LinkedIn isn’t the biggest social media platform out there. 

Neither is it the first choice of (digital) marketers to promote their business on social media (If you are wondering, Facebook gets the top spot). 

But in the case of LinkedIn, such numbers are deceiving. The platform might not win the “popular award” but can LinkedIn offers disproportionately jaw-dropping ROI for B2B brands. 

Why?

Because LinkedIn has the highest number of “business ready” users. Over 61 million senior-level influencers and 65 million decision-makers are on the platform, and 49% of active Linkedin users earn over $75k/ year. 

Such distinctive characteristics make LinkedIn a goldmine for B2B companies that often have high ticket products/services to sell. 

Unsurprisingly successful LinkedIn strategies for B2B brands often go beyond the rudimentary tips you will find on Google. 

In this article, we will analyze the LinkedIn strategies of 5 successful B2B companies at a granular level. You can use their mindsets, principles, and approaches to mimic a similar level of success on LinkedIn.   

Without further ado, let’s jump in. 

5 B2B Brands That are Nailing LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

#1 – HubSpot

If you ever searched for any marketing or sales-related topic online, you probably stumbled on one of HubSpot’s blog posts. 

That’s because, the HubSpoteam started content marketing early and, over the years, perfected a content-based culture that helped them flourish into the brand they are today. 

Now with an impressive $1.3 B revenue ( 2021), HubSpot is one of the most dominating and influential  Saas brands out there. On LinkedIn, 713k people follow HubSpot and consume its content. 

So what is the secret behind HubSpot’s success? 

The short answer: HubSpot’s LinkedIn strategy is a mere extension of its content-based culture. Simply put, the brand’s LinkedIn strategy follows the same principles that made its blog so successful. 

Let us explain it to you. 

For starters, HubSpot publishes regularly several times per week. If you compare that number with other Saas LinkedIn pages, HubSpot posts other brands’ one year’s worth of content in a few weeks.

Such consistency accomplishes two great things: 

• It signals to the LinkedIn algorithm that the HubSpot page is very active. 
• It motivates users to return and engage with the content. 

However, more content is not enough on its own. You want your content to be valuable to your audience, right?  That’s where audience-content fit comes in. 

And HubSpot does a stellar job there too. Its customers are SaaS marketers who are notorious for refusing to do business with any brand that fails to educate or provide value pre-purchase.  

Thus, most of HubSpot’s LinkedIn content is educational, no matter the format. From simple text posts to webinars, you will always find nuggets of wisdom in every post on the  HubSpot LinkedIn page.

At the same time, promotional content also gets some love.  HubSpot promotes its brand in a very subtle,non-pushy way. It lets the audience become brand advocates. 

Hubspot is also ace at building communities by initiating discussions that their audience wants to participate in. 

Remember we discussed the importance of content repurposing in the content marketing tips article?

Well, the Hubspot team repurpose their content on LinkedIn. For instance, they upload parts of their podcasts as short videos. Also, you will find chunks of their blog posts converted into LinkedIn posts. 

Apart from brand building and lead generation, Hubspot utilizes LinkedIn to attract new talents. But unlike other brands, Hubspot doesn’t go around and tut its own horn. 

Instead, they leverage employee-generated content(EGC). Essentially Hubspot inspires its employees to tell the world how incredible the brand is. 

EGC, in a way, is quite similar to user-generated content. So it’s not surprising that Hubspot scores some serious trust points with its EGC based approach. 

However, Hubspot’s EGC strategy on LinkedIn doesn’t stop at the ground level. Their CEO, Dharmesh Shah, becomes the torchbearer and leads from the front. 

Dharmesh, hands down, is one of the most respected SaaS marketers in the world. He regularly shares his experience and opinions on marketing, startups, and entrepreneurship with over 1M followers. 

Such a powerful personal brand of the CTO lifts Hubspot’s brand. 

We, here at Concurate, discussed the positive effect of personal brands of company leaders on SaaS brands before. Hubspot is an excellent example to study if you are interested in that topic. 

Overall what makes Hubspot wildly successful on LinkedIn is a mixture of a solid content-based approach, perfect audience-content fit, and utilization of employees’ personal brands. 

#2 – Gong

How many B2B brands do you think would place a CTA “Follow us on LinkedIn” on their ebooks? 

Probably zero, right? 

Well, it is Gong’s thing. The brand jumps at any opportunity to strengthen its LinkedIn presence. 

Such dedication made Gong’s LinkedIn strategy one of the most sophisticated in the B2B SaaS. You will find blog posts, videos, and even a LinkedIn case study discussing Gong’s success.

So what is Gong doing right? 

First, the brand has the right mindset. Gong is here on LinkedIn to establish itself as an authority. Udi Ledergor, the Vice president of Gong.io, says, “We’re not selling on social media. We’re providing value and education and creating our authoritative figure in the industry . And LinkedIn is super valuable for that”. 

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The Gong team builds the entire LinkedIn strategy on a solid base of rich and relevant content with that goal in mind. As a result, their LinkedIn content marketing execution is perfect. 

They have been posting several times per week for years. Such consistency helps with both the LinkedIn algorithm and organic engagement. 

Gong’s posts offer tremendous value to the target audience. Take a look at the below example. If you were a sales leader, wouldn’t you want to share it with your team? 

The brand also understands the LinkedIn platform well. Anyone active on LinkedIn would recognize that Gong uses the popular “one-line paragraph” format. 

But these are the basics, right? 

So let’s cover the actual three-pronged approach that really took Gong off. 

First, the Gong team quickly figured out that the short video format works pretty well.  So they started producing more video content. These videos are often part of interviews or webinars. However, Gongsters (folks at Gong love to call themselves that) know how to have fun. So they don’t shy away from posting music videos in collaboration with other brands. 

Such a deadly combination of usefulness and entertainment keeps Gong’s audience hooked. 

Second, Gong runs giveaway campaigns to build up brand awareness. Interestingly, the brand offers books with acute relevance to their target audience (Sales leaders and reps) as giveaways. For example, in the following post, folks at Gong give away free copies of Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence.” If you are into self-development or sales, you would know this one is a must-have. 

Third, Gong has a robust content culture. Some of the top leaders of Gong have a huge following on their LinkedIn profiles. For instance, their Head of Content Devin Reed has 51k followers, CMO Udi Ledergor has 27.9k, and the CEO Amit Bendov has over 34k followers. 

These leaders regularly share their expertise on LinkedIn and continue building communities. 

Last but not least, Gong’s copywriting game is strong. Gong ads offer compelling value while being both attention-grabbing and intriguing. 

Take the following ad as an example. 

The copy denounces one of the most common proven sales advice right off the bat. Can you think of any better hook than that? 

The caption reads: “We analyzed 304,174 sales emails”. Clearly, these tips are based on cold hard data.  

Then comes the actual value bomb – “5 phrases that will help/hurt your email”. 

CTA is also very clear “See the data-it’s all here.” 

This example from Gong should be in your copywriting swipe file. 

Takeaway: Gong’s secret weapons are its content culture, authority mindset, and giveaway campaigns. The brand understands the audience like the back of its hands and doesn’t hesitate to add entertainment elements into educational content. 

#3 – Mad Over Marketing (MoM) 

This example might make you question your current notion about what a proper LinkedIn strategy should “look like.” 

MoM’s LinkedIn marketing strategy violates many perceived “marketing rules.” Still, MoM thrives on LinkedIn with 460k subscribers and enjoys a regular high engagement. 

In case you don’t know, Mad over Marketing is one of the most popular Indian digital media firms (1.4M FB followers and 1.1M Instagram followers)  that curates interesting marketing/advertisements examples. 

So what makes this example unique? 

Well, MoM doesn’t explicitly sell any product or services on LinkedIn.

 Of course, the MoM teams work with other brands on creative campaigns, but they rarely mention that on LinkedIn. You won’t find any webinars, product videos, short videos showcasing company culture, or even a lead magnet. 

Unlike other entries on this list, the brand doesn’t rely on its team members’ status as individual thought leaders either. 

The only thing MoM does is post content it’s known for –  interesting examples of advertisements from all over the globe.  Here is what a typical post looks like: 

Now, the obvious question is, how does MoM get away with such “passive” marketing? 

The answer lies in precise brand positioning and excellent audience-content fit. For years, MoM has marketed itself as the go-to platform for advertisement nerds and marketers who want to find intriguing and creative ad examples across all industries. Thus the brand is aware that visitors (and potential leads) will flock around as long as they get what they come for. Word-of-mouth marketing does much work for MoM. 

We, here at Concurate, are big supporters of ensuring audience-content fit as the cornerstone of any content marketing effort. This brand is a great example of what a brand with an excellent audience content fit can achieve without any fancy marketing moves. 

With that said, MoM seems to have a solid documented strategy for LinkedIn. For starters, like both Hubspot and Gong, MoM posts very frequently. 

Also, MoM is great at storytelling through carousel posts. The first slide always starts off with a killer headline. Subsequent posts tell a captivating story. 

Also, these LinkedIn images are created using custom design format that uses the same color pallet as the MoM website. Such uniformity promotes MoM in a subtle yet powerful way. 

Takeaway: No matter what you do, make sure your content aligns with the audience’s preferences. Once that part is covered, be ridiculously good at storytelling and let your content promote your brand. 

#4 – Zerodha 

We have already discussed how company leaders with powerful personal brands positively impact a brand’s growth on LinkedIn. However, if the CEO has a massive loyal followers base, a brand can leverage that to grow faster.

