From AI to analytics, content marketers have more tools to succeed than ever before. But you can only get the best results if you’re working with a solid content marketing strategy from the start. 

Having been in the content marketing game for well over a decade, we’re often surprised to see the same problems plague our clients, whether they’re smaller startups or Fortune 500 behemoths. 

• They aren’t aligned around the same goals. 
• They struggle to understand their audience. 
• They don’t create effective content. 
• They can barely get any piece of content out the door.

The problems go on and on, but once we dig into their content marketing operation, we generally find that these problems stem from one, or two, or five things that are wrong with their core content strategy. 

Luckily, some of the biggest problems can be solved by the simplest fixes—and we can give them to you. So, whether you’re dealing with recurring challenges or one big blocker, here’s how you can break through and get back on the right track.

How to Fix the Top 15 Content Marketing Strategy Mistakes

If you’re guilty of one (or all) of these common mistakes, don’t get down on yourself. We know about these firsthand because we’ve been guilty of them too. But we also hope you’ll right these wrongs, put our tips to work, and come out on top with your next killer case study. 

Mistake 1: Not Documenting Your Strategy

If you’re working with a small team, small budgets, and a long to-do list, it can seem inconvenient to stop and document your strategy. But keeping it “in your head” doesn’t do anyone any good. 

Only 44% of enterprise content marketers have a documented content strategy.
—Content Marketing Institute

This is a sad statistic, but it’s not surprising, as we see too many clients come to us without a clear strategy on paper. It’s also no surprise that they struggle to work effectively or get the results they want. But the #1 thing you can do to completely transform your marketing is document your strategy. (Trust us, by tweaking our strategy on paper, we increased sales 160%.)

The fix: Download our free content strategy toolkit, then grab your core team, dig into your historical data, and work through the steps in our guide to create a content strategy. We’ve perfected the process to ensure you walk away with a solid, cohesive strategy that will help you achieve the goals you want.

Mistake 2: Working Without Personas

If the content you create isn’t collectively moving you toward your goal, it’s not the content’s fault. Oftentimes, weak content happens because you don’t know who you’re trying to create content for. 

The #1 challenge B2B marketers face is creating the right content for their audience.
—Content Marketing Institute

We harp on this all the time—and for good reason. 

• Who is your audience?
• What do they need?
• What do they care about?
• What motivates them?

It’s important to do the footwork to get inside your audience’s minds so you know how to tailor your content to them. 

For example, when Dropbox asked us to help revamp their employer brand, we dove into audience insights to understand how to position the brand to potential employees. With a revised campaign, we were able to help Dropbox increase brand perception 7%. 

The fix: Talk to your potential customers, ask questions, and get inside their minds. (If you’re not sure who your audience is, here’s how to find them.) Once you have a clear picture, you can use our guide to create personas and ideal customer profiles. Going forward, anytime you have a content idea, use your personas/ICPs to vet your ideas or refine them to make them more compelling. 

(BTW, personalization can do a lot to make your audience feel seen. Find out how to use AI to add more personalization throughout the buyer journey.)

Mistake 3: Content Isn’t Tied to a Goal

Too much content out there is total fluff, overly salesy, or completely random. There’s no cohesive story or supporting message. To be truly effective, every piece of content should directly map to a goal.

The fix: Follow these tips to set clear, measurable goals that will get results.

Mistake 4: Not Including the Right Stakeholders from the Beginning

You might be excited to hit the ground running with your strategy, but a content marketing operation requires a lot of people—and they all have different opinions and perspectives. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve made it to the finish line with a project, only to be sabotaged by a barrage of last-minute adjustments from late-stage shotcallers.

41% of B2B marketers cite workflow issues/content approvals as a key challenge when creating content.
—Content Marketing Institute

Feedback is not a problem inherently, but when people drop in with their opinions in the final stage (having often not reviewed the project goals), content often gets watered down or altered so significantly it no longer serves its original purpose. 

The fix: Build solid timelines with built-in review stages. Don’t go on to the next stage of production until you have sign-off from all relevant parties. (If you’re not sure who needs to be involved in what, here’s what an ideal content marketing team looks like.)

Remember: It’s important to get overall strategy buy-in from higher-ups before you even start to create content. The more you can involve people in the vision, the easier it will be to get the budget for that new video or design time for those social ads.

Mistake 5: Making Scattershot Content

This is probably the number one problem we see when brands pursue content marketing. They may get excited about a certain project or format, but their overall content is created and published inconsistently. 

54% of B2B marketers struggle with creating content consistently, and 44% struggle with creating quality content.
—Content Marketing Institute

While a one-off piece might work if you’re lucky, you need a cohesive content plan that provides true value to your audience regularly.

The fix: Instead of publishing piecemeal content when you can get around to it, break your strategy down into content campaigns centered around a core message or theme. Use our brand messaging framework to make sure you’re tailoring the right message for each audience.

Mistake 6: Trying to Do It All Yourself

Year after year, marketers are asked to do more with less. Whether it’s a shifting economy, industry issues, or company challenges, marketers are always having to tighten their belts.

55% of B2B marketers are working with the same budget (or a decrease).
—Content Marketing Institute

This means you have to be as smart as possible with your time and your budget. Fortunately, as AI technology has come on the scene, there are more ways to increase your productivity and reduce your workload by employing AI tools to help in everything from content creation to automation. 

A lack of resources is the #1 challenge facing B2B marketers today. But 72% have begun to use generative AI tools.
—Content Marketing Institute

The fix: Review your tech stack to see what tools you’re using, and what tools you might add to the mix. (Here are 50+ content marketing strategy tools to help you work more effectively, plus 30 AI hacks to work more effectively.)

Mistake 7: Not Measuring or Not Measuring Correctly

This is one of our biggest pet peeves, and we see it over and over (even in our clients). You can’t make any clear progress if you have no benchmarks—and you certainly can’t demonstrate your ROI if you don’t track your results. 

The fix: Try this 3-step process to choose the right metrics for your goals, and double-check that you have the correct infrastructure in place to measure. (Trust us, we have spent more time than we’d like on the phones with reps to get the right tech on our site.)

Mistake 8: Refusing to Change

When you’ve put the work into a content strategy, it’s frustrating to change course halfway through when you realize it’s too unrealistic. But if there’s anything we’ve learned in the last decade of marketing, it’s that things change—and they change quickly (hi, pandemic!). 

The fix: It’s important to review your strategy regularly to ensure it aligns with your current goals and market conditions. A good strategy provides a firm foundation with the flexibility to scale. If you prefer to run lean, consider taking a moonshot approach to crafting a strategy. We used this to tweak our own content—and increased our leads 78% in 6 months.

Mistake 9: Missing Easy Opportunities

It’s easy to get tunnel vision when you work on your own brand day in and day out. (Again, we’re guilty of this too.) But it’s important to take a critical look at not only your own strategy but your competition’s strategy too. We can’t tell you how many times a simple competitor audit has surfaced surprising insights into areas a client can easily make a play.

The fix: You should always be looking for gaps to fill in your content strategy, as well as easy plays to get visibility. Start with our guide to find the best keywords to target (including low-hanging fruit your competitors aren’t targeting). You can also conduct a content audit to identify gaps in your own marketing mix, as well as subjects your competitors are covering.

Mistake 10: A Weak Production Pipeline

Content marketing takes a lot of work, but without the right resources, skills, or infrastructure to produce it, it’s nearly impossible to create quality content consistently. But if you have a clear division of labor and a streamlined workflow, you can achieve incredible results. 

For example, by optimizing workflow, we were able to help Course Hero produce 600 infographic study guides over three years. This helped them provide a massive library of guides to their audience and build a reputation as a trusted resource. 

The fix: Having made just about every mistake in the book, we know how to avoid the major pitfalls in content creation. See our guide to optimize your content creation process and work more effectively at every stage. 

Mistake 11: Not A/B Testing

This goes along with ineffective measuring. Your goal is to move away from guesses and hunches and look for more concrete answers by testing your hypotheses. You think blue is the right color for that button? You might be surprised to see that red is the real winner.

For example, when Teach For America asked us to deploy a paid media campaign to recruit new teachers, we embarked on a strategic testing campaign optimized for learning and iteration. Through this approach, we were able to eclipse their goals 124%.

