On every episode of our Best Story Wins podcast, we chat with marketing industry leaders about to get their best b2b marketing tips and find out how they’re connecting with their audience. Launch Darkly CMO Keith Messick is always down for a good chat, and if there’s one thing we know about him, it’s that he hates B2B marketing…when it’s boring.

As he reminded us on the pod, one of the biggest myths in B2B is that it is not emotional. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Any buying decision you make has an emotional driver, and in B2B there are plenty: the drive to perform better, to advance your career, to please your boss, and more. Still, so many B2B marketers treat their audiences like bots, often producing the most generic content that is safe but, well, rarely effective. 

Messick thinks there is a larger shift coming in the B2B space, in that people not only crave but may soon expect B2B marketing to mirror B2C—with all the fun, creativity, and emotionally driven messaging that entails. What does that mean? If you want to be ahead of the curve, it’s time to inject a little more fun into your B2B marketing. Luckily, Messick was kind enough to share three of his best tips to do so. 

3 B2B Marketing Tips to Make Engaging Content

Whether you’re brainstorming your next batch of content or revamping your content strategy from head to toe, try these tips to capture your audience’s attention—and keep them engaged.

1) Use humor. 

Humor can be tricky because it is so subjective, but it is also one of the easiest ways to make B2B marketing more engaging—and stand out from the competition. So many brands are stuffy or drowning their audience in techspeak (especially in SaaS). It’s easy for audiences to tune out. Leading with levity is a great way to cut through the noise and make a genuine connection with your audience. 

Tip: Messick notes that inside jokes with an audience can be especially effective. By demonstrating empathy, you can prove that you really understand who they are. These types of shared jokes also make your audience feel like they are part of a special community. To do this effectively, think of common problems or frustrations your audience faces, then look for ways to meme-ify them or create entertaining content. 

Want to stand out from your competition? Create content marketing that is fun and creative. 

For example, we personally hate marketing jargon and gibberish, but we know it’s pervasive in our industry. As a joke, we made the Marketing Gibberish Generator to help the next social-guru-rockstar-ninja BS their way through their next meeting.

2) Think of the marketing you hate—and try something different.

Another way to make B2B marketing less boring is to zig where everyone zags. Think of the standard practices or approaches in your industry—the ones you find particularly boring or uninspiring—and think of creative ways to do the opposite, whether that’s trying something different with your next e-book or explainer video. 

For example, Messick is bored to death by basic customer testimonials, as they all tend to look and sound the same. His team is working to revamp their videos to make them more unscripted and more natural—even if that includes some bloopers. 

Tip: When you’re brainstorming a fresh piece of content, picture the generic version that you would find in your industry. What does it look like? What does it sound like? What information does it contain? Now, think about how you could tweak every aspect to make it stand out, whether that’s a sassier title or completely different format. 

In the vein of Messick’s complaint about customer videos, we particularly love Crowdstrike’s City of Las Vegas case study, which feels like the opening of a spy thriller film. 

If you’re inspired to do something similar, find out how to craft compelling customer stories, and check out these 15 B2B videos that are anything but boring.

3) Make things more entertaining than they need to be.  

If you really want to make your content less boring (and showcase your brand personality), go above and beyond to do something unexpected, or add a little flair to your content. Messick says that making things funner than they need to be is one of his favorite things to do.

For example, you might create a game or quiz that tests your audience’s knowledge of your industry. You could create a video that parodies a popular TV show or movie, using it as a way to explain a complex concept in a more digestible way. By being creative and pushing the boundaries, you can easily capture your audience’s attention and make a lasting impression.

Tip: In marketing, the more mundane content is often overlooked (e.g., the CTA, the newsletter confirmation email, etc.). Look for ways to infuse a bit of personality into them, and you’ll make a small but impactful change that improves your customer experience. For inspiration, start with our tips to write copy that emotionally hooks your audience.

This is especially smart to do in industries that traditionally rely on safe or straightforward messaging (think cybersecurity). When you can turn a mundane piece of messaging into a fun and exciting moment, your audience will take note. 

For example, when Dialpad announced their new AI voice platform, we helped them create a funny promo video featuring a variety of robots “auditioning” for the new gig. It was a far more engaging and entertaining approach than a traditional tech promo video. 

How to Keep Your Content Interesting

B2B marketing is always evolving, which means you always have opportunities to try new things and build stronger relationships with your audience. If you want to make sure that every piece of content connects, here are a few more things to keep in mind. 

• Put your personality front and center. One of the easiest ways to stand out is to use a strong and clear brand voice in everything you create—down to your tweets. 
• Get inspired by the pros. We know it’s hard to get inspired when you’re selling a less-than-sexy product. Find out how these brands have turned their boring products into killer marketing.
• Experiment more. Mix up your content formats, try a new design style, or Tweet an entertaining tip thread. The more you engage with your audience, the more you’ll learn what resonates. 

Most importantly, stay up-to-date on the latest marketing tips and trends. Listen to the Best Story Wins podcast, where you can hear more industry experts show you how to win marketing. Or check out our full resources library for tips, tools, and templates to help you work smarter. Ultimately, the more educated, open, and adaptable you are, the easier it is to win the marketing game. 

For more great marketing tips from Keith Messick, listen to his episode.

Marketing is a stressful job, especially when you’re trying to create a strong SaaS marketing strategy. You have to worry about how your brand is perceived externally—and, with the constant pressure of stakeholders, you often need to worry about how your marketing team is perceived internally. Although marketing is one of the most important things you can invest in during a recession, stakeholders are often more critical of marketing in these times, so demonstrating your value and getting real results from your SaaS marketing strategy is more important than ever. 

Luckily, as Databricks‘ Bryan Saftler reminded us on episode 1 of our new Best Story Wins podcast, there are three key ways that any marketer can improve their performance (and get valuable insights in the process). 

How to Revamp Your SaaS Marketing Strategy

From culture marketing to collaboration, these tips will help you strengthen your strategy, connect with the right audience, and prove your value as a brand—and a marketer.

1) Participate in a new channel.

Marketing is all about getting your message in front of the right people, and to do that, you need to go where your audience is. There are more channels than ever before, and new ones are popping up all the time. You don’t have to incorporate every single channel into your SaaS marketing strategy, but experimenting with a new channel—or the ways you use existing channels—can give you unexpected results. 

If you’re short on resources or time, look for ways to reuse existing content to experiment with a new channel. For example, you might turn a popular e-book into a webinar presentation, or live stream a Q&A with an in-house expert on YouTube. (Live-streaming is particularly great as it allows you to connect with your audience in real-time, creating a sense of urgency and authenticity that other channels can’t match.)

Tip: Don’t try to master every single channel. Instead, see our tips to choose channels that most align with your audience, and lighten the workload by asking your followers to create user-generated content for a different channel. It also helps to conduct a competitor audit to find out which channels your competitors are using. And remember that any new experiments should be measured and reported on. Use our guide to determine which metrics to track on your social channels.

2) Share behind the scenes of your company.

SaaS is a very competitive field, and one of the biggest ways to differentiate your brand is to showcase who you are and what you care about. One of the best ways to build a connection with your audience is to show them what goes on behind the scenes of your company. People are curious by nature, and they love to see how things work. By sharing behind-the-scenes content, you can give your audience a glimpse into your company’s culture, values, and processes—and humanize your brand in the process.

For example, you could create a video series that shows how your products are made, from concept to final production. Or you could share photos and stories from company events or volunteer activities. You could even create a blog or social media series that showcases the daily life of your employees.

By sharing behind-the-scenes content, you can build trust and credibility with your audience. They’ll see that you’re transparent and authentic, which will make them more likely to do business with you.

Tip: There are all sorts of ways to spotlight your culture. See our tips to master culture marketing, show off your culture on social media, and even turn your team into content creators themselves.

3) Find a new partner to collaborate with in the industry.

Collaboration is a powerful way to improve the success of your SaaS marketing strategy. By partnering with another company, publication, or thought-leader in your industry, you can tap into their expertise, resources, and audience to create something that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

When looking for a partner, think about companies that share your values and complement your strengths. You could partner with a company that provides a product or service that’s related to yours, or an influencer with a similar target audience. You might exchange guest posts, host a Q&A, co-host an event or webinar, or create a joint content series. By collaborating, you’ll not only create value for your existing audience but expand your audience too. 

Tip: One of the best ways to increase your reach, tap into a new audience, and build credibility is to partner with an industry publication to co-create a piece of bespoke content on a relevant topic. Find out how to pitch publication-tailored content to the right people. 

How to Create Ongoing Value

Of course, as a marketer, providing ongoing value is the key to success. If you want to continue to create value for your audience, differentiate yourself from your competitors, and build a strong reputation in your industry, here are a few more hacks to do it.

• Ask sales for pain points. The more you understand your customer (and the communication challenges your sales team faces), the better you can tailor your messaging to bridge that gap. Find out more about how marketing and sales can collaborate, use our free buyer journey template to ensure you’re delivering the right message at the right time, and try these tips to turn pain points into marketing. 
• Master your email marketing. One of the best ways to increase conversions and nurture your audience is to build a relationship via email. See our tips to improve your email marketing and provide the most value possible every time you press send. 
• Stay educated. The more you keep up on best practices and industry trends, the easier it is to adapt your content strategy. For weekly tips to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter. To hear marketing industry leaders share the tactics they use to win the hearts and minds of their customers, subscribe to our Best Story Wins podcast. And if you need tools and templates to get more things done, take a look at our resources library.

Of course, if you need support to improve the value you provide, see our tips for choosing the right agency, find out what it’s like to work with Column Five, or reach out directly. We know marketing isn’t easy, but we’d be happy to help make it easier—for you and your brand. 

Want more great marketing tips? Watch Bryan’s full episode of Best Story Wins on YouTube.

We have strong feelings about content marketing—for good reason. Too many brands are churning out subpar content for content’s sake, clogging people’s feeds with stuff that is superfluous, self-indulgent, or entirely off-brand. (This is why we recommend some brands stop creating content until they can sort themselves out.) But on the flip side, we’ve noticed another disturbing trend: Marketers have become so precious about their content that they become completely paralyzed.

• They waste hours debating copy…for a single header.
• They exhaust their teams with endless ideation.
• They tire their designers with pixel-by-pixel edits.
• They push deadlines back time after time.

This type of hyper-focused micromanaging doesn’t help your team, and it certainly doesn’t help your marketing. There’s a point where you just need to put down your pencils, push it out, and move on.

