15 Not-to-Miss Content Marketing Campaigns of SaaS Brands

Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.

To make it work, you need to have buy-in from top management and be comfortable allocating enough funds to it.

But once you do, the benefits can be incredible.

In the words of Mark Macdonald, Shopify’s Content Marketing Lead, “You get ‘always on’ market research, it’s far easier to get traction for new products and features, and having an audience attracts a wealth of outside opportunity. And when you build a media asset that you own and control, it helps insulate you from third-party algorithm changes on platforms that you have zero control over.”

Let’s take a look at 15 brilliant examples of SaaS content marketing campaigns launched by some of the smartest brands in the industry. We’ll dissect what made these campaigns work and what we can learn from them.

1. Groove’s “Journey to 100K” story

Groove is a well-known sales engagement platform for enterprises using Salesforce.

The company followed the path less traveled by documenting its financial ups and downs in its blog. They spoke about their journey from zero to $100K in monthly revenue. At the time, SaaS founders hid their failures to avoid dampening team morale and scaring customers.

But CEO Alex Turnbull decided to take a risk and be transparent. He began to share “real stories” about growing the company a mere six months from zero cash day.

Groove’s blog post on A Startup’s Journey to $100,000 in Monthly Revenue resonated with other small businesses and, within a week, Groove had 5,000 subscribers. Now, the Startup Journey blog talks about the company’s journey to $10 million a year and has more than 2,50,000 readers per month!

Groove didn’t hit the jackpot right away, though. Initially, they tried different types and styles of content but none of it was fetching results.

Len Markidan, head of marketing at GrooveHQ, says in a podcast at CoSchedule, “We had a product, but we didn’t really have athoughtful or effective marketing strategy at all.”

They reached out to companies like Unbounce, HubSpot, and Kissmetrics who were marketing themselves really well. What they learned helped them develop a winning framework for their own content — that of being relevant, actionable, and unique.

The stories shared on the Startup Journey blog raised awareness about Groove and appealed to SMBs and small businesses who were facing many of the same problems.

What we can learn from their campaign:

• Share your personal entrepreneurial experiences in a fresh, authentic voice. Tell compelling stories, display your vulnerable side, and talk about the “embarrassing” numbers, too. 
• Talk to your audience, find out their challenges and what they’re thinking about, and write about it. 

Other content marketing campaigns by Groove:

Over time, Groove has launched several other blogs to cater to different audiences and stages of the funnel:

• A culture blog – Behind the Curtain
• A customer experience blog – Wow
• An entrepreneurial blog – Grow

2. Moz’s Content Hubs and Informative Videos

Moz is a SaaS brand that counts among the leaders in SEO software. 

Since SEO and search are among the most technical topics, Moz uses a content hub strategy to deconstruct them. Instead of creating isolated blog posts, they have written guides to provide in-depth information on each broad SEO topic such as:

• The Beginner’s Guide to SEO 
• The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide 
• The SEO Keyword Research Master Guide
• The Technical SEO Site Audit Checklist

Each guide is divided into several chapters with a glossary at the end. They’re regularly updated with the latest trends. Readers can find their topics of interest without getting overwhelmed by the vast amount of content.

Moz’s guides also benefit from higher Google rankings, more conversions, and greater brand authority.

Whiteboard Fridays (WBF) are a tradition started by the ex-Moz founder, Rand Fishkin, in 2007. They’re videos that typically accompany long-form blog posts wherein a presenter explains complicated topics with a pre-drawn whiteboard. WBFs record 20%-30% more engagement than other content on the Moz blog.

Even after Fishkin moved on from Moz, WBFs are still hosted by other marketing experts in the team.

What we can learn from their campaign:

• Use content hubs and the topic cluster strategy to break up a broad topic into smaller, interrelated, and manageable bits.
• Video marketing is an effective driver of engagement and brand awareness. Brand building can be beneficial down the line in sales conversations. 

Other content marketing campaigns by Moz:

Moz has a bunch of other content marketing initiatives:

• The Moz blog is helpfully divided into several categories like branding, CRO, keyword research, and link building to educate readers about SEO and online marketing.
• The Moz Q&A Forum is a community that allows SEO professionals to ask and answer questions and exchange opinions and perspectives. 
• Moz Academy offers paid courses to help people learn practically anything they want about SEO.
• Moz has an extensive database of free webinars, case studies, whitepapers, and reports to cater to the preferences of different people.