The fix: Even if something is working, it might still be improved. Look for opportunities to tinker, tweak, and test wherever you can. (AI can be a big help here.) 

Mistake 12: Not Aligning Content With Your Journey

The strongest content marketing strategy delivers the right message, to the right person, at the right time. Unfortunately, too many marketers create content that is too generic or too granular. It’s no surprise that they can’t easily move their audience from one stage to the next. 

48% of B2B marketers struggle to align content to different stages of the journey.
—Content Marketing Institute

The fix: If you want to be successful, you need to understand your audience’s needs at each stage, then choose both the messaging and format that will best speak to those needs. Start with our free template to map your journey and key messaging, then assess how to make great content for every stage of the buyer’s journey.

Mistake 13: Not Matching the Message to the Format

Different audiences crave different types of content formats, which are often influenced by channel. Whether it’s ebooks, infographics, or short-form video, it’s important to deliver your message in the right package.

B2B marketers cite case studies, video, and thought leadership articles as the top three most effective formats.
—Content Marketing Institute

The fix: Understand which types of formats are best for different types of storytelling. See our breakdown of 13 types of content—and how each can help you achieve a different goal. 

Mistake 14: Not Maximizing Your Content

It takes so much time and energy to make great content, yet many marketers publish it once and let it gather dust for eternity. This is a huge opportunity missed.

The fix: Identify opportunities to repurpose and reuse content. For example, an e-book can easily be spun into a few blog posts and an infographic. Learn how a divisible content strategy can help you do this.

Mistake 15: Playing It Too Safe

True, you don’t want to fix something that isn’t broken. But never mixing it up breeds stagnation—and that’s creative death for your content strategy. Also, as brands become more and more homogenous, it’s increasingly challenging to stand out in the crowd. That’s why something you need to try something edgy from time to time.

For example, we collaborated with Unbabel to create the edgy “STFU campaign.” This NSFW approach turned heads and helped the brand make a big splash.

The fix: Even if you don’t have a huge budget, challenge yourself to try something different, whether it’s a different format or a different way to ideate. If you want more tips to stand out, try these ideas to come up with bold campaign ideas. 

How to Strengthen Your Content Marketing Strategy

Ultimately, the key to a strong content marketing strategy is the ability to test, tweak, and adapt as you go. For that reason, we recommend reassessing your strategy quarterly to make sure you’re still aligned to your goals. In the meantime, continue to educate yourself, optimize your process, and look for ways to work smarter. If you need a few more tips to do that…

• Use these 100+ content marketing tools and resources to help you create better content.
• Try even more tips to overcome your content marketing problems.
• Find out how to make creative content that tells your brand story.

And if you still need some help, don’t be afraid to bring in some experts. You can follow our tips to find a good content marketing agency, or hit us up.

We’re not gonna lie; content marketers took a bit of a beating this last year. As the economy tanked, algorithms changed, and AI came out of nowhere, it was an adventure (to say the least). But with a new year ahead, it’s time to take a step back, clean house, and refocus your efforts. 

Luckily, whether you’re rebuilding your entire strategy or looking to enhance what you already have, there are a lot of things you can do to improve the way you work and the results you get (especially if you’re one of the 58% of content marketers struggling with a lack of resources).

That’s why we’ve compiled this handy list of 20 things you can do now to help your 2024 turn out a lot better. 

How Content Marketers Can Make 2024 Better

Whether you’re a two-person marketing team or a massive department, tackling these to-dos (to whatever degree you can) will help you work smarter and more effectively next year.  

1) Revisit your Content Strategy. 

A lot of things can happen throughout the year that shift your strategy in one direction or another. A product launch, a company change, a surprise announcement—these are all things that need to be immediately addressed, but they can also nudge you a little off course. 

It’s important to build a content strategy that is both solid and flexible, as you will inevitably need to adjust throughout the year. But starting the new year with a documented strategy is one of the best ways to set yourself up for success. 

Tip: To make sure you have everything you need, download our free content strategy toolkit and guide to get it on paper. Additionally, you shouldn’t only review your strategy at the end of the year. Get into the practice of reviewing it once a quarter to make sure your team’s efforts are on track. 

2) Make sure your goals are measurable. 

We’re still shocked by how many content marketers don’t document their content strategy—especially their goals. Without articulated goals, you have no North Star to work toward. And if you do have goals, but they are vague and not easily measurable, it’s even more difficult to prove your success. (Without that demonstrated success, when it’s time to ask for more budget or buy-in on future projects, it will be that much harder to justify your ask.)  

Tip: To get your goals on paper, see our free guide to set goals you can actually measure. 

3) Measure the right things. 

Although your goals should be measurable, you don’t need to measure every single thing. (That’s a great way to paralyze yourself with data.) Focus only on the most insightful and relevant data—and make sure you have the infrastructure to gather it. 

Tip: See our guide to choose the right metrics for your content strategy to identify the best things to measure.

4) Audit your tools. 

With so many tools available, marketers have plenty of support—especially now that AI is on the scene. But success relies on choosing the right tools for you. 

• Is everything working the way you need it to? 
• Are you using everything consistently?
• Are there more efficient tools available? 
• Is there something you’ve wanted to experiment with?

A proper audit will help you identify areas where you may be wasting your budget or can use what you have more effectively. 

Tip: If you’re not sure what tools you might add to your arsenal, check out these 100+ tools and resources to improve your content marketing.

5) Spend your remaining budget. 

The end-of-year accounting mantra is always “use it or lose it.” If you haven’t used your whole budget, it’s time to spend it. Whether you want to create some seasonal content or experiment with a new tool (as we just mentioned), make the most of your remaining budget to help you hit your goals. This is also a good time to try something bold or experimental, especially if you have the budget to burn.

Tip: If you’re looking for opportunities to spend your budget, here are 10 ways to use it up.

6) Ask for more budget—the right way. 

Budget is always a touchy subject, especially in these last few years. But if you can demonstrate a solid need, you may be surprised by the results. Whether you want to create more content next year, expand your team, or invest in some additional support, you simply have to approach your ask strategically.

Tip: Try these tips to get more budget next year.

7) Take a day to look at what your competitors are doing.  

If you want to know how to strategize for the new year, it’s good to catch up on what other people are doing (or have done) well. You may find some good inspiration in their sites or social feeds (or realize that you’re creating content that is a lot better than theirs). Either way, knowing what competitors are doing will help you strategize effectively. 

• Did your competitors do anything particularly unusual or unique this year?
• How does their content compare to yours?
• How are you positioning yourself differently?

Tip: To help you assess your competitors, check out our competitive analysis template. The questions outlined can help you document the similarities and differences you find. That said, you can also find inspiration from people outside of your industry. For example, find out what B2B marketers can learn from film directors.

8) Check in with inactive contacts.

In the spirit of “out with the old, in with the new,” it might be time to let go of some ineffective practices—and contacts. After all, content marketing isn’t about quantity; it’s about quality. Also, most marketing automation software charges by the number of contacts, so cleaning out unengaged subscribers can be cost-effective.

Give people an opportunity to stay or go with a simple check-in email. 

• Use a distinct subject line like “Still want to keep in touch?” or “Are we breaking up?” 
• Emphasize that you love sending stuff their way, but acknowledge that you want to be respectful of their time and energy.
• Include two buttons: one to stay subscribed and one to unsubscribe.

Tip: Chances are your inactive people won’t open the email, in which case you might want to check in with them once a quarter or twice a year. (We count inactives as people who haven’t opened an email in 2 months.) 

9) Check in with engaged subscribers.

Naturally, you want to provide the best experience for the people who are happy and willing to stay with you. Use this time to check in and send well wishes. (The holidays are a great excuse for this.)

• Let them know you appreciate their support this year. 
• Ask for feedback/ideas about how you can help them or provide the content they need.
• Tease exciting things you have in the works. 

This is a great excuse to stop “marketing” and remind people you’re here for them and care about providing real value. 

Tip: You might also want to send a recap or roundup of your best pieces of content. 

10) Check for broken things. 

There are all sorts of things that can detract from your brand experience, and it’s often the little things that can turn someone away or diminish your brand in their eyes. Broken links, 404s, buttons that don’t work—these are exasperating for both the user and the marketer. (We know this firsthand, as we’ve found broken links—or links to the wrong resource—on our site more times than we’d like to admit.)

