How Repurposing Content More Than Doubled ZyLAB’s Traffic

ZyLAB is the developer of software for eDiscovery and public record needs. Corporations, government agencies, and law firms wanting to manage their litigation, investigations, document review, and FOIA requests can count on their AI-powered and intuitive legal discovery tool.

Over the past few years, ZyLAB has boosted its website traffic and built a strong brand image in its niche. We were keen on knowing more about their winning journey. Hence, we got in touch with Mingus Mkubukeli, Growth Marketer at ZyLAB/ Ipro.

In this SaaS Leaders Interview Series, Mingus tells us how their content strategy has been the cornerstone of their success at ZyLAB.

ZyLAB’s Success Highlights

Content marketing is at the heart of their marketing strategy. It is backed by well-researched and carefully chosen keywords. Quality content has not just helped them build authority but also fetched them backlinks naturally, with minimum outreach.
They strongly advocate content repurposing to boost brand awareness and thought leadership.
Their top-funnel content includes blog articles, social media, PR activities, and more that help them attract qualified leads.
Their mid-funnel content includes whitepapers and webinars that push leads further down and support them during the consideration phase.
Their bottom-funnel content comprises in-person webinars, product demos, and other content that aids in conversions.

Thanks, Mingus, for sharing your SaaS journey and Zylab success highlights with us. We are excited to know more about it!

Could you share a bit about your expertise?

As a growth marketer, I specialize in demand generation. Simply put, that means I specialize in full-funnel marketing; from creating buzz and generating brand awareness for our products and services, to helping convert prospects into customers.

My journey into B2B marketing started in the oil industry but I quickly switched as soon as I realized that I was more of a fit in a fast-paced and innovative environment. Since that switch, I have helped various SaaS companies (from Face Analysis to HR tech) meet their growth objectives.

In return, these companies have helped me sharpen my skills in all forms of digital marketing, from content marketing to SEO, to paid advertising.

It’s been quite the journey.

Tell us about ZyLAB and how it impacts your customers

At ZyLAB/ Ipro, we help organizations perform fast, defensible eDiscovery investigations with an easy-to-master solution that’s built to meet today’s data challenges.

We’ve been around since 1983 and started as an archiving solution for organizations that needed a smart and efficient way of managing their data and institutional memory. We entered the market as a pioneer: we were the first full-text retrieval software for the PC. Indexing was the name of the game at the time, and we were amongst the first solutions to offer it.

As time passed we continued down our path, which led us from retrieval through indexing to AI-assisted eDiscovery. Though the tools and technologies we use are almost unrecognizable, the end goal remains the same: lightening the load of legal professionals.

You’ll notice that I say ZyLAB/ Ipro and that’s because ZyLAB was acquired by Ipro last year (summer of 2021). This makes us one of the largest key players in the eDiscovery market.

With both companies and technologies combined, this enables us to offer an innovative AI-driven, real-time hold-in-place and search-in-place eDiscovery and Information Governance Platform, offering solutions for Internal Investigations, Data Privacy & Compliance, eDiscovery, and Information Requests. That’s the value we bring to our customers.

If you’ve never heard of eDiscovery before, I wouldn’t blame you. We are in a very niche and competitive market. As a consequence of that, having a strong product offering is crucial.

What’s been your strategy when promoting ZyLAB?

One of my main goals has been to build and strengthen the company’s thought leadership. Because we are in a very competitive space, we need to have a strong digital presence.

Content marketing plays a huge role in our overall marketing strategy and it is heavily backed by SEO data. Topics are well researched and keywords are carefully chosen – high volume and low competition.

Instead of only focusing on optimizing our content for search engines, I’ve extended our reach by repurposing our content on content syndication platforms. I find that this works well for us since, our audience, legal professionals, are quite particular about where and whom they are getting their information.

This has also helped us position our brand as a thought leader in the space, grow our web traffic, and get valuable backlinks in return. As a result, we’ve been able to more than double our website traffic in 2021 and the plan is to continue that growth in 2022. This is something I’m most proud of.

Our lead funnel is like most SaaS companies, I assume. We have our top-funnel content that includes blog articles, social media, pr activities, etc. Our mid-funnel content includes whitepapers, webinars, etc. And our bottom-funnel content in-person webinars, product demos, etc. We further build on this by leveraging intent data tools like 6sense.

When it comes to full-funnel marketing, it is especially important to avoid boiling the ocean. What we do, is focus on offering funnel-specific content. This enables us to prioritize accounts that show interest or purchase intent for the type of product/ services we provide.