3. Ahrefs’ “How-To” Content and Engaging YouTube Channel

Ahrefs is an all-inclusive SEO toolkit that comprises a rank tracker, a keywords explorer, a site auditor, a site explorer, and a content explorer. 

Really, who hasn’t heard of Ahrefs in the SEO world?!

It’s not just the quality of the product that has skyrocketed the company’s popularity. It’s also their focus on putting out detailed and data-rich articles and actionable videos. 

The company invests heavily in creating “How-To” guides that address the challenges and problems of its target market in detail. The Ahrefs blog is one of the authoritative SEO and marketing blogs in the world. Their articles are a masterclass at showcasing one’s product as the solution to the reader’s problem.

Instead of resting on their laurels, the team at Ahrefs chose to diversify into YouTube. Ahrefs TV is one of the most popular SEO channels with more than 280K subscribers. It features short, 10-minute videos on key topics that their target audience will be interested in.

What you can learn from their campaign:

Write in-depth and actionable “How-To” content and include a demonstration of how your product addresses the reader’s pain points and solves their problem. Your prospects will see the content just at the time they need it. 

Also, use the power of video marketing to engage a wider audience and build authority and brand awareness. 

Other content marketing campaigns by Ahrefs:

Ahrefs offers free tools like Keyword Rank Checker and Backlink Checker to drive awareness and provide value. 

The Ahrefs Academy provides video courses on SEO and blogging taught by Ahref experts like Tim Soulo and Sam Oh.

4. Webflow’s Case Studies as Effective Conversion Content

Webflow is a no-code website builder platform targeted to designers who want to build professional websites without help from developers. It has a post-money valuation of $1 billion – $10 billion as of 2021. 

Its website features a vast collection of case studies across categories and industries. Through these assets, Webflow demonstrates its industry expertise, showcases the benefits of its platform, and builds social proof.

A typical case study talks about the problems faced by the customer, how Webflow provided a solution, and the results achieved after switching to the platform. They include a customer testimonial to emphasize the impact of Webflow in addressing the customer’s pain points.

What we can learn from their campaign:

Use case studies to take your prospects through the problems they commonly face in their industry, the solutions you can provide, and the results they can expect from your platform. 

Highlight data that shows how you resolved the major problems of your customers and provided the very benefits they were looking for, such as increased page load speed and faster implementation. 

Other content marketing campaigns by Webflow:

Webflow leverages several marketing channels to raise brand awareness, build authority, and attract prospects, such as its blog, Webflow University, Webflow TV, Webflow Community, and Webflow Forum.

5. ThoughtSpot’s Solution Briefs

The business intelligence platform ThoughtSpot stands valued at almost $2 billion. Its investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Silver Lake Waterman, and Sapphire Ventures.

Initially, the company aimed to enable business users with a search-based analytics platform. Gradually, it expanded its target audience to include data analysts and developers. It has also expanded its customer base.

ThoughtSpot used solution briefs to cater to specific readers from various industries. The solution briefs demonstrate how the platform can be used to solve problems particular to each industry. 

What we can learn from their campaign:

Solution briefs are like detailed use cases that you can create to educate your customers about how they can use your product to solve their industry-specific problems.

If you weave in a relevant customer story at the end, it will help improve the credibility of your software. 

Other content marketing campaigns by ThoughtSpot:

ThoughtSpot’s AI-powered platform is often considered abstract and overwhelming by users. 

To counteract that perspective, the company is using clear and engaging branded animation to highlight the product’s benefits. The animated content consists of sales demos, ad campaigns, and assets for websites and social media. 

Scott Holden, CMO at ThoughtSpot says, “During the last 6 months, in the heart of COVID, we’ve seen our lead traffic go up by 35%. That’s because, in the digital world, we’ve been able to get attention from people with really good creativity and really well run events with really good content. ”

In addition, the company offers podcasts, webinars, whitepapers, analyst reports, datasheets, case studies, ebooks, and demo videos.

6. Buffer’s Open Culture Blog

Buffer began as a Twitter scheduling app and later moved on to other social media platforms. Initially, founders Leo Widrich and Joel Gascoigne found it hard to get noticed. Biggies like TechCrunch and Mashable ignored them.

Since then, the social media management platform has adopted a three-pronged content marketing strategy to attain an annual revenue of approximately 20 million. 

Buffer started with guest blogging to build relationships and get its first 100,000 subscribers. Then it focused on creating content for its existing users on its own blog. Finally, they use email marketing to serve up their best tips.

Currently, Buffer has three publications: Flow, a marketing blog, Open, a workplace culture blog, and Overflow, an engineering blog.