If you have some extra time as things are winding down, take a day to double and triple-check landing pages, contact info, ads, functionality, and all those other seemingly small (but very big) things. 

Tip: Use tools like broken link checker, and test your page speed to flag any loading problems.

11) Clean up your own inbox. 

Content marketers are absolutely inundated with content, and clocking into an overwhelming inbox is not the best way to start your day. Feel free to go on a merciless unsubscribing spree to clear up your brain space and consume only the content that is actually valuable to you. If you have a “someday I’ll read this” folder with articles that are a year (or two) old, either take this time to read it or clean it out. 

Tip: To make life easier, see this roundup of tools that can clean up your inbox for you. 

12) Subscribe to one new publication or podcast.

Once you’ve done your cleanup, search out new sources of inspiration. You don’t even have to subscribe—you can bookmark if you prefer. Again, the content you consume should always offer value. New ideas and inspiration are incredibly helpful to spark your creativity, which is probably waning as we head into the holidays.

Tip: We’d recommend subscribing to Column Five’s Best Story Wins podcast, where we interview industry experts who are winning hearts, minds, and market share. We also love the thought leadership the Content Marketing Institute puts out. 

13) Hold a postmortem. 

When you’re working on content marketing day in, day out, it’s hard to take a step back and look at your efforts as a whole. That’s why it’s helpful to do a proper review of this year’s marketing to identify what worked, what didn’t, and where you have the biggest opportunities to improve. 

• What were the most and least successful pieces you published?
• What did the most successful pieces have in common?
• What subjects did people gravitate toward?
• What formats worked best?
• How can you improve or experiment going forward? 
• What content gives you the most ROI (e.g., e-books, articles, infographics, videos)?

While it’s easy to find flaws during this process, remember to celebrate everything your brand has accomplished, too. Even if you took a risk that didn’t pay off, you still tried something new. 

Tip: See our guide to conduct a content audit.

14) Flag content to repurpose or reuse.

If you want to get more mileage from the work you’ve already done, look for low-lift ways to get fresh eyes on older content. You can repurpose that content into a different format or boost a campaign to increase visibility. This is especially helpful if you had a particularly successful piece of content. 

Tip: Going forward, find out how to use a divisible content strategy to maximize everything you create. 

15) Share your end-of-year findings with other teams.

If this isn’t common practice, be vocal about what your department has been doing. This level of transparency is good for your company culture, helping other departments understand what exactly it is you, uh, do here. 

For example, we create a quarterly report to track our progress, share our wins, deconstruct our fails, and keep people in the loop about what we’re doing. At the end of the year, these reports give us a holistic snapshot of our content marketing success—and help us get buy-in when we have ideas that involve people outside of the marketing department. 

Tip: Coworkers in other departments can contribute to all sorts of great marketing, especially when they know what you’re trying to achieve. Follow our tips to turn them into content creators. 

16) Optimize your content creation process.

A good content machine doesn’t work without the infrastructure to support it. Luckily, there are a lot of ways you can improve. Reassess your entire production process to identify pain points or inefficiencies that can be fixed in the new year. 

Tip: See our guide to optimize your content creation process at every stage of production.

17) Poll your audience about what they want to know more about. 

You have a whole year of content planning ahead of you, and sometimes you’re just plain out of ideas. In addition to your postmortem, ask your audience what they want to see directly. You might send out a poll in your newsletter or ask a daily question on Instagram. (When we did this last year, we got great insights on the content subjects and formats our audience prefers.)

Tip: No matter the subject, your content should tell a strong brand story. Follow these prompts to brainstorm better stories that will connect with your audience. 

18) Pick one new thing to try. 

You don’t have to massively overhaul your content strategy to see better results overnight. (It’s unlikely you have the time or budget to do so anyhow.) But short, simple experiments can give you valuable data to improve your work. Whether you want to try a new format or storytelling style, incorporate one new thing into your content strategy for next year. 

Tip: If you want to get out of your head, try our quick exercise to brainstorm 30 ideas in an hour. This can help you come up with different ideas, angles, or takes that you may not have thought of otherwise. Then, once you’re ready to bring those ideas to life, see our guide to run successful campaigns.

19) Think about ways to simplify your buyer journey. 

One of the biggest saboteurs in modern marketing is noise. People are facing an endless stream of content, and AI will only make that worse as content marketers produce larger volumes of content using these tools. But one of the greatest gifts you can give your audience is a simple, streamlined, and noise-free buyer journey. That means clearing obstacles, providing the right information, and making it as easy as possible to move from one step to the other. 

Tip: See our breakdown of ways to simplify your buyer journey, including what types of pain points to look out for. 

20) Find the right partner. 

While there are plenty of things you can do in-house, outside eyes can offer some refreshing insights. That said, a good content marketing agency is a collaborative partner, and not every agency will be the right fit.

Tip: Find out what you should look for in a content agency, and follow these tips to find an agency with the right expertise for you.

Final Thoughts for Content Marketers to Keep in Mind

A new year of content marketing always comes with its own challenges, but sometimes we find that content marketers can be their own worst enemies. As you continue to build and implement your strategy, keep an eye out for these common pitfalls.

• Stop being a perfectionist. One of the biggest things that can hold you back is being too precious about marketing. Try these tips to kill your perfectionism and get out of your own way.
• Don’t bore your audience. Because content marketers are afraid to mess up, they often play it safe. This results in content that is basic, boring, and blends into the crowd. Look for ways to spice up your content and make a big splash.
• Don’t double your work. It’s easy to settle into routines that keep you in a rut, especially in content marketing. Sometimes, this means you’re doing more work than you need to be doing. Look for ways to streamline your work, whether that’s adapting one piece of content for multiple audiences, using AI tools to work more effectively, or getting smarter about your email marketing.

Most importantly, don’t get down on yourself. Marketing is an ever-changing field that takes a lot of savvy and grit to navigate. If you survived this year, you’ll survive next year—and work smarter while you do it. Good luck.

As budgets tighten and markets become more competitive, it’s harder and harder to close a deal in the SaaS space. That’s why it’s so important to build out customer acquisition strategies that target the right audiences and entice them to take action. 

Unfortunately, many brands splinter their focus between top-funnel marketing (to build brand awareness and relationships) and bottom-funnel sales conversations (to close the deal), neglecting the oh-so-crucial customer acquisition stage to move people down the buyer journey. (Admittedly, we’ve been guilty of this too.) 

But if you want to bridge marketing and sales effectively, you need to carve out strong customer acquisition strategies that work effectively. Fortunately, we can help you do that. But first, let’s talk about what customer acquisition actually is. 

What Is Customer Acquisition? 

Customer acquisition is, in essence, the process of attracting new customers. Although it is technically a marketing function, traditional marketing tactics are usually focused on brand awareness and audience engagement. Customer acquisition is more narrowly focused on speaking to the audience who already knows who you are—and convincing them to take real action toward becoming a customer (e.g., signing up for a demo, downloading an e-book, joining your email list, etc.). 

What Do You Need to Implement Successful Customer Acquisition Strategies? 

If you want to create strong customer acquisition strategies, you need to set yourself up for success with the right tools, infrastructure, and ability to execute. To start, you need to have the following: 

• Ideal Customer Profiles and Personas: If you don’t have an intimate understanding of who your audience is, what they need, and what problems they’re trying to solve, it will be nearly impossible to convince them to take the next step. For this reason, it’s crucial to have both ICPs and personas clearly documented. (See our handy guide to get both on paper.) 
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): This is how much it costs to acquire a new customer. The formula for CAC = Total Acquisition Costs / Number of New Customers Acquired. Your CAC is important to understand how well your efforts are working and how you can work to lower that number (as your goal is to acquire new customers for less investment).
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): This shows you how much value a customer brings during the course of the relationship with your business. The formula for CLV = Average Purchase Value × Purchase Frequency × Customer Lifespan. By understanding both CAC and CLV, you can better understand how your strategies are working and work to improve ROI for your overall customer acquisition efforts. 
• Measurement infrastructure: No matter how smart your strategies are, you must have a way to effectively measure your efforts. (You also need to know which metrics to measure). Ensure you have the appropriate tools and infrastructure in place to do this well. 