That is what Zerodha did exactly. 

Zerodha is an online stock investment platform with 258k followers on LinkedIn. The brand has a unique take on the LinkedIn strategy, which deserves a proper breakdown. 

Like other entries on this list, Zerodha’s LinkedIn strategy relies heavily on educational content. Since most visitors to the Zerodha website are looking for advice on stock investment and financial decisions, Zerodha churns out content on those topics. Usually, text posts, blog post links, and videos dominate Zerodha’s page content collection.  

Zerodha also publishes videos in collaboration with other applications (“Quicko”, for example). Usually, such collaboration partners complement what Zerodha offers, so those collaborations work well. 

However, one of the trump cards Zerodha has is CEO Nithin Kamath himself.

Nitin possesses well-respected thought leadership in the fields of entrepreneurship, stock trading, and finance. Over 800k readers on LinkedIn consume his content and engagement on his LinkedIn profile is off the chart. 

Zerodha, being Nithin’s own brand, gains some authority (and serious growth) by association. When Nitin shares posts from Zerodha’s page, thousands of people like, comment and share. 

Zerodha also shares its CEO’s posts on the company page. 

The brand is also big on showcasing social proof. Whenever a user has something nice to say, Zerodha puts it on its official page. Since people trust independent reviews, these posts established Zerodha as a trusted source in its potential customers’ eyes. 

Takeaway: Invest in your personal brand and utilize it to grow your company. Also, ensure audience-content fit and keep educating your audience. And look out for independent positive reviews. 

#5 – Canva 

Almost everyone who has been part of any content creation process probably knows about Canva. It’s one of the most used design SaaS tools out there. With 354k followers, Canva also has a thriving presence on LinkedIn.  

The brand checks off all the criteria required for LinkedIn domination. On top of that, Canva is very vocal on social issues, which elevates the brand from being a faceless entity to a brand with distinct personality.

Let’s take a look at what Canva is doing right. 

If you visit Canva’s page, you will see topics such as “how to have better video meets”, “How to be more creative as a teacher” and “team goal setting” . That might feel counterintuitive at first. After all,the Canva is a design tool for non-designers, right? Shouldn’t they talk mostly about design only ? 

 However, on a close inspection, you can tell Canva knows its different audience segments. Those topics cover specific use cases for different audience segments and address audience’s painpoints. 

In other words, Canva nailed audience-content fit. 

Canva ads also reflect the brand’s deep understanding of customer use cases. 

Canva utilizes different content formats to create customer success stories for different audience segments. For instance, Canva created a video for Gracia Barra’s story but went for a carousel post to tell how Fastcompany grew past challenges with Canva. 

One thing remains consistent across all those customer stories, though: a compelling narrative. Canva mastered the art of making its customer a hero. This is an unmistakable sign of a brand with an excellent content culture. 

But it is the brand’s strong and clear stances on social issues that truly set Canva apart. Preserving the environment, supporting the LGBTQ community, ensuring an inclusive work environment–Canva isn’t hesitant to express its opinions clearly. 

Since  83% of millennials prefer to do business with a brand with matching social stances, by being upfront about social issues, Canva attracts customers with similar values in droves. 

As most products in every category are objectively on the same level, such emotional association ensures brand loyalty. 

Here is what a Canva user has to say: 

Canva also celebrates its team and company culture. You can find captivating videos featuring real Canva employees on the Canva LinkedIn page. It’s evident that Canva puts effort into creating a cooperative, inclusive, and growth-minded company culture. It’s not surprising that Canva was selected as the best workplace in Australia for three consecutive years. 

Such great company values help Canva create a tight-knit community. 

Takeaway: Again, the audience-content fit is a must. You also want to take a stand and be vocal. And take time to learn the art of creating captivating narratives. 

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

Things to Remember while Creating a B2B LinkedIn Strategy

A successful LinkedIn strategy takes serious planning, flawless execution, and frequent testing. Here are a few things to keep in mind while building a LinkedIn strategy for your B2B business. 

Ensure Audience-Content Fit: 

Whatever your goals are here on LinkedIn, be it spreading brand awareness or establishing a lead pipeline, first, you need to create content that your audience finds worth paying attention to. That’s why find out early which perspectives and values resonate best with your readers. Every successful B2B brand mentioned in this article has its content aligned with customers’ preferences. 

But how do you even find what your audience finds valuable? 

Start your quest by asking these questions to your target audience: 

• What problems do you solve with our product? 
• How do you use our product to solve your problems? 
• What difference does our product make in your life? 
• Whom did you follow to expand your domain knowledge? 
• What values do you prioritize most? 

Answers to these questions will open the doors for you. Remember, you might need to readjust audience-content fit with time as the answers to the above questions change. 

We, here at Concurate, help our clients to get the audience-content alignment right as we produce content. We ask questions, spend hours finding the right angles, and closely monitor what works. So if you think you might need help, feel free to reach out. 

Invest in Your Personal Brand

Some B2B leaders, CEOs, and even mid-level managers have been producing high value on different platforms consistently. Their audience actively seeks out them, enjoys their content, and trusts their thoughts and opinions. 

When such influencers join a company, the audience puts trust in that company because of the pre-existing bonds with those influencers. 

You would find that every successful B2B brand on LinkedIn has leaders and managers with sizable follower bases. For instance, Hubspot has Dharmesh Shah, Ahref has Tim Soulo, and Canva has Melanie Perkins.  To grow your brand on LinkedIn, you might want to take the same “personal brand” path.  

A personal brand can only be built on a lot of relevant, insightful, and valuable content. In other words, you need to share your expertise, answer your audience’s questions and provide solutions to your audience’s challenges. 

Please note that the needle might not move much at the beginning after doing everything right. Remember, personal branding is a patient man’s (and woman’s) game. You need to be consistent even when no one is reading your content. 

However, it’s not necessary that you have to use only LinkedIn as your personal brand-building platform. We recommend a mixture of other social media platforms, online publications (Read how we helped our client to get on Forbes and also made  Forbes editors happy), and other channels. 

Organic is Great, Paid Gives a Boost to Organic

LinkedIn is one of those rare social media platforms where organic reach is still relevant. Providing value and being consistent – that’s all it takes to grow your brand on the platform. No need to spend a single penny on promotion. 

However, as much as we love organic growth, paid promotion, if done right, can give excellent results. For instance, when we promoted a lead magnet for one of our clients, Triangle IP, the number of leads doubled in a month.  

Most successful brands use paid promotion as a part of their overall strategy. Promotional goals can be anything from creating brand awareness to lead generation. 

If you are coming from a Facebook advertisement background, LinkedIn campaigns at first might feel a bit on the pricier side. But since you can go really niche with your targeting using attributes like ‘job role,’ ‘company size,’ and ‘spoken language,’ the overall ROI is way higher. 

But nothing can influence your paid campaign’s success more than your offer. Lead magnets, webinars, registrations, and trials – whatever you choose, it must be tempting to your audience. You can get an idea of what might work best for you by interviewing your customers or looking at your analytics dashboard. 

Next comes the ad copy itself. The best examples of LinkedIn ad copy are succinct and intriguing. Only a seasoned copywriter with in-depth knowledge of your audience can create such pieces of art. So don’t cut corners here. Get your best copywriter to write your ads. As mentioned before, Gong writes phenomenal ads. Feel free to take inspiration from its copy.  

If you are going for videos or Carousel posts, your narratives must be captivating and relatable. In the case of the carousel, the content of different slides should flow and connect well. Gong and Canva are two great examples to follow here. 

We also recommend investing in LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It’s a fantastic tool for searching even the most niche groups of professionals/ brands. You will get potential lead notifications and better profile view insights as extra features. This tool comes in handy if you are focusing on targeted campaigns. 

Be unique

Brands that are doing exceptionally well on Linkedin have many things in common. 

But every single one of them has something that makes them unique:  Canva has its compelling storytelling and powerful voice. Gong has a light-hearted, entertaining yet educational approach. MoM has a minimalistic approach.

 Even if you hide their logos, their followers probably would recognize the content from their favorite brands.

And this is important. You want to cultivate an identity of your own- be it a signature style of content, storytelling or brand voice. Once you find your pecularity , weave it into your content, brand message and brand narrative.

This uniqueness would separate you from others who are also competing hard to gain a foothold on Linkedin. 

Wrap Up

Hope, you found the analysis of these five B2B brands insightful. These are doing exceptionally well on LinkedIn. All of them have a few things in common: 

• Their audience finds their content very useful
• Those brands also have effective organic and paid strategies 
• They rely on the personal brands of the team members
• They are vocal about social issues
• They leverage all Es for content creation – Education, Engagement, Empowerment 

Use these principles as the foundation of your LinkedIn growth strategy. And if you need any help with the content or paid strategy, book a call here.  

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Even 5-6 years ago, SaaS content marketing was almost a greenfield. Only a handful of companies knew what they were doing. As a result, there were a lot of trials and errors going on. 

Since then, SaaS content marketing has matured. Early starters like Hubspot have managed to gain authoritative status. Also,the number of Saas brands into content marketing has ballooned.

Hubspot found the number of companies adopting content marketing went up to 17% in a single year (from 70% of respondents in 2020 to 82% in 2021). 

However, what once worked for first movers isn’t effective anymore. There is too much competition and customer expectations have changed radically. 