Open is representative of Buffer’s corporate culture of openness and transparency. The blog presents raw and honest accounts of its business ups and downs. Its articles “How We Hire at Buffer” and “Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer: Our Transparent Formula and All Individual Salaries” are among the most shared ones. 

What we can learn from their campaign:

Don’t be afraid to take a bold step to engage your customers and attract prospects. People appreciate transparency and openness, and, instead of being put off by your failures, they will appreciate your courage. 

Other content marketing campaigns by Buffer:

Buffer runs two podcast series — Breaking Brand and The Science of Social Media — to target listeners on the go. 

7. Squarespace’s Influencer Marketing

Squarespace, a website builder, collaborated with many top YouTubers and YouTube channels to drive awareness and conversions for its platform. 

Squarespace sponsored the following YouTubers as part of its campaign:

1. News/ pop culture – Ray William Johnson, Good Mythical Morning, Philip DeFranco, Tyler Oakley
2. Learning – Minute Physics, CrashCourse, AsapSCIENCE
3. Movies – Screen Junkies, Cinema Sins
4. Gaming – The Game Theorists 

The company’s primary objective was to drive conversions by targeting audiences across a variety of demographics. It also sought to increase awareness about Squarespace’s platform by partnering with YouTube influencers to create original content.

Source: Mediakix

The campaign was quite successful with a total audience reach of 57,674,112 and 33,511,059 sponsored video campaign views. 

What we can learn from their campaign:

Use influencer marketing to raise awareness about your brand and drive more engagement and conversions. However, remember that endorsements have to be authentic and relatable to build trust with your audience. People can easily see through fake endorsements and it could backfire on your brand.

Other content marketing campaigns by Squarespace:

Squarespace has a collection of resources to 

1. Made with Squarespace – a showcase of Squarespace websites created by real users
2. Making It – a blog that shares informative articles, stories about Squarespace users, trending topics, and videos to help entrepreneurs with selling online. 
3. Forums – a community for Squarespace users can exchange tips and perspectives
4. Webinars – a group of free, one-hour sessions that teach Squarespace skills and are open for customers and prospects

8. ConvertKit’s Creator Stories

When ConvertKit was founded in 2013 by Nathan Barry and David Wheeler, it wasn’t exactly a groundbreaking product. Success stories like Mailchimp, HubSpot, and AWeber were flourishing at the time. 

Even if ConvertKit was a best-of-the-breed email marketing software, it wouldn’t have been enough to carve a space for itself. Initially, the company grew organically through word-of-mouth marketing. 

To compete with the big fish, ConvertKit used several content marketing strategies like doing 150 webinars in a year for a narrow audience with simple tech and doubling down on its SaaS email marketing strategy. These strategies helped the company reach more than 2.3 million MRR.

Creator Stories is an initiative wherein ConvertKit shares inspiring entrepreneurship journeys of its customers. 

Artists, chefs, coaches, designers, course creators, musicians, YouTubers, podcasters, and writers shared their struggles, challenges, and wins. Each creator profile is accompanied by a podcast episode so visitors can choose the format they’re most comfortable with. You can also watch short films about these creators. 

What to learn from their campaign:

Share inspiring stories about your users launching and growing their business using your SaaS product. Include actionable takeaways and tell compelling stories. 

Other content marketing campaigns from ConvertKit:

ConvertKit offers high-quality guides around subjects like creating ebooks, newsletters, and landing pages, selling online, reaping the benefits of email marketing, and so on. 

Its blog has a vast collection of articles categorized by topics like building your audience, business models, SEO, content marketing, digital marketing, monetizing your email list — practically anything an aspiring entrepreneur would need to build a business. 

9. Close’s Content Playbooks

Close focuses heavily on content marketing to raise awareness about its CRM software platform. 

When the company was launched in 2013, it quickly discovered that it couldn’t grow by just putting out more advertisements than the competition. So the marketing team changed tactics: they studied competitors’ blogs and discovered that there weren’t enough high-quality sales resources.

Close had a confident team of storytellers and in-depth information about sales. So they set out to “out-teach” the competition.

To that end, Close puts out content playbooks, guides, and videos to educate prospects and customers about sales skills, sales management, and sales tools & templates.  

What we can learn from their campaign:

When you teach people how to effectively run their business, they will look to your product when they’re evaluating their software solutions choices.

Focus on creating evergreen material that will continue to pay dividends years after it has been published. 