If you already have this information documented, give it a once-over to ensure it is accurate before you start to implement the following strategies across channels. 

7 Smart SaaS Customer Acquisition Strategies

If you’re looking for more ways to strengthen your buyer journey, here are our best tips to reach the right people and maximize conversions.

1) Create quality content for Search Engine Optimization.

SEO has been the mainstay of marketing efforts for years, but as Google refines its algorithm and AI changes the way people find information, your old SEO strategies may not work as well. These days, it’s important to focus on an EEAT strategy for acquisition.

• Experience: You may have noticed that every keyword is cluttered with fluffy articles that regurgitate the same information. Nowadays, people are desperate to hear thought leadership from people who have experienced real-life wins, failures, and lessons. If you want to provide more value to your audience, share your personal perspective and anecdotes that reflect your experience. 
• Expertise: People always want to hear from experts. Share your pro tips and insights to educate your audience and gain credibility. 
• Authoritativeness: There are a million people who call themselves experts, but not everybody holds real weight in their industry. The more people link to your site and the higher your authority score is, the more you’ll be seen as a respectable resource. 
• Trustworthiness: People want to know that your site is trustworthy and worth engaging with. Ensure you’ve covered your bases in terms of things like site security—and provide transparency about who you are as a brand to increase trust. 

If you want to strengthen your EEAT for customer acquisition, serve the most valuable content to your audience and give them clear next steps to take based on said content.  

Tip: Create high-quality content, accompanied by downloadable toolkits, templates, or guides to help them solve a problem or do something more effectively. Use data storytelling (e.g., proprietary research or case studies with strong results) to demonstrate your expertise and real-life results. If you want to tap into your audience’s most burning questions about a topic, plug in any topic to Answer the Public, review the related questions generated, and think about what types of gated content you can create to answer those questions. 

You can also check out SEMRush’s deep dive on the power of EEAT for more ways to speak to your audience effectively.

Example: Our Guide to Build a Brand Strategy is our #1 most popular piece of content that has converted the most customers. 

2) Use paid search (PPC) to target the right audience. 

PPC can be a great strategy, as long as you follow the right rules to avoid wasting funds on an ineffective campaign. 

• Research the right keywords. Consider the keywords you want to target, as well as the negative keywords you do not want to target. (See our guide to find the right keywords for your campaigns.) 
• Create strong landing pages. They should be well-designed, mobile-responsive, and optimized for conversions. 
• Consider your audience’s most active times. Schedule ads to go live then. 
• A/B test everything. Try different ad formats, keywords, creative, etc. to see what resonates. 

You should also start with a basic test to ensure your funds are used efficiently. 

Tip: Make sure you have the right tools set up to measure your campaign success. 

3) Use organic social media to engage with your audience. 

Social media is a great way to boost your content, connect with customers, and entice them to take action. And if you’re investing in quality SEO content, it’s also a great place to repurpose that content. There are all sorts of ways you can do this. 

• Create a tip series.
• Share smart hacks.
• Educate people about your brand. 
• Show them how to solve problems. 
• Use video to grab attention. 

Social is also the perfect channel to tease gated content. Share previews or snippets, and encourage people to go to your site to download your toolkits, templates, or guides. 

Tip: When people are deciding if they want to work with you, they don’t only judge your product, tool, or service. They can also be highly swayed by the people who work behind the scenes. Follow these tips to showcase your people and culture on social media.

Example: Freshbooks uses Instagram to entertain and educate, providing high-value content to their audience with every post. 

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4) Use paid social to convert. 

Paid social is a great way to amplify your downloadable content, tips, tools, and guides. Just make sure to follow best practices. 

• Choose the right platforms. While every social platform has its benefits, LinkedIn is gold for SaaS customer acquisition. 
• Make ads that stand out in people’s feeds. You need attention-grabbing design, copy, CTAs, etc. Consider which format is the best for your ad as well (e.g., carousel, video, static image, etc.).
• Identify the right audience. LinkedIn has helpful audience templates to get you started. 
• Create landing pages that are optimized for conversion. You want your audience to take the next step, so make it as easy as possible for them. 

Tip: You can also partner with influencers to increase visibility and credibility with your audience. 

5) Engage people through email. 

Your email list is full of people who may be on the cusp of becoming customers. This makes it one of the most important channels for customer acquisition, and it requires a proper strategy like anything else. Remember: Your goal is to keep your brand top of mind and convince people to take the next step. 

• Segment your list to better target different audiences.
• Personalize the content. 
• Launch high-value drip campaigns that provide relevant education or engaging content. 
• Include compelling CTAs.

The good news is email subscribers are already interested in your brand, so they are more inherently invested in the content you provide. 

Tip: Poll your subscribers to find out what type of content they’re interested in. Not only does this make them feel seen and heard but it helps you give them exactly what they need. When we did this for our own agency, we found out our email subscribers favor content that features real-life marketing examples. This helped us better curate our editorial mix to appeal to their needs. (For more ideas, you can also see these 10 tips to improve your SaaS email marketing.) 

6) Tap your network for referrals.

Referrals are always one of the best ways to acquire new customers, as a customer co-sign increases your credibility. You can garner referrals directly and indirectly, using a variety of tools. 

• Use Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys to identify customers most likely to refer you, and ask them directly. (This also goes for the clients you have the most longstanding relationship with.)
• Create a referral program that benefits the existing customer and the new customer (e.g., discounts, freebies, etc.). 
• Ask your favorite customers to write online reviews or submit to directories and other relevant online databases. 
• Create compelling case studies that tell a strong story. 
• Publish testimonials across channels. 

Tip: As previously mentioned, email is a great channel to engage, so you can easily send personalized emails to your happiest customers to ask them for referrals. (You can also include special incentives and easy links to make the referrals even easier.)

Example: Case studies are an easy way to demonstrate social proof, especially when you can share impressive results. Hubspot does this well by showcasing simple, short customer success stories on their Instagram.  

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7) Go to events to convert people IRL. 

Events have always been an effective way to meet and convert customers in real life. And in a post-pandemic world, there are actually more opportunities to engage than ever, as you can host both online and in-person events. 

• Think about your specific business goals, then select the type of event that would be most relevant. Again, there are more options than ever for every budget and goal: a multi-day conference, webinar, conference, trade show, online event, local community event, etc. Even something simple like a virtual “in conversation” series with industry leaders on YouTube is a low-lift way to engage with your community. 
  
• Sponsor or partner with other brands to participate in their event. If you can be a featured speaker, you can gain both visibility and credibility.
• Create teaser campaigns announcing your event (or that you’ll be attending an event). This helps you increase visibility and even start conversations before the actual event.

Tip: If you’re hosting an in-person event, film as much content as you can. This gives the event a second life online and ensures the valuable information shared can engage even more people.

Example: Hubspot does this well. Inbound is their biggest conference of the year, and they share event recaps, conversations, and highlights on their YouTube channel to bring an online audience into the event. 

How to Improve Your Customer Acquisition Strategies Over Time

Your customer acquisition strategies will be ever-evolving, particularly as you learn, iterate, and gather more insights. 

• Ensure your value prop is accurate. One of the most pervasive problems we see in the SaaS space is that brands struggle to communicate who they are and what they do effectively. Use our free brand messaging template to ensure your value prop and messaging are as compelling as possible. 
• Audit your competition. If you want to compete in your industry, you need to pay attention to what other people are doing. Use our free guide to audit your competitors’ efforts to see how they present themselves and why they may be more effective at customer acquisition. 
• Stay nimble. No strategy is set in stone, and as market conditions change, trends come and go, and new technologies arise, it’s important to adapt. With every new strategy you implement, focus on learning and getting the most insights possible. 

That said, we know it can be difficult to stay on top of everything. Sometimes, you need the right partner to help you bring your strategies to life. If you’re on the hunt for a helpful team, follow these tips to find an agency partner with the right expertise, or start your search by reviewing our FAQs or reaching out to us directly. 

But above all, whether you partner up or go it alone, the number one most important thing you can do is stay educated. If you want more tips and insights into customer acquisition and more, subscribe to our Best Story Wins podcast to hear thought leaders share how they win hearts, minds, and market share every day. 