You were previously associated with Harver. How did content marketing help then?

When I was at Harver, our content marketing and SEO fit in the overall brand strategy in a way that helped strengthen and amplify the company’s positioning. I apply the same principles at ZyLAB/ Ipro.

Initiatives that have impacted Harver’s search performance are a strong focus on SEO and content repurposing. For example, we took our well-performing blog and turned it into a podcast. This, again, helped increase brand awareness and thought leadership.

Since content marketing is key to my overall strategy, I always measure it. I always look at our organic growth and measure the success of our digital marketing channels. Basically, asking, are the channels I’m using bringing us valuable traffic, and how much of that traffic is moving down our marketing funnel or contributing to the pipeline.

Some of my go-to tools for my growth marketing efforts include:

Ahrefs for SEO
6sense for gathering intent data for ABM campaigns
Google’s suite of webmaster tools for technical digital marketing
Microsoft Clarity to see how visitors use our website
MuckRack for PR initiatives

Have you explored link-building strategies in any of the SaaS companies? If yes, could you please talk a bit more about it?

Backlinks are extremely important to a website but to be honest, I’ve never had a dedicated backlink strategy. I think this is because my content strategy has always been strong that it gains, for the most part, backlinks naturally.

We’ve done the occasional outreach for earning backlinks but it’s the quality and type of content that seems to have worked for me.

For example, writing and publishing industry reports is a good way to earn yourself some backlinks since other content marketers would potentially cite your report in their blog articles. This also does wonders for your thought leadership.

This has been how, for the most part, I have been able to generate backlinks.

Is there any piece of content that you own (ebook/ whitepaper/ podcast) you’d like to tell us about?

Speaking of reports, we’ve recently published the 2021 State of AI Adoption in eDiscovery. We surveyed 184 eDiscovery practitioners across law firms, service providers, corporate, and government, to better understand how AI is deployed across the eDiscovery industry.

The legal sector is often behind when it comes to technology and this is because it is a “traditional” institution. Many legal professionals still perform most of their daily functions using manual methods, even though there are tools to help enhance their performance.

This report highlights how and why legal professionals are using AI tools and for what functions.

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

In my opinion, the SaaS domain is great because it’s face-paced and encourages you to think on your feet. I like that. I find that it helps push my creativity. There’s never a dull moment.

As a growth marketer, I have to constantly experiment and come up with new ideas to help expand on whatever success I’ve gained per experiment.

My advice to other marketing professionals would be; to know how to interpret your data! To succeed, you to be able to make sense of the data you are getting from your marketing activities. It’s one thing to just run an experiment and then measure the results. If you do not understand the data from your experiment, it will be hard to determine what works.

How have you been maintaining a work-life balance during these times?

As far as maintaining a work-life balance during this time, well, I like to wind down by tuning on my two turntables and embarking on a musical journey. So besides marketing, I like to create and play music.

I’m also a big vinyl head; so, I like to collect records. These activities helped me get through the pandemic.

Books you’ve been reading or podcasts you’d recommend?

I haven’t picked up any new books lately but one of my go-to podcasts has to be The Search Engine Journal Show. As I’m big on SEO, I find it insightful and the best way to keep up with the latest digital marketing trends, especially keeping tabs on how Google is progressing in the world of search.

SaaSy Tidbits from Mingus Mkubukeli

Merely focusing on optimizing our content for search engines isn’t enough. SaaS firms need to invest in repurposing their content on content syndication platforms. This can help them build a strong brand image and online authority.
Measuring your content marketing performance is critical. A SaaS marketer should constantly ask themselves –
- Is this tactic or channel fetching me the organic growth we aimed for?
- Which channels are bringing us traffic?
- How much of that traffic is moving down our marketing funnel or contributing to the pipeline?
Though occasional outreach is critical for gaining backlinks, finally, it’s the quality and type of content that’s important for gaining backlinks naturally. Create an industry report and see your backlinks soar!
SaaS marketers looking to taste success in their fields need to learn to make sense of the data available to them. If you do not understand the data from your marketing activities, it’s tough to determine what works.

That was all about how ZyLAB leverages content repurposing to boost traffic and increase conversions. As a SaaS content marketing agency that strives to create a strategic content mix for its clients, we completely relate to Zylab’s brand journey.

If you have any further queries on how Zylab functions or their brand success, get in touch with Mingus on LinkedIn or visit their website.

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.