#485 – The Mail-Right Podcast Show: How to Write a Real Estate Case Study That Wins Clients In 2025

Subscribe: RSS

How to Write a Real Estate Case Study That Wins Clients In 2025

Master real estate case study writing with our step-by-step guide. Showcase wins, build trust & attract more clients in 2025. Get started now.

In this insightful video, we delve into the art of crafting compelling real estate case studies that not only showcase your success but also attract potential clients in 2025. Learn the essential components that make a case study stand out, from storytelling techniques to data presentation. Whether you’re a seasoned agent or just starting out, this guide will equip you with the tools to win clients.

Why Case Studies Matter for Real Estate Businesses

#1 – Tell a story where your client – not your brand – stars

#2 – Create a familiar structure

#3 – Make it visually engaging

#4 – Case study formats

Narrative case studies

Descriptive case studies

Exploratory case studies

Explanatory case studies

Episode Full Show Notes

[00:00:15.070] – Robert Newman

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s for episode number 485 of the MailRight podcast. That’s right, that’s right, that’s right. You’ve found one of the top 100 real estate marketing podcasts available. If you’re on Apple or iTunes, or wherever it is, just click the link button. John and I would deeply appreciate it. Today’s show, which we’re super excited about, is Real Estate Case Studies That Win Clients, an inbound marketing strategy I have used to tremendous success and achieve outstanding results over the years. Before we get into that, though, before we start to tell you all the awesome, amazing ways you can use case studies, let’s let John tell you the awesome, amazing things that he’s up to and who he is so that you get used to the English voice as part of this podcast.

[00:01:02.760] – Jonathan Denwood

Thanks, Rob. I need to brighten it up. It’s been a rough day, hasn’t it? However, I’m the co-founder of Mel-right. Com. We’re a fabulous, easy-to-use CRM and AI-generated website builder, along with a range of other great tools, all in one really cost-effective bundle. It starts at around $49 to month. It’s just fabulous. Let’s go back over to you, Robert.

[00:01:32.060] – Robert Newman

Beautiful. All right. My name is Robert Newman. I am the founder of InboundREM. We are an SEO and AIO-first marketing company that focuses on websites that you own, results that you can control, and a higher ROI than you can find anywhere else. If you’re interested in any of that, visit Inbound REN and look under the Services page, or simply watch my bio video to learn more about me. Let’s roll right into this, case studies. I have conducted case studies and reviews as my primary method of generating revenue for the past 10 years. I bootstrapped Inbound REN. We are now at approximately $3 or $4 million in total revenue for nine consecutive years. The vast majority of people who contact me contact me based on case studies or reviews. We’ve used every strategy and technology that John has gone out of his way to design. There are many different types of case studies that we can discuss. Now, John’s going to go into number one for you. Why don’t you talk to us a little bit about how it’s going?

[00:02:45.590] – Jonathan Denwood

Yes, I did update our shared calendar because I didn’t word it very well the first time, but I have now updated it. Tell a story where your client, not your brand, is the star. I left out the star in my original notes. What I mean by that, now, obviously, it’s okay to talk about yourself if it is of interests me. E, it shows your credibility, efficiency, and knowledge level, which will benefit the client. So, any information about yourself related to those subjects is fine. However, anything else, the client isn’t really interested. What the client’s really interested in is stories that they can relate to, which show that you can solve a problem they have. That’s what they’re interested in. A lot of real estate I see online suggests that it’s fair to say, ‘I sold these many houses last year, I had this much, I made this much money.’ It probably does show competence, but if you take it too far, it just comes across as bragging, basically. I think there’s a certain level beyond which it becomes damaging if you take it too far. They’re more interested if you’re marketing to a particular niche and your top case studies relate to that particular niche and show that you solve specific problems that niche might have. I think that’s much more powerful.

[00:04:40.280] – Jonathan Denwood

What do you reckon, Robert?

[00:04:42.020] – Robert Newman

I reckon that if anybody wants to see a case study that has not only generated two times more business than the case study is about, but also has been It’s an incredible example of this. Go to southpasadinahomes. Com and look for the blog post titled 30% I Got My Client, 30% above Asking on a Teardown. The case study there is incredible because the client takes a bit of time to explain how he took 15 investors literally competing for a teardown. There was no overembellishment in the title. What he did was he manually, physically called all 15 of these investors, and he basically talked to them. This is an area of specialty for him. He understood what he was looking for. He found two people with good plans that needed the area, needed the land, and understood the value he brought in his ability to work with the historical society in the area that they were tearing down this home, which meant that they could get the permits to actually do it. All of those dots connected, and then he explained how he started a bidding war between those two investors that literally took someplace. This was not a house, John.

[00:06:03.740] – Robert Newman

This was a spray-painted walls and floors that were falling apart and all this different stuff in South Pasadena. The house should have been torn down from the gate, but it was still standing. He got somebody to spend 1. 1 million instead of 735,000 on a property that they were going to have to tear down as soon as they bought it. It was incredible. It was incredible. Incredible case study. Explained exactly how he did it. Now, when When you’re giving case studies, what you’re trying to do is put the person who’s reading the case study in the shoes of the story. That’s what you’re doing. That’s why it’s so important to tell a story where your client is the star, not your brand. You don’t talk about you. You talk about the circumstances and the work and the result. And then that will sell you in a way that nothing else can, especially if it all happens to be true. I love storytelling case studies, especially when you work your ass off to get the case studies. A lot of my reviews take me years and years to get, and clients have to make 10 times what they spent with me before I can ever get a review publicly posted.

[00:07:15.980] – Robert Newman

So I’ve spent years getting them. So it makes it so sweet when you finally get it and they’re true. John, this is also something I’m incredibly hot on, which is create a familiar I’m curious to know where your source was for that because I go with like, marketplace.

[00:07:37.140] – Jonathan Denwood

I did a bit of research on this. I got about four or five resources. I think I got that one from the contentmarketinginstitute. Com. I can put the links into chat. I’m not sure if I sent the links to you, but I was doing research after I’ve sent you your email. But yeah, that’s where I got it from. Because I know it’s with the ones you do and the ones you write for people, you’ve got a structure and you do research online, folks. I don’t think… Well, maybe you know this, I don’t. Maybe there’s some science behind it, but I think it’s more based on experience, what’s worked and what isn’t. But I’m just surmising that. I don’t know if there’s actually any science behind structure. But if you’re going to put the effort in, it’s best to see online or go to Rob’s website, and he’s probably got some examples on there and have a structure that’s worked for other people because they’ve probably done the pain of testing it. What do you reckon, Rob?

[00:08:52.820] – Robert Newman

There’s so much science. Human beings have been telling stories for thousands upon thousands of years. There is a lot of study that says that we’re psychologically wired to tune into certain stories. That’s why a lot of our global fables are literally almost the same. And yet culturally, those stories were told theoretically by completely different people, completely different generations, completely different times. Yet sometimes you look at them side by side and you say it’s the same story. It’s just a duck instead of a goose or whatever. And here’s the thing. That is because certain story structures resonate with humans. Hero’s Journey is the most common story structure.

[00:09:37.360] – Jonathan Denwood

You’re talking about Campbell in his book and archetypes. Do you know if there’s any… And I’m not putting that down at all because I attempted to read the book and I just couldn’t do it. I don’t actually find him a very engaging writer. I’ve tried, I’ve listened to it a bit, but I had to stop on that. But I think these archetypes and that there’s a lot to it. But I was talking about, do you know if there’s any structures that there’s real hard core scientific where they’ve done peer study and they’re compared to one control group with another? Or is it just based, which I’m not pooh-poohing because I do actually believe if you look at ancient ancient Greece or powerful stories, you’re totally right. They have a similarity, don’t they?

[00:10:38.980] – Robert Newman

Like the Odyssey, Homer’s Odyssey, probably the most significant recorded version of a hero’s journey that’s ever existed. In very many ways, the first true revenge story and the first spaghetti western all wrapped up into one. When you start saying, Is there any research? Well, not in quite the same way that you’re talking about that. Campbell stole from Jung. Jung spent a lifetime documenting his research, but because Excuse me, guys. My bad. Because of the nature of his study, he was never able to publish numbers like Kinsey because he wasn’t doing studies. He was working with clients. Science. But he did so much work on establishing all of his dream recording, a psychoanalyst, when it came to journaling and things like that, he noticed similarities in the way that different people in different parts of the world, different cultures were journaling the same thing, which made him spark off and write a book called Man’s Symbols or something like that.

[00:11:56.600] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I have read that. It’s the same problem. It might be just down to me, the same problem with Campbell. I have attempted. That’s the only one I could get my head around because it’s an autobiography, but I think that’s the one we’re talking about when I think he goes to Africa. But the other books he’s written, I can’t make head or tell of them, but I’ve been influenced by other writers, a British writer who did a couple of biographies on Yann called Anthony Store, and I’ve been influenced by those. But attempting to read Yung’s own stuff, I just had to give up. It just didn’t gel with me, Robert.

[00:12:45.500] – Robert Newman

I swear by him. I’ve built a career around him.

[00:12:50.940] – Jonathan Denwood

I really like the ideas, archetypes and other things he talks about. But I’ve had to read other writers that have read extensively his material. I just couldn’t get my head around reading his stuff.

[00:13:09.540] – Robert Newman

For everybody that’s listening to this show, if you get curious, you can go to YouTube and type in Jung, and you’ll get two or three AI representations that are doing an excellent job of taking basically Jung’s thoughts and taking out some of his He was clinical and a rambling writer. He is very hard to follow.

[00:13:37.260] – Jonathan Denwood

Okay? He is very hard to follow. Rambling, isn’t it?

[00:13:42.160] – Robert Newman

Yes. I also had a hard time getting through his stuff. What I don’t have a hard time doing is there’s a lot of really great people who have… I don’t want to use the word dumbed down, but they got like cliff notes. They take the main ideas, throw it in the videos, and they’ve animated, and they’ve done all sorts of cool stuff. So if you want to know like Jung’s Red Book, his period, go just YouTube it, everybody, because it’s an excellent source to understand structure or storytelling.

[00:14:11.980] – Jonathan Denwood

Do you think, I think the other factor, he could speak reasonably good English, but he was writing in German, and it was translated from German to English. And I know they have great… The people that do these translations are highly educated and experienced, but I still think it’s very difficult difficult, especially when you’re dealing with a rambling writer like Yung, and it’s such a vast subject. There must be something lost in the translation, I would have thought.

[00:14:43.900] – Robert Newman

Yeah, Definitely. All right. Well, listen, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to go to a break and then we’re going to come back. But the answer is yes, there’s lots of people that talk about structure and writing, and there’s a lot of great marketing copywriters who are quite brilliant. Seth Godin is I’m one of them, even though I’m not the biggest. I’m more of a fan of Jung than I am of Seth. But Seth is also a brilliant writer. He is very good at what he does, which is how he’s become so famous. There are many, many, many great places to go to copywriting. If you want to get somebody who’s good at digital blog writing, go to neilpatel. Com.

[00:15:20.500] – Jonathan Denwood

I’ve actually interviewed him, Rob. Neil? What?

[00:15:25.960] – Robert Newman

Seth or Neil?

[00:15:27.740] – Jonathan Denwood

No, not Young. Seth. I’ve actually interviewed him. It was about six years ago, but I have actually- You make me want to cry.

[00:15:35.660] – Robert Newman

I’m going to cry right now. How did I not get a chance to do that?

[00:15:40.100] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it was on my other show.

[00:15:41.660] – Robert Newman

You and this other show. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that’s John casually mentioning that he’s got one of the top WordPress shows in the world.

[00:15:53.360] – Jonathan Denwood

I would say it’s one of the most consistent. I think I’m on episode 978 It’s pretty good.

[00:16:03.100] – Robert Newman

All right, we’ll be right. It’s beyond pretty good. If you haven’t tuned into it, check out W-Tonic, WPTonic. Com. It is a very big show. John gets lots of notable guests. He does incredible round tables. He’s got it posted to numerous channels. It is all things WordPress-related. If you’re going to build a website on WordPress, or you’ve already built one with me, checking it out is not such a bad idea. All right, we’ll be right back. Stay tuned. Sorry about all the coughing, man. I don’t know what’s going on.

[00:16:35.600] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s all right. I think we’re doing some good stuff.

[00:16:39.040] – Robert Newman

We always do some good stuff. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 485, I am here with my fearless co-host, Jonathan Dinwood. He is famous for many things, but the thing- Blabbing?

