little more reliable.

And giving whatever details you can about the situation, such as the type of security breach it was, allows you to paint a more detailed picture and hopefully allows people to see themselves in it.

Because again, the reason for the detail or even the naming is not so that someone goes, 'Oh my God, my name is also Robyn—this must apply to me.' It's to say, 'This person faced a situation similar to mine or this person runs an organization similar to mine or experienced a challenge similar to mine.' And so that level of detail will allow them that same level of relating even if the full name isn't there.

As a B2B company, we support our community, but in our industry (horticulture) the B2C companies are more outwardly supportive. Are there ways to show that we're supportive of our community without stepping on the toes of one community versus the other?

Interesting. Well, I have a feeling I might need a little more specifics about this. I wasn't aware there was a horticultural beef between the B2B and B2C folks and we were worried about stepping on toes!

But if you can lean on partnerships in any way—if there's any way to work with those folks and support the efforts they're making—that's a good way to not just capitalize on groundwork that's already been laid, but to gain that halo effect where if they're the experts in a space, then tying in with them might be a good way to do it.

There may also be a way for you to do something that's not inherently related. One of my favorite things is back to school time. A lot of companies will do a back to school fill the backpacks drive or a food drive.

If you're not doing something that is directly related to your product or service, it still helps your community. It still gives you a good reputation or a good halo effect of the good work you're doing, but hopefully without the feeling that we're trying to make our park greener than your park or we're going to clean up more square miles of riverfront than you, or something like that.

But, depending on the type of industry, maybe you do make it competitive. Maybe you make it a fun thing where you all go in and try to see which company does the most good in a particular way and you all celebrate your collective impact.

I've seen some organizations—this was the blood drive, which is a little strange to be competitive about, I guess—but a couple of local organizations did a blood drive to see which organization could get the most gallons.

Now in the end, everybody donated blood. Lots of blood donated was a good outcome. But it made it fun for them to be able to lean in and do a little bit of a competitive thing. So maybe something like that might work if you had somebody who wanted to be a little cheeky and have some fun.

Our business makes more than one of these claim types. Which should we prioritize?

My guess is that most companies actually are making several of these different claim types. It would be pretty rare to make only one. So yeah, you're probably—throughout the day, throughout a campaign, throughout the week or the month—making claims related to all or at least several of these claim types.

There's no hard or fast rule that says you should prioritize one over the other. My question would be: Which one is currently most important for your audience to understand? Or in a given case, which is most relevant to your current lead message?

If you're running a particular campaign around sustainability, you probably want to focus on commitment because that's a commitment to sustainability.
If you're trying to steal market share, you might be more worried about comparability claims.

Which one is going to be most relevant to your current priority message? Think of proof and these different types like seasoning. Sprinkle it generously on everything you're doing. You can't overdo it. People are going to be compelled by seeing all the evidence that you are who you say you are.

I work at a SaaS startup focusing on convenience claims to try to take market share. Should we mostly do customer success stories? Or how can I get buy-in to branch out to other types of proof?

Good question. As we mentioned, for stealing market share, a lot of comparability or comparability content is going to be key because you're recognizing that your audience is making that comparison. The way for you to get market share is to show how you measure up to the competition.

I would probably focus a lot on comparability content. But yes, customer stories are going to be great. If you can find them, try to provide detail about the types of problems you're solving. Testimonials are great: I love this company, first name, last initial, stock photo, etc. Provide as much detail as you can in a way that's still engaging to read. Because a hidden, three-level sub-nested page of customer success stories is not going to cut it—no one's going to find it. Lead with it—bring those stories out and share them directly.

But again, the purpose of these categories is not so you feel like you're failing in one aspect or doing only one type of proof. It's helping you recognize these different opportunities.

So go with whatever you have. If you have a bunch of rich customer stories, by all means use those, tell the heck out of those stories and maximize the impact of those wonderful customer stories that you have. But also see if you have some of the other types of proof we talked about that might also be beneficial.

Is trust-forward messaging different for people? For example, positioning toward the leader versus positioning toward the business?

That's a really good question, and like everything in marketing, it depends. It depends on what you're trying to prove and to whom.

Your sales team will understand what you're trying to convince them of—what opposition or challenge or obstacle you have to overcome to get that business or to get their buy-in. And that can guide what you need to prove.

A lot of times if that leader you're selling to, for example, is not your end user, you're probably going to lean more toward the education side. They might not know how frustrating that lack of compatibility is because they don't deal with it day-to-day. Explain that you often see tech teams wasting upwards of five hours a day trying to find the right information, which is why this type of system is going to be more helpful.

Filling that education gap doesn't necessarily mean anything to them if they're not experiencing the challenges of that speed. So, educating them on that gap will help get them on board.

Reverse engineer it. What do we need to convince them? What's the barrier to that? How can we provide evidence that helps them understand and get over that hump?

Editor's note: This article was edited for flow and clarity from a Q&A segment with content marketing expert Melanie Deziel during our May 2026 Content Marketing Friday Forum featuring the latest tips, tricks, frameworks, and more to improve your content strategy for better (and provable) results. Our Friday Forums are monthly, free mini- conferences featuring multiple sessions that dig into the latest on a specific topic. Always free, always on a Friday, and always a community-favorite event. Check out what's coming up!

About Melanie Deziel: Melanie is a creative systems architect, keynote speaker, and award-winning branded content creator who loves helping people and organizations unlock their creative potential. She is the author of Prove It: Exactly How Modern Marketers Earn Trust.