3 Reasons to Publish Your Content

If you’re a marketer who easily gets bogged down in the details, here’s the good news: Not only do you not need to stress so much but you can actually improve your results by, well, easing up. Here are three key reasons you should publish content consistently—and avoid overthinking.

“Digital marketing is so ephemeral. You have a huge opportunity to launch and learn from lighter efforts vs. endlessly debating copy phrasing.”
—Column Five’s VP of Growth Asher Rumack

1) You need to keep your audience engaged.

We all want to publish the perfect piece of marketing content, but guess what? The longer you wait, the more you allow your competition to snatch your audience’s attention away from you.

You want to stay top of mind for your audience, but when you get bogged down in perfection, you lose the opportunity to consistently connect with them. Although larger pieces of content (e.g., ebooks and video) are crucial to your success, there are leaner, easier ways to create valuable content that can also make an impact.

Tip: One of the easiest ways to cut your brainstorming time in half is to simply poll your audience about the content they like. You can do this on social media, or send a survey to your email list. You might be surprised by the results.

For example, when we polled our audience, we learned that people especially love roundups and real-life examples of great marketing. Instead of wracking our brains for original content ideas, we’ve incorporated more roundups of things like SaaS campaigns, great digital marketing, and CTA examples into our mix. This content is relatively easy for us to produce, and it gives our audience exactly what they want.

2) Creating content is easier than ever, thanks to a variety of tools.

Although we don’t think that AI can replace you, there are plenty of online tools to support you. From generating topic ideas and articles to designing social content and optimizing content for search engines, tools like ChatGPT and Canva can help you do everything. Best of all, they alleviate the need for extensive technical skills or resources, which are often a big blocker for marketers trying to get things done.

With the right tools, you can work smarter.

Note: We don’t think AI will entirely replace marketers or the need for human brain power, but you can determine where and how you implement it. For example, we find ChatGPT helpful for beating out article outlines and asking questions about our audience and what they’re searching.

Tip: See our roundup of 100+ content marketing resources to find helpful tools to cut your creation time in half. You should also look for low-lift ways to create truly valuable content.

For example, to help our audience brainstorm more effectively, we created a simple Google Doc template of fill-in-the-blank content marketing ideas. It didn’t require us to write thousands of words or design a full e-book, but it was an incredibly easy way to provide something of value (and gate it).

3) Testing is the most effective way to learn what resonates.

No matter how much time or energy you put into something, it means nothing if the content doesn’t resonate with your audience. That’s why testing is essential to learn what works and what doesn’t. By publishing a variety of content (and experimenting with different types of content), you can gain valuable insight into what your audience likes and dislikes.

Getting creative assets into the market to get real data feedback is cheaper than ever, so the cost of false starts or delays is exponential.

Tip: A/B test different headlines, images, calls-to-action, types of articles, formats, etc. to find out what type of mix gives you the best results. Pay attention to engagement rates, click-through rates, and time spent on-page to understand what resonates.

For example, after reviewing our highest-performing content, we found that “how to,” “tips,” and anything with a number in the headline tends to perform particularly well. (TBH, we’re also experimenting with getting sassier, as you can see in the title for this very blog. Who knows what the data will tell us, but we won’t know unless we try.)

The #1 Secret to Good Content: Value

Ultimately, whether you’re sharing a tip thread on Twitter or publishing a 50-page whitepaper, the key to good content is the value it provides. Value may be subjective, as your audience might derive value from a hefty piece of thought leadership or a funny video. Either way, the key is to make sure you’re speaking to their needs and wants. To do that effectively…

• Assemble the right team. If you need a partner to bring your content strategy to life, head on over to our FAQs to find out what it’s like to work with us.
• Document your goals to ensure you’re actually moving the needle.
• Follow these tips to brainstorm valuable ideas.
• Measure the right metrics to get the best insights—and tweak your content strategy accordingly.
• Optimize your infrastructure to create quality content consistently.

Above all, stop being precious with your content. Start being curious. The more you push out into the world, the more you’ll learn, and the smarter you’ll get. That is the best way to make sure your marketing succeeds.

When you’re trying to reach different audiences—and make them convert—you need good content and a solid call to action to close the deal. Unfortunately, terrible CTAs are sabotaging marketers across the web. (We’re not naming names, but the problem is far more pervasive than you might realize.) Luckily, you don’t have to be an award-winning copywriter to write an effective CTA that converts. You just need to know a few simple tricks. The good news? We have ‘em for ya, along with real-world examples so you can see why and how they work in the wild. 

But first, let’s recap what a CTA is. 

What Is a Call to Action (CTA)? 

A call to action (aka a CTA) is exactly that—a simple invitation to your audience to take a next step. A CTA can be a button, a link, or a message that encourages a user to do something, such as sign up for a demo, schedule a consultation, or download a whitepaper.

The best CTAs are clear, concise, and compelling. 

Remember: Every piece of content marketing you create is an opportunity to build a relationship with your audience, and CTAs are the key to strengthening that relationship. Whether someone just read your latest e-book or stumbled across your website homepage, you should always give your audience a next step to engage with your brand more. That is the power of a CTA—and why such a small piece of messaging can have such a huge outcome on your business.

7 Tips to Write an Effective Call to Action

Because CTAs are so important, you need to make sure your brand is nailing each and every one. That’s where we come in. No matter your audience, industry, or marketing budget, there are a few simple hacks you can use to write stellar CTAs that convert. 

1) Use a command verb. 

Whereas your regular marketing content may lean a little more editorial, your CTA is the place to get to the point, create a sense of excitement, and direct people where to go/what to do next. Hence, using imperative verbs (aka verbs that give people a command) are so important. These are verbs like walk, run, go, sign up, try, download, etc. (You have seen this language everywhere, even if you didn’t realize it.) These simple but impactful directives remind people where to go and what to do next. 

Examples of imperative phrases:

• Claim your free trial now to start enjoying our premium features.
• Get your free e-book download today and learn how to boost your productivity.
• Try our limited-time offer!
• Join our community of like-minded individuals and start achieving your goals.
• Register now to secure your spot in our upcoming webinar.
• Upgrade your account now to unlock additional features and benefits.
• Start your 30-day challenge now and transform your life.
• Download our app today and enjoy instant access to all our services.
• Book your appointment now and take the first step toward a healthier you.
• Sign up for our free newsletter.
• Schedule your custom consultation. 

Example: Bombas makes comfortable socks, underwear, and t-shirts—and they’re pretty good at CTAs too. “Go ahead, make yourself comfortable” is an imperative command with a cozy promise that perfectly aligns with the brand.  

Example: Half Magic Beauty also uses an imperative command with “Take your glitterpill,” a cheeky play on words to encourage site viewers to shop their glitter cosmetics. 

2) Speak to your audience’s desired future state. 

A good brand tells a good brand story, and that is directly tied to the promise you’re making to your audience. What will they get by buying your product/service? How will they benefit? How does your product speak to their wants or needs, solve a problem, or improve their lives? Crafting a CTA that promises their ideal future state (in which they’ve bought and are now enjoying the desired results) will always make them want to click. 

Tap into your audience’s emotions and you’ll make them want to click.

For example, B2B professionals are a busy group of people who value efficiency and productivity. They respond well to CTAs that emphasize time-saving benefits. For example, “Streamline your workflow today” or “Maximize your productivity with our services.” Whereas in the personal wellness industry, people are looking for personal change. CTAs like ” Transform your life” or “Achieve your goals” demonstrate the benefits of taking action. Pro tip: Add an exclamation point. It’s simple but effective. 

Example: Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform that makes it easier for businesses to grow their customer base. They could say something basic like “send newsletters more efficiently,” but they tap into the true benefit of their platform by saying, “Convert more customers at scale.”

3) Speak to their pain points. 

While the desired future state is always compelling, as it focuses on what the product/service adds to a user’s life, eliminating pain is just as powerful a prospect (and can sometimes be even more compelling). This is a smart way to not only present your brand as the problem-solver but also reinforce the pain that the user is currently experiencing. 

Example: Hubspot is also a marketing platform that automates the most tedious marketing challenges. They could say “Try Hubspot today!” but instead they say “Migrate without the migraines.” By leading with a pain point, they motivate users to try it out and solve that frustrating problem quickly. 

4) Create a sense of urgency.

Creating a sense of urgency is an effective way to encourage your audience to take action. Use words like “now” or “today” to create a sense of immediacy, or highlight time-sensitive promotions or limited-time offers to encourage your audience to act quickly.

Of course, not every brand is peddling goods that can be bought with a flash sale for Black Friday. (For example, as a strategic content marketing agency, we don’t offer flash sales or holiday packages.) In that case, if you don’t have an inherent sense of urgency, look for ways to make your language more emotional and exciting to make people want to click ASAP. For example, say “Turbocharge your sales!” vs. “Increase customers.” If you’re a nonprofit, say “Save a dolphin’s life” vs. “Donate now.” Adding a sense of mystery or curiosity can also instill a sense of urgency, making people want to find out more. 

Example: Glossier uses a mystery CTA to make curious people want to click and discover. 

5) Use a number.

Numbers and data can be very compelling, and it adds a level of subtle credibility to your CTA. Whether you’re encouraging people to “Make 50% more sales,” “Save 4 hours a month,” or “Join a million people on the way to fitness,” adding a number can be a powerful tactic to make people click on your CTA. Whether they want the comfort of joining a crowd or a promise of saving a certain amount of money, that simple number can drastically improve your CTR.

Example: Legal Zoom makes it easy to start a legal business with a few clicks. They employ a bit of crowd psychology in their CTA by encouraging visitors to “Join the millions who launched their businesses with LegalZoom.”

6) Keep it short. 

The ideal length of a CTA can vary depending on the context and the specific campaign. However, in general, a CTA should be short, concise, and to the point—ideally under 10 words. 

The goal of a CTA is to motivate your audience to take immediate action, so using clear and direct language is essential. That said, the length of your CTA should be determined by the clarity and effectiveness of the message, rather than a specific word count or character limit. Still, brevity is always best. 

Example: Grammarly is an online writing assistant that helps users improve their writing skills. Their brief but elegant CTA says everything you need to know: “Brilliant Writing Awaits.”  

7) Speak to your audience’s generational drivers. 

You always want to tailor messaging for your audience, and their age may be an important thing to consider in that messaging. Different generations are driven by different things, so optimizing your CTAs to speak to their unique desires can be an incredibly powerful way to convert them. 