Other content marketing campaigns by Close:

Close believes in a three-stage content marketing machine:

1. Generate lots of raw material
2. Send the raw material down the assembly line
3. Remix and repurpose the content for various uses

So far, the company has published several books such as those on cold calling, sales hiring, follow-up strategies, and sales negotiation. It also has guides on enterprise sales and cold emails, checklists, templates, scripts, and email courses. 

Of course, the Close Sales Blog is the go-to resource for sales professionals looking to upgrade their skills and stay updated on the latest trends in the industry.

10. Shopify’s On-Demand Business Courses

One of the world’s leading ecommerce behemoths, Shopify serves as the backbone of some large companies like Google, Wikipedia, and Tesla Motors. 

A combination of smart SaaS content marketing and awesome software has catapulted Shopify into being used by more than 275,000 retailers across 150 countries. 

The Shopify brand is further solidified by the strategy of offering thoughtful insights and actionable advice to entrepreneurs and founders.

The company’s mission is to equip people with the training and the resources to build, launch, and grow a successful business.

Shopify Learn has a wide variety of resources: courses, tutorials, and webinars. They educate people about how to do business with Shopify (customer acquisition) and teach them how to build a long-term, successful ecommerce business (customer success).

New courses are added each month and participants can also track their progress online. 

What we can learn from their campaign:

Shopify has become synonymous with entrepreneurship through its commitment to education. It creates and shares merchant success stories to build confidence in aspiring entrepreneurs. 

This drives people to build a relationship with the brand even if they aren’t ready to use the platform yet.

Other content marketing campaigns by Shopify:

Shopify’s blog receives more than a million visitors each month and has played an important role in the growth of the ecommerce platform. 

Its podcasts, Shopify Masters and Vanguard, aim to capture new audiences by sharing insights from industry experts and stories around entrepreneurship. 

Shopify’s Help Center is a comprehensive resource for ecommerce professionals to enable them to start with the platform, sell their products, manage their online store, market their offerings, and expand their business.  

11. Canva’s Classroom-Style Video Tutorials

Canva is an online graphic design software meant for businesses that don’t have the budget to hire a graphic designer or that don’t have Photoshop/Adobe-level skills. Using its drag-and-drop interface and professionally-designed templates, you can create anything from business cards, flyers, and invitations to Zoom backgrounds.

Founded in 2012, it has more than 60 million active users per month across 190 countries. 

If you’re new to graphic design or want to learn how to use Canva in the classroom, the Design School offers free video tutorials around the product, on personal branding, and social media. 

• The “Canva for Beginners” course offers a quick overview of the software and how you can use it for your business. 
• The “Canva for the Classroom” course educates teachers about using creativity and project-based learning and promotes digital literacy. 
• Courses like “Graphic Design Basics” and “Social Media Mastery” provide a foundation for people to grasp the nuances of design in an online world.

What we can learn from their campaign:

Creating video tutorials and detailed articles to explain to users how to make the most out of your product will help drive greater adoption. 

When users derive value from the entire experience, a proportion will be compelled to sign up for the paid version to unlock more features. 

Other content marketing campaigns from Canva:

Canva’s offerings are segmented into courses, tutorials, and the blog. The Canva blog has high-quality articles categorized by topics like design, marketing, branding, nonprofit, and teachers & students.

12. HubSpot’s Free Certification Courses for Brand Authority

HubSpot’s blog attracts millions of unique visitors each month partly due to its focus on putting out high-quality content via different channels. The blog is categorized into Marketing, Sales, Service, and Website to align with the needs of specific audiences.

It is an inbound marketing, sales, and service software with nearly 128,000 customers across 120 countries.

HubSpot acquires some of its customers through free certification courses available at HubSpot Academy. Popular courses are Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Digital Advertising, and Digital Marketing. 

If you complete a course, you get an “industry-recognized badge” to add to your LinkedIn profile. 

What does HubSpot get? Brand awareness and brand authority!

Also, when these course participants look for a marketing or sales tool, HubSpot will be top of mind for them.

What we can learn from their campaign:

Establish authority and brand awareness by offering free and valuable courses and certifications that equip participants with practical knowledge. Your company will benefit from word-of-mouth marketing. 

Other content marketing campaigns from HubSpot:

HubSpot creates a diverse variety of content for all stages of the sales funnel. Their CTAs vary from getting visitors to sign up for a free trial or a product demo or download a lead magnet. By requiring an email to download a piece of gated content, HubSpot hopes to nurture the lead and push them further along the funnel. 