So how do you start, grow and retain the edge in 2022 when SaaS content marketing is more competitive than ever? 

This article will answer your questions. Here are 22 ways to make your B2B SaaS company’s content marketing efforts go up and running in 2022.

1. Ensure audience-content Fit
2. Focus on the Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu) content (if the situation is right)
3. Say “no” to mirage content 
4. Give product-led content a try 
5. Ungate your content
6. Understand the value of both strategic and tactical content
7. Build a community
8. Have an opinion
9. Create a content calendar
10. Adjust your content to the maturity of the industry
11. Publish more
12. Optimize your content for better promotional success
13. Update your content regularly
14. Repurpose your content
15. Focus on video-based content
16. Build a personal brand
17. Focus on SEO, but don’t over do
18. Use the full potential of newsletters
19. Go from “social media marketing” to “platform specific social media marketing”
20. Think about UX
21. Collaborate with other experts
22.  Spy on your competitors

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

1. Ensure Audience-Content Fit 

Let’s kick off with a subtle thing that impacts your content marketing on a  massive scale: Audience content fit. 

Over the years, content has been deemed as the “magical solution” of  SaaS content marketing.  

That’s not entirely right. 

Many SaaS marketers hire competent writers and produce excellent quality content. Yet, they don’t get expected results. 

That is because they mess up audience content fit by unintentionally creating content for the wrong audience.

For instance, if an SEO tool blog covers only the basics of SEO it might get a lot of attention from beginners. But such content wouldn’t attract SEO veterans or CMOs who otherwise could have been customers. 

So how can you ensure you are creating the right content for the right audience?

Start by defining the ideal customers for you. Consider their potential lifetime value (LTV), decision-making power and other factors. You may end up with one or multiple segments of desirable customers. 

In the next step, you want to interview them and fill up your audience personas. Ask them what challenges they face, how do they use your tool and what their expectations are. Once you have the whole picture, conduct keyword research, and create content around the audience’s interests. 

2. Focus on Bottom of the Funnel Content 

What makes SaaS content marketing strategy different from just writing/ journalism? It’s the sales number.

Content marketing makes your sales easier. 

Many marketers go all in and create top-of-the-funnel(ToFU) content. And to be honest, in the long run, ToFU content pays serious dividends. 

However, if you haven’t seen much success from content yet, focus on(bottom-of-the-funnel) BoFU content. There are some good reasons for it: 

• A good chunk of your audience is already aware of the value you offer. They don’t need education. They need reasons to choose your product over others. Great BoFU content pieces convert them like charms. 

• When you are new to the content marketing game, BoFU content makes you less dependent on other “pricier” acquisition channels like PPC. 

• ToFU content alone isn’t effective without BoFU content. ToFU content educates and attracts. It’s the BoFU content ( case studies, success stories and so on.) that drives sales. When you produce ToFU content in more mature stages, there should be a solid collection of BoFU content. 

• Perfecting audience content fit and finding the brand voice takes time. Case studies, success stories, demos bring to sales while you experiment. 

BoFU content isn’t limited to case studies only. It could be: 

• Competitor comparison (Example: The TIP Tool v. AppColl | Who will be Your Invention Manager in 2022?)
• Tools Listicle (Example:8 New Age Financial investigation software to look at 2021 ) 
• Success story ( Example: Saxton Horne client success story) 
• Courses that teach how to utilize your tools to solve customer challenges( Example: (SEMrush academy) 

3. Say No to “Mirage Content”

Back in 2018, the average blog post length was 1151. Within 3 years, that number has become 2520 in 2021. On paper, increased word count should correlate with content quality. 

Unfortunately, that’s not the case.  Many articles are just parts of other articles stitched together. Needless to say, such articles often fail to provide value. Thus those don’t convert well. 

Benji Hyam calls such content “Mirage content”. 

An article with the title “ Best SEO practices in 2022” that lists entries such as “ Place keywords in the headline” would be an example of mirage content. Even an SEO intern probably knows that. That article is hardly worth readers’ time. 

So, how can you avoid it?

Mirage content stems from atrocious audience content fit. If you take care of that, you won half of the battle there. 

Also, you want to hire writers with domain knowledge or have a process to train your writers. 

Original content like case studies, white papers, interviews and thought leadership pieces are by nature super useful to readers. Focus on those to keep your content valuable and relevant.  

4. Embed Your Product into Your Content (Product-Led Content) 

Most companies don’t mention their product in the content unless it’s BoFU. After all, they don’t want to come off “salesy” while educating their readers. 

However, in reality, the customer journey rarely follows the AARRR  (Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue Referral) model perfectly. Very few customers  care much about starting from reading a ToFU content and booking a demo only after reading a case study( BoFu). 

What they care about is a solution. 

If a company blog post offers that solution and at the same time also showcases how their product fits into that solution, customers will buy it. That’s why you should invest in product-led content. 

According to DrFio Dossetto (Ex Hotjar and founder of Contentfolks), “Product-led content is any type of content that strategically weaves a product into the narrative and uses it to illustrate a point, solve a problem, and/or help the audience accomplish a goal,”

Product led content is effective for: 

• Attracting new potential clients and educating them about your product. 
• Preventing customer churn. When existing customers learn about new ways to use the product, they usually stick around. 
•  Converting new visitors into customers fast. 

Hotjar’s 5 questions to ask your customers about the product you are selling is an excellent example of product-led content. 

Notice how hotjar features their product where it helps with surveying the readers’ customers. 

5. Ungate Your Content 

“Ungate all content, the future of content is ungated.” 

That’s what Pulkit Jain ( Global content marketing manager, MoEngage) said when asked what SaaS content marketers should do differently in 2022. 

Yes, it sounds counterintuitive. After all, you want some juicy leads in exchange for that excellent piece of content, right?

But making content ungated is great advice for any SaaS brand who are not in the mature stage of content marketing. 

Gated content creation can work only if : 

1. You already have a good flow of traffic 
2. Your content is of extremely high value that visitors can’t get easily (Industry research report, for example) 
3. You have built authority with a solid collection of ungated content over the years

Most SaaS brands don’t check off all three. Thus it’s better if you don’t hide that awesome webinar of yours behind a form. It would serve you in so many ways: 

• Your content will bring much-needed links and contribute to overall search traffic. 
• You will have a better chance to assess your audience-content fit. 
• You will build up a library of content, which in turn builds up your brand. 

Once Impactplus ungated their Pillar pages, those have driven over 900 new leads and influenced $55000 in revenue. 

6. Understand the Value of Both Tactical and Strategic content  

Content adds value to readers by helping them with actionable steps to achieve a goal (big or small) or by providing new perspectives. 

Most SaaS content belongs to the first category. Blogs, Webinars, videos- most of them are for solving only specific problems.

Cassandra Naji, Director of Learning & Development of Animalz calls such content “tactical content”.  These are content topics people search for. Therefore the traffic potential of tactical content is high. 

Strategic content, on the other hand, provides value by teaching new frameworks and changing beliefs. Counter narrative thought leadership articles, data-driven thought leadership blog posts, industry trend reports- all of these are strategic content. This category of content , by nature, is less optimized for SEO but perfect for building brand authority.  

Drift marketing strategy: coin a new term is an example of strategic content from our blog. Its main goal is to introduce an underutilized yet effective tool of content marketing. 

Ideally, you want to publish both. But depending on the audience-content fit, you might have to lean on one side.  

If your ideal reader base is junior-mid-level titles who deal with specific problems, publish more tactical content. Since this type of content is more SEO-friendly, you want to publish more during the traffic building stage. 

When decision-makers and C- level executives are your audience, producing more strategic content makes sense. They are often used to viewing things from a broader perspective. Therefore, they value strategic content more. 

7. Build a Community 

Many successful SaaS content marketers have turned to sustainable content channels like communities. 

Because communities are: 

• Great for interacting with the target audience
• Cradle of future content ideas 
• Made of a band of brand supporters who value your product/content
• Great for promoting your content via dark social 
• Perfect for repeat sales and upsale

Based on the state of the community management report, the ROI of online communities is crazy- 4530%. Since many potential customers actively seek out active communities, these can grow quickly. 

In other words, brand communities are awesome. But where should you start from?

Ideally, picking a platform that your customers frequently use is the first step. Facebook and Slack are the two most popular platforms. 

Once you are done with the setup, invite selective members through email newsletters. Promoting your community on social media also works. Here is an example: 

Once created, share your insights, initiate conversations and be helpful. Answer queries and promote your existing relevant content. 

For inspiration, check  Lemlist’s Facebook community, Lemlist family. They managed to build an engaged audience by providing value. 

8. Have an Opinion 

Persuasion is the core principle of any content. A well written/produced content persuades readers to accept the message – be it a story, an opinion, a product page, or something else. After all, people take action only after they accept a message. 

To be honest, readers want to be convinced first too. There is no shortage of info. But readers want strong enough opinions on industry topics that persuade them to take action. It is the reason why opinionated founder brands like Zerodha are so successful. 

The best ways to be opinionated are speaking from your experience and taking a stand. These breathe a sense of conviction into your content. Ultimately, this air of humble confidence pulls readers in and makes them come again for more. 

XoXoday’s 5 Incredible Ways to Gift Me-Time to Your Employees is a good example of content with an opinion. 

They don’t hold back any punches while making their position clear with conviction–” It’s not selfish to take ‘me’ time”. 

Ideally, your SaaS content should have such an opinionated voice.