1. Baby Boomers: Baby boomers are an older generation that tends to be more traditional and value quality over quantity. They respond well to CTAs that emphasize the quality and durability of a product or service. For example, “Invest in quality that lasts a lifetime” or “Experience timeless elegance.”
2. Gen X: As a generation of latchkey kids who were raised on anti-establishment values, you can cater to Gen X’s independent streak with messaging that speaks to their unique identity or independent thinking. For example, “Stand out from the crowd” or “Make your mark.”
3. Millennials: Millennials are a tech-savvy generation that is always on the lookout for new and innovative products. They respond well to CTAs that emphasize the latest trends and technologies. For example, “Join the future of fitness” or “Get ahead of the game with the latest tech.”
4. Gen Z: Gen Z is the youngest generation, and they are often considered to be more socially conscious than previous generations. They respond well to CTAs that emphasize the social impact of a product or service. For example, “Make a difference with every purchase” or “Join the movement for a better future.”

Example: Colourpop is a fun beauty brand that is focused on the Gen Z/Millennial buyer. Knowing this, they use the right language to speak to their audience. They could say “Try new makeup” but instead they say “Don’t get FOMO.” By using this relateable slang, they cultivate a sense of familiarity and create that emotional sense of urgency—a win-win.

How to Ensure Your CTAs Are Successful

If you want to write CTAs that always hit the mark, there are a few more ways to ensure your copy always lands.

• Keep your personas up to date. To effectively speak to your audience’s needs, wants, pain points, and emotions, you need to understand who they are and what they care about. Revisit your marketing personas every six months to make sure they’re still accurate. 
• Inject your brand voice. To create a solid and cohesive brand experience, take every opportunity to infuse your content with your brand personality. CTAs are one of the most overlooked places to do this, so if you can do it well and naturally, it will only enhance your user experience. Note: You don’t have to get too creative. You need to walk the line between familiarity and clarity. This is why we always keep our homepage button labeled “Contact Us.” It keeps it simple and clear for people who know exactly what they want to do. 
• A/B test. CTAs are one of the easiest things to test, and one of the best ways to get insight into your audience’s preferences. Test new messaging to see what resonates. 

Of course, CTAs are only one part of the content marketing machine, and good content always starts with a good content strategy. To ensure every part of your content machine is aligned, see our free guide to content strategy. And if you need any support bringing that strategy to life, find out what it’s like to work with us on content strategy or reach out. We’d love to help you connect with your audience and build a community of lifelong fans—one CTA at a time. 

SaaS email marketing can be frustrating. Why? Because B2B marketing just isn’t as easy as B2C. Consumer brands often have a clear and immediate response to email marketing, but in SaaS, where it takes an average of 84 days to close a deal, nurturing leads with a full email marketing program can feel like a lot of work for no immediate reward. 

But, trust us, that work is worth it. Email is one of the most effective ways to engage with your audience, grow your community, and convert people. According to Litmus, for every $1 you invest, you get a $36 ROI. And when you know how to work smarter, not harder, you can increase your ROI even more. To help you do exactly that, today we’re sharing some of our best research-backed tips to improve your SaaS email marketing—with less sweat and stress.

10 Tips to Master Your Email Marketing

Here’s the good news: You don’t have to overhaul every single thing you’re currently doing in your email marketing. But with some small steps (and plenty of A/B testing), you can tackle this mix of strategic and tactical tips to improve your overall marketing results. Best of all, many of these tips take relatively little effort but reap huge rewards. We know this firsthand. 

We’ve done—and continue to do—all of these things to some degree, and we’ve found great success. (Not to brag, but our open rate is 47% higher than industry standard, and our CTR is 218% higher than industry standard.) So we hope these tips help you master your email marketing, nurture your leads, and convert your community one SEND at a time.

1) Segment your audience (or reassess your segmentation). 

Industries change, businesses change, and audiences certainly change. What worked last year may not work next month, so it’s smart to regularly review and improve your segmented lists.

• Are you segmenting the right groups?
• Are your segments too large or too small?
• Do you have a clear understanding of their interests and drivers?

Tip: Use our free personas template to identify, clarify, and segment your audience, then use our buyer journey template to identify what marketing messages each segment needs to hear in which emails, and create fresh workflows to feed those messages to them. 

2) Add more links to your emails. 

It sounds simple, but data shows that adding multiple links to the same thing increases the likelihood that someone will click through to it, whether it’s the first or third time they see it in your email.

According to Mailchimp, the average CTR for SaaS companies is 2.45%.

Additionally, Mailchimp recommends descriptive linking vs. the standard “click here.” 

Example: 

• YES: Get your free B2B content strategy toolkit to transform your content now!
• NO: For a free B2B content strategy toolkit, click here. 

Remember: Email marketing is a well-established medium. Your audience understands the concept of links. When you use language that is less natural or more directive (e.g., “click here), it can feel out of touch or condescending to savvy professionals. This approach also lets you write more natural and compelling content while being less interruptive. 

Tip: Link the most important piece of content at least three times in your email. 

3) Mix up your subject lines. 

We’re going to talk a lot about the power of A/B testing in this article. In email marketing, subject lines can make or break you, as they’re generally someone’s first impression of your email. Finding an enticing, clickable subject line is crucial. This is especially true in SaaS, where brands tend to sound like generic robots.

According to Mailchimp, the average open rate for SaaS brands is 21%. 

We highly recommend A/B testing subject lines to get a sense of what resonates with your audience, or the type of subject line they respond to. A few things to consider as you experiment: 

• Emotion: Things that are surprising, exciting, or even shocking can really hook people. 
• Benefits: What will they gain by clicking? For example, “Your 2023 Starter Pack is HERE” was our most popular email subject line last year. 
• Urgency: The more pressure/time-crunch people feel, the more likely they are to click. 
• Personalization: Studies consistently show that personalization increases visibility and clickability. Personalization tokens in subject lines also increase deliverability, preventing content from going to people’s junk folders.

A/B testing helps you understand not only what resonates but what your audience really likes. For example, you might find they’re particularly partial to emojis, or numbers, or more emotional language. 

According to Litmus, QA, A/B, and spam testing your emails increases ROI by up to 28%.

Tip: One of the most important rules of subject lines is to keep it short. Mailchimp suggests 9-60 characters to keep it legible in an email feed.

4) Add a GIF.

People are inherently visual, and GIFS are one of the best ways to wake them up. It seems like a simple tactic, but the data backs it up. According to Litmus research, companies that included animated GIFs in their emails saw an ROI of 37:1, while brands that never included them saw an ROI of 18:1.

Tip: Use GIFS to showcase your brand personality. We started including a funny GIF in each newsletter two years ago, and we know it gives us and our audience a laugh each week. Alternatively, if a humorous approach doesn’t totally align with your brand, consider how animated visuals can enhance your content in other ways (think data visualizations or other information visualization). Visuals that help your audience understand content at-a-glance can be especially powerful. 

5) Add more personality. 

Let’s be real. SaaS email marketing doesn’t always work well because it can lack humanity. SaaS marketers tend to rely on jargon, buzzwords, or data to connect with their audience, and while these things can be effective in the right time and place, they are often dry and dull. 

People crave connection, and infusing your content with your brand personality is a great way to give them. 

• Do you use your brand voice well?
• Do your emails sound human and personable?
• Is your email nicely designed according to your brand? 
• Do you take advantage of strong brand imagery?

We’re living in a time when your brand personality is often the single most significant way you can differentiate from your competition. Every piece of content you create, from your e-books, to your CTAs, to your emails, should show off who you are. For that reason, we ourselves conducted an audit of all of our email content, from welcome emails to ebook delivery emails, and rewrote them to add a little more personality and, dare we say it, pizzazz. 

Tip: Use our free brand voice template to identify your personality and create guidelines to use it. And if you need some inspiration, here are 6 examples of great SaaS emails.

6) Reassess your publishing cadence. 

Are you sending too many emails a month? Are you sending too few? Finding the perfect balance is the key to keeping your audience engaged. 

According to Litmus, 9-16 emails per month is the sweet spot.

This is an important thing to A/B test for your own brand. Note: Segmentation and personalization intrinsically help you avoid sending too many emails. When you’re more intentional about which emails you send to each group (and the value those emails provide), you’re less likely to overwhelm your audience. 

Tip: Of course, your volume may fluctuate. You may send more emails around a big launch or less around a hectic time of year. Either way, plan those thoughtfully and consider the value of what you are or aren’t sending. For example, we generally avoid sending emails around the holidays. Those emails have some of the lowest open rates (historically), as they tend to get lost in the shuffle, and we think we provide more value and service by giving our audience a break around that time of year.  

7) Experiment with your send time. 

This one can be tricky, as SaaS brands may have customers all over the world. But finding a solid window will only improve your ROI (and improve your audience’s brand experience too). 

Luckily, there is some solid data on this topic. 

• According to Sendinblue data, SaaS brands are likely to see the best open rates if they send on a Tuesday or Thursday, but they have the highest click-through rates on Wednesdays. 
• For open rate, the best times to send are 10 AM and 3 PM.
• For click-through rate, the best time to send is 2 PM.

Tip: Consider your target audience’s wants, needs, and daily schedule. For example, is a VP of Product Development likely to review non-urgent email first thing in the morning, or would they be more likely to click on an email right after lunch (when they’re fed and have more brain-space)? 

That said, every brand is different. For example, we send our weekly newsletter Thursdays at 11:05 AM. (We have found out the hard way—via mis-scheduled emails—when our audience is definitely NOT active or opening our content.) Again, A/B testing can help you find out what’s best for you. 

8) Curate the right mix of content. 

If you want to keep people nurtured and engaged in your email marketing, you need to feed a solid feed of interesting and relevant content. Consider the different pillars of content you produce and what audiences crave most. (Look back at your data to identify what is most popular.) 

For example, if you’ve been heavy on content related to a new launch, consider tempering that with some high-value downloadable content. 

Tip: Create a simple poll to find out what your audiences like. When we did this last year, we found out that our audience is especially interested in real-life examples and roundups of good marketing, so we are incorporating more of that into our strategy mix this year.

Note: If you do send a poll, it is important to acknowledge/take action to address poll results. If people give you their time and feedback with absolutely no response, it can erode brand trust. 

9) Keep your lists clean. 

We know it’s painful to reduce your list numbers, but it’s always better to have a smaller, healthier pool of subscribers than a bloated list that actually drives your ROI down. So, reach out to unengaged subscribers at least every 6 months to find out if they’re still interested in your content.

This is not only a good thing to do for your numbers but it’s a good thing to do for them too. By simply reaching out and acknowledging that you might not be providing value to them, you demonstrate empathy and show that you genuinely care about their inbox experience. 