Choosing the right content marketing agency can be overwhelming. Ideally, you want to establish a strong relationship, grow together, and do the best work possible. But if you’re not on the same page as your agency, it won’t be the right fit—no matter how many fancy awards that agency has won.

So how do you find the right agency? Luckily, we’re here to help. We’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of the industry, so we know what to look for—and what to run away from—when you’re on the hunt. Whether you’re looking for a little content creation support or a partner to help you build your brand strategy from scratch, you can follow these tips to narrow your choices down. 

Why Do You Even Need a Content Marketing Agency?

Content marketing requires a strong strategy, available resources, and the ability to execute it effectively. Not every brand has these things. Marketers already have enough on their plates, so a supportive partner can be invaluable. The right content marketing agency can give you the energy, expertise, and insight you need to achieve your goals—with less headaches. Here’s why.

1. Experience: In content marketing, it can be easy to make a misstep. But because content marketing agencies have worked with a ton of brands and marketed to many different people in different industries, they’ve seen many of the pitfalls and mistakes that can be made. Thus, they can help you hone a strategy that works for your goals and keeps you grounded.
2. Infrastructure: Silos and a lack of resources are the biggest culprits that cause chaos in content marketing productions. This sabotages your ability to create quality content consistently. A good content marketing agency has an optimized production process to keep you on track, on brand, on budget, and on time.
3. Better ideas: When you’re tasked with managing a brand, you can easily find yourself so immersed in it that you’re really just working in a bubble. Marketers get tunnel vision, and content creators are so focused on getting content out the door they don’t stop to consider whether it’s the right content at all. A content agency can offer a fresh perspective with stronger ideas, spot potential pitfalls (again, they’ve been around the block), and push you toward more innovative ways of thinking.
4. Insider info: Content agencies are full of creative people who eat, breathe, and sleep content marketing. And they are eager to share their knowledge with you. They’ll pitch bold ideas, experiment with different formats, suggest new distribution channels, tools, resources, and more. All of these tips can upgrade every part of your marketing operation.
5. Great connections: In addition to their expertise, content agencies also have established relationships with vendors, media contacts, influencers, PPC experts, and other resources that can help you implement your strategy effectively. Whether you want to get your infographic featured in a major publication or need a great video production company to produce a web series, they can help you out.

That said, before you start your search, you need to decide if working with a content marketing agency is the right choice. If you’re not sure, see our guide to figure out if you should DIY or outsource to a freelancer or agency.

If you’ve decided that you do need an agency, know exactly why you’re seeking help.

• What type of support do you need (strategy, content, distribution)?
• How much of that work will you need them to do?
• Who will be your stakeholders?
• How will you share that workload?

You may not have the answers to all of these questions before you start, but these are important things to think about.

How to Find a Content Marketing Agency

While there are a lot of decent agencies out there, you want a great one. That means rolling up your sleeves and vetting them. Here are 12 things to look for once you start your search.  

1) A Good Process

How You Know: They tell you who you’ll be working with, when, and why.

Nobody wants to repeatedly be handed off to a stranger. The right agency will tell you exactly who will be handling your account’s business, creative, production, and promotion from the get-go. They should also talk you through their process and who your point person will be. Although the agency may know who’s in charge of what and when, you can easily feel neglected if this isn’t clear. 

Pro tip: If you’re starting your search, here are 7 questions to ask to understand who they are and how they work. 

2) Real Results

How You Know: They present case studies.

An agency should never wrap a project like they’re sending off a message in a bottle, just hoping for the best outcome. The right agency wants to know what they did right, what they did wrong, and how to improve the process and performance for next time. Case studies show that they’re invested in their work and their clients.

Pro tip: Search for agencies who have case studies for work in your particularly industry or what you aspire to do.

3) Versatile Skills

How You Know: Their portfolio will showcase a range of projects.

In content marketing, few things are less attractive than a “same thing forever” attitude, even if the agency’s good at it. Experimentation is crucial if you want to push your brand to the next level.

Find a content marketing agency that wants to try the new and devour the unknown. Even if they specialize in a field (e.g., tech), they should be pushing their own limits and constantly evolving. Hire an agency that you know is game and ready for anything.

Pro tip: Ask them to send you examples of their more experimental work. Even if it’s an internal project, they should have something on hand. (For example, we once made a music-themed video game just to flex our creative skills.)

4) Demonstrated Expertise

How You Know: They write thought leadership pieces.

The right agency always wants to learn more but is happy and confident to teach a thing or two. It’s a sign of wisdom and maturity. Look to see if your agency has a blog or a regular contributorship somewhere. Reviewing this content will give you a sense of who they are and how they think. 

Pro tip: Review a recent article before you chat; it’s a great ice breaker when you’re trying to get to know them.

5) Industry Contributions

How You Know: They create industry resources to help people make better content.

A decent content marketing agency does their work well and goes home for the day. A good agency sees the big picture and strives to be part of it. A great agency wants to elevate their platform and their industry as a whole. This means they’re willing and eager to share presentations, e-books, white papers, videos, etc.—all in the name of achieving new heights.

Pro tip: Ask them about the trends they’re seeing, and what they’re passionate about. These conversations can be inspiring for both of you.

6) Lasting Partnerships

How You Know: They have long-term clients.

Never trust anyone who can’t maintain relationships. (If everyone else is the “problem,” it’s probably them.) Sure, some engagements are bound to have their issues. But if the majority or all of someone’s clients don’t appear to stick around, it’s a red flag. Don’t start work with an agency you already assume will burn you in the end.

Pro tip: Look for a content marketing agency with a track record of successful partner relationships by searching their portfolio. Also find out how you can cultivate a healthy relationship with your agency to do the best work together.

7) A Trustworthy Reputation

How You Know: They have client testimonials and recommendations.

You want to know you’ll get your money’s worth from your agency, and word-of-mouth is always powerful. If an agency can’t find a single client to say something nice about them on their site, LinkedIn, or somewhere, run…run away. They aren’t just crooks but lazy ones at that.

Pro tip: Check out review sites like Clutch, which can be helpful resources to vet agencies and see what people really think of them.

8) Great Communication

How You Know: They always make sure you’re on the same page.

Great work comes from great communication. The right agency will check in with you, talk through problems, and touch base regularly to avoid wasting your budget and destroying your timeline. Whether it’s double-checking deadlines or providing visual references, they’ll do everything they can to make sure the conversation at the end of the project will be over margaritas—not problems. 

Pro tip: You’ll know how good they are at communicating from that first meeting. Notice how well they’re listening and whether they’re taking the time to really answer your questions (or just saying what they think you want to hear).

9) Solid Boundaries

How You Know: They’re willing to say no.

If you just want yes-people, you won’t get the work you deserve. What you need is strong, creative counsel. But plenty of content agencies are willing to take on anything just to get paid.  

The right agency will tell you if you’re accidentally working against your own goals. The right agency will explain why an idea won’t work, then present a better alternative. Hire an agency to be your partner, not someone you can just bark orders at.

Pro tip: Ask about a time they said no to a client—and why. Ideally, they’ll tell you why they said no, what they did instead, and why it worked. (For example, that’s what happened when we convinced Microsoft to do a video instead of an infographic…and ended up with 45 million+ views.)

10) Transparency at All Levels

How You Know: They tell you exactly what you’re getting.

If they’re dodging questions or not responding to emails, it’s only going to get worse. They should tell you what you’re going to get, how you’re going to get it, and how they’re going to make sure you do. From brainstorming to content creation, strategy to promotion, you should feel informed and confident every step of the way. 

Pro tip: Ask them what you can do to help your collaboration. They’ll appreciate the consideration and vested interest in building a partnership—not just being treated like a gun for hire. (BTW, if you’re sending out an RFP, you can get better work by being transparent too. Follow these tips to get the best RFP response possible.)

11) Open to Constructive Criticism

How You Know: They’re open to feedback.

Why would you ever, ever, ever work with anyone, any team, any agency that isn’t open to feedback? They don’t have to take it, but they should darn well want to hear it at the very least. Client-agency projects are like personal relationships. When was the last marriage vow that noted, “I love the way you never listen to me and refuse to change even when I ask nicely”?