High-quality case studies, ebooks, guides, templates, and checklists are used to capture users with top-of-the-funnel content.

13. Mailchimp’s Short Films that Tell Stories and Share Dreams

Mailchimp has always been very good at marketing, evolving from a “quirky email company” to a B2B SaaS marketing enablement business. It has 12 million active customers and an average of 10,977 customers sign up every day. 

It’s known for its eccentric content marketing campaigns, including one that leveraged mispronunciations of its name to create video and audio ads.

It harnessed the power of creative storytelling with Mailchimp Presents, a collection of original short-form films, documentaries, scripted series, and podcasts for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Mailchimp commissions or creates these content types. 

Without discussing Mailchimp, they tell entrepreneurial stories about creative differences, the awkwardness of using stock photos, mid-life career changes, and similar themes that resonate with their audience. 

Jay Maldonado, Senior Marketing Manager at Mailchimp says, “Once you’ve sent an email or created a website in Mailchimp, now you can kind of lean back and see entertainment content… It really kind of builds the full circle of mental and emotional connection with our users.”

What we can learn from their campaign:

Films and documentaries increase brand awareness and help the brand create an emotional connection with its target audience. However, this strategy works when you’ve already built authority in your industry (Mailchimp has been around since 2001) and you have the budget for a campaign that is not targeted towards your bottom line. 

Other content marketing campaigns from Mailchimp:

Mailchimp has a rich marketing ecosystem. 

They have a Resources section aimed at small businesses that offers the following:

• Mailchimp 101 – Articles about how people can use their product
• Guides & Tutorials – Step-by-step tutorials to help learners get started with Mailchimp
• Case Studies – How customers are successfully building their brands with Mailchimp

There’s also a Mailchimp Marketing Glossary that lists some of the commonly-used marketing terms.

The company recently acquired a business magazine, Courier, which publishes content aimed at modern entrepreneurs and modern businesses. At present, the magazine has 100,000 readers across 26 countries. 

14. Intercom’s Podcasts on Business Strategies

A list of SaaS content marketing campaigns is not complete without a mention of Intercom’s excellent content marketing strategy. Intercom has a messaging platform that enables companies to build customer relationships via product tours, live chats, and chatbots. 

The company’s content director says, “There’s a growing cohort of companies like Intercom who believe that if you focus on publishing great content, you’ll need to do minimal marketing to attract people to your product.”

All of Intercom’s content is free and does not have CTAs or share expectations.

In its weekly podcast, it interviews industry experts on topics like digital transformation and Intercom’s users to derive practical insights. The focus is on business strategies and growing and scaling businesses. Incredibly, the podcast does not have an external agenda and is focused on providing value to the listener.

What we can learn from their campaign:

Podcasts are an engaging form of content marketing that allow you to create branded content on a budget. The benefits of a podcast are:

• It’s a portable content format that people can listen to on the go
• It builds a loyal audience at a much lower cost than video
• It can be launched quickly with just a microphone and recording software
• It allows you to test new ideas and gain traction quickly with less competition
• It enables you to tell rich stories and reach new audiences

Other content marketing campaigns from Intercom:

Intercom builds trust and reputation with:

• A blog called Inside Intercom about customer engagement, support, and product & design
• Comprehensive, downloadable, and printable books about customer support, sales, and marketing

15. BigCommerce’s Ecommerce Glossary

By creating a glossary of ecommerce terms, you can drive top-of-the-funnel organic traffic, establish your industry expertise, and create brand awareness.

That’s just what BigCommerce, an ecommerce website builder platform, did with their ecommerce glossary. They’ve also created individual blog posts to cover each term in-depth. 

What we can learn from their campaign:

A glossary content asset is a great way to complement your blog and drive backlinks. 

Other content marketing campaigns by BigCommerce:

BigCommerce creates a wide variety of content to fulfill the needs of its audience, such as the  BigCommerce blog, Ebooks and guides, The Make it Big Podcast, The Make it Big Conference sessions, on-demand webinars, and case studies. 

The BigCommerce University provides training and certification programs for both business owners and technical professionals. 

Conclusion

If it isn’t already clear, let us reiterate that you should never embark on content marketing without a solid, research-backed strategy. Publishing a few stray blog posts will do absolutely nothing for you.

Research your target market, develop a strategy, and produce valuable, actionable content. Choose your marketing channel(s) with care.

When done correctly and creatively, content marketing not only builds authority and awareness but drives more leads and conversions.

Author

Pratik Dholakiya

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