Tip: A simple subject line like “Still want to keep in touch?” or “Are we breaking up?” can be an effective way to catch their attention. Just make sure it’s very easy to unsubscribe or opt back in. 

On that note, always make it easy for anyone to unsubscribe at any time—and not just because it’s illegal to hide the unsubscribe option in many countries. (Follow the law first, and make your emails pretty second.) Also, don’t make people re-enter their email to unsubscribe either. The more work you make them do to leave, the more they’ll resent you. 

10) Do a quarterly postmortem. 

Review your analytics on a quarterly basis to identify what worked, what didn’t, and any other insights your data may hold. If you’ve incorporated more A/B testing, now is the time to look at what you’ve learned. 

• What type of content proved most popular?
• What subject lines had the highest open rate? 
• What formats did people gravitate toward?

Tip: A pre-send checklist can help you improve the quality of your email marketing and ensure everything you send is up to standard (e.g., are graphics rendering properly? Does your subject line have a strong emotional hook? Is the final email fully proofed? Are your links active and accurate?)

According to Litmus, companies that use an extensive pre-send checklist saw a substantially higher ROI (40:1) than those that don’t use a checklist (28:1).

Remember: Experimentation Is Everything

SaaS email marketing isn’t a one-and-done thing. It’s an ever-evolving practice, and the more you experiment, the more you can and will learn. What matters most is that you start with a strong content strategy foundation, track and measure your goals, and use the results to make data-informed decisions as you go.

Above all, staying up to date on marketing best practices will help you move faster and make smarter decisions as you go. If you need a little hand there, sign up for our weekly newsletter, which is full of helpful tips to master your marketing. (Plus, you can see our own email marketing in action.) You can also check out our free resources archive for more tools and templates. And if you need some direct support in bringing your content or email marketing to life, see our FAQs or reach out. Whether we work together or not, we hope these tips have been helpful—and we wish you the highest open rates and click-throughs in the future. 

Marketing is tough, especially when content marketing budgets are getting cut across the board. Not only do you need to make sure you’re creating the right content but you need to get the most from every piece of content you create. Of course, that can be a challenge when you’re trying to market to multiple audiences with different wants and needs. Fortunately, there is a smart hack you can use to create a large volume of tailored content with minimal effort. It’s called a divisible content strategy. 

What Is a Divisible Content Strategy?

It’s a simple way to spin multiple pieces of marketing content out of one main piece. Here’s how it works: 

Tier 1: You create one large piece of cornerstone content, such as: 

• Guide
• Report
• Whitepaper
• Ebook
• Interactive
• Podcast
• Video

It works best when it’s a rich piece of content that comprehensively covers a topic.

Tier 2: You create a variety of supporting content based on that piece of cornerstone content, such as:

• Blogs 
• Guest posts
• Infographics
• Videos
• Slideshows
• Etc.

This content is ideal to publish on various owned channels to promote the larger piece of content. 

Tier 3: You create an additional batch of social microcontent to promote the cornerstone content and supporting content across social media, such as:

• Twitter threads
• Mini infographics
• Quotes
• Data Visualizations
• Highlights
• Image carousels
• Short videos
• Quick tips

There are many benefits to a divisible content strategy. It allows you to tell a consistent story across platforms. It helps you create more marketing content with less work. And it helps you maximize your reach and promotion. But one of the best things about it is that it allows you to create supporting content tailored for multiple audiences. In essence, the supporting content acts as a special doorway, encouraging all sorts of different people to step through and explore your larger content. The key, of course, is to tailor that content to make your audience want to know more.  

5 Ways to Tailor Divisible Content For Your Audience

Naturally, if you want to reach different people, you need to take a different approach for each type of person. Here’s how to ensure the supporting content you create is interesting and relevant to your different audiences. 

1) Find a pain point.

Pain points, problems, and challenges will always grab attention, and they can be one of the best starting points for a conversation. Whether you’re sharing relevant tips, data, or highlights, creating marketing content around pain points will always make your audience do a double-take—and swipe. 

Tip: Create personas to understand what makes your audience tick, and see these 10 easy ways to turn pain points into content. 

Example: To promote their 2023 Marketing & Industry Trends Report on Instagram, Hubspot shared the biggest challenges social media marketers make. This is a great way to highlight interesting data, speak to that specific niche (even though the report covers wide swaths of the marketing industry), and do it without having to create a whole new piece of content. (Bonus points for making them slide to see the data—and increase engagement in the process.) 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by HubSpot (@hubspot)

2) Find an emotional hook.

Similar to pain points, which are a specific emotion, any emotional hook will always stop someone’s scroll. The key is to understand what is relevant or relatable to them. If you’re not sure what would resonate best, think about how you might create content based on these emotions. 

• Fear: What’s a statistic, alarming trend, or warning that might be relevant to them? 
• Joy: What type of marketing content do they find exciting, interesting, or amusing? Memes, jokes, etc. can be a great way to connect.
• Relief: What time-saving tips or hacks can you share to help make their lives less stressful?
• Surprise: Is there any myth-busting insight in your content? Does it reveal a surprising truth? That’s a great way to catch their eye. 

Again, think about the messages they want or need to hear. 

Tip: Use empathy to think about your audience’s emotional needs. For more inspiration, see how these 15 brands turned empathy into great marketing content. 

Example: Hubspot calls out classic myths about remote work to change leaders’ minds (and promote a deeper dive article about the subject).

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by HubSpot (@hubspot)

3) Tell an additional story.

Even if your cornerstone content covers a particular topic in depth, there are always ways go deeper. A simple data point in an ebook can become a full blog. A particular trend might inspire a whole new infographic. Creating additional content or providing additional information about a specific angle is a great way to deliver value to a specific audience. For example, after creating an e-book about the power of brand video, we might then write an article on how B2B tech marketers (a very specific audience) can use videos to connect with their audience. 

Tip: It can also help to look at trending stories in your industry and see if there’s a connection. For example, if you’re in PR and a popular company recently suffered a PR crisis, you could write an article offering your tips on how to ensure your company doesn’t make the same mistake. That said, be thoughtful about what stories you’re chiming in on. See our tips to ensure you’re not newsjacking like a jackass.

Example: Hubspot’s 2023 Marketing & Industry Trends report contains plenty of interesting info for a variety of audiences, but Hubspot used the report to tell a specific story to a specific audience: marketing executives. By creating The Marketing Executive’s Playbook, they were able to use data from the report to give execs their own specific game plan, increasing the value of the report while expanding the story. 

4) Choose their preferred format.

Different audiences consume content differently. For example, if you’re targeting a Gen Z entry-level employee, a TikTok video might be ideal. If you’re targeting a CMO, a well-researched blog article may be the right medium. Medium is also dictated by platform. If an e-book is your cornerstone content, you might target one group with a Twitter thread of the best insights and reach another audience with a short tip video on Instagram.

Tip: Find out which of these 13 types of visual content will work best for your story.

Example: Hubspot’s simple little Instagram quiz is a fun and engaging way to interact with marketers while encouraging them to check out an additional piece of content. Note: Quizzes like this are an easy thing to personalize for a specific niche audience, too. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by HubSpot (@hubspot)

5) Share the relevant highlights.

People are busy, and they may not have the time to explore a full piece of content. That said, you can still provide a valuable service by condensing or extracting the most relevant information for a specific audience through something like an infographic or a series of tips. 

Example: To promote their How to Reach Out to Influencers guide, Hubspot shares 6 tips to make it easy for marketers to connect with influencers. It’s a simple, snackable way to tailor content. 

How to Ensure You’re Always Connecting with Your Audience

Whether you’re trying to reach broke college students, urban 30-somethings, or Fortune 500 CEOS, there are a few specific ways to make the most memorable impression with your audience.

• Consider their age. Different generations want different things. See our tips to connect with Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. 
• Speak the way they speak. You don’t want to intimidate your audience or speak down to them. Make sure you’re speaking to them in a real, human voice—at their level. 
• Use your personas to brainstorm. Personas help you get inside your audience’s mind, which is why they’re such a great tool to vet your ideas. If you can’t justify why your target audience would care about your idea, don’t produce it. 

Of course, the best way to connect with your audience is to build a strong content strategy around their interests. (Download our free content strategy toolkit if you need help building yours.) That said, we know that takes time and effort that not every brand has. If you’re looking for the right partner to help, take a look at our FAQs or reach out. We’d love to help you connect with your audience. 

Content marketing is part art, part science. You’re dealing with budgets, data, decision-makers, internal processes, and so much more. Oftentimes it feels like you’re running at full speed just to keep the wheels on. For all that effort, you want the best results possible. But, the truth is, if you’re not focusing your attention on the right things, you won’t win the way you want to. Luckily, we know firsthand that there are one, two, and even ten things you can do to improve your marketing ASAP. You just need the nudge to do them. That’s why we’re here to share our team’s best B2B content marketing tips to make your work easier—and more effective. 

Best of all, every single tip we’re outlining today is something we’ve personally done—and helped our clients do—to improve our marketing operation. (You can even read about how we turned these tips into a 160% increase in bookings for our agency.) Since we know they worked for us, we hope they’ll do the same for you. 

10 B2B Content Marketing Tips to Grow

These tips are both strategic and tactical, with varying degrees of effort, but we guarantee that these adjustments will drastically improve your day-to-day life and your long-term results. 

1) Stop creating content—until you know your brand story. 

This sounds like a crazy statement, but we’re serious. We’ve seen too many brands waste too much time on piecemeal content that doesn’t reflect their brand or support their strategy. Quantity does not equal quality, and the more time you waste churning out ineffective content, the more you’re going to dig yourself into a hole. A successful marketing operation is built on a strong brand, so you need to identify the key components of your brand (aka your brand story) before you can create compelling content that connects with your audience and turns them into customers. 

Your brand story is the best source of content you have.

What does a fully articulated brand story look like?

• Brand Heart: You need to identify your heart (aka purpose, vision, mission, and values) to know what stories you should be telling to draw people to your brand. 
• Messaging: To properly express who you are, communicate what you do, and tell your story consistently, you need a strong messaging framework that includes your tagline, value prop, and main story pillars. 
• Visual Identity: You can’t compete or create strong content marketing without a visual identity that reflects who you are, as well as the guidelines to help your team apply it. 

If you haven’t articulated your brand before, use our free brand strategy toolkit to do it, and see our guide to brainstorm strong brand stories that reach the right people.  

2) Re-examine what you’re measuring. 

“If you aren’t measuring success or analyzing results, then what’s the point of putting it out there?
—Elise Mastio, Column Five Senior Strategist

A good content marketing strategy includes documented goals and clear metrics to measure them. When brands aren’t measuring (at all) or aren’t measuring the right things, there is no way to gauge success or strategize how to improve. 

