How Thought Leadership Content Got Flowla to Being the #1 on Product Hunt (1,700 Upvotes!)

Helping buyers make informed decisions with ease is what defines success for businesses. This is especially true in the B2B realm where the decision-making process is pretty complex and long. 

This scenario calls for brands that differentiate themselves not just with their service but also the way they sell their products. The next-gen sales is highly driven by experiences that empower buyers. 

Flowla realized this early and came up with a solution that helps B2B revenue teams transform processes by eliminating friction and speeding up the sales cycle. The platform unifies all sales resources, actions, and conversations. 

We got talking to Elen Udovichenko, the Head of Content at Flowla. She told us all about her journey in content and the SaaS world. She also spoke to us about how Flowla found its way to building its authority in the buyer enablement domain.  

Flowla is well on its way to achieving a dominant position in the industry with its super-relevant social and content strategies. And we are curious to know how.

Success Highlights

• Flowla’s journey has been driven by a vision to create a world where B2B sales cycles are 100% digital, collaborative, frictionless, and enjoyable. 
• They have empowered B2B firms to go beyond the traditional email threads by offering a unified, step-by-step digital journey that serves as the single source of truth for all involved parties.
• Through their services and marketing strategy, they’ve created a unique space – Buyer Enablement. They go beyond the creation of mere “mini websites” to offering comprehensive workflows with built-in automation rules and AI guidance. This differentiates them from traditional players like Seismic and Highspot. 
• The result? Flowla became becoming #1 product of the day, week, and month on Product Hunt with 1,700+ upvotes. This attracted a lot of qualified traffic for their website.

Let’s hear more about Flowla from Elen. 

Hello Elen! Thank you for taking the time to share Flowla’s journey. But first, our audience would like to know more about you. 

Can you tell us about yourself and your professional background?

I’m the Head of Content at Flowla with almost 10 years of experience in content writing and marketing in general. I started my professional journey in sales (IT services) but soon switched to content and have been working as an in-house or freelance content writer. 

Later, I joined Reply.io as a part-time writer and grew to become their Head of Content in a matter of 3 years. In this role, I’ve been managing all content-related initiatives for 1.5 years, leading a small team of in-house and freelance writers and a proofreader, and collaborating with subject matter experts and design/development/SEO teams to implement projects of different complexity.

About 2 months ago I joined the revenue team at Flowla, an up-and-coming startup in the buyer enablement space, as their Head of Content.

Considering my background and experience, I can say that I specialize primarily in SaaS and sales tech content topic-wise and anything from website copy to long reads or ebooks format-wise.

Tell us about your brand and how it impacts your customers. 

Flowla is a buyer enablement software that transforms B2B sales processes into seamless digital journeys. Our mission at Flowla is to empower buyers and streamline the sales cycle.

Our journey at Flowla is driven by a vision to create the de facto medium for B2B sales. We believe in a world where B2B sales cycles are 100% digital, collaborative, frictionless, and enjoyable. Unlike traditional email threads, having a unified, step-by-step digital journey that serves as the single source of truth for all involved parties is the key to success.

By unifying all sales resources, actions, and conversations into a single link for the buyer, we eliminate friction and significantly expedite sales cycles, often by up to 50%. We rescue B2B deals from the pitfalls of endless email threads, ensuring that every interaction is meaningful and contributes to the buyer’s informed decision-making process.

In a market dominated by legacy “sales enablement” players like Seismic and Highspot, Flowla stands out by prioritizing the buyer’s experience over the seller’s. Our approach, rooted in a bottoms-up strategy and a more accessible price point, disrupts the traditional norms.

We’ve identified a unique space known as Buyer Enablement, going beyond the creation of mere “mini websites” to offering comprehensive workflows with built-in automation rules and AI guidance. This innovative perspective differentiates us from competitors, emphasizing the true value of transforming materials into dynamic, guided workflows.

What’s been your demand generation strategy?

Right now, we mostly rely on LinkedIn for demand generation. We’re very invested in building personal brands for our C-suite as well as other team members (myself included). At the same time, we understand that we want to focus on owned channels more in the next year as with the LinkedIn algorithm it’s practically impossible to get a consistent reach and engagement.

That said, we did have a successful project launch thanks to LinkedIn this month. We released our ebook the 2023 Sales Almanac with top posts from 100 thought leaders on LinkedIn covering the key trends of the past year and predictions/suggestions on how to succeed in the future.

Sharing thought leadership content allows us to fetch qualified and ready traffic that needs little effort to convert. It also helps us build strong connections with influencers and strengthen brand awareness. 

In just a week the ebook got promoted (for free, no paid promo) by 20 of the featured influencers with a total of ~300k followers and downloaded 500+ times, driving a decent amount of traffic to our website.

Since this project was mostly aimed at creating awareness and laying the foundation for possible future collaborations with the influencers in our space, we’re pretty happy with the results and plan to build upon it with a more exclusive (and this time gated) ebook with 2024 predictions and resources to prop up for success.