[00:16:54.980] – Jonathan Denwood

Blabbing? He’s famous for just blabbing. I’m a hot and bothered to die. He’s I’ve been all over the place to die. Oh, dear.

[00:17:04.040] – Robert Newman

All right. We’re talking, we just briefly mentioned the fact that… Because we haven’t mentioned it in a little while. It’s only fair to mention everybody that John runs one of the longest established, best-regarded podcast on WordPress. He was just telling me he actually managed to interview Seth Godin for that other show. Seth Godin is a legend. He’s saying, Here’s one of the people that you’d most like to meet in the entire world, Robert, and I met them. I don’t care about celebrities, but God, the luminaries in the marketing field, God, I wish I could meet some of them. Anyway, he met Seth Godin, which I find to be so cool. When we’re talking about case studies, the next thing to do is to make it visually appealing. How would you go about doing that, John?

[00:17:56.720] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I think visuals are important I think video. I’ve been busy the last six weeks, and I’ve got about kept my writing up on my blogging and that. But especially in the age of AI, you’ve got to add video to it, you’ve got to add calls for action, downloadables. You’ve got to mix it up with good visuals as well. On most of the stuff I now produce, I put one or two videos, and I try and jazz it up, and that Google seems to like that. There’s a lot of people out there saying that articles are finished, blah, blah, blah. I don’t really believe that. I think the past year has been extremely turbulent dealing with Google. I’m not quite sure even that Google understands what they’re doing. They’ve been feeding it out. So there’s been a lot of updates. There’s been a lot of people that have seen their traffic collapse, come back, collapse again. It seems to be all over the place. I think the SEO experts that I listen to, there’s a group of podcasts that I listen to around SEO experts because I tend to walk a lot in morning and late afternoon.

[00:19:33.160] – Jonathan Denwood

And that’s when I listen to these podcasts. And I think it settled down a bit, but I think having good visuals, having engage, video, I think, and I notice with what you do on your own website with your team and what you recommend to your own clients is this, mix it up with video, have good graphics, have it visually appealing. I don’t know if I’m boring him, because when he starts typing, I don’t know if I’m boring Rob or- No, I just had to take some notes real quick.

[00:20:11.100] – Robert Newman

No, you’re not boring me. Sorry about that. I had to respond to something on my screen.

[00:20:18.780] – Jonathan Denwood

They’re always after you, aren’t they, Rob? People, there’s always something to do, isn’t it, Rob?

[00:20:25.360] – Robert Newman

Well, it just depends. Some of the time it’s actually people I actually have to pay attention to who I try to let everybody in my life know that from 2: 00 to 3: 00 PM Pacific Standard Time on Thursdays, I’m podcasting. And 99% of the people in this world respect that, except for the two people that come into my house and work on Thursdays, because I had the brilliant idea that I would do everything all on one day, and it makes so much sense on paper.

[00:20:49.180] – Jonathan Denwood

It does, doesn’t it? It does. But it doesn’t quite make sense, does it, when you actually try and do it, does it?

[00:20:55.740] – Robert Newman

Yeah, it doesn’t. Because all of a sudden somebody’s like, Hey, I’ve I got this thing. I’m about ready to buy for the work I’m going to do on your house. Do you need it?

[00:21:03.860] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s like- I do Thursdays on my busiest day because I try and get everything done on a Thursday.

[00:21:10.040] – Robert Newman

Exactly. Well, in terms of we try very hard. You can do a lot of cool things, and it’s becoming cooler, faster because of AI. You can do lots of great visuals, use Midjourney for better thumbnails, use… Photoshop has jumped in the AI game, and I’m hearing from my team that their tools are actually pretty good. There are other tools that we use. We use Canva a ton to do compelling images.

[00:21:36.920] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, yeah. Just a quick, I don’t know if you heard of this new AI image editor from Google in their Germanize Suite. It’s got a funny name. It’s got a really strange name. I run out of time today. It came up on my feeds, and it’s supposed to be really, really good, but it’s got some weird name.