“All goals need a plan. There are no marketing wishes; only marketing strategies.” 
—Elizabeth Spurbeck, Column Five Senior Producer (Interactive Team)

Of course, good measurement starts with setting goals that are actually measurable. We are all about the OKR method (objectives and key results) to guide your goal-setting, track your progress, and tweak as you go. If you haven’t experimented with this before, see our guide to setting measurable goals and find out exactly which metrics you should be tracking. 

That said, it’s easy to gravitate toward vanity metrics that look good in a report, but think critically about what type of data provides the most useful insights. 

For example, here at Column Five, we had enjoyed a full year of record-breaking traffic leading up to our big site redesign in 2021. While that felt good to report on each month, what ultimately matters is the quality of our traffic. After we redesigned our site and removed a batch of irrelevant and outdated content, our traffic disappointingly dipped. But you know what else plummeted? Our bounce rate. Although we’re now getting much less traffic, we’re actually retaining more people. Had we only focused on traffic as our success metric we would have missed the real data story: that our fresh content strategy is clearly working, and we are attracting the right kind of people. 

(See our guide to find the stories in your data if you need to brush up on your data interpretation skills.) 

3) Optimize your production process. 

No matter how many article ideas you have or campaigns you want to run, if you don’t have the process and infrastructure to get sh*t done, you just can’t be effective. (This is probably the #1 issue we see our clients facing, whether due to resource issues or good old internal silo-ing.)

To help things run as smoothly as possible, there are a few simple steps to take. 

• Assign the right team roles and responsibilities. See our guide to build a kickass content team to provide accountability and clarity for your team—and ensure nothing slips through the cracks. 
• Use the right tools to cut down on time. Assess your tech stack and look for ways to combine, consolidate, or upgrade tools and subscriptions. You can also take a look at these 100+ tools to make content marketing easier. 
• Conduct postmortems. After you complete a project, have a meeting to talk through any challenges or speedbumps. This helps your team identify pain points, problem-solve together, and smooth out processes to save time, energy, and frustration. Even if you aren’t regularly hitting roadblocks, it’s always helpful to re-examine the way you work. Just because you’ve always done something one way doesn’t mean it’s the best. 

To jumpstart this process, see our guide to master content creation.

4) Ask your audience what they’re struggling with. 

It’s easy to get so excited about an idea you’d love to produce that you forget to consider whether or not your audience wants it. (All content marketers are guilty of this.) 

“The bar is getting ever higher for work that is truly interesting and valuable to people outside your company. Creating this requires a fundamental shift to empathize with your audience first, not your brand agenda.”
—Ross Crooks, Column Five Cofounder

Remember that good content is content that is interesting, relevant, and useful to your audience. Understanding their needs, wants, and challenges is crucial if you want to brainstorm good ideas that will actually grab their attention. 

You should have a clear understanding of your target audience. (If you don’t, use our free template to document your personas.) But there are a few low-lift ways to create more attention-grabbing content. 

• Conduct simple social media polls. Ask them what type of challenges they’re struggling with, what types of content they find most helpful, etc. This tactic is an all-around win. It lets you engage directly with your audience, get their feedback, and use it to generate a fresh batch of ideas. 
• Write an emotional headline. If you understand your audience’s needs/wants, you can infuse that language into things like headlines or social captions. Are they busy and stressed? Words like “easy,” “simple,” or “quick” will entice them to click. (BTW, we like Coschedule’s headline analyzer tool to punch up headlines.) Do you want to stand out? A provocative headline could grab attention.
• Don’t just brainstorm; vet your ideas. This seems simple, but it’s such an often overlooked step in the creative process. As you plan your content, think about how you can maximize the value. That may mean expanding on the topic (e.g., The Ultimate Guide to Brand Strategy), narrowing in on a specific angle (e.g., 7 Infographic Design Styles to Try Right Now), or adding your own expertise (e.g., The 5 Biggest Mistakes We See SaaS Marketers Make). 

Also, don’t forget that you are dealing with real people. One of the biggest mistakes we see in B2B marketing is talking to people like they’re business representatives and not everyday human beings. 

“Business decision makers are people too. They like cool stuff, good storytelling, unique experiences, and good design.”
—Katie Raney, Column Five Design Team Lead

Ultimately, your best bet is to lead with empathy. As long as you put your audience first, your content will always be more successful. For more tips and inspiration, see how these brands put empathetic content marketing into action. 

5) Update your old content. 

If you’re undergoing a massive marketing makeover (and starting a fresh content marketing strategy), net new content does not always need to be your first focus. In fact, oftentimes you can get even better results by cleaning up your current content archive. There are multiple reasons why this is a great idea. 

• Algorithms favor fresh, rich content. By updating, consolidating, refreshing, and re-promoting your existing content, you can give your SEO a major boost and hold strong to the keywords you rank for and reoptimize for new keywords. (Find out how we used this strategy to help Blend increase their traffic 183%.) 
• It gives your audience more to chew on. When you do attract new people with net new content, they will have a great library of your existing content (all fresh and current) to deep dive into. 
• It takes less work. By reworking what you have, you can get twice the results for half of the work.

We have personally found massive success with this strategy, getting our top 10 most valuable keywords to rank on page 1, among hundreds of other terms. Best of all, this strategy ensures that our thought leadership stays current and aligned to our current brand strategy. (If you haven’t done a reoptimization campaign before, see Hubspot’s guide to do it the right way.)

Fun fact: This very article was originally published five years ago. What you’re reading now is a massively updated version with even more links and resources that we have spent the last few years creating. 

6) Repurpose your content. 

It takes time and money to create content, so you should maximize the impact (and lifespan) of every piece you create. 

Beyond updating your content archive, there are so many ways to give a second life to content by reusing, remixing, and repurposing in different ways across different channels. This is the easiest way to create a steady stream of content to keep your audience interested and engaged. 

What does that look like?

• Break an infographic into a series of visualizations for your next ebook. 
• Publish quotes, data points, or excerpts on social.
• Consolidate an older article into a Twitter tip thread.
• Reuse illustrations in blogs, ebooks, and content. 

For more tips to do this, find out how to repurpose your infographics and data visualizations. 

7) Move quickly. 

While you shouldn’t waste time on content that isn’t tied to your brand and content strategy, you also shouldn’t let perfectly good ideas wither on the vine. (We can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen this happen in the organizations we work with.) 

Remember: The key to a successful marketing operation is creating a steady stream of quality content. Updating your existing content or reusing older content is one way to fill your feed, but you definitely do need to produce net new content on a steady schedule. The problem is that many brands struggle to do this consistently. 

“The hardest part when you first start content marketing is striking a balance between planning and doing. You need to establish a publishing rhythm and measure results so you can learn what does and doesn’t work.”
–Jason Lankow, Column Five Cofounder

The problem is usually something to do with a lack of decision-making or an inefficient production process (see point 3). But the ability to move quickly in content creation is a huge competitive advantage. 

“There’s nothing worse than seeing your great idea—done by someone else.”
—Katy French, Column Five Content Marketing Director

Whether that’s joining a timely conversation, participating in a trend, or responding to current events, the more flexible you can be in your storytelling, the more you’ll stand out. Unfortunately, when you’re too busy overthinking a concept, waiting for approvals, or going round and round in endless revisions, you fall behind. (FYI, sometimes doing something late is worse than not doing it all.)

“Listen to your experts (internal, agency, or otherwise) if they tell you that this ‘trendy’ thing you want to try is actually already tired. Appeal to people and be fun, but please don’t hop on a meme 3 months too late.”
—Keisha Hester, Column Five Marketing Manager

To keep the machine moving, use our free editorial calendar template for scheduling and planning. You should also pre-plan for the unexpected, especially when it comes to current events. In fact, we recommend creating a general system or rubric to help your content team understand when and how to respond to various trending things. For example, we ask ourselves the following questions before we hop in: 

• Is this relevant to our Brand Heart? We only think our participation is valuable if it aligns to our brand’s beliefs or areas of expertise. 
• Do we understand what’s really happening? You may want to jump in immediately, but sometimes you need more information before making a call. 
• Are we being honest? We never want to virtue signal or be performative. 
• Can we add value? Our brand always wants to be proactive vs. responsive, so doing things like sharing resources or helpful information feels more productive and worthwhile. 

Check out our additional tips to newsjack without being a jackass. 

9) Choose the right format—not the “cool” format. 

Marketing moves fast, as do content creation tools. Now, you have more options to share your story than ever, from ebooks, to interactives, to videos. These are all storytelling tools, and they all offer a different experience to your audience. That’s why you need to know which tools are right to tell your story to your audience. Depending on the channel, use-case, or general preference, people may want different types of content in different types of formats. That’s why it’s so important to choose the right format for your story.  

We’ve been guilty of this ourselves. For example, we once spent a (very large) number of hours on a slick interactive ebook that gave us very little ROI. It wasn’t because the content wasn’t valuable, or because the creative was bad. It was because, frankly, the format was not right for the story. Our ebook was meant to be a helpful resource for someone to bookmark, share with a team, or reference over and over. The robust interactive was beautiful, but the information was a bit more buried than it would be in a straightforward PDF ebook. Ultimately, we decided to translate the interactive’s content into a static PDF ebook, and it has been downloaded many more times than the interactive was viewed. 

If you’re not sure what types of formats you should be utilizing, see our breakdown of different formats and when to use them. 

10) Experiment with new things. 

Content marketing is a crowded space. Innovation and originality play a huge part in successful content. But like lemmings, it seems many brands are playing a game of “follow the leader.” One video goes viral, every other brand makes a copycat. One infographic does well, a brand wants five more on the same theme. It feels more comfortable to play it safe, but that also keeps you stagnated.

We know taking risks is scary, but it’s the only way to figure out how you can improve. That doesn’t mean you have to hop on every trend or sink a quarter of your year’s budget into one fancy new piece of content. But small, intentional risks are well worth it. Whether it’s mixing up your CTA style (we’ve experimented with a variety of visual CTAs) or exploring a new format, creative experimentation keeps you on your toes—and keeps you competitive. Even if you fail, there’s always a lesson somewhere.

“The only thing more powerful than ‘why?’ is ‘why not?’ Knowing what works by looking at the past is great, but great content practices always leave room for risk and experimentation.”
— Asher Rumack, Column Five Director of Growth

One helpful way to get inspired is to use our free competitive audit template to get insight into what your competition is doing, how you compare, and how you can outshine them. 

Last Tip: Get the Right Help 

From strategy to steady publishing, you might need some support to guide your content marketing operation. There are plenty of agencies out there, but it’s important that you cultivate a healthy, creative, and collaborative relationship with whomever you choose. 

• See our tips to find an agency with your expertise.  (Check out our content strategy FAQs if you want to start your search with us.) 
• Find out how to work effectively together once you sign the contract.

Above all, the best way to improve your marketing operation is to stay educated about the best branding and marketing practices. Check out our library of free resources, subscribe to our newsletter, and encourage your team to share what they’re learning. (We have an #inspiration slack channel where we share anything and everything.) The more you talk and share ideas, the more good ideas you’ll have. 

If you’re a growth-stage SaaS company, you know it’s the wild west out here. It’s a smaller customer pool, with more competition, and a ton of roadblocks along the path to purchase. How do you succeed? By working intelligently, focusing on measurable progress, and taking expert advice. (Hi, we’re the experts.) Having helped hundreds of brands over the last decade, we’ve seen the most common problems and pitfalls that SaaS marketers struggle with—and we know how to navigate them.

So today, we’re sharing our best down-and-dirty tips to help you get your marketing in shape, along with helpful resources, templates, and toolkits to make it a whole lot easier.

20 Tips to Improve Your SaaS Marketing

Whether you’re starting fresh or correcting course, we hope you find these tips helpful. (And if you have any of your own to share, please do!)

1) Create goals you can ACTUALLY measure.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, only 40% of B2B marketers have a documented content strategy. We know that SaaS marketers (whose bosses are more focused on the product than brand) are often flying without a strategy. But without a plan, you’re only going to waste everyone’s time and resources. To figure out if what you’re doing is actually working, use our guide to set measurable goals, track your progress, and adjust as needed, and download our B2B marketing strategy toolkit to craft a strategy that will help you reach your goals.

2) Creep on your competition’s content.

If you want to outshine your competitors, you need to know how they’re crushing it—and how they’re dropping the ball. Conduct a simple competitor content audit to dive deep into their content and spot opportunities to outshine them with your own brand storytelling.

3) Find the messaging gaps in your own content. (Trust us, they’re there.)

To create a seamless buyer experience, you need to say the right things at the right time. But how do you know what people need to hear? See our guide to map your customer journey, identify key messaging for each stage, and tailor your content accordingly.

4) Collaborate with sales to create a seamless brand experience.

If sales and marketing aren’t aligned, you can’t deliver the experience your customer needs and wants. (Fun fact: Only 60% of B2B marketers say they provide a consistent experience across their buyer journey.) To get on the same page, find out how to bridge marketing and sales in your buyer journey and create sales content that empowers your team to close the deal.

5) Focus on brand, not product.

In SaaS marketing, everyone is worried about product development, but it’s your brand that will ultimately help you stand out from your competition. Use our brand strategy toolkit to build your brand and tell your brand story in every piece of content.

6) Identify your brand values—and share them.

B2B consumers are emotional people, and they want to feel connected to the brands they buy from. Use our free workbook to identify your brand heart (aka purpose, vision, mission, and values), then create content to share these beliefs with your audience.

7) Nail your basics: Search, Email, Social.

When you’re creating a fresh marketing strategy, focus on Search, Email, and Social first. These are the core channels that will help you reach the right people, build strong relationships, and move people along the path to purchase over time. If you’re not sure who you’re trying to reach (or where they are), see our guides to find your target audience and create a distribution plan that helps them find your content.

8) Focus on the social channels that matter.

You don’t have to be everywhere or try to keep up with everyone. Only focus on where your audience is—and where you’re getting the most return. If you’re not sure what that is, see our guide choose the right social channels for your brand.

9) Tell your brand story at every touchpoint.

Your brand story is your biggest differentiator, so infuse it into every part of your marketing. From blog content, to social posts, to CTAs, tell the story of who you are, what you care about, and why your audience should care. For inspiration, use these 10 tips to tell a compelling brand story.

10) Maximize every piece of content.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 60% of B2B marketers have been asked to do more with the same resources. Luckily, you can get more mileage from your content if you remix, repurpose, and reuse. Turn that infographic into an Instagram story. Create a series of articles from that ebook. There are a million ways to get creative. For more tips to do that, find out how to put a divisible content strategy to use.

11) Create brand content that is actually on brand.

A consistent visual identity is a key part of your brand story, so make sure every piece of content you create accurately reflects who you are. You should have a complete brand identity, as well as brand guidelines, but it is especially helpful to create a simple checklist to vet every piece before it goes out the door.

12) Give buyers the info they need, then sit back.

B2B buying is changing. Buyers want less handholding, more information, and the option to complete their purchase online. Your job is to give them the information they need, in its most optimized presentation, to help them make their own choices. Find out more about how B2B buying is changing and how you can adapt.

13) Remember that B2B buyers are PEOPLE.

Although there are usually more stakeholders in a B2B buying decision, they aren’t all faceless corporate drones. Your buyers are people with feelings, so think about what makes them tick. Look for ways to speak to their needs, problems, and wants with an empathetic approach. See our tips to tap into empathy and turn it into great content.

14) Know the 5 types of B2B content—and use them all.

Every content strategy should include a mix of:

• Brand content (about your brand specifically—who you are, what you do, etc.)
• Editorial content (thought leadership, expertise, etc.)
• Talent content (for potential employees and current employees)
• Product content (sales/informational content)
• Performance content (tactical content in support of KPIs)

Make sure you have all types of content represented in your editorial calendar, and find out more about how each content type serves your brand goals.

15) Curate the perfect mix of content for your unique audience.

A good content mix is like a beautiful meal; it feeds you a little bit of everything you need to feel nourished and satisfied. In B2B, there are all sorts of ways to do this, from dense thought leadership to fun polls. To find out what you should be feeding your audience, see our guide to create the perfect mix of content.

16) Use different formats to tell your brand story effectively.

What types of content is your audience used to seeing? What do they like to engage with? What formats can deliver your message most effectively? These are important questions that should be considered during the brainstorming phase—not just when you’re handing a content brief off to your designer.

17) Only choose the metrics that matter.

You can only manage what you measure, but if what you’re measuring isn’t really that insightful, it won’t help you make meaningful improvements to your content strategy. (This is a big problem with vanity metrics that look great but mean very little.) To make sure you’re only focusing on numbers that will move the needle, see our guide to choose the right metrics for your content strategy.

18) Calculate ROI the right way.

ROI is one of the most frustrating parts of SaaS marketing, especially if you don’t know exactly how to calculate it. Get the clarity you need with our guide to determine ROI the easy way.

19) Don’t make content for you. Make it for your audience.

If you want people to connect with your content, you need to provide value in some way. Whether it inspires, educates, or entertains, ask these questions to vet your ideas and ensure they are meaningful and relevant to your audience.

20) Choose the right agency with the right expertise.

An agency can be a great support to guide your brand strategy or bring your content strategy to life. But one of the biggest challenges that tech marketers face is not being able to find a partner who can speak to their audience. See our guide to find a B2B agency with the right expertise to help you achieve your goals. And if you want to start your search with us, find out what it’s like to work with us on a content strategy—or reach out. We’d be happy to help you apply these tips (and a whole lot more) to get the marketing results you want.

If you want to create successful SaaS marketing, you need to focus on one thing: providing value to your audience. Talk about the things they care about, deliver the information they want, and do it in a way that feels natural and authentic to your brand. (It’s a fairly simple formula but one that many brands seem to struggle with—usually because their content is focused on the brand, not the audience.) 

But how do you ensure your brand is providing value? Start by using content to educate your audience. No matter who your audience is, or what your service is, I can guarantee that what they need and want is information that helps them learn, grow, and improve in some way.

When your brand provides that information, you’re providing a much-needed service and positioning yourself as a trusted resource in the process. It’s a true win-win. Also, as this type of content is usually a customer’s first introduction to your brand, it is one of the best ways to start (and nurture) your relationship. 

84% of B2B customers would buy from a supplier that they had a great relationship with—even if the terms of business were less preferential. 

—2022 Sana B2B Buyer Report

How to Educate Customers Through SaaS Marketing

“Education” can take many forms, from practical how-tos to expert deep dives. If you want to incorporate more educational content into your marketing strategy, here are five ways to do it and deliver great value to your audience.

1) Help them solve a problem.

If you want to create a connection with your audience, show them that you understand their challenges and, most importantly, are committed to helping them overcome them by giving them the information they need to do so. 

Not only does this help you showcase your expertise but you get to provide a helpful service to your audience—something they will appreciate,  remember, and hopefully return to you for. 

Tips to do it:

• Create personas. To get familiar with your clients’ pain points, talk to them. Follow our guide to create personas, and use this information to influence your content brainstorms. 
• Use empathy. Once you have a handle on their pain points, put yourself in their shoes and think of the type of content that they would love to have to help them navigate their unique challenges. For inspiration, see how these brands have put empathetic content marketing into action.
• Choose the right format. Educational content can come in all sorts of forms, including articles, guides, toolkits, templates, etc. Make sure to choose the best format for your content. 

Example: To help our audience navigate their content marketing challenges, we’ve offered our insights on how to fix the biggest content marketing challenges, how to find the right audience, and how to build a content strategy from scratch. 

2) Educate customers through the lessons you’ve learned.

People respect industry leaders who can speak authoritatively on the issues they face, especially when their authority comes from firsthand experience. 

In addition to helping people solve their problems, you can also educate them by sharing the lessons you’ve learned while navigating your own struggles (which are likely theirs too). When you’re open, honest, and transparent, your brand becomes much more human—and people are more likely to feel a connection if you can commiserate over the same struggles. 

Note: “Thought leadership” is a term that gets tossed around a lot in SaaS marketing, and so it has been cheapened, but the original idea behind it is to showcase your experience, share the lessons you’ve learned, and prove that you know your stuff.

“The lessons we remember are the lessons we learn the hard way.”

—Seth Godin

Even if you don’t think you are the world’s foremost expert, you probably still know more than your customers and thus are in a good position to educate them.

Tips to do it:

• Share your wins. If you tried something new and it worked, turn it into a helpful case study or share your best tips to help others do the same.
• Be honest about your failures. You only fail if you don’t learn from your mistakes. If you’ve experienced a challenge, be honest about what you went through and what you took away. (Bonus points if you can help others avoid the same mistakes.)
• Dig into your own data. You’d be surprised by how many interesting insights live in your spreadsheets. If you can dig into your data and find unique stories, you can create content that provides valuable information to your audience–and your industry. 