As for the content strategy, it’s being tweaked and polished as we go and try different things. The team did a really exhaustive research of the ICP and buyer personas even before I joined, I did some competitive analysis in my first month to better understand the landscape. I also tested a few assumptions, optimizing the older blog posts using tools like Dashword and Frase (and saw immediate results with some posts getting 1.5 times more traffic in just a month compared to the past 6 months in total). 

What’s worked for us in our content strategy is building razor-sharp ICPs, thorough competitor analysis, and optimizing existing content. I think brands need to constantly experiment and move quickly with their learnings. 

All in all, we have a lot of ideas and move quickly (which makes it a bit hard to plan for the longer term), but it’s pretty common for an early-stage startup with a lean team in a competitive industry like sales tech.

We’ve just discussed that what we’ve achieved in the past two months can be easily considered a success in terms of demand generation. We had a really successful Product Hunt launch, becoming #1 product of the day, week, and month with 1,700+ upvotes and creating a lot of traffic for our website. 

Next, this Almanac project got us in front of a huge audience thanks to the influencer posts. So when our founders meet people and talk to other founders in the space, many of them mention that Flowla is everywhere these days, which is what we’ve been aiming for!

But next quarter, we definitely plan to do more smart MOFU/BOFU stuff like expert content, some deep research, more ICP-focused and valuable to the end users.”

Have you explored any link-building strategies? If yes, can you share about it?

So far we’ve been able to secure a few high-authority backlinks (70+, considering that our DA is just 32). These were mostly from our co-marketing partners – we didn’t have any targeted effort in this area yet. But we absolutely plan to! 

I already have a few guest post-exchange opportunities in the pipeline for Q1.

We are aiming to be smart about our link-building efforts, using content collaborations. One tactic that we’re planning to implement is targeted outreach to get our product or content projects featured in relevant catalogs and listicles. We are currently experimenting with this on a podcast we’re working on.

Any advice you’d like to give to marketing professionals, especially in the SaaS domain?

First and foremost, understand your audience deeply. Tailor your messaging to address their pain points and highlight how your solution solves real problems. Stay agile – the SaaS landscape evolves quickly, so be ready to adapt your strategies. 

Build strong collaborations between marketing, sales, and product teams – everyone should have a common purpose and keep the message consistent in everything you do (be it a new feature, sales demo, or a blog post).

What I love the most about SaaS products is that they prioritize long-term relationships between a customer and the vendor (as opposed to one-off purchases) which allows you to foster advocacy and deliver value consistently.

How does demand generation fit in?

Demand generation in SaaS is about more than just attracting leads and having them buy from you. Its main goal is to help them uncover their problems and then educate them about fixing those issues (preferably but not necessarily using your SaaS product).

How can one remain relevant in this domain? 

Staying relevant in SaaS requires customer-centricity. Regularly assess market trends, listen to customer feedback, and adapt your product accordingly. Engage with your user community, foster customer advocacy, and be responsive to their changing needs.

How do content marketing and SaaS go together?

Content marketing is the backbone of SaaS marketing. Through content, you can educate your audience, showcase your expertise, and address pain points. Develop informative blog posts, case studies, webinars, and whitepapers highlighting your product’s value. 

Use content to guide users through the buyer’s journey, from awareness to consideration and conversion.”

Any new skills you are planning to learn?

I’m planning to upskill in SEO in Q1 as we focus more on owned media channels and experiment with influencer marketing which is a pretty new area for me.

Is there any piece of content you’d like to tell us about?

Yes, it’s this ebook we’ve recently launched. It’s a curated selection of 100 posts from top LinkedIn voices covering the most influential trends from 2023 and predictions of what comes next.

SaaSy Tidbits by Elen Udovichenko

• The SaaS domain allows businesses to build long-term relationships, enabling them to foster advocacy and deliver consistent value. 
• Content marketing is the backbone of SaaS. It’s through content you can educate buyers through the journey, nurture them, and push them down the funnel. It also establishes you as an authority in the field, which is super-critical for SaaS shoppers. 
• To stay relevant in the ever-changing SaaS domain, firms should prioritize customer centricity. They should listen to feedback and adapt quickly. That’s why, a thorough audience analysis is a must. You must know your customers and their buying journey along with the challenges they face. That’s when you can offer them relevant solutions. 

A well-executed LinkedIn campaign along with an agile content strategy helped Flowlabecome a buyer enablement rockstar. 

As a SaaS content marketing agency, we’ve always prioritized high-quality relevant content. Hence, the insights shared by Elen resonate with us. The tips she shared are quite practical and will surely help marketers build relevant content strategies.

Thanks, Elen for offering us a peek into Flowla’s brand journey! If you have any questions on how Flowla works or can help you, we’d recommend getting in touch with Elen on LinkedIn. You can also visit their website to learn more about their services.

Author

Hazel Kamath

Hazel Kamath is a Senior Content Writer and Strategist at Growfusely – a SaaS content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO.

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