15 Content Marketing Lessons from Hyper-Growth SaaS Companies

According to research, the top three goals of successful content marketing are:

1. Create brand awareness.
2. Build credibility and trust.
3. Educate audiences.

Also, 39% of B2B content marketers spend more than 25% of their marketing budget on content marketing!

In simple terms, content marketing is important.

Content marketing is the process of getting your content read by your target audience.

However, content marketing can be complex, with new SaaS marketing trends, tools, best practices, etc. emerging every year.

Hence, instead of building a strategy from scratch, it is better to learn from those who got it right.

Here are 15 battle-tested content marketing lessons from hyper-growth SaaS companies to help you build a powerful SaaS content marketing strategy of your own.

1. Moz’s Commitment to Whiteboard Friday and Quality Blog Posts

Lesson: Stay consistent. Produce quality content with videos to maximize impact.

Moz is an SEO tool that helps businesses increase their organic traffic, search engine rankings, and visibility.

Their blog contains easy-to-understand and actionable marketing tips for businesses that rely on the internet to get customers. This is impactful as the value of the content you produce depends on how actionable it is.

And Moz got it exactly right. 

Rand Fiskin, the cofounder of Moz, has published Whiteboard Friday videos where he shares tons of actionable tips. These tips can be immediately put into practice. The fact that they are in video format is just icing on the cake.

Whiteboard Friday still continued even after Rand moved on from Moz.

Take a look at the following image from one of their articles.

This format of presentation of information makes complex topics easy to understand. What makes it even better is that the accompanying article for the video is also quite well written. The principal talking points in the video are bullets in the article, making it handier.

As a result, Moz was able to create evergreen content that has been attracting its target audience.

2. JetOctopus’s Sharp Expert-Led Insightful Content + Social Media Shoutouts

Lesson: Talk to experts, get their insights, publish them in your blog, and stay active on social media.

JetOctopus is a crawler and log analyzer that makes technical SEO for SaaS companies easy.

Their blog is filled with content on SEO. They have asked specific questions to renowned SEO experts and have compiled the answers in their posts. This has made their content authoritative, actionable, and accurate.

Take a look at the following example.

This article covers an interesting topic that most, if not all, digital marketers could benefit from. It doesn’t contain the opinions of one writer who has merely researched other topics. This contains a collection of thoughts from 12 experts.

By collating information from trusted sources, JetOctopus has maintained the quality and authority of its blog. 

Furthermore, social media mentions like the following increase the credibility of its blog.

3. Close.com’s Strategic Content Upgrades

Lesson: Keep upgrading your blog posts from time to time.

Close is an all-in-one sales CRM targeted at businesses that are scaling up.

They have understood one crucial thing about digital content: they get outdated. No matter how well received your content is at present, there will be a time in which it will lose its applicability. 

In its blog, Close has maintained the relevance of its content by upgrading it from time to time.

For example, one of their articles lists the 31 best sales books. As new books get released and technology evolves, they have continued to update the list.

The fact that it ranks on the first page of the SERPs for “sales books” is proof enough that their targeted content upgrade gets results. No wonder, they get 277k site visits a month.

4. HubSpot’s Super Smart Lead Generation Strategy

Lesson: Produce detailed and well-researched content for your audience and arrange it well. Your audience should not struggle in any way to find what they are looking for.

HubSpot and its blog don’t need an introduction.

If you work in sales, marketing, or customer service, you must have found your way to one of their articles or courses.

Producing detailed content in various formats for a wide array of audiences gets them 11M+ visitors every month. They have videos, checklists, blog articles, courses, and podcasts that are neatly organized for you to browse through.

Their strategy articles have been a huge hit among their audiences. They are easy to implement strategies that are useful to professionals across the board. Their article about developing a content generation strategy is a great example.

5. Ahrefs’ Content Creation Through Sponsoring Thought Leaders 

Ahrefs had hooked on the marketing world when they announced that they will be using their paid traffic budget (~$200k) differently. Instead of spending it on Facebook and Google, they have invested that in content creators and industry experts.

They invested in videos, podcast episodes, newsletter issues, projects, events, social media campaigns, and blog articles.

Although it might be impossible to measure the impact of each individual effort, Tim Soulo, the CMO of Ahrefs, has shed some light on the process.

This strategy invites a myriad of unique ideas as creators and experts all over are involved. It could be a brilliant content creation and marketing strategy for those who have the budget and resources to pull it off.

6. Chanty’s Grand Exit-Intent Form on Blog Posts

Lesson: Use popups to convert your visitors into readers.

Chanty is a team-messaging tool that helps remote teams work more productively.

Its blog has a great exit-intent form. Take a look.

The image and its title contain a pop-culture reference that pulls the attention of the reader. The message explains how you can save 30% of your time. Also, the rejection button has an innovative message.

7. Groove’s Connecting to Users Through Storytelling Strategy

Lesson: People love personal stories. Give them what they want.

“People buy from people, not faceless organizations.” – Allan Dib, author of The 1 Page Marketing Plan.

Groove’s blog has captured the essence of that quote. Alex Turnball, founder and CEO of Groove, an email support tool has shared the story of their brand. His journey from zero to $100k of monthly revenue for plenty of visitors.

The informal language of that story had a tremendous impact on the readers. Now, Groove is a multi-million dollar brand.