9. Create a Content Calendar 

Consistency is crucial for even the tiniest content marketing wins. D However, content marketers struggle with consistency. According to a Venngage study, 36.7% of participants mentioned consistency as the biggest challenge. 

Now to be consistent with your content marketing, you need to ensure two things: 

• Your content voice, opinions and editorial guidelines should match across all the channels. 
• Don’t stop publishing. 

You need a content calendar for that. It ensures all of your content related tasks are getting done in a planned manner. You can see who is working on what project and how they are making progress. 

Content calendars are more of project management than an actual calendar. Therefore, use reliable project management tools to create your content calendar. 

Here is a content calendar sample we use for one of our clients: 

10. Adjust Your Content Strategy to the Maturity of Your Industry 

SaaS product companies often serve various industries and not all industries are on the same level of content maturity. 

For instance, content marketing in industries like manufacturing or Agritech is still in the ‘Low maturity’ stages. Many brands are not even using content marketing. 

On the other hand, we have industries like eCommerce and martech, which are highly competitive. Some of the best examples of content marketing come from these segments. 

Your job as a content marketer is to get a sense of where your industry stands in the content maturity scale and adapt to that. 

Do your readers expect top-notch content and flawless UX?

Forget run-of-the-mill ultimate guides and listicles (unless those are truly epic). Your content needs to focus on differentiation, opinionated content and to fill “gaps” in the search intent. 

Do most of your competitor brands publish irregularly and publish average content?   

You can do well with just decent quality blog posts and ultimate guides. 

Also remember, content marketing is evolving. The current most popular content of your industry will not be the same in the future. Even low maturity industries will see more in-depth, mature content.

You should be able to read these changes and step up your content game accordingly. 

11. Publish More, Preferably a Lot More 

“How many times should I post per week”? It’s probably one of the most frequently asked questions in content marketing. 

The answer to this question depends on what your goals are and how fast you want the results. 

If you are looking to build traffic through SEO, you want to publish more, a lot more. Publishing  long-form narrative style blog posts almost daily can help you meet your goals. A combination of high posting frequency and other factors (outreach, original data, visuals) has resulted in continuous traffic flow. However, this requires a huge amount of marketing budget.

But there is a nice hack to it – “Scalable Content Marketing”. Auto-generating thousands of pages with templatized yet unique information helps build authority in the eyes of Google. For instance, GreyB, an innovation research firm, use page templates to publish unique patent related content for innovative tech companies.  Search for “[Any top tech company] Patents” in Google, and you shall find a result from GreyB on the first page of Google (most definitely).

In case your immediate priority is to support your sales, you can get away with publishing a lot less. However, in that case, the content must be super useful yet sales focused. Take either the BoFU content approach or the product-led content approach for the best results. 

Animalz is a great example of a brand that supports sales with content. They cover both tactical and strategic content and align topics with readers’ interests. Their frequency is 2-3 articles per month. In case you are wondering, they make $7.3 M annually with only a 50 member team.  

Some of you may not have the experience and the expertise required for building a content engine that churns out 3-4  high-quality blog posts per month. In that case, your best bet would be bringing agencies like Concurate to your side.  They have both expertise and capacity to plan, produce and promote content on a large scale without compromising on quality. 

12. Optimize Your Content for Better Promotional Success 

The importance of content promotion can’t be overstated. To bring ROI from your content, you have to promote it before your audience.

Many marketers think of promotion as the last stage of the content process and take a shotgun approach. They just start promoting on the following mediums without much content level planning : 

• Social media platforms and paid ads
• Search engine ads 
• Email newsletter 
• Communities 
• Influencer outreach 

However, each platform is unique. The content format, content consumption habits and audience expectation vary across different mediums. 

For instance, most are not ready to read a 3000-word blog post when they are on Instagram. 

If you want an impressive result, think of your promotion and make adjustments before writing the content.  

For example, if you want to promote content primarily on Linkedin: 

• Include your personal opinion and experiences into the narrative as LinkedIn readers love learning from people with real experiences. 
• Have a strong opinion to initiate conversations. 
• Invite other industry experts to share their take on the topic.
• Be ready to participate in conversations taking place in the comments.  

Here is an example of an ad campaign we ran on LinkedIn for one of our clients – Triangle IP. From the website we knew one of their templates that got downloaded the most. So we ran a paid promotion for that template on LinkedIn and doubled the number of leads that month.

However, if you want to use the same content on Twitter, you are better off creating multiple snippets and then promoting those. Every platform requires you to deliver content in a way their audiences love to consume.

On a Side Note: We landed a client through this one tweet – more on this story is soon to follow. 

13. Update your content 

If you Google any query, especially if it is time-sensitive, usually recent content shows up in search results. That’s because Google considers content freshness as a ranking factor. 

After you publish your content, it gradually loses its freshness. Over the years you can see a slow decline in traffic and ranking. 

Here is a visual demonstration of this phenomenon: 

Source: Moz

Even “evergreen” content is not invulnerable to this decay. After all, with time, new solutions to the old problems emerge and old practices get obsolete.

The only way to deal with it is by updating your content. 

Once Google senses new updates, it rewards your efforts by improving both ranking and traffic. 

When Ahrefs, for example, updated their content, they saw a sharp growth in organic traffic. 

Source: Ahrefs  

We, here at Concurate, are advocates of content update for another reason: It allows you to re-hook your readers by improving the content narrative. As your content marketing matures, you would find the audience-content fit has shifted over time. By updating old content, you can make your content more useful to your readers. 

When updating old content, focus on the following areas: 

• Fix your headlines 
• Get rid of any outdated stats or advice 
• Change images including screenshots 
• Review links and fix the broken ones 
• Get rid of any time-specific words/phrases
• Improve your storytelling 
• Make your content compelling

14. Repurpose your content

Content repurposing is probably the most efficient way to create new content, without starting from scratch. Essentially you take one content, put it in “the jar” of a new format,“put a label” and use it as new content. 

Here are some more compelling arguments in favor of repurposed content: 

• When you repurpose and publish the content on a new platform, a new set of audiences get to see it that otherwise may never find it. 

When Ross Simmonds turned a blog post into a video, 11k viewers watched it on Youtube. The vast majority of them found it the first time on Youtube. 

• Repurposing helps you keep conversations going on a specific topic. The more you repeat the topic, the better ideas and new perspectives will pop up. 
•  When your users find your in-depth content, covering the same topic on multiple channels, you get one step closer to being an authority. 

There are many ways to repurpose your content. Here is a list of the most popular ones: 

1. Turn your blog posts into podcasts/videos. 
2. Turn internal data into case studies. 
3. Use your blog posts to create ebooks/lead magnets. 
4. Convert testimonials into social media posts. 

15. Focus on video-based content. 

In 2022, there is one content format you can’t just say no to – video. 

It is great for storytelling, retaining info and keeping viewers engaged.

 It’s one of the favourites of marketers. According to Wyzowl 2022 report, 86% of businesses use videos as a market tool. ROI of video marketing is impressive- 82% of participants say video helped them increase leads. 

Brands are generating such impressive numbers with webinars, explainer videos, live videos, social media videos and even client testimonials. 

According to a Hubspot report, two major shifts happened in video marketing post-pandemic: 

• The audience is now much open to consuming long brand video content, provided videos are educational and fun. 
• Marketers are using content in all three stages of the funnel. 

So what steps can you take? 

First, work on a compelling narrative and ensure audience content fit. 

Second, use videos in every stage of the funnel. Webinars are great for ToFU. Explainer videos are for MoFU and use client testimonials for the BoFU. 

Third, promote your video on different platforms like Youtube, LinkedIn and social media. Don’t be afraid to repurpose your videos. 

Special mention: Tiktok. Since the platform has a reputation of being suited for only certain types of creators, most SaaS brands aren’t there yet. You might gain first-advantage if you figure out the platform.

Feel free to take inspiration from brands like Shopify. They are inviting customers to create content on the TikTok platform. Considering the engagement, Shopify is doing great. 

16. Build a personal brand. 

In recent years, the way readers find new content has changed. People have started looking for content on niche websites and communities. 

Because most brands are too busy chasing behind the perfectly optimized content. In the process of winning the “best SEO” status, their content often leaves out the actual depth that comes from real industry experiences. 

Think of a financial prediction SEO blog post written by a generalist writer vs an elaborated thought leadership article covered by an economist.  The former might be more optimized but readers would probably save the latter. 

That’s why SaaS leaders with strong personal brands are so sort after. They built their personal brands by sharing their real knowledge, wins and losses. Readers trust such leaders’ content (and their brands) far more than any SEO article can ever achieve. 

Thought leadership is the key to excel in content marketing in 2022. Start sharing your first-hand experiences on social media and your blog. 

Nitin Kamath, CEO of Zerodha, is a great example. He has been sharing his knowledge and opinions on the Zerodha blog and his social media accounts for years. He has become the go-to influencer on financial matters for millions of readers. 

17. Focus on SEO, but don’t overdo

Search engines are the most powerful mediums of content discovery. No wonder, you can’t talk about content without mentioning SEO. 

If we see SEO from a strategic perspective, the most commonly preached advice won’t work for most SaaS brands. Do you think you can outcompete brands like Hubspot for competitive keywords? These behemoths have first movers’ advantage. 

However, you can still dominate industry keywords provided your category isn’t “overSEO”ed. (For example, A SaaS startup that targets the manufacturing industry)

If your industry is relatively mature, use thought leadership to lead SEO. 

By that we mean, you collect keywords around your audience interests (not your product-related keywords) and create content around those. 

That being said, save high intent keywords for your landing pages. Ideally, your landing pages and other conversion-focused content must rank for keywords with high purchase intent. 

Triangle IP seems to be implementing this thought leadership combined with the SEO approach. Their blog section is full of topics that cover readers’ queries ( not just strictly product related topics/keywords). 

18. Use the full potential of newsletters.

Newsletters have always been marketers’ favourite medium and rightfully so. After all, email newsletters deliver $42 in return for every $1 you spend. 

Many SaaS marketers use newsletters to drive traffic to blogs and renew subscriptions. That strategy isn’t wrong but certainly has limitations. 

What you really should do is convert your newsletter into a content channel. Ideally, the email content should be a piece of useful content in its own right. 

However, you CAN embed links to your blog posts/ landing pages as long as those fit into the email content narrative. 

Alternatively, you can use product-led content as email content. Here is a great example from Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest newsletter: 

Also, paid newsletters like substacks can be a great addition to your founder’s brand content marketing. Once you start publishing great content on substack, you can promote it on other channels for new sign-ups. 

Long story short, prioritize the value first without sacrificing the promotional and sales aspects of your newsletter.  

19. Go from “social media marketing” to “platform-specific Social media marketing” 

Social media channels and content marketing are intertwined. However, from audience expectation to popular content, these platforms are often fundamentally different from each other in many ways. 

For instance, Instagram is a visually dominant platform, whereas Linkedin is a text-dominant one. There is also a big difference in what the audience wants to consume. You probably have seen “this is not Insta”  comments on Linkedin.  

Here is an example of how marketing approaches vary in two different platforms: 

Still, many SaaS marketers use a “one-size-fits-for-all” social media content strategy. They repurpose the same content on different platforms without considering these differences. 

Instead, you should have separate strategies for separate platforms, preferably led by platform experts. 

This specific platform focused approach will make your content adapt better to different audience segments. Once you hook your audience, results will follow. 

20. Think about UX

In 2020, Google announced they would start counting users’ page experience as a ranking factor. It will be in full effect by march 2022. 

But what are the yardsticks of user page experience? 

Well, Google has disclosed a list of page experience signals. 

Core web vitals: This includes factors like: 

• LCP: The Largest Contentful Paint( LCP) measures the render time of the largest text or image block. Ideally, you want to keep it less than 2.5 sec. In other words, your readers should be able to interact with the largest text/image element on the page within 2.5 secs. 
• First input delay: The First input delay or (FID) measures the time from the moment a user clicks on a link , taps on a button or uses any JS-powered control to the time when the browser is able to process it. FID should be less than 100ms. 
• Cumulative Layout shift( CLS):  CLS is the measure of a website’s instability. It determines whether a site behaves in the way it should. Make sure you keep the CLS score less than 0.1.  

Mobile friendliness: Make sure your content loads fast, mobile optimized and is designed for an effortless visual experience. 

HTTPs: Secure your website with HTTPs. 

If you are already putting effort into content marketing, complying with Google’s guidelines shouldn’t be too hard. 

However, content quality still is the most important factor. The same article also states“ Great page experience doesn’t override great page content”.  

21. Collaborate with other experts

If you have paid attention, you must have noticed in the last two years leading SaaS brands have been inviting other SaaS leaders on their podcasts and webinars. These collaborations are all over the place across the entire SaaS industry. 

There is a good reason for that. 

Collaboration content is a win-win situation for all parties involved:

• The host gains some extra authority points by owning the platform where other experts share their expertise. 
• The guest solidifies his authority by being invited to a platform that the audience trusts. 
• The audience learns about new useful perspectives/ tips from experts who have real experiences.  
• Both host and guest, get exposure to each other’s audience. 

As a SaaS leader, you should reach out to other experts and collaborate. 

Such collaborations can take the form of webinars, podcasts and even narrative-based thought leadership blog posts. Check Databox blog for some inspiration. They are focusing on narrative-based articles. 

Webinars? Or Podcasts? This can be a tough choice. Overall, podcasts are better for attracting new visitors. Webinars can work, but those truly shine when it comes to converting attendees into customers. 

For inspiration, head over to Coschedule and check out their “Actionable Marketing podcast”. 

Buzzsumo has a great collection of collaborative webinars with some of the biggest names of the marketing industry as guests. 

22. Spy on your competitors.  

Let’s be honest. We, at Concurate, aren’t very fond of content marketing practices that focus more on the competitors than the audience. 

With that said, some insights on what gaps they are leaving out are always welcome. And if you are a late bloomer (in terms of content marketing maturity) we advise you to actively find those gaps and fill them up with your content. 

Also, if some content strategy is working for them, you can certainly give it a try. 

There are enough tools available in the market to assist you in your mission to be the content 007. Tools like Ahrefs site explorer, Buzzsumo, Sparktoro deserve mentions. 

Summing it Up

In conclusion, content marketing has evolved in the last few years. SEO-based content strategy once worked for early starters, but it won’t be the same for other SaaS brands. Your best bet is to create a subcategory in your niche and produce epic thought leadership content. 

We, here at Concurate, have worked with SaaS brands from different verticals. We understand how content marketing works and when it shifts from our first-hand experience. If you need an ally to win at the SaaS content marketing game, talk to us. Book a calendar slot here.

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We help our clients publish books to establish thought leadership. As we believe, books are a great way to showcase author’s experience and hold in the domain. The most recent one that we are working on is about patent mining. Now, we needed to get a foreword from the author’s (our client) friend. The one who has been with our client for many years, the one who has seen our client through his thick and thins. The friend who knows our client like almost no one does. We wanted to minimize the friction for our client’s friend to share his inputs with us over a zoom call. Here is how we figured out the best way forward.

We’ve converted this entire blog in PDF form that you can download and save for later reading (or sharing with your friends). You can download it using the form below:

An Anecdote Before We Get to the Template

Source: TheBiCycleGirl

I had been wanting to create a meme, inspired from one of our very creative team members – Vijay Pandey. I was struggling to create one until I came across an awesome tool for generating memes – it’s called Kapwing. The tool has nailed it by being intuitive and a huge variety of #templates to create memes with. I saw one on kapwings home page – where it showed – 5 reasons kapwing is the perfect choice for creating memes. (Creative way to overcome #objections) Loved it. So, I just tried to think of it in terms our business. And wollah – I made it in 5 minutes. Here is the one I created.

So much fun it was 🙂

#SideNote: If you explore kapwing to create a meme – do share with me 🙂

Preparing Prompts

So, I decided to put togther my learning to solve the problem at hand. The idea that struck me was to come with the prompts or a template just like the ones Kapwing gave to me for creating meme. Here is how:

I turned to my little home library to look for a book with a nice foreword. While browsing through the books I came across book I had read a few months ago – “The Almanak of Naval Ravikant”. I recollected that the book was quite well-written. I read it’s foreword again, loved it, broke it down in 5 sections with 5 prompts:

• Prompt #1: How do you feel about writing the foreword?
• Prompt #2: How long have you known the author? What do you want the world to know about the author?
• Prompt #3: Can you please reflect on the time you have spent with the author?
• Prompt #4: Why do you take the author seriously? Reflect on his characteristics
• Prompt #5: How do you think this book will benefit readers?

Let’s look at an example of each prompt and reflect on takeaways

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

Foreword Template | Prompts

Prompt #1:

How do you feel about writing the foreword?

Example:

Source: Book –“The Almanak of Naval Ravikant”

Reflection on the Example:

Three reasons for writing the foreword:

1. Happy about the philanthropy that the e-version is available for free
2. Establishing the fact that such a book was much needed
3. Adding humor to engage the reader

Prompt #2:

How long have you known Tom? What do you want the world to know about Tom?

Example:

Source: Book –“The Almanak of Naval Ravikant”

Reflection on the Example:

Attributes of the protagonist (Naval here) with a build up. Use of idioms is super cool to add more punch to the content.

Prompt #3

Reflection on the time you have spent with Tom

Example

Source: Book –“The Almanak of Naval Ravikant”

Reflection on the Example

1. Sharing the depth of time spent together through thick and thin. It’s the adversities when you get to know people better
2. Some information on what the protagonist (Naval here) has accomplished despite adversities.
3. How is the protagonist different from the rest of the successful bunch? (Skim the cream)

Prompt #4

Why do you take the author seriously? Reflect on his characteristics

Example

Source: Book –“The Almanak of Naval Ravikant”

Reflection on the Example

Just the characteristics are mentioned inclusive of strength, personality and the way of thinking.

Prompt #5

How do you think this book will benefit readers?

Example

Source: Book –“The Almanak of Naval Ravikant”

Reflection on the Example

What’s in the book for readers. Let’s remember it’s always more about ‘them’ than ‘us’.

Let’s Sum it Up

Writing anything becomes more effective if we know the purpose of it. The purpose of foreword is a validation from someone other than the author that the book is worth reading. Once the purpose is clear, and if we have a template or a plot or right prompts of what should go in the content – writing becomes a piece of cake. Then comes in the decorators, that’s us, who add zing to the writing to make it more engaging. And wollah – mission accomplished.