Pro tip: A good agency solicits feedback and pushes themselves to grow. Ask them how they challenge themselves, and what they do to improve.

12) Good Vibes

How You Know: You hit it off from the start.

If you’re just doing a small rushed project, you’ll likely get away with a few emails throughout the process. But complex campaigns are an investment of time, money, and energy. They require a lot of back and forth and, sometimes, there are a few bumps in the road. You want someone you feel comfortable working closely with, especially under stress. 

Pro tip: Honestly, there’s no pro tip for this one. When you feel it, you feel it. 

What to Do When You Find the Right Content Marketing Agency

Finding the right agency is a relief, but the real work begins once you do. A good relationship is a true partnership, where you’re both invested in each other’s success. To help cultivate that dynamic from the jump…

• Here are 5 ways you can support your agency throughout the creative process.
• Learn about the different types of creative thinkers. It can really help your team dynamics.
• Find out how to split the workload correctly. 

Above all, keep your communication lines open. Be open, be proactive, and be engaged. And, hey, if your agency doesn’t work out for some reason (though we hope it does), we’d love to be considered. Just holler at us.

Data visualization is an incredibly valuable tool for marketers. It helps you communicate important insights in a visual way, helping you deliver your message more impactfully. But not everyone does data design right—even if they say they do. A good data visualization agency knows data is about more than charts and graphs; it’s about bringing your data to life.  

How to Find a Data Visualization Agency

To make the hunt a little easier, here are 8 great questions to ask to help narrow down your search for the right data visualization agency.  

1) Do they demonstrate their data expertise?

Many agencies can churn out an infographic, but a great data visualization agency knows the fundamentals of data. They don’t just design; they can analyze and dig into the data to uncover interesting insights. They should also demonstrate that knowledge and share their knowledge and expertise freely. You want to know you’re working with true experts.

2) Do they turn data into stories?

Data analysis is only step one of creating a great data visualization. Turning those insights into a solid narrative and using data visualization to support that narrative is what will make your project truly successful. You don’t just want a data visualization agency to plug your data into a design program. You want them to help you create the most impactful narrative possible.  

3) Do they design data according to best practices?

Now here’s where a lot of agencies fall short. Yes, you can design a chart. Yes, you can add a pretty illustration. But this is not what true data visualization is.

The entire point of the art is to make data as comprehensible as possible, to present it in the most easy-to-digest format. There are subtle but very effective ways to do this. The way you label, order, or use color can help or hurt your data visualization. (You can find out more about best practices in the Data Visualization 101 e-book from our sister company, Visage.) Ask them about their data design philosophy to get a sense of how they approach it.

4) Do they work in different mediums?

There are many ways to present data visualizations, including infographics, interactive experiences, video, and more. The format you choose is informed by your data story, which is why it’s so important to work with someone well-versed in data storytelling. They should be able to design whatever the data requires.

5) Have they created similar work before?

If you have a specific idea in mind, you want to work with a data visualization agency that has the skills and experience to execute it for you. (You also want someone who can tell you if your idea doesn’t serve the data well.) Take a look at their portfolio to see if they’ve created similar work or have experience with similar clients or industries.

6) Do they have a good response when you ask them what their favorite type of chart is?

You want to work with people who are passionate about their craft. Asking this question will give you a sense of their knowledge and enthusiasm for data visualization. Trust us, any self-respecting data nerd will have an answer. (And if you want to hear some very strong opinions, you might also ask them which side of the pie chart debate they’re on.)

7) What recent piece of work are they particularly proud of, and why?

You can comb through their portfolio to get a sense of what they do, but if you aren’t the most data-literate person, it’s likely you’ll miss the nuance and craftsmanship that goes into a strong data visualization. Having them explain their thought process behind a design or what they did to help enhance comprehension will give you a sense of their creative process and problem-solving skills.

6) Do they have thorough and thoughtful processes?

There are a lot of moving parts in a major data visualization project. Content needs approval, brand guidelines needs to be communicated, data need to be double-checked. If these responsibilities are unclear, if they fall through the cracks, or are ignored completely, it can affect the quality—and credibility—of your data visualization. Make sure you are clear on how they work, and how they expect to work together with you.

7) Are they transparent with you?

You want a creative partner you can rely on to produce good-quality work. If they seem less than confident, if their pricing is murky, or if you get a general bad vibe, it’s best to move on. Again, a lot of agencies claim that they can do any data visualization, but it is a very specific skillset that requires true expertise.

8) Do they approach projects as collaborative?

You don’t want an antagonistic partner, but you don’t want a total yes-man either. A great piece of data visualization happens when the best ideas make it to the front—regardless of ego. If you have a great design suggestion, they should be open to it. If you’re heading in the wrong direction, you want them to tell you so. The goal is the best project possible. Work with a data visualization agency that puts that value above all else.

Ask these questions while you’re on the hunt and you should be able to find the right partner fairly painlessly. But remember: Finding your partner is only the beginning.

How to Work with Your Data Visualization Agency

If you want your brand to get the best work from your agency, it’s important to establish a good rapport from the jump. Here are a few tips to make the process a little smoother.

1. Communicate a clear goal. Your data visualization agency is made up of expert designers and data storytellers who are adept at creating visualizations to communicate a specific purpose. They need to know not only what the goal is for this particular project but how it plays into your larger communication goals. Is it meant to engage people on social? Will it be used at a tradeshow? This info will influence their decisions at every stage, from the language they use to the format they use to present the data. Start off on the right foot with a detailed creative brief to clue them in. Here’s how to write one if you haven’t done it before.
2. Educate yourself about data storytelling. It always helps to share a basic understanding of what data storytelling really is. To understand the value of data visualization, find out why data-driven storytelling helps brands, and learn about why our brains love data visualization.
3. Don’t just dump your data on them. It’s exciting to have a partner who can dive into your data, but that doesn’t mean they’re your personal assistant. Far too often a client will get so excited they’ll send over every single piece of data they have, giving us a veritable ocean of data to wade through. This wastes precious time for the data visualization agency and, ultimately, your organization—the longer they take, the longer you wait. When you deliver data, it should be organized, complete, and a decent amount of data. (Sometimes people come to us with three stats and ask us to turn it into a data story. Other times, it’s an insane database of randomness.
4.  Let them extract the most meaningful insights. You may already have a story in mind—and you may have the data to support it—but there may be a more interesting angle in that data. (Sidenote: We hate to see people try to retrofit data just because they have a “great” idea. Not only does this result in a weaker story but you risk misrepresenting data, which can hurt your credibility.) You should have filled your data visualization agency in on the project’s goal, so let them help extract the most valuable insights to achieve that goal.
5. Collaborate on the story. Once the most interesting insights are uncovered, it’s vital to shape a narrative that will communicate them with the most impact. This is a highly collaborative process. You know who you’re trying to reach—how they think, what problems they face, the language they use—so you should help guide your data visualization agency. We believe the best story wins, no matter who it came from. 

Follow these tips and you should be able to form a productive and creative partnership together. Of course, we’d be happy to build that partnership with you. If you’re looking for someone to turn your spreadsheets into a compelling data story, reach out.

The marketing rules have changed. Whereas traditional advertising was once the way to connect with an audience, in the digital age, people are less wowed by that type of interruption marketing. Today, they’re drawn to engagement marketing, where brands focus on relationship-building through content. Enter brand storytelling—the buzzword of the digital age.

But what does brand storytelling really mean? Why does it matter? And how do you actually do it? Lucky for you, you’ve come to the right place.

With over a decade in the digital marketing game, we’ve helped some of the world’s biggest brands tell their brand stories—and, now, we’re going to help you do it too. In this guide, we’re diving into everything you need to know about B2B brand storytelling to help you tell your story effectively, connect with the right people, and win your market. Let’s dive in. 

TOC

• What Is Brand Storytelling?
• What Are the Elements of Brand Storytelling? 
• Why Is Brand Storytelling Important?
• How to Do Brand Storytelling
  • Start With Your Brand Heart
  • Document Your Brand Messaging
  • Identify Your Audience
  • Establish Your Branding
  • Brainstorm Ideas Around Your Story Pillars
  • Optimize Your Content
• How to Make Sure Your Brand Story Lands

What Is Brand Storytelling?