Example: We’ve written about the worst mistakes we’ve made, our successful experiments, and the biggest lessons we’ve learned in our first decade in business.

3) Help people get to know you.

As people move through the customer journey, they want to learn all sorts of information–not only about what you do but who you are and what makes you different. In this sense, telling your brand story is educating your customer. It’s also the single most effective way to differentiate yourself from your competitors. 

Sure, there’s a company with more website visitors than you have. Sure, they may have more e-books than you do. And, sure, they may have more speaking gigs too. But what they don’t have is your exact experience, perspective, personality, values, client service style, or goals.

The more you do this, the more you’ll naturally attract people who have similar perspectives or philosophies (who are more likely to convert).  

Tips to do it:

• Share your Brand Heart. Identify your purpose, vision, mission, and values, and turn that into content that speaks to who you are and what you believe. 
• Create a strong brand identity. The way you look, speak, and act is an essential part of your brand story. Make sure your content reflects that (and create a brand style guide to ensure it does). 
• Showcase your culture. Whether it’s an employee spotlight or a behind-the-scenes peek on social media, find out how to turn your culture into engaging content. 

Example: At Column Five, we produce informative content for our clients, but we also create content to showcase our company’s values and personal passions, such as our People for Periods interactive to help destigmatize menstruation. 

4) Teach them a practical skill.

Thought leadership is an important element in SaaS marketing, but sometimes brands get a little too esoteric, musing in long blog posts or philosophizing on a podcast. That knowledge is valuable, but if it isn’t immediately applicable to your audience’s life, it can take a backseat.

Your audience needs someone to cut through the crap and deliver simple, understandable, and easy-to-follow tips to complete a task, tackle a problem, or do something new. Tips, tutorials, how-to guides, and hacks are a great way to educate, but remember that brevity and practicality is key. 

Tips to do it:

• Create microcontent. You can easily share practical tips and tricks by breaking them up into small, bite-size pieces of microcontent for social. (Sharing snippets is also a great way to promote larger pieces of content.)
• Make it visual. Infographics are a super helpful and effective way to deliver tutorials, tips, or hacks. 

Example: We created this infographic on how to optimize your blog for publishing to help promo an e-book on content distribution.

5) Learn together.

You are an expert in your industry. You know your stuff. But you’re also eager to expand your knowledge to give your audience the best information possible at all times. Demonstrating that you are also an active student shows your audience that you aren’t just resting on your laurels. It helps them learn new things, too.

Tips to do it:

• Host a Q&A. If there are industry leaders or peers that are doing great work, pick their brain in a formal or informal interview. A Q&A via Facebook Live or Zoom is a great way to connect with peers and create evergreen content for your audience to consume. 
• Interview experts. There are experts both inside and outside of your company walls whose knowledge can be invaluable for you and your audience. You can formally interview them, ask for tips, or turn a conversation into an interesting article. (See more tips to turn your own team into content creators.) 

Example: We recently chatted with TBWA/Chiat/Day’s John Hickman about the keys to success in B2B.

How to Master SaaS Marketing

Whether you’re trying to entertain, inspire, or educate customers through your content, remember that value is everything. As you build your content strategy, think of your audience’s pain points, vet your ideas, and look for new ways to deliver the content they want through the most effective channels. (For more tips to do this, check out our Ultimate Guide to B2B Strategy.)

And, of course, if you’re struggling to do any of that on your own, consider bringing in some expert help. See our tips to find an agency with the right expertise, or find out what it’s like to work with us on a content strategy. We’d love to help you educate your audience at every stage along the path to purchase. 

B2B marketing isn’t easy, and in the tech world, it’s increasingly challenging. From crowded marketplaces to internal misalignment, content marketers are facing a range of issues that affect their day-to-day work. This is increasingly clear in the Content Marketing Institute’s 2022 Technology Content Marketing report, which explores the state of tech marketing in everything from strategy and content creation to distribution and metrics. Above all, the report highlights the biggest challenges tech marketers are facing—and, boy, do they sound familiar. Having helped B2B brands of all sizes over the last decade, we are more than familiar with these challenges. Fortunately, we also know how to tackle them.

How to Tackle the Top 5 Challenges in Technology Marketing 

According to the Content Marketing Institute, the top 5 biggest challenges tech marketers face include: 

• Creating content that appeals to multi-level roles within the target audience 
• Accessing subject matter experts to create content 
• Internal communication between teams/silos 
• Creating valuable content instead of sales-oriented content 
• Differentiating products/services from the competition

If these sound familiar to you, don’t worry. It just means that 1) You aren’t alone. 2) You’re in the right place. Here, we’ll break down these challenges and give you our best tips, tools, and resources to tackle them effectively. 

Problem 1: Creating content that appeals to multi-level roles within the target audience. 

If you don’t understand who your target audience is, what they care about, or how to make content that is relevant to them, your content won’t succeed. Of course, considering that the average B2B purchase requires multiple stakeholders (according to Gartner research, it can include up to 20), you need to know how to tailor your messaging to multiple audiences. 

The fix: Fortunately, the more strategically you approach content creation, the easier it is to create content that makes an impact. 

• Create personas. These will help you understand your audience’s unique needs, wants, challenges, desires, etc. With this clarity, you can craft content that speaks directly to different roles within the same organization. Start with our free template to create personas, and try these tips to find your target audience. 
• Think in campaigns. A good marketing campaign tells a cohesive story, but it provides different entry points into that story, tailored for each specific audience. When trying to reach different groups, think of their unique needs/interests, and find an emotional hook that speaks to those needs. Different content may take different forms, too. Your higher-level thought leadership for C-level decision-makers may do well in an industry publication, while a free e-book on your website may be the perfect resource for mid-level decision-makers. Use our free campaign template to brainstorm campaign ideas across touchpoints.
• Nail your messaging. Regardless of who you’re speaking to, telling a consistent story is crucial. Find out how to create brand messaging that resonates and reinforces your brand story. 

You should also strive for a healthy content mix to create a seamless path to purchase. Find out what 5 types of B2B content you should be creating. 

Problem 2: Accessing subject matter experts to create content. 

62% of technology marketers say their organization outsources at least one content marketing activity.
—Content Marketing Institute

Tech can be highly specialized, so you need content creators that can speak confidently and authoritatively on a subject matter. But those voices are not always easy to find. (And, in fact, we find that sometimes the loudest voices in marketing have the least interesting things to say.) 

Still, you need experts to help you create the rich, valuable content your audience deserves. 

The fix: Luckily, there are many ways to tap into the expertise inside and outside your company’s walls. 

• Turn your team into content creators. Who knows about your field more than the people actually working in it? Go straight to the source by tapping the people in your company to generate interesting content. You can also pair a writer with these experts to help expand their ideas, shape a narrative, and turn it into a compelling piece. Luckily, things like Q&As, guest columns, or team roundups are relatively low-lift ways to generate a steady stream of content. 
• Reach out to experts in your field. Interviews are one of the best ways to share knowledge, gather insights, and expand your reach. Outside of your company, turn to industry peers and experts to conduct an interesting and relevant interview. This can be a formal interview or a casual conversation (either format is easier than ever, thanks to tools like Zoom). 
• Use an agency. A good content agency has a talented network of creators across many fields. If you’re on the hunt, see our 5 tips to outsource tech marketing.

Note: If you do end up using an agency, follow these tips to make your collaboration go as smoothly as possible. 

Problem 3: Internal communication between teams/silos. 

Behind-the-scenes frictions are often one of the biggest problems in a marketing operation that is struggling. (It’s why, along with strategy and technology, your organizational structure is so crucial to a mature marketing organization.) 

The fix: When teams become disjointed, it’s time to focus on clarity and alignment.

• Know your goals. We find that a lack of clarity around goals is usually the root of all misalignment, miscommunication, and frustration. If people aren’t on the same page, aren’t clear on who owns what, or aren’t on board with what you’re trying to achieve, your efforts are doomed. Find out how to document your goals to keep everyone aligned.
• Share and tell. To really collaborate effectively, colleagues need to understand each other’s work and feel invested in it. If it doesn’t feel like you’re on the same team, or you can’t see how one department’s work influences another, you need more open lines of communication. Regular meetings to share your wins and in-progress work can go a long way toward breaking down walls.

Note: Understanding the way different people on your team think and communicate can also go a long way toward creating healthy team dynamics. Find out about the different types of creative thinkers and how to work best with each. 

Problem 4: Creating valuable content instead of sales-oriented content. 

We sure do know about this one. This is the cardinal sin of content marketing, and yet it is the most common thing we see in the wild. Marketers are so focused on what they want to say about their brand they forget to think about what their audience actually wants and needs to hear. Again, content marketing is meant to start a conversation, so you shouldn’t be selling off the bat. 

The fix: Ultimately, you need to have a clear understanding about what marketing’s role is—and how you are going to do it for your particular audience. 

• Understand the difference between marketing and sales. No, really. In too many organizations, sales bleeds into marketing and muddles the message. Understand what the true function of marketing is, then can you learn to bridge marketing and sales in your buyer’s journey. 
• Use empathy. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and you will be able to connect with them much more effectively. The secret to doing that? Employ empathy. Think about their fears, worries, frustrations, desires, hopes, and dreams—then create content that speaks to these points. If you’re not sure what empathetic content marketing looks like, here are 15 brands that do it well. 
• Vet your ideas. To ensure your audience will actually care about your content, you need to do more than brainstorm ideas—you need to carefully analyze each idea to decide whether or not it will provide value. To do that, ask these 5 questions every time you come up with a new idea, and try these tips to create value-centric content. 

See more tips to create interesting and engaging B2B content. 

Problem 5: Differentiating products/services from the competition.

60% of technology marketers said they stand out by differentiating their content.
—Content Marketing Institute

As the marketplace becomes more crowded, differentiation becomes increasingly challenging. (In fact, in these conditions, your product/service matters much less than your actual brand.) But with so many brands focused on keeping up with the Joneses, everyone is looking like a copy…of a copy…of a copy. This is why so much B2B marketing is, frankly, terrible. But it’s also why you have a huge opportunity to steal the spotlight. 

The fix: If you want to stand out in the crowd, start with a critical eye. 

• Do a content audit. Before you even build a content strategy, we always recommend doing a content audit of your brand’s content, as well as your competitors’ content. This helps you spot your strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities to zig where they zag. Start with our step-by-step guide to conduct a content audit.
• Create a strong brand identity. The way you look and speak has a huge effect on how your brand is perceived, and it will help you stand out from the crowd. For example, if your whole industry uses blue branding, you’ll turn heads with purple. If your competitors are dry and pretentious, adopting a down-to-earth voice will help people feel more connected to you. Good content marketing is about building a relationship with your audience over time. The stronger your brand identity (and the more consistent you are), the more you will build a community. See our tips to find your brand voice and personality, build a visual identity, and create a style guide that makes it easy to keep your content on-brand. 