A good foreword must reflect on the following 5 things:

• Section #1: Your emotion about writing the foreword
• Section #2: Author’s introduction to the whole wide world
• Section #3: Reflection on your time spent with the author
• Section #4: Reflection on why readers should take author seriously
• Section #5: Benefits of reading the book

Hope you enjoyed reading the post. Shall you wish to use content to bring you more business, we are just a call away.

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It’s challenging to gain the attention of people in today’s fast-moving world.

Agree?

In all honesty, yes, it’s true!

But, when there is a will, there is a way.

People still pay attention to things that are worthy of it

People like the stuff that wows them,

They even share it with others

So as brands, give people a reason to talk about you

And watch your brand name spread like fire

What must have started as an innovative approach towards marketing as one company’s CSR has taken the upwards flight on the wings of imagination, powered by the people’s verdict by making it viral on social media platforms…

Advertising is no longer what it used to be. Changing times call for change in action. After subtle advertising, manipulative advertising, blatant advertising, now it’s all about emotional advertising. 

Something that moves you from within is working like a win-win for both the manufacturing fraternity and the consumer. They bank on that incredible feeling of good karma to support a cause. Coming with campaigns focused on humane issues allows brands to touch people’s hearts. People’s participation in popularising such campaigns is like having both sides of the bread buttered.

Let’s take a quick look at a few companies that have nailed such campaigns.

LUX: #Breast Awareness Campaign by LUX

Early detection is of paramount importance in any cancer treatment. Addressing this issue, Lux came up with an awareness campaign by manufacturing soaps with an extra lump on them. So every time the lady used the soap, it reminded her – early screening could help in timely detection and save her life. Nothing could be more satisfying to the company when surveys showed the percentages of early detection going up post-campaign.

 The company did not put up the soaps on their retail chain but distributed them in various awareness campaigns held across the country. So instead, the company focused on gaining mileage in brand popularity, brand visibility, brand loyalty. As a result, Lux came across as a brand that’s concerned about its consumers’ health. The campaign touched people so much that its echo was heard across the country, carrying the brand name everywhere. Lux, no more, is a brand that’s just endorsed by cine stars.

Source: Wundermanthompson

HP Lubricants: #RoadsThatHonk

Road rages and accidents are the banes of every society. And, a company a coming up with feasible solutions is welcomed with open arms. ‘HP Lubricants’ wanted to do something to avoid accidents on deadly hairpin bends in Jammu Srinagar Highway.  

The idea is that accidents are avoidable, and we should do something practical using science and technology. This resulted in the installation of Smart life poles (using radar technology)  having sensors that use electromagnetic waves to gauge the speeding vehicles on both sides of the road of a hairpin bend. Whenever there are vehicles on both sides, it sends a signal with an led light and a horn that warns the drivers of both vehicles to be more vigilant.

Based on the principle that humans instinctively react to sound, the company came up with this innovative solution which has resulted in 45% lesser accidents saving a massive number of human lives. What started as an agency innovation became a global conversation on road safety! Not only are the smart poles being installed in three other states, but also the National Authority of India is in talks with road authorities of Saudi Arabia and Nepal for installations! 

Source: HP Lubricants

Savlon: Savlon Swastha India Mission – #HealthyHandsChalkSticks

Innovation is in the DNA of Savlon as a company. It came up with a non-stinging antiseptic at a time when every other available antiseptic in the market used to sting (give a burning sensation) on the application on open wounds. Decades later, yet again, they were able to grab the common man’s attention by coming up with a novel and attractive approach to hand hygiene. Their focus this time was on poor hand hygiene resulting in the death of children in rural areas. They brainstormed and came up with a unique solution that not only grabbed the attention of the kids but elders alike but showed the public at large that even something as mundane as washing hands could become a fun activity! 

They infused chalk sticks with soap, and so, the school-going kids using chalk sticks and slate. Instead of being reminded time and again to wash their hands before eating food looked forward to washing their hands and see the chalk powder sticking to their hands turn to soap and wash off all the germs along with the dirt. Who says being hygienic couldn’t be fun! This created interest in much more than their target audience, and the company enjoyed market penetration in new cities. So the company literally washed out the dirt and brought in the moolah!

Source: Ogilvy

Berger Paints: #Berger Truckart Childart 

Every parent dreams not only for himself but for the bright future of his offspring. But what if that very apple of your eye is rudely snatched from your life all of a sudden, leaving a void so large that most parents hardly ever recover.

 A company that helps you paint your dream house came up with an innovative twist to paint hope in the lives of those very parents whose children had gone missing.

In Pakistan, it’s in the culture to have some form of graffiti with a message and or faces of famous personalities painted on the back and sides of trucks. Berger Paints came up with the idea to paint the faces of the missing children instead, on these trucks that constantly travelled from one place to another. An excellent and highly effective media campaign. Because the likelihood of finding a missing child in the same locality has a slim chance, but the idea of having trucks that travel far and wide display the faces of these kids drove up the chances of finding them.

Many children were found and returned to their parents. Thus the company helped in solving a heinous crime. They also got blessings and well wishes from thankful parents. The takeaway for the company being, not only more brand visibility, but it was now also known as a company with a heart.

Source: Berger Paints Pakistan

BrewDog Forest: Sustainable Entrepreneurship

First Negative Carbon Beer Company

After rampant disregard for nature in industrialization’s blind race, we are now left with highly dwindled forest cover and holes in the ozone layer! So it is heartening to see companies finally wake up to the looming threat and taking proactive steps. One such company is the BrewDog beer company that bought 2050 acres of land in the Scottish Highlands and planned to plant one million trees to restore 650 acres of peatland and increase the green cover. 

Meanwhile, they are funding four carbon removal projects. They consciously opted for green energy options and use wind power. Also, they have an anaerobic digester bio plant. In short, the company is trying to reduce its carbon footprint by a combination of different activities. They performed calculations taking into consideration all these activities. They came up with a negative carbon figure that they successfully used as a USP as the first carbon negative company in the field. As a result, the company earned an environmentally conscious name and amended for whatever harm they might have caused due to their operations. They set the inspiration for other companies to follow suit. If we put our mind to it, we can undo the harm done so far. By far, industrialization’s most important contribution is that everyone needs to correct the imbalance created in the ecosystem.

Source: Forbes

MasterCard: Virtual Prepaid Cards

With Expiry Matching The Predicted Year Of Extinction Of The Endangered Species

Money cannot buy everything. For everything else, there is Mastercard. A catchy tagline that stayed with not only their users but everyone who heard it. MasterCard came up with more eco-friendly material for some of its prepaid cards with the added novelty of supporting organizations that work to prevent wildlife extinction. 

As all prepaid cards have an expiry date, they came up with the brilliant idea of matching these timelines with the predicted year of extinction of certain wildlife species, thereby bringing the reality of the threat to the forefront. So every time their users bought these cards, part of the proceeds would go to specific organizations working towards saving these species to survive the death date. Their cards also carried pictures of the particular animal, making the cards more attractive. The card reminded them these animals will disappear if we do nothing NOW.

By a simple step, the company came to be known as an ecosystem caring company, not just humans, but wildlife also matters. They also replaced plastic with eco-friendly materials—their way of moving towards a more sustainable environment for all. The company gave its users the satisfaction of protecting endangered wildlife species from being wiped off the face of the Earth.

Source: Master Card

Thai Airways: #Thai Stay Home Miles Exchange

Mobility is the backbone of Globalisation. The world has come closer thanks to Aviation Industry. And with the stiff competition, it is imperative to come up with ideas to retain customers. The frequent flyer program was one such incentive for ensuring brand loyalty. The more you fly, the more miles you amass.

With the pandemic striking, the whole aviation industry was grounded. The losses were unimaginable. They turned a dire situation to their advantage by hatching the best advertising stunt by remaining in the focus even when not operating. They combined a sense of patriotism along with the chance to be a responsible citizen.

Staying indoors being the only possible solution to contain the pandemic from spreading, they used it as a tool to reward their customers with miles – only this time – not for flying but for staying indoors! Ingenious indeed!

Turning isolation into rewards proved rewarding for the customers who stayed indoors and helped Thai Airways portray itself as the responsible national carrier. They got 37,230 registered users who were awarded a whopping 809,152 miles during the campaign period and logged a total of 3,236,608 hours spent indoors. 

The company succeeded in remaining in focus while grounded and gave hope to their grounded customers that they would be flying again soon enough. Thai Airways sure drew out a lot of mileage from giving out miles with a smile without even flying a mile!

