How to build a content engine that keeps leads flowing
Supporting notes for my session at SaaSBooMi Growth 2020
This is a supporting essay for my session at SaaSBooMi Growth 2020 today, where I’m talking about the basics of building a content engine for a SaaS startup.
I’ve been a volunteer for SaaSBooMi (and its predecessor Product Nation) since it all began. And SaaSBooMi Growth, for which this talk was prepped, is a virtual conference focused exclusively on marketing and growth. It has been put together with a lot of care and attention by a bunch of amazing volunteers, and I was thrilled to be invited to speak!
The audience leans towards relatively early stage startups, so my session is focused on that segment. But there’s still a bunch of stuff to take away, especially a few of my hacks. There may be a few simplifications and generalisations for the sake of brevity and easy understanding.
I’ve constructed this as 5 steps, so it’s easy for founders to think about this linearly, and I’m showing the slides where necessary. Here goes.
Step 1 - Construct your marketing MVP
I wrote a full essay on the marketing MVP, and how we are figuring this out at Interview Mocha here. But let me explain again: Your marketing MVP is the macro part of your marketing: Your marketing strategy, content strategy, positioning, your brand, your design and visual language, you get the drift.
Why is it important for your content strategy? Because only when you get this part right can you start moving really fast on the micro part of your marketing, the tactical part: the messaging, the what of your content creation and marketing, the context of your product marketing, and the focus of your sales enablement and collateral.
The example I give here is the 2012 positioning of Freshdesk, which you see above. Once we figured that our positioning was as the social helpdesk, we knew what to write about: Social media, its impact on support, and how things were changing in this space. It would be on-brand, and it was timely, interesting, relevant stuff. Without this clarity, our content marketing could not have started.
Step 2 - Figure out your objective with content marketing
If you are marketing to SMBs, TOFU content may be the best investment, and this is usually focused towards demand gen. If you are selling to enterprise, MOFU and BOFU content may be your best chance at closing deals. Content can also be for branding, like Buffer. Choose from these. Don’t try to do all at once.
Demand generation for enterprise may or may not be content driven, but for SMBs it can really speed things up.
Step 3 - Decide on what content to create
Ask yourself this. Who do you sell to? Do you sell to marketers or developers or finance pros? If they are marketers, what are they interested in? What are they reading, what are they doing, what are their aspirations? Once you have a handle on this, you’ll roughly know what kind of content you need to create.
But that’s not enough, you need to infuse immediacy in your content, get to the urgent topics your audience wants to read. Here’s a hack for that: Find 5 - 10 of your ICPs who are active on Twitter, go to their ‘likes’, and see what they are bookmarking for further reading. You’ll get reams of information on their work interests and immediate reading, which you can then tie into the content you create.
I use this extensively, and my team at Interview Mocha is actually working on something that came straight out of research like this.
Step 4 - Find a way to create this content
Though I encourage almost everyone on your team to write, this may not be possible/desirable for everyone. So if you can’t do it, and can’t hire folks to do it either, go the freelance way.
With so many freelancers looking for work in this economic crisis, you can get value for your money and also support the ecosystem. There’s so much great writing talent out there and it’s relatively inexpensive, especially in our country. Hire freelance folks, give them your ideas, expand upon them, keep the engine going, and keep shipping.
How to hire a freelance writer? Ask for their work, and if their writing impresses you, and you want to read more, that’s who you should get. Remember, marketing can be taught, writing well not so much.
Step 5 - Focus on the metric that’s important to you as a business
Right, in the beginning, don’t measure anything. In content marketing, patience is a virtue. Do all of the above, and get your content engine going. Publish for a month, and then see what’s working, and what’s not.
If you are marketing to SMBs, focus on traffic and conversions. If you are doing so to enterprises, ask your sales team about what collateral is working for them and what kind of content would help them close more. They’ll tell you.
Thanks to Mrigank Tripathi, VP SaaS of PeopleStrong, who helped me think through and structure this.
PS - There is one important element missing here - Distribution. As I was trying to write about it, I realised that the topic needed (and deserved) a lot more time and space. Though I spoke a bit about it today, I’ll expand on those points in a longer essay here, hopefully within this week.
Further reading
Become a better (content) writer in 5 minutes - My cheatsheet for content writers, the one I reference in this talk.
If you came here from the SaaSBooMi session and have questions or need a clarification or two, please feel free to DM me on Twitter, or write to me at sairamkrishnan@outlook.com.