Ultimately, remember that brand-building is the key to longevity. To make that a priority, find out how to build a brand team that will grow your business. 

The Secret to Tech Marketing Success: Strong Strategy

No matter your product or service, if you want to be a successful tech marketer, you need a strategy-led organization. With a clear and focused plan, you can create measurable results, increase your impact, and work more effectively at every level. To make sure your team is on the right track, use our free content strategy toolkit to build the right strategy for your brand. And if you need a little outside help, feel free to start your hunt with us. Find out what it’s like to work with us on a content strategy, or reach out directly. We’d love to help you find and keep your audience. 

Pearson provides world-class educational tools, content, products, and services to help people adapt to our changing world, navigate its challenges and opportunities, and make progress in their lives.

Pearson needed to increase product awareness and lead generation for four key audiences: higher education faculty, women in STEM, STEM teachers, and parents of college students.

Each of the four campaigns centered around a core piece of creative (one promoted video, as well as three promoted e-books). We tailored each asset for the specific target audience, helping to generate interest around Pearson’s unique products and services.

To make sure these campaigns were as effective as possible, we took a two-pronged approach to our distribution strategy. 1) Identify which creative content was most effective. 2) Identify which channels were most effective for distributing that content.

The key to success was strategic, aggressive testing. Fortunately, Pearson understood the value of this approach and let us build in time and budget for a testing phase to collect valuable data and optimize our strategy accordingly. With these insights, we could ensure the budget we invested would give them the best ROI.

To do this, we first tested to identify the main audience to target across all campaigns, then segmented further to identify specific audiences for each campaign.

Once we had established the audiences, we tested creative messaging to see which ad variation earned the most conversions (specifically ebook downloads) across Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and native ad placements. We also staggered the campaigns over the course of 6 months. This allowed us to use the insights gained from each campaign to inform the next, helping to continuously improve our results.

To track our results, we presented weekly reports to Pearson outlining insights from each campaign. This transparency helped us work with Pearson effectively—and helped their teams learn from each other’s campaigns.

Thanks to this strategic approach, we were able to help Pearson reach the right customers across the web, earning:

• 615,745 views for the awareness campaign
• 840 total ebook downloads

Above all, working with a collaborative partner who understood the value of time and intentional testing was the true secret to success.

Ultimately, all content marketers want the same thing: to create compelling content that converts. Unfortunately, many marketers often confuse quantity with quality, churning out piece after piece that gets lackluster results. They look at content marketing as a numbers game, thinking they just need to produce a massive volume of content and surely something will stick. When their content doesn’t work, they blame the design, the timing, the distribution strategy—basically everything but the core problem. (Trust me, as the cofounder of a content marketing agency with a decade of experience, I’ve seen this happen over and over again.) However, when it comes to marketing your brand, there is one simple truth: If a piece of content fails, it’s because it did not speak to its audience.

At its core, successful content marketing is about engaging with people through content—not talking at them or selling to them. If your content isn’t made with your audience’s unique needs or interests in mind, you won’t be able to engage with them in any sort of genuine way. You won’t move them down the path to purchase. You won’t even grab their attention for more than a second.

Luckily, there is one way to ensure your content is meaningful, relevant, and effective: Use empathy.

What Is Empathy?

According to Merriam-Webster, empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. As Dr. Brené Brown notes, empathy is “feeling with people.”

In the context of content marketing, feeling with people is about understanding your audience’s needs, putting yourself in their shoes to understand the challenges they face, and creating content that speaks to those unique issues.

The #1 thing that contributes to content marketing success is the value it provides.

“Yeah, but isn’t content marketing about educating others?” Sure—if it’s educating them about the things they need and want to know.

Empathy is not talking about yourself, your services, your pricing, and how great you are. It is not newsjacking in a desperate attempt to create relevance. (Does a SaaS company that operates in the financial service industry need to be commenting on what Kanye West is up to? Probably not.) Empathy in content marketing is simply about putting your audience’s needs first.

This doesn’t mean you can’t ever ask your audience to sign up for a newsletter or download an e-book. It just means you should prioritize compelling content that attracts them to you so that you can offer those goods and move them along the buyer journey.

Why Should You Use Empathy In Your Content Marketing?

Leading with empathy helps you create far superior content that is more meaningful, memorable, and effective.

• Empathetic content grabs people’s attention. Empathy helps you meet your audience where they’re at. A catchy headline that speaks to someone’s immediate challenges is much more effective than a sales-y listicle about all of the reasons they “need” your product.
• Empathetic content strengthens your relationship with your audience. When you can clearly communicate that you understand your audience’s struggle and have the expertise to help solve their problem, your audience will see that you really care, which makes them more eager to form a relationship with you. And if you can create content that helps reduce your audience’s pain and frustration, your brand will automatically become the hero.
• Empathetic content improves ROI. No one wants to waste time, money, or energy on content that doesn’t move the needle. Building your content strategy around empathy ensures that the content you do make speaks to your audience, makes a bigger impact, and makes them more likely to convert.

But what does empathy look like in your day-to-day practice? We’ll break it down for you.

How to Employ Empathy In Your Marketing

When you’re marketing your brand, there are three simple steps to ensure you’re coming up with empathetic marketing ideas that will connect with the right people.

1) Develop marketing personas.

A friend recently said to me, “When you’re thinking about content, consider the hell that your clients are trying to escape from and the heaven that you want to deliver them to.” While this might be a dramatic statement, it certainly works for content marketing, especially when your goal is lead generation or increasing sales.

Of course, to understand your clients’ hell, and what will appeal to them, you need to know exactly who they are. Creating customer personas (also known as “psychographic mapping”) is the first step to really understanding your audience.

When you know your audience’s specific pain points, wants, and needs, you have much better insight to fuel your content brainstorms later on.

How to do it: Start with our free guide and template to create your own marketing personas. Having direct conversations with existing customers will ensure you get the most accurate perspective, but accessing any available research about your target audience (e.g., surveys, research, reports) can also provide helpful insight.

To pursue empathetic content marketing, make this your mantra: Sell less, listen more.

2) Brainstorm around your personas’ pain points. 

During brainstorms, content marketers often ask, “What kind of content will help me sell more?” That’s the wrong way to look at things. Instead, you should ask, “What kind of content will provide so much value to readers that it will attract customers?”

According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2022 B2B Content Marketing report, 87% of the most successful marketers prioritize their audience’s needs over their organization’s message.

To start your brainstorm the right way, do a brain dump of the general topics, issues, or ideas that you know your audience will be interested in. You will refine specific ideas later, but this is the time to identify the core subjects that will attract their attention. (Note: Pain points are good to hone in on because they are usually the things people have the strongest emotional reaction to.)

How to do it: One great way to get inside your audience’s mind is to do a little online research about what people are searching for or talking about. For example, AnswerThePublic is a handy tool that shows you all of the questions people are asking about a particular topic. These questions can be great content themselves (e.g., The Ultimate Guide to _______) or help you hone in on relevant subjects within your expertise.

You might also look around to see what other people in your industry are saying about a topic, then take a better or opposing stance. (A strong stance is a great way to pique your audience’s interest.)

3) Add even more value.

It’s easy to get excited about a cool idea, but if you can’t justify how or why your target audience will really be interested in it, it won’t help you achieve your goals.

So, once you’ve brainstormed your general ideas, you need to take it a step further to refine and vet your best ideas through your personas. (Note: This is the most important step of any brainstorm—and especially crucial to tap into the underlying empathy you want your content to convey.)

Whether your content is educational, inspirational, or entertaining, the more your ideas provide unique value to your audience, the better your content will be.

How to do it: Identify your best ideas, then go through them one by one to identify what pain point, need, or want they speak to. You may find some ideas don’t hold water, but you may also be able to refine your ideas to make them more interesting and specific. (We’ve often seen a so-so idea become a killer story by tweaking the angle slightly.) If you’re struggling to refine your ideas, ask these questions to make them more impactful.

• What practical knowledge or skill can you deliver? Things like tutorials, tips, hacks, how-tos, etc. can solve problems and help your audience save time, money, or frustration. The more helpful your content is, the more your audience will come to see you as a trusted resource.
• What resources can you create to help them apply this newfound knowledge? Templates, guides, toolkits, maps, calculators—there is all sorts of supplemental content that can be incredibly valuable to your audience. (For example, we’ve designed camping guides for Coachella and walking maps of San Francisco for conferences.)
• What similar paint points have you faced? Sharing your greatest lessons or mistakes can be a great way to humanize your brand, demonstrate empathy, make your audience feel less alone, and provide valuable solutions.
• What escape do they need/want? Your content doesn’t always have to be strict thought leadership. Humorous or entertaining content can be a welcome distraction for your audience (and a great way to grab their attention). For example, when we got fed up with all of the buzzwords and fluff we see in the marketing world, we created the Marketing Gibberish Generator to help social-guru-rockstar-ninjas BS their way through their next marketing meeting.

For more tips, here are 7 ideas to create content that provides true value. And see these 15 examples of empathetic content marketing in action.

How to Keep Connecting with Your Audience

Empathetic content marketing isn’t a one-time task; it’s an ongoing practice. Keep listening, keep reflecting, and keep looking for unique ways to engage with your audience. While your content strategy may change each quarter, keep empathy at the center and you’ll always be working toward the right thing.

That said, there are a few more things to keep in mind as you build your content practice.

• Choose the right format. In content marketing, the medium is just as important as the message. If you’re not sure which format to choose, see our breakdown of content marketing formats to find out what type might work best for your goals.
• Maximize your content. As a marketer, you want to get the most mileage from every piece of content you create. Find out how to use a divisible content strategy to make more content with less work.
• Strengthen your strategy. Make sure you have a clearly documented content strategy that keeps everyone on the same page.
• Measure your success. As much as empathetic content marketing relies on emotion, you want to see tangible evidence that your content is emotionally connecting. Make sure you have the right measurement infrastructure set up, and find how to choose the right metrics from the jump.

Of course, we know this work doesn’t happen overnight. If you’re over-extended or just plain stuck in your marketing, some expert support can help. See our tips to find the right content agency, learn more about what it’s like to work with us on your content strategy, or reach out directly. We’d love to help you give your audience the content they deserve.