In short, brand storytelling is the act of telling the story of your brand through content. By authentically communicating who you are, you can increase brand awareness, make genuine connections with your audience, and build a strong community of lifelong fans. 

What Are the Elements of Brand Storytelling?

There are many ways to tell stories about your brand, and each represents a different facet of your identity. Whether you’re telling stories about how your company started or how you’ve successfully helped your customers, any story you tell about your brand contributes to your larger brand story.

That said, there are a few general categories that represent each pillar of your brand story.

• Who you are: How your company came to exist, as well as your vision, mission, values, and culture.
• What you do: The product or service you provide.
• Who you do it for: The people you want to help.
• Why you do it: Your larger goal beyond what your product/service does—how you really benefit your customer (e.g., your app helps people easily book vacations so that your customers can truly relax).
• How you do it: Visibility into your product, production, people, or process, including how you are evolving and working to create the best product/service for your customers.

The way you tell your brand story may vary, depending on your marketing strategy. But pretty much every content format is a fantastic tool for brand storytelling, including but not limited to: 

• Articles
• Case Studies
• Data visualizations
• E-books
• Explainer videos
• Infographics
• Interactive infographics
• Microcontent
• Motion Graphics
• White papers
• Video

In some ways, it doesn’t matter how you tell your story. What matters most is that it is authentic and honest and resonates with the right people. The good news? If you do brand storytelling well, it automatically will.

Why Is Brand Storytelling Important?

For many years, interruption marketing reigned supreme (aka traditional advertising, where a brand interrupts people to talk at them, as opposed to with them). People are tired of that dynamic, as it makes them feel like a faceless dollar bill targeted by a faceless corporation. Now, we are in an era of engagement marketing, where people want honest, authentic brand relationships built on mutual trust and respect. They want to align with brands and engage with them on a personal level—like a trusted friend or resource. This is why brand storytelling has become the most powerful way to compete in the marketplace. 

Brands that master storytelling through content marketing on social platforms and other channels will have a leg up in many ways, as storytelling has far-reaching benefits both inside and outside your company walls.

1) Brand storytelling makes you stand out from your competition. 

What makes you unique? Whether it’s your product design or service features, there’s a reason you’re different—and people want to know what it is. You might think it’s self-indulgent, but the most integral elements of your brand story—how you came to be, grow, learn to do good work, and choose what you stand for—are more interesting to other people than you think. If you can actively spotlight the things that make you unique through your content, you can easily outshine your competitors.

2) It humanizes your brand. 

Humans want to interact with humans. Luckily, your brand is made up of a variety of unique, interesting, and engaging people. By peeling back the curtain and sharing that part of your brand story, you make it easier for people to feel connected to the people behind your brand and, most importantly, trust you. (Brands that focus their corporate storytelling on product features miss a huge opportunity to make this personable connection.) 

3) It helps you attract the right people. 

People (both your customers and potential employees) expect brands to be outspoken and demonstrate their values. Brand storytelling lets you communicate more than what you do; it helps you show people what you believe. When you articulate your values, you make it easier for customers to align themselves with you—and you can better entice the talent who might want to work for you.

This is yet another reason why brand storytelling can help make you more competitive. It’s not just about the customers you attract; the employees you attract are the ones who will drive your innovation and success from within. Telling a brand story that attracts those gem candidates can, in many ways, fuel your brand’s future success. 

4) It helps you communicate your value. 

Conventional wisdom suggests there are two ways to compete as a business: price and value. In B2B, competing on price doesn’t just sound awful; it’s a race most brands can’t run forever, even if they wanted to. In most industries, there’s always someone younger, scrappier, with a leaner team, who can afford to charge less for something similar to what you offer. Does it matter if their offering isn’t quite as good? Nope. Unless you scale like Amazon, it’s a race to the bottom.

On the other hand, competing on value can keep you in the game. Think of the value you provide. What do customers experience? What do they really “get” when they buy from you? Brand storytelling helps you reinforce this value at every point of the buyer journey. 

5) It gives you more agency.

One of the more frustrating things about your brand story is that you don’t have total control over it. Your story is partly what you communicate and partly how people perceive what you communicate. While that may be frustrating, it’s important to take ownership of what you can control. If you don’t promote your brand story, people will write their own narratives about you—or, worse, disregard you entirely.

“Authority isn’t bestowed to the entrepreneur with the best message but the entrepreneur most willing to express it.”
—Dan Martell, Founder of SaaS Academy

We live in an increasingly transparent world. This is, for better or worse, a by-product of the Internet age. That’s why it’s much better to develop your brand’s story by design (personally, and with intent) than by default (whatever the Internet conjures up).

How to Do Brand Storytelling

So, how do you share your brand story? For marketers, the answer is content. Every piece of content you create tells a part of your story, from the smallest tweet to a huge white paper. If you can build a strong content infrastructure that provides a steady stream of brand stories to multiple audiences on multiple platforms, you will maximize your reach and create more moments to connect with the right people. But how do you do that? Here are our best tips to tell your story well. 

1) Start with your brand heart.

One of the biggest reasons brands struggle to tell a clear or compelling story? They don’t actually know who they are. This is why you need to start with your brand heart. Your heart is the core of who you are, comprised of your purpose, vision, mission, and values. These core principles are the foundation of your brand story. They fuel the decisions you make about your business, the way you show up in the world, and the way you interact with your audience. They can also be great fodder for future storytelling, but you need to have them articulated on paper to ensure your brand is aligned and telling an authentic story about who and what you are. 

Tip: Download our free brand heart workbook to document your purpose, vision, mission, and values. 

2) Document your brand messaging.

The secret to telling a strong brand story is telling a clear, cohesive story—consistently. This is crucial for a few reasons. 

• You want to be memorable. The more consistent you are in the way you present yourself, the easier it is for people to identify and remember you. 
• You want to create a seamless brand experience. You want to move people along the path to purchase as easily and as smoothly as possible. Disparate messaging can create speedbumps. (In fact, this is a common thing we see with our B2B clients.) If your marketing and sales messages aren’t aligned or telling the same story, people will second guess your brand—and do so at crucial stages. 
• Your story is more impactful if it’s easy to understand. Clarity is incredibly important. You don’t want to confuse your audience with conflicting messaging, nor do you want to bore them to death by droning on and on. Clear brand messaging helps you tell your story concisely.
  

How do you describe your product/service? What makes you different from your competition? What are your key selling points? How do you ensure that brand creators can speak about these things confidently? By documenting your brand messaging, you will have compelling answers to everything a customer could ask.

Tip: Use our free brand messaging framework to identify the key stories you want to tell and the language you want to use. This will give you a strong foundation to brainstorm content ideas later. 

3) Identify your audience.

To be a good storyteller, you need to understand your audience: who they are, what they want to hear, and how they want to hear it. Of course, you are not speaking to one homogenous group—especially in B2B. You may be speaking to people in different industries or even generations. Thus, you need to intentionally segment and separate. 

• Create Personas and Ideal Customer Profiles. In B2C, you would only create marketing personas. But in B2B, you need to identify both the types of companies you want to target (aka Ideal Customer Profiles), as well as the individual personas at those companies. Doing this work is tedious but worth it. When it comes time to brainstorm story ideas, your personas can help you vet your ideas and identify the best stories for different stages of the buyer journey.
• Map your buyer journey. One core thing to remember is that brand storytelling is not selling. Selling can be part of your brand story at the appropriate time, but if you come on too strong too soon, you will turn people off. Instead, you need to understand your customer’s headspace at every stage of the buyer journey and identify what parts of your brand story they’ll want to hear about at each phase. This is an immensely helpful exercise to identify the right messaging for the right time. 

Tip: Use our guide to create ICPs and personas to properly identify and document each part of your audience, and use our free buyer journey template to identify what messages they need to hear at what point.

4) Establish your branding.

One of the often-overlooked aspects of brand storytelling is the brand part. Your brand voice, your personality, and your visual identity all tell their own story about your brand, so it’s important to present yourself authentically and consistently in every piece of content you create. 