Source: Thai Airways

BRAND	PRODUCT	TARGET CONSUMER	PAIN-POINT	ACTIVITY	INSPIRATION	PERFORMANCE
LUX	Soap Bar	Women	Once every 4 minutes, a woman in India  detected with breast cancer	Innovatively shaped Soap with a lump to remind women to go for timely checkups	Creatively changing the shape of the soap	The percentage of early detection went up post-campaign
HP Lubricants	Smart life poles	Road drivers	Loss of life on blind spots in hairpin bends on Jammu Srinagar Highway	Installation of smart life poles on both sides of the bend to alert drivers on both sides by honking	Application of radar technology to save lives	Reduced 45% of road accidents and started a global conversation on road safety
Savlon	Savlon Healthy hands chalk sticks	Parents in rural areas	Death due to poor hand hygiene	Distribution of Savlon healthy hands chalk sticks in rural areas	Innovative chalks that are infused with soap and clean just like soap on contact with water	Improved hand hygiene leading to lower mortality rates in villages across the country
Berger Paints	Truckart child finder	Parents	3000 kids going missing annually in Pakistan	Painting faces of the missing children on the back of trucks	Uniting a lost child with his parents	The campaign resulted in many missing children finding their way back home
BrewDog Forest	Beer	Adults	High carbon footprint leading to drastic climatic changes	Sufficient Afforestation to overcome the carbon footprint of the company	Sustainable Entrepreneurship for a brighter, cleaner, greener tomorrow	More generation of Oxygen and elimination of carbon dioxide making the planet safer
Mastercard	Virtual Prepaid cards	All prepaid card users	Animals on the brink of extinction	Using the year of extinction as the year of validity of the card	Linking the years brought to the forefront the looming future where these species could well be absent if we did nothing  now	Wildlife Conservation
Thai Airways	Special App	Frequent Flyers of Thai Airways	Everyone was grounded, and no airlines were operational the world over	Rewarding miles for staying at home	Lucrative incentive to stay indoors and thereby avoid the spread	3,236,608 hours spent indoors by 37,230 people

 

Let’s Sum it Up:

These companies have been able to bring about a change in the lives of the people they touched. So can you. They could be the first, and you certainly aren’t the last. You only have to find that niche in between, where you can instate yourself for years to come. 

One doesn’t need an unlimited budget to work wonders, nor unending resources. But, what you do need, is a boundless imagination and the heart to bring about change using the available resources resourcefully!

The pandemic has changed the lives of everyone forever. The people have to take a relook at their lives. So campaigns that could have been a success two years back might now have to do a retake. You need to brainstorm on what are the attributes of your particular product and in which way can you achieve multiple aims – 

• giving a world-class product
• giving something the consumer finds unique in your product
• gaining an edge on competitors 
• leaving the consumer with a feel-good factor
• increasing brand value
• increasing brand visibility
• maintaining brand loyalty
• working within budget
• contributing towards a more sustainable future
• satisfaction of having made a positive change, however minute, in the lives of people.

So it’s time to come up with that perfect campaign that will level up your brand and make you the talk of the town!

We are more than happy to brainstorm it with you. So block our calendar for a quick chat now.

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“Empowering Independent Business Owners Everywhere”

How can I Sell Snowboards Online?

Tobias Lütke, aka Tobi, a computer programmer by trade, had a keen interest in skiing. In 2004, he decided to start his online business to sell snowboards under the brand name Snowdevil. Looking at his options, to create an eCommerce store, Tobias wasn’t very happy with the options available to him like eBay or Yahoo stores. The available options were neither scalable nor customizable and caused difficulty in integration with other services. Tobias’s expectation of perfect software also comes from a very specific trait he has – “obsession for optimization”. (We have heard that as a child he actually calculated the steps for multiple routes to his school to choose the optimum one.) When Tobias’s expectations weren’t met he took the challenge head-on and plunged in to create the software he needs all by himself. And it’s his obsession for optimization, sharp mind, and teaming up with the right people that Shopify has reached where it’s today. Shopify has more than 1,700,000 businesses in approximately 175 countries using its platform as of today. Let’s take a visual look at Shopify’s inspiring story!

What about Other Business Owners Across the World?

Tobias figured that the market gap is the lack of customizable online store builders. To have a specially designed store, the one that reflects on the look and feel of the brand, business owners depended on expensive to hire – web developers. Tobias was used to coding small computer programs since his childhood. Tobias also pursued software engineering as a graduate. He very well knew that a person from a non-technical background could not create an online store as easily as him – a software developer. Due to the shortcomings of the available options and lack of better options, Tobias began building software to launch his online store. He launched his online store, along with his partners, Daniel Weinand and Scott Lake. Shopify was born to bridge these market gaps in 2006. Even though Tobias initially had no intention of turning Shopify into a business, it became clear to him that the software can be helpful for other small business owners everywhere. Since then, there has been no looking back. Shopify has grown into a successful all-in-one e-commerce platform for people to start, run and grow a business online.  

A Rock-Solid Marketing is What Shopify Needs

For a business to be successful many components play a role: the founder’s grit, the people who join his tribe, product-market fit, approach to sales and marketing, brand values etc. As a content marketing agency, we just studied the marketing aspect of Shopify’s business strategy. And we are here to share our research with you. One thing that gets reflected in every piece of marketing content that Shopify creates is: “Empowerment of Independent Business Owners Everywhere”. From their blog where the content focus is to provide help related to online sales and marketing to the free tools to assist business owners for further success. From YouTube videos to an app store flooded with useful applications to assist the business owners.

Brilliant Ideas Executed by Shopify’s Marketing Team

#1. Organic Search: Google Ads & Blogs

If you google, ‘How do I open an online store,’ the very first result is a Shopify ad. Even the following two results are of Shopify. For many business-related queries, a google search will give you the links to Shopify blogs, which provide information to empower small business owners. Shopify understands its target persona very well. It has nailed the answer to the pain points of business owners through their blogs and educational content. Shopify has published numerous blogs on its website to answer all the queries a business owner might have at any point in time. These blogs and information pop up on search engines due to organic search through google ads and links, giving Shopify maximum visibility. 

#2. From Website Visitors to Customers | Shopify has a lot to Offer 

Writing content and attracting good website traffic is just half the battle won. To convert these website visitors into customers is another significant task at hand. Step 1 in this task is to get the contact details of the website visitors. Visitors today are very informed and shall give their email addresses only if they are getting super valuable in the exchange.  . Shopify provides business owners with a whole bunch of (free) useful tools on their website. 

Landing Pages for the these Tools

Each tool by Shopify has a creative landing page, which aims to attract and capture the business owner’s email id by offering more value and moving them a step further in launching their own store on Shopify. Let’s take a look at how Shopify structures the landing pages for one of its tools – a business name generator. A tool that provides a list of around 100 options for naming your business.  The page is full of actionable pointers for naming a business. The page also offers an industry-wise classification for naming like apparel, health, and living, home decor, etc. #SideNote – Writing the content is just the start of the game, bringing it in the top Google results for relevant queries is the winning move. Even on a simple google search for creative names for business, the Shopify tools page shows up in the first couple of results. Once the website visitor generates a name with the tool, Shopify instantly offers him an option to claim the domain name for his business. If the visitor adds ‘.shopify.com’ in front of a business name, for example, ‘mybusiness.shopify.com,’ this domain name is made available to the visitor for free by Shopify. And within minutes, Shopify helps business owners get the online store started with a 14-day free trial.   If the visitor gets converted nothing like it. If he doesn’t at this stage, they don’t let the visitor leave empty-handed. The landing page offers further value by listing the apps (exclusively available on Shopify’s App store), which can help business owners with their online businesses in nascent stages. Example: Free logo maker, identifying the in-demand products for selling, etc. #SideNote: Such a logical placement of offerings – a business owner looking for names for a business must actually be having his business in nascent stages. Business owners can go to the app store for any additional needs for their business and use apps like a free logo maker. With their tools and apps, Shopify empowers business owners and gives them the necessary educational content, tutorials, and surrounding help on their platform itself while bringing visibility to their apps.

Empowerment! Empowerment! Empowerment!

Shopify believes that “Email is one of the best channels for maintaining and strengthening customer relationships over time.”. It has also created an app called Shopify Email to help businesses better hang email marketing. In addition, Shopify provides free tools to capture leads by sending notifications regarding new tools released to business owners.  It has tools to help the business owners with marketing and selling of their brand also. There are tools for email marketing, Facebook ads, and their chat system called Shopify Ping to help the brand owners to create a better reach for their products. These tools and apps are super intuitive and easy to use, making them uncomplicated for business owners.

#3. Social Proofs | Moving the Needle by Video Testimonials from Champion Shopify Users 

Dragos Bratasanu rightly said, “The dominant social force that drives our thinking and our actions is the unconscious search and need for social proof.”. Social proof is a psychological and social phenomenon wherein people copy the actions of others in an attempt to undertake behavior in a given situation. This concept of social proof has been used by Shopify very well to their advantage. Shopify markets its services through the business owners, their existing customers, who have availed their services. It provides proof to target customers of how it has helped businesses and why their customers are happy with using Shopify.  For instance, a video of the Cee’s Closet owners is an insightful testimonial for business owners who wish to avail Shopify for their online store. Here are a few insights that the viewer can pull about Shopify from the video testimonial:

• Designing your online store using Shopify is very easy and intuitive even for business owners that come from a non-tech background
• The ability to customize a Shopify store to match the vibe and identity of the brand is something that Shopify users are a fan of
• Shopify helps in accelerating the business growth so much that something achievable in 10 years can be fast-forwarded to achieve in 3 years.

Now, isn’t that a wisely designed video testimonial or what? Overcoming the major possible objections of a to-be-customer way beforehand.

#4. Video Marketing | Staying Up-to-date with the Trend

Wyzowl recently conducted a survey regarding businesses using video as a marketing tool. The statistics reveal that, in 2021, 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, which was 61% in 2016.  According to the survey conducted by Wyzowl, 87% of video marketers say video, in general, gives them a good return on their investment. The pandemic has contributed to this trend and even companies like Instagram have caught up to it, with the introduction of Reels in Instagram feeds for greater visibility.  Shopify understands the importance of being where their potential customers can be. Shopify’s video marketing is another powerful marketing asset. Learn with Shopify is a YouTube channel for small business owners with big plans. They provide step-by-step coaching from industry owners on generating business ideas, finding winning products to sell, marketing tactics, business finance, operations, branding, etc. They aim to prioritize learning as it is at the heart of entrepreneurship. They target the pain points of the business owners. To help business owners to keep moving ahead, they provide all kinds of solutions from the industry experts through these videos. Besides creating their own content on YouTube, Shopify has also engaged with prominent YouTube influencers to bring forward successful case studies. Also videos from influencers on how a business owner can make his Shopify store a huge success are quite popular.

