Sarah Bottorff understands how content advertising and marketing can help build a logo. She must do as she’s performed it for numerous SaaS groups, including her modern agency, FastSpring, where she is VP for Marketing.
For example, Bottorff was formerly introduced to construct a marketing group at AppFolio for a brand new felony product imparting. AppFolio had completed its organization through strong attention to content advertising. Bottorff took those learnings and applied them to their unique legal practice control answer, MyCase, making it the range two criminal practice control software program on time.
That became simply the beginning. Bottorff took her content advertising capabilities to Smokeball, another organization providing a cloud-based total felony exercise control software program. When she joined them, Smokeball changed into a sales-pushed agency. It didn’t do content material advertising, opting to ship a monthly email to its database as a substitute.
Bottorff changed into a position to expose professionals to how content advertising and marketing that supplied idea leadership could better upload real fees around using their software. It helped the company’s clients recognize their efforts to be wonderful attorneys, now not remarkable commercial enterprise software people.
With FastSpring, she has brought that same attitude to using content marketing to assist clients in being even better at what they do. In this situation, FastSpring gives SaaS-based digital commerce answers to small to mid-sized organizations selling digital software programs (e.g., subscription software, payment and billing, workplace competencies, etc.). Through content material advertising and marketing, FastSpring helps customers enhance how their clients sell their software.
Here are a few examples from the FastSpring weblog:
7 Ways to Use Video to Increase Conversion Rates, How To Write Great Product Descriptions That Convert and Subscription Finance: What is Monthly Recurring Revenue? These blog posts are not about FastSpring’s merchandise; they, as an alternative, offer guidance and quality practices on the way to boom income and apprehend income management as a part of their commercial enterprise better.
It’s fair to mention that Bottorff understands the price that content marketing can carry to a company – if you make your customers a hit, you will succeed.
So what’s the advice she offers?
Tips for fantastic content material marketing
The first thing is to construct a sturdy crew with dedicated roles and responsibilities, says Bottorff. Content advertising and marketing is a shared duty; however, content material marketing software will not thrive without defined roles and obligations.
The most critical position is the owner of the content material application. The owner identifies drivers and pain points. They do this through operating with the product team to recognize what they’re developing and why and speaking to clients to understand ache factors and gaps. Interviews are a huge element of any content advertising and marketing software. With all this information, the content material owner develops a complete program.
Another crucial element of a strong content program is SEO. As Bottorff points out, creating content’s quality, but you want the proper people to discover it. Then there’s design, and by way of layout, Bottorff doesn’t just imply how the content looks but how easily digestible it is and how it’s displayed. Then, of course, there’s the high-quality writing and the subjects that lend fantastic thought management that human beings want to devour.
As to where content material advertising suits the company, Bottorff argues that it ought to be incorporated and work across the organization – in product planning and the roadmap, patron fulfillment, and the income group. Every team has a role to play in what content material to develop. The key to building successful relationships throughout those groups is reciprocity. For example, Bottorff says the product group works with the content advertising group because the brand-new capabilities they increase will get publicity. For income, it’s approximately ensuring they get the resources and property they need.
Building a content material library
Bottorff takes a slightly special attitude when it involves constructing the content library. You want to define the purchaser’s adventure and build content to support that adventure. But for Bottorff’s agency, which is a pay-according-to-performance business, personnel is incentivized to assist their customers in optimizing their websites and their businesses.
Her group increases content that allows companies to get to the subsequent stage of their business. So, they offer advice on optimizing their websites, improving their content, and leveraging different content material assets, like webinars or films.
Bottorff says FastSpring has comparable challenges to its customers. Hence, ey have an amazing deal with the concepts and might put more sources into growing thought leadership content that their customers want.
For example, FastSpring sends potentialities personalized videos in which a Sales/Support individual speaks to the possibility on-screen, indicates their website, and makes recommendations to improve it. They then display how, in case you plugged in FastSpring APIs, you could enhance the experience with special approaches. These are simply informative and sufficient to make the chance to see the fee and need to know more.
Bottorff likens the videos to a cooking display where you may see the last product that will help you recognize the fee of the effort you want to put into making it.
My take
Bottorff makes the factor that content advertising is all about the revel in and that you need to provide content in an effortlessly digestible manner. Content has to be useful, which calls for you to recognize your marketplace nicely. Now, it’s not best in terms of what content material to provide but alsoto provide it and in which.