• Determine your brand voice/personality.  It is way too easy to default to boring marketing speak, especially in B2B marketing. Why do so many brands sound the same? Because they haven’t identified (or don’t know how to use) their brand voice. 
• Build visual identity guidelines. Your visual language is the aesthetic experience of your brand, and it communicates a lot about who you are. Everything from your logo to color palettes can affect how you present yourself, so—just like brand messaging—you want to develop a consistent, on-brand visual language that creates a cohesive experience. 

Tip: Use our free templates to find your voice and personality, and use our free guide to design a brand identity. Most importantly, after you have these elements locked down, create brand guidelines to help content creators stay on brand.  

5) Brainstorm ideas around your story pillars.

Now that you’ve laid the foundation of your brand you can do the fun stuff: brainstorm unique and creative ways to tell your brand story. There are many ways to do this, but we find that one of the easiest hacks is to brainstorm ideas around each pillar of your brand identity (who you are, what you do, who you do it for, why you do it, and how you do it). 

Want your content to connect?
Educate, entertain, or inspire. 

Here, we’ll walk you through a number of ways to do that, as well as handy examples of what each type of brand storytelling can look like in real life. 

PILLAR 1: WHO YOU ARE

• Tell stories around your values. Since you’ve clearly defined your brand heart, you know exactly who you are and what you believe in. Turning those values into content is a great way to show people what you care about and create a connection based on those shared values. See examples of how smart brands turn their values into content.
• Tell stories to your employees and future employees—not just your customers. According to Pew Research, 57% of people who quit during the Great Resignation did so because they felt disrespected at work. The more you tell stories about the people behind your brand (and celebrate them), the more you can cultivate a sense of belonging—and help customers feel connected to your employees too. To start, here are 7 easy ways to showcase your people and culture on social media.

Example: We helped Dropbox build their talent brand through creative brand storytelling that showed potential employees what #LifeInsideDropbox was all about. 

PILLAR 2: WHAT YOU DO

• Tell stories about what makes you different. This is where your brand messaging comes in handy. Having crafted clear and concise messaging about what you do and what makes you different, think about story ideas that support each talking point. 

Example: To help educate small businesses about who Unbabel is and what they do, we executed a bold and edgy campaign that would stand out from their competition. We told this story through various formats, including a hero video, eBook, blog articles, social media content, the eye-catching interactive game Unbabel It, and more.

PILLAR 3: WHO YOU DO IT FOR 

• Use empathy to think about what your audience needs to hear. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes, and give them content that is relevant to their life. Whether it solves a problem, gives them a fresh perspective, or helps them do something more efficiently, empathy is your biggest storytelling tool. Try these tips to turn your audience’s pain points into content, and see how these brands put empathy to work.
• Tell strong customer success stories. If you want people to buy into your brand, they will often want proof that you’ve helped other people like them succeed. See our best tips to turn customer success stories into compelling narratives (because, yes, that is its own art). 
• Create stories with your audience. Sharing your story is important, but giving the mic to your audience can be incredibly powerful. Find out how to create user-generated content that builds community.  

Example: Happy Money shares real client success stories through Member Money Moments— simple, bold, and eye-catching graphics on Instagram. It’s a simple way to showcase how the brand helps clients while letting customers say it in their own words.

PILLAR 4: WHY YOU DO IT

• Tell your origin story. People want to know how your company started, so share your beginnings—the good, the bad, and the embarrassing. (If you’re curious to know how we got to this point, here’s how we built C5.)
• Talk about what excites you in your field. People want to connect with passionate people. There’s a reason you got into this business, so share stories about what drives you. This type of transparency is a great way to cultivate authentic relationships with your community. 

Example: We launched the Best Story Wins to talk about B2B marketing, ask industry thought leaders about their challenges, and share our enthusiasm for brand-building. This is just another way for us to connect with our audience and share our expertise. 

PILLAR 5: HOW YOU DO IT

• Share lessons you’ve learned or ways you’ve failed. If you want to form a closer relationship with your audience, you need to be open and honest. If you’ve effed up royally (or learned a valuable lesson), that vulnerability and transparency can help you meaningfully connect with others, especially if you’re helping them avoid the same mistakes. (For example, find out how we decided to change our own content strategy and increased sales 160%.)
• Share behind-the-scenes. People always want to see how the sausage is made, and there are all sorts of ways you can give them a peek behind the curtain: Q&As with team members, live streams, articles, etc. In fact, your team can sometimes be the best source of content. See our tips to turn your fellow employees into brand storytellers. 

Example: Zendesk shares plenty of expert content, but creating that content isn’t always easy. There are flubs, bloopers, and more. Zendesk shows off its charming personality by actually sharing those bloopers in an entertaining Instagram reel. Not only does this give you a sense of their fun brand personality but it helps people see that even the pros mess up sometimes. 

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A post shared by Zendesk (@zendesk)

For more inspiration, see how these brands tell great brand stories (even if their product/service is less than exciting), try these 10 brainstorm prompts to tell your brand story, and find out how we helped Happy Money reach millions of people by telling their brand story.

That said, we know that sometimes your creative brain isn’t working, so we’ve also compiled a handy brainstorming template to help you fast-track your storytelling. Fill in the blanks, and you can generate a month’s worth of content ideas in under an hour. 

6) Optimize your Content.

Whether your content is meant to inform, delight, or entertain, show your audience you value their time and attention by presenting it in the right package and making it as easy as possible to consume.

• Choose the right format. The most important goal for every piece of content is to communicate your brand story as efficiently and effectively as possible. Therefore, choosing the right format is vital. You might get caught up in trying to produce the flashiest, trendiest type of content, but this is a disservice to your audience. See our guide to 13 types of B2B content marketing to find out which format might be best for your story.
• Tailor your story for the channel. We’ve seen great pieces of content crash and burn because they didn’t work on the platform (e.g., an infographic that was rendered too small on a blog, or a video that was too long for Instagram). Different channels demand different kinds of storytelling, so match your storytelling format to the channel. You can also maximize your reach across platforms by marketing a single piece of content to different audiences. 
• Partner with other people. Your owned channels are a great starting point to share your content, but it always helps to increase your reach through publishing partnerships, syndication, or cobranded work. Find out how to partner with industry publications to create custom content.
• Make it shareable. You don’t want to be the only one telling your brand story. Encourage your audience to share your story by making it easy to do so. Working social buttons, proper dimensions, SEO optimization, hashtags—consider anything you can do to foster engagement. For more tips, find out how to optimize your blog for your publishing and how to optimize your infographics for SEO.

How to Make Sure Your Story Lands

No matter how much budget you have to spend on marketing, if your story isn’t authentic, it won’t resonate with the right people. To ensure your story resonates—and makes the most impact—here are a few more tips.  

• Build a strong content strategy. Did you know that 60% of B2B marketers don’t have a documented content strategy?! Without a strategy on paper, it’s hard to create good brand storytelling. If this is something you still need to do, use our free content strategy toolkit to get your goals on paper, brainstorm the right story ideas, and get real results. 
• Start emotional, close logical. One of the biggest myths in B2B marketing is that it isn’t emotional. Wrong. The goal of telling a good brand story is to connect with your audience—and emotion is the key to doing that. First, focus on creating that emotional connection with your audience up front, then you can get more into the weeds with more sales content as they progress deeper into the buyer journey. Find out how to optimize your buyer journey to start emotional, close logical, then follow these tips to write copy that hooks your audience. 
• Sweat the small stuff. Your confirmation email, your password reset message, your CTAs—every piece of content is an opportunity to show people who you are and what your brand is about. Take a fresh look at those little things and pack them with personality. Start with our tips to optimize your CTAs and emails. 
• Experiment often. Your story isn’t static; it changes as your company grows and expands, brings on new team members, and breaks into new markets. A new initiative can spawn a whole new campaign to send your story far and wide, so don’t be afraid to try new things. 
• Stay educated. The best way to be a better marketer is to keep up with what the best in the industry are doing. Subscribe to our Best Story Wins podcast to hear how B2B marketers are building winning brands, sign up for our newsletter for weekly tips, or check out our free resource archive for tools and templates to work smarter. 

Of course, doing this deep work takes brainpower and perspective that you don’t always have on tap. If you need a little extra guidance to get your house in order, find out what to look for in a content agency, take a look at our brand strategy FAQs, or reach out. We’d love to help you tell a memorable brand story that turns people into lifelong fans.

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.) 

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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).

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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. 

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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.