The act and art of sharing personal stories make a company appear more “human”. As a result, it is easy to build long-term relationships with customers. Groove has done just that.

8. Kinsta’s In-Depth How-to Posts

Lesson: Advice readers exactly what they need to do to solve their problems. How-to guides do just that.

Kinsta is a WordPress hosting solution for professional websites.

Its blog contains one thing that its audience looks for the most. “How to” guides that are in-depth and can be followed immediately.

Searching for “how-to” on their website yields 1000+ results!

As these blog articles are quite long, Kinsta offers its readers to save them as PDFs. A proven way to capture leads!

9. Hotjar’s Behind the Scenes Blog Posts

Lesson: Spill your secrets by sharing personal stories. “Behind the scenes” has a “classified information” vibe to it which makes it interesting.

Hotjar is a customer behavior tracking and analysis tool. It helps businesses learn how their audience behaves on their website, what they like/dislike and what they should do to get optimum results.

They have pulled their audience close by satisfying their curious minds via its blog. With a great collection of “behind the scenes” stories highlighting their highs and lows, Hotjar has formed a human connection with its audience.

These stories which are personal to the brand, reveal them as humans. As we mentioned above, people buy from people, not faceless organizations.

10. Shopify’s Smart SaaS Marketing + Control Over Target Industry Keywords

Lesson: Target the right keywords. Research your target audience extensively and create in-depth content on each of those issues.

Shopify has emerged as one of the leaders in eCommerce. Its blog is a reflection of that.

Shopify’s years of experience with a variety of customers have helped them understand their pain points and desires. Because of that, they have been able to hit hard with each of their pieces.

Each article on its blog shows the quality of information Shopify has on its target audience. As a result, they have been successfully dominating the eCommerce content market. An example of this is the section of “quick start guides” in its blog.

Even for extremely competitive keywords, Shopify seems to find its way to the first page.

11. Intercom’s Content Promotion Strategy Through Retargeting Ads

Lesson: You can use paid ads to promote content as well.

Intercom is a customer success tool enabling businesses to communicate with their customers better.

Like many SaaS businesses, Intercom prefers to market itself through its well-researched, in-depth content. They do it effectively through targeted ads. Take a look at the following Facebook ad by Intercom.

The above ad aims to educate its audience about the importance of sending the right message at the right time.

12. Semrush’s Centre-Aligned Blog and Smart CTA

Lesson: When you have a reader on your blog, make sure that they do only one thing – read your content.

Semrush’s blog is a great destination for professionals who want to learn the ropes of SEO, digital marketing, and all things related.

Their approach is simple: provide their audience with a great reading experience.

Apart from writing world-class content, they have implemented minimalism on their blog pages with zero distractions. When a reader goes through their content, it is less likely to click elsewhere.

Take a look at the following example from Semrush.

They have added the floating table of contents which allows easy navigation of the content. In the beginning, they have also mentioned the estimated reading time, publication date, and category of the article.

13. Sleeknote’s Laser Focus On Audience-Centric Keywords

Lesson: Understand the search intent of your audience and target keywords accordingly.

Sleeknote is a popup builder that helps businesses capture qualified leads.

Its blog primarily focuses on eCommerce, digital marketing, CRO (conversion rate optimization), copywriting, email marketing, and more.

Their understanding of their target audience and digital marketers has made them clinical with their choice of keywords. Its blog contains articles that target relevant keywords to questions that its readers might have.

Here is an example that proves their accuracy.

They rank #1 for “last-minute marketing ideas”.

14. Mailchimp’s Elegant & Interactive Success Studies

Lesson: Interactive elements are engaging. Engagement leads to retention.

Take a look at the way Mailchimp has presented one of its success stories via carousel images.

The presence of images and little text makes the story engaging and interesting.

Mailchimp has also made statistical reports interactive and fun making its blog more engaging. Take a look at the following example.

Towards the top-left corner, the index is collapsible and helps the reader navigate easily.

It gets interesting. 

Instead of scrolling vertically, Mailchimp has integrated a horizontal scroll to keep things fun. The theme of the report continues as well. Take a look.

15. CoSchedule’s 3-Point Principle for 1M+ Monthly Pageviews

Lesson: There is no substitute for high-quality, useful, and actionable content.

CoSchedule is a marketing management software. Their primary target audience is digital marketers or marketing teams. When it comes to reeling visitors in with its content, they follow three simple steps.

1. Understanding their audience. Their pain points, likes, and dislikes. The places they hang out online.
2. Publish content after analyzing competitors and researching topics.
3. Unite its audience with brand value. Fostering a sense of belonging binds both.

Its blog focuses on problems that present-day marketers go through and provide actionable tips to solve them.

Wrapping Up

Content marketing can make or break your brand. All the examples above have a great product, but that is not the only reason for their success. Their properly researched content tailored for their audience plays a major role.

We hope that you have taken a lot away from the above examples to market your own content better. The simplest trick to creating an outstanding blog is to start with the aim to give tangible value to your readers.

Good luck!

Image Sources – MOZ, JetOctopus, Twitter, chanty, kinsta, hotjar, Shopify, Pinterest, SEMRUSH, Mailchimp

Author

Pratik Dholakiya

Pratik Dholakiya is the Founder of Growfusely, a SaaS content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO.