ENTERPRISE SAAS CONTENT MARKETING PROGRAM
Building a content program that resonates with users throughout the customer journey
Project Roles
UX Writer, Copywriter, Content Strategist
Company
Zuum
Challenge
Zuum, a social media content strategy tool, needed to expand its ongoing content marketing program, feeding prospects into the content silos of the marketing website.
The objective of the program was to address target audience needs and interests throughout their customer journey, with a primary goal of converting new visitors to product trials and a secondary goal of driving newsletter subscriptions.
Solution
Distributing relevant content throughout the customer journey
I conducted user and prospect interviews, which revealed the customer journey to involve a long, extended Awareness period, followed by a relatively short 4-6 week buying decision process. With tool contracts typically running 12 months, this was an annual cycle for many companies.
Inbound search keyword analysis and tool use analysis helped me align the content topics with how the product was being used. A critical step to ensure the content’s relevance and consistency throughout the customer journey.
Creating content with broad appeal for early stage awareness
Data reports are great for generating awareness. Especially when your own product generates the data.
Monitoring content with our primary key performance indicator (KPI), new visits, I saw early on that benchmarking reports had the best performance. Interestingly, I noticed that readers frequently requested fan growth data for past reporting periods. This led to several optimizations. One was creating a monthly benchmarking report that users could collect over time. And ultimately, I published an annual fan growth report.
The fan growth reports demonstrated remarkable longtail performance. Continuing to drive substantial traffic a year and a half after publication.
Extending our reach to readers of top industry publications
To generate industry-wide reach and awareness I authored articles on trending topics and content tactics, running in leading trade publications. While these media appearances didn’t generate the same inflow of traffic that our reports did, they introduced the brand to a new audience. The articles were also a source of brand credibility, and were shared with prospects during the sales process.
Educational videos appealed to new and existing users alike
Our educational videos were primarily created for our customers. However, we combined the support element of a HowTo video with big picture strategic value. By applying a given tool demonstration as part of a higher-level strategic methodology. This gave all users a clearer sense of the tool’s value beyond simply gathering and displaying data. In total, over 40 videos were produced.
Outcomes
Over the course of our content marketing program, I published more than 600 articles, reports and videos. The content was distributed through blogging, social media, content partnerships, communities and groups, industry event sessions, and paid media.
Collectively, the content of the program provided a solid stream of new visitors, building much needed awareness and affinity towards the product. Optimizations increased performance 265% over a 4 year period for the primary KPI of New Visits to content pages.