The chat with a coffee shop owner in Almaty is going well. He has asked what setup costs, complained that his Instagram ads are "running, I think, but no more guests are coming in," and is ready to give it a try. Then a short message arrives: "Send me your case studies." You don't have any. You send your Google certificate, and he stops replying.
The annoying part is that you could probably have fixed his ads. But he doesn't know that, and he has no way to check.
A case study can be about your own project: all it needs is a task, numbers and a conclusion, and you can set that task yourself. If you are following the Start track, its six weeks will give you material for all three case studies in this lesson: a test site with tracking in week 1, a 10,000 ₸ campaign in week 2 and an audit of someone else's business in week 5.
In short
- A case study is a task, what you did, the numbers and a conclusion. It needs no logo and no company name.
- Without clients you can build three types: your own test on a real budget, an audit of someone else's account or site, and a project with full tracking on a test site.
- Send three detailed case studies, not fifteen lines of "ran targeted ads": a single line can't show what you did or how it turned out.
- One case study is 150-250 words following the template plus a plan vs actual table, all on a page that opens from a link.
What counts as a case study
A case study answers four questions: what the task was and which metric judged the result, what exactly you did, what the numbers showed, and what you would do differently. There is a quick test: strike the company name out of the text. If the write-up loses nothing, it is a case study. If what is left is "ran ads for a well-known brand" without a single number, it is a line from a CV.
An experienced prospect looks at your reasoning as well as the result: how you hunted for the problem and whether you checked your own work. To them, a failed test with an honest breakdown is more convincing than "300% sales growth" with no baseline. The first shows how you thought; the second is a number with nothing to compare it to.
Three types of case studies you can build without a client
| Type | What you show | Time | What the prospect sees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your own test on a real budget | Landing page, events in GTM and GA4, Meta pixel, three creatives, a 10,000 ₸ Meta campaign, results table | 2 weeks | You can launch a campaign and measure it end to end |
| Audit of someone else's account or site | Five findings: what is wrong, why it loses leads and what to fix first | 40 minutes to audit, an hour to write up | You spot problems and know which one costs the most |
| Project with full tracking on a test site | Event specification, GTM container, GA4 report and verification screenshots | 1 week | You set up tracking that someone else can verify |
If you only have time for one, do the first. Real spend, even just 10,000 ₸, is what separates a case study from lecture notes: you have seen for yourself what a click costs in your niche, how fast the daily budget goes and how many of the people who submitted the form go on to reply on WhatsApp. You can't pick that up secondhand.
An audit pays off twice: it is a case study and a reason to message a business owner, and the 40-minute checklist for it is ready to use.
The third type is your way into subcontracting. Agencies and busy freelancers hand out tasks like "set up the events, we'll run the ads ourselves," and a case study with verified tracking shows you can handle one.
Case study description template
One case study: 150-250 words and a single table. The structure is the same for all three types:
- Context. Who sells what, plus one constraint: a small budget, the season, no website, leads coming in only through WhatsApp. Two sentences are enough.
- Task and metric. The one metric you judged the result by: CPL, number of qualified leads, share of leads with a correct source.
- What you did. Three to five points, each naming the tool and how you checked it: "set up the
generate_leadevent in GTM and verified it in DebugView," "made three creatives presenting one offer in different ways." - Numbers. A plan vs actual or before-and-after table. Only numbers you can back with a screenshot go in.
- What you would do differently. One paragraph. It shows whether you can take your own work apart, so "everything went well" won't do here.
Below are the plan and actual figures for the IELTS prep centre test from week 2. The numbers are an example; your case study will have its own.
| Metric | Plan | Actual |
|---|---|---|
| Budget | 10,000 ₸ | 9,860 ₸ |
| Impressions | - | 12,000 |
| Clicks | 150 | 171 |
| CPC | 67 ₸ | 58 ₸ |
| Leads | 5 | 11 |
| CPL | 2,000 ₸ | 896 ₸ |
| Replied on WhatsApp | - | 7 of 11 |
| Came to the trial lesson | - | 3 |
The conclusion for a table like this: "CPL was 896 ₸, less than half the plan. But 7 of the 11 people replied on WhatsApp and 3 came to the trial lesson, so each person who came cost 3,287 ₸. Eleven leads are too few to say why the others dropped out. In the next test I will plan on the cost per person who comes rather than on CPL, and ask the manager to note why the others didn't come." It opens with a number and ends with an action. "The test was a success" in its place would tell the reader nothing.
Where to host it
- One page with all three case studies: Notion, a Google Doc shared by link, or a simple website. Add a two- to three-page PDF that is easy to send over WhatsApp or Telegram.
- On LinkedIn, case studies go in the Projects section, and each one can get its own post.
- Instagram Stories make a poor only home: a plan vs actual table is unreadable on a story screen, and the prospect has to dig through your profile when they could have opened one link.
Show ad account screenshots without personal data: blur phone numbers, names, addresses and account IDs. Show someone else's ad account only with the owner's written permission. Without it, stick to what anyone can see: ads in the Ad Library and the website.
Mistakes that are obvious at a glance
- "Increased sales" with no starting figure and no period. Nobody can check it, so the prospect won't believe it even if it is true. Write where you started, where you ended up and how many weeks it took.
- A case from an agency where you interned, presented as your own. On the first call someone will ask what exactly you did, and after the awkward pause your other case studies come into doubt too. Describe your part and say plainly what the team did.
- Google and Meta certificates instead of case studies. A certificate proves you passed a test, not that you did the work. Put them at the bottom of the page, after the case studies.
- Fifteen case studies of two lines each. Two lines show neither the task nor the numbers, so fifteen of them weigh no more than one. Keep the best three and write them up with the template.
Case study checklist
Questions
Can I show a case study where nothing worked? Yes, if it has the cause and a conclusion. "Nine leads, none qualified: the ad promised a discount the website didn't have" says more about you than "CPL 800 ₸" with no explanation at all.
Do I need certificates? They help if you are applying for an agency job, where they are sometimes asked for. A coffee shop or dental clinic owner needs a case study. So case studies first, certificates later.
How many case studies do I need? Three, one of each type. Once paid projects come in, add them and drop the practice ones.
Exercise: write up your week 2 test
Take the campaign you ran in week 2 of the Start track and write it up with the template: context, task and metric, what you did, plan vs actual table, what you would do differently. Aim for about 250 words. Go through the case study checklist, publish the page and open the link in an incognito window: if it asks you to sign in or request access, a prospect will hit the same wall.
If the paragraph on what you would do differently comes out as one line, go back to the table. Find the row where the actual figure is furthest from the plan and write what you will change because of it in the second test. What you should end up with is a link you would be glad to send in reply to "Send me your case studies."
Summary
- Your first case study is done: the week 2 test, written up with the template and passing the checklist.
- The second is an audit of someone else's business using the checklist from lesson 19.02. It also gives you a reason for a first message to the owner.
- Build the third from the test site with tracking you set up in week 1.
- With three case studies behind one link, move on to the outreach in lesson 19.03, where the case study link goes in the fourth sentence of your message.