One Video That Created a Blast for Shopify

To experiment is a core part of the DNA of Shopify’s workforce. As one of the experiments, Shopify decided to create one video per day (for three months) and publish it on their Facebook page. One of their videos on ‘How to start an online t-shirt store’ went viral and received more than a million views. Not just view but a lot of conversions as well in terms of free trials. 

#5 Shopify App Store – A brilliant move by founders for Business as well as Marketing

In 2009, Shopify opened up a few APIs to the developer community. For instance, if a developer wanted to integrate a payment system into a website for his client. In that case, he could directly use Shopify’s API to do so, and all the backend work will be taken care of by Shopify. These APIs helped Shopify attract a lot of developers. As a result, the developers began creating apps on top of those APIs, which are further helpful for business owners.  In this manner, Shopify has created a community of developers that is beneficial for both the developers as well as business owners. These apps are just like WordPress plugins that can be integrated into any WordPress website for added functionality. However, Shopify has much more to offer than WordPress. Shopify has more than 6,600 apps in its store at present, which are user-friendly and intuitive. Besides the mutual benefits between developers and business owners, Shopify has benefited a lot (in terms of increased customer base) by doing what it does the best – empowering the independent business owners everywhere. It’s similar to people preferring Apple products to their alternatives because of the huge variety of sophisticated mobile apps availability.

Key Takeaways from Shopify’s Marketing Strategy

To sum up, Shopify has been highly successful in its marketing strategy and has seen massive growth in the last few years. The main motto of Shopify is to empower independent business owners everywhere.. Anybody across the world can sell anything with the help of Shopify. Whether you are a manufacturer or want to have a dropshipping business model, Shopify provides all kinds of solutions for independent business owners. As the famous saying goes, ‘Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.’ Likewise, Shopify empowers business owners and teaches them to build, market, and sell their brands online with easy-to-use tools. This ideology has played a pivotal role in the growth of Shopify, allowing business owners to be independent.

Before You Go

Marketing is not just about selling goods and services; it is about selling experiences. To get more tips on marketing strategies, check out how Starbucks and Airbnb create unforgettable experiences through their marketing strategies. At Concurate, we help brands amplify their unique voice, as people today buy only from brands where there is a value overlap. If your organisation wants its content marketing strategy designed by Concurate, let’s connect over a short call. Block our calendar today! Meanwhile, Explore the plethora of resources to help you out your business! If you wish to read more goodness, subscribe to our newsletter. We send value to your inbox only once in 15 days. Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

Airbnb is a community based on connection and belonging—a community that was born in 2008 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to 4 million hosts who have welcomed over 800 million guest arrivals to about 100,000 cities in almost every country and region across the globe. 

Today, Airbnb is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $31 billion. 

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It’s essentially the largest hotel chain in the world, larger than the world’s top 5 hotel chains combined. And it doesn’t own a single real estate listing. 

How did this community of hosts and guests grow so exponentially within a couple of decades? How did two design grads and a techie change the childhood perception of stranger danger to get people to change the way they travel? How did a company that started because two guys in San Francisco had no money to pay their rent grow into a multi billion dollar enterprise?

They discovered that the secret lied in figuring out how to get strangers to trust each other. So, why don’t we trust strangers? Why don’t you? Could be for multiple reasons… fear, lack of familiarity, the conditioning we’ve had growing up that tells us we should always be wary of strangers, bias towards a certain kind of people, our previous experiences, and more. 

Here’s how Airbnb started, overcame these hurdles, created a genius marketing strategy, and built a business on the principle of strangers trusting strangers.

The Beginning

The story of Airbnb’s beginnings is already an urban legend. Two design graduates – Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky struggling to pay the rent open up their home to designers gathering in San Francisco for a conference. They rent out air mattresses in their living room and give their guests a bed and breakfast. One wacky idea later, they realize this has the potential to be built into a business. Hello Airbnb! 

Energized with their idea, the designer duo reached out to their former flatmate to join them and help build a website for their business. They did, but there was just one booking that came in. They realized that no one believed in the idea of letting strangers into their homes, or for people living in strangers’ homes. 

Unfortunately for them, that realization didn’t pay the bills. In the hope of raising capital, they were now deep in debt. Being designers at their core, and taking advantage of the elections happening then, they explored the breakfast part of their business a little more seriously. The design grads printed limited edition cereal boxes around the US election – called them ObamaO’s and Cap’n McCain’s. They filled them up with the cheapest cereal they could find and sold them at $40 a piece! 

And then they became cereal entrepreneurs! 

Their breakfast business got them enough capital (and funding) to launch the business of their dreams. “Book rooms with locals rather than hotels” is what they pitched. And it worked! 

The long and short of it is BELIEVE IN YOUR IDEA – if you can dream it, believe it! 

Once they had their website up and running, they needed to figure out a way to get strangers to trust strangers. The greatest lesson I learnt from studying how they built their marketing strategy was this: It doesn’t matter if your vocation is far from your education, on the face of it. If you’ve learned well, you will be able to apply your education to your vocation to create magical results. After all, when you are faced with a problem, you fall back on what you know. And what we really knew was design. Brain and Joe were from design school. And they used design to build a marketing strategy to build an empire. An empire based on the sharing economy – commerce with the promise of human connection.

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

Discovery #1 – The Importance of Reviews 

A person or listing with over 10 positive reviews increases the chance of a booking 

Joe says that as design school, they learnt that design is more than the look and feel of something. It is the experience. They channeled that thought into creating a well designed reputation system that they believe is key for building trust in the customers Airbnb serves. 

He says, “Maybe the people my childhood labelled as strangers, were friends waiting to be discovered”. Similarity is what brings people together most times, isn’t it? To understand this better, Airbnb undertook a joint study with Stanford. The goal of the study was to understand how much similarity influenced trust. How much more likely is someone to trust another if they are similar in age, location and geography? 

Research showed that we prefer people like us. The more different someone is, the more unlikely we are to trust them – that’s natural human bias. What’s interesting is when you add reputation into the mix. In the case of Airbnb, in the form of reviews. The study showed that having less than three reviews, changed nothing. But more than 10 reviews changes everything. And the result of the study showed that high reputation beats high similarity in generating trust. The right design can help us overcome one of our most deeply rooted biases. 

Once they discovered this, Airbnb designed a system to help people using the service overcome their most deeply rooted biases. Airbnb encouraged reviews from both guests and hosts. But they realised that trust is a two way street and a bad review often leaves a bitter taste. So now they reveal reviews on the app only when both the host and guest upload them. 

Discovery #2 – The Goldilocks Message Length 

The acceptance rate for hosts depends on the message shared by the visitor 

Reviews were one thing. Airbnb discovered that the review being just the right length was key to acceptance rates for bookings. Sharing a short message like “Yo!” or a long message detailing the emotional situation a guest is in raises red flags. Studies showed that messages like these in online experiences had little to no acceptance rate. However, messages that were just right – letting the host know why you chose their home and who you’re traveling with, for instance – showed highest acceptance rates. 

How did they design for just the right amount of disclosure? They nudged guests towards writing just the right messages to their prospective hosts. 

The little box indicates the right message length, giving the guest a nudge in the right direction. A few prompts were also added to encourage sharing. Building the right amount of trust, as Joe says, takes the right amount of disclosure. And Airbnb seems to have got this design to be near perfect. 

Discovery #3 – Nothing Works Like Tugging on Heartstrings

Experiences, Stories, and Friendships

Airbnb began with two men struggling to make rent. It’s grown into a community of travellers, explorers, hosts and guests. Joe says, “Most travel today is like fast food – it’s efficient and consistent at the cost of local and authentic.” Airbnb has been designed to make travel like a magnificent buffet of local experiences. By living in Airbnb host’s home, you’re sharing their most personal space – spaces that are usually kept closed and hidden from guests. Airbnb encourages photos of homes and spaces shared on the platform. When people share a part of themselves, that changes everything. A big emphasis is laid on community and connection over isolation and separation. 

Their website and social media houses beautiful stories shared by hosts and guests. Of experiences, of lasting friendships. Did you know that most of the visual content on Airbnb’s website and social media is user generated content? If that doesn’t speak volumes about a reputation of a brand, I don’t know what does! That’s the epitome of brand marketing – when your customers become your brand ambassadors, organically. 

In sum and substance

Airbnb was built around a design event in San Francisco. Slowly, the nature of business shifted from an event oriented business to a travel business. The three men realized that this platform was bigger than an event. It was a chance to connect with travellers and give them experiences that were unique and would make memories for life. 

They didn’t really invent anything new in terms of a business model. The hospitality business has been around for decades. So how did Airbnb eventually take off? Luck and timing aside, Joe says he has learnt that “you can take the components of trust and you can design for that.” 

From being broke and on the verge of being thrown out of their home, Joe and Brian turned their fear into fun. And that is the gift of creativity.

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Meanwhile, Explore the plethora of resources to help you out your business! If your organisation wants its content marketing strategy designed by Concurate, let’s connect over a short call. Block our calendar today!