[00:21:59.580] – Robert Newman

But I’ll look at it. I mean, I’m a big fan of Google, so we’ll have to take a look at the image generator. So, one way or the other, we want to put something compelling, and compelling can mean a lot of different things to your audience. My team does this really cool thing where they go through the videos, and as they’re editing them, they find the one frame, like this frame, for those that are watching, I’m like, somehow you catch me doing, and then- He does that after he’s talking to me, folks. Then they capture that and use it on the title. That’s where I think you could do something compelling. Today, as soon as we get down here, John, I’m going to do it. My next video is about how to essentially AI-proof your business, although that’s not the title I’m using. I’m using a cooler, more exciting title. That’s really what the subject is going to be. We’re going to have to do some cool thumbnail to go along with it. No doubt my team will take something where I’m justiculating wildly with my little lightsaber, and they’re probably going to use that on the thumbnail.

[00:23:10.440] – Robert Newman

I think that it’s whatever means that you have at your disposal to be creative, whether you’ve got a budget for Fiverr or Canva, or you have to use AI because that’s the time that you’ve got, and all you have time to do is put in a prompt, just make sure you do something. That would be my comment. All right, we’re down to the last one in terms of case studies. The last note here, and it’s a big one, though. You can present case studies in various formats. John, I’m going to jump into this. There are narrative case studies. There are descriptive case studies, exploratory and explanatory, all case studies. Each one of these is different. Narrative is typically told in the third person, or it can be a form of explanation that presents both sides. It’s also worth noting that, by the way, narrative is often referred to as storytelling, but it’s actually narrative. It’s like, and then this guy did this, and then the other guy did that, and then this guy did this, and then I did that, and it’s narrative. Descriptive is where it’s usually personal, really personal. You describe down to the last detail what happened.

[00:24:20.740] – Robert Newman

The case study I referred to on southpasadinahomes. Com and Derek Vaughn, that was a descriptive case study. Exploratory case studies are what John and I do in terms of reviews. Exploratory thinking is often thinking out loud, where you examine the pros and cons, logic, or home builder, and you go, ‘They’re building with this fake but highly experimental material that should insulate the home in the winter and lower electric bills.’ That’s exploratory. So you explore the idea in terms of the case study, and you give an opinion. All I can tell every single person listening to the show is to make sure you use the words ‘in my opinion’ so that nobody gets confused when you’re stating a fact. All right. And last but not least, explanatory case studies. This is one where you’re a really, really, really, really, really, to every single person out there, what the case study means. Because maybe you’ve got numbers or marketing data, and you’ve got spreadsheets and dense material. Explaining and interpreting it are really great case studies. At least that’s what I thought when I read this list. How did you intend it when you wrote it, John?

[00:25:53.220] – Jonathan Denwood

I drew on the ideas from all the research I conducted, but I have also heard these used as a general description of topic areas. Topic is probably not the right word. I don’t know what other word to use, really. Categories, that’s probably a bit of… But it makes sense to me, narrative, descriptive, exploratory, explanatory. It makes sense logic to me, and I thought you did a good outline there. I think they’re good signposts about when you’re thinking about the case studies, are you going to hit one of these four categories, basically? That’s why I included it, and you did a good job, Rob.

[00:26:41.000] – Robert Newman

Excellent. All right. Well, listen, ladies and gentlemen, my world is collapsing in on me. We got a small late start, and I’m just literally getting blown up to the point that I’m going to have to make an exit one way or the other. But before we go, if anyone cares to, check us out at inboundrim. Com, Services, and About page. I’ll let John provide you with the same information. Hit, smash that like button wherever you’re listening to us. Please, for the love of God, do it. Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it. All right, John, how would you like people to contact you?

[00:27:16.740] – Jonathan Denwood

Instead, I really wanted to say to people, if you’re listening on the phone, what we’re saying, and you’re listening on iTunes or Spotify, please leave us a review. That would really help me. If you leave a review, most people listening to this, who are probably listening on their phones and using iTunes or Spotify, will find it easy to leave us a review. And if you do that, it will encourage more people to listen to the show. And then we’ll get into the top 10, and Robert will be fabulously happy. So please do that, and it really helps me. And Rob, back over to you, all right.

[00:28:00.860] – Robert Newman

Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time today. We so deeply appreciate it. We strive to deliver something that we believe will benefit your business every week. John does a smashingly good job at this. Hopefully, you’ll tune in to us next week when we’ll have something that entertains, dazzles, and improves your performance.