Create content for your product
Create content for your product
1. Review your product’s features, benefits, and competitive positioning.
If this information is not readily available, talk to your product development team about key product features. Then, perform audience research to learn about its benefits and positioning: Use focus groups and in-depth customer interviews to learn about product benefits. Use target surveys to learn about competitive positioning and create a perceptual map.
2. Research the target audience for your product to gain a clear understanding of their pain points, interests, and channel preferences.
Look for this information in your buyer personas and other existing audience research. If your product’s target audience differs or is only a segment of your overall brand audience, clarify these differences for anyone who might also create content for other products. For example, if you offer a variety of business operations software tools for professionals from entry-level to c-suite, but the content you want to create is for a solution specifically designed for budget managers, clarify how this audience segment differs from your larger brand audience in pain points, interests, and channel preferences.
3. Interview your sales and customer success teams to learn about common topics and questions from both prospective and current customers.
Common questions can provide inspiration for future content. For example, if current customers frequently ask about a specific use case for a product, like how to set up an email newsletter template, future content for your email newsletter tool can highlight high-converting templates created with your software. Your sales team can provide insight into the types of information audiences need to convert to customers. Feedback gained from sales pitches and post-sales surveys can similarly guide your content.
4. Review product review sites for independent confirmation of customer feedback and preferences.
Use websites like G2 and Capterra to research customer reviews of your software product, or online marketplaces like Amazon for physical products. These sources can help you understand content ‘blind spots’ that, when published may lead to a better understanding of your product and industry.
5. Define the buyer’s journey for your product, with specific attention on the pain points your customers face at each stage of the journey.
For example, prospects at the awareness stage are seeking general information, and may not even be aware of the problems they need to solve. They need educational, non-product-specific content that focuses on explaining the problem. At the consideration stage, they will look for comparative content about the different solutions available for their problem, such as product demos, webinars, or case studies that explain the value of your product more specifically.
6. Create a channel strategy for your content that matches your audience’s preferences. Keep in mind that your product content will likely exist within a larger content marketing framework for your entire brand.
For example, a SaaS solution may focus largely on its own website as well as LinkedIn for product-focused content. Draw on the research about your target audience to limit your focus to the most relevant content channels. Review your brand’s existing content channels to determine which are most relevant for the specific product you’re promoting.
7. Build a content calendar for your product that matches both your channel strategy and audience content needs in the buyer’s journey.
You can use an existing content calendar template, or create your own using a software like Airtable. Draw on all previous steps in this playbook to build your content calendar. For example: Focus only on the channels identified in your product content strategy. Plan a mix of content that covers all stages of the buyer’s journey. Focus on relevant topics as defined by your audience research, sales and customer success interviews, and independent review sites.
8. Create engaging, channel-optimized content with a singular focus and a clear call to action.
The details of your content should depend on the channels you have identified and your audience preferences. For example: A B2B SaaS solution for c-suite executives may focus on in-depth research reports, promoted via LinkedIn. An email marketing tool for mid-level professionals may focus on content that differentiates it from competitors, promoted via Facebook and Instagram. Each piece of content should have a singular focus, optimized to the topic and the audience’s point in the buyer’s journey. A clear call to action at the end offers a natural next step to guide your audience through the sales funnel and towards product conversion.
9. Measure content success against key product metrics like lead conversion rate, cost per lead, and customer LTV.
For example, content in the awareness stage can be evaluated against how many leads the content creates, while content in the consideration stage should be evaluated against SaaS demo signups. Over time, you can identify trends to determine which content helps the product succeed, and which needs adjusted to build awareness, sign-ups, and revenue for the product.