Ah, campaigns.

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Where many think content marketing begins. Unless you’ve jumped straight to this page, that’s not you. Because we’ve made lengthy stops to work on our Audience and Message, you know there’s a good deal of foundational work that goes into knowing who to target, and what you need to say for them to become a customer.

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It probably won’t come as a surprise, then, that you’ll need to introduce some connective tissue between the work you’ve already done and your first campaign before you hit go on the first ad or email.

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Time for a glow up

Looking at your site now might be a little like the experience of looking at photos of yourself as a teenager. With hindsight, it’s easy to see that you never really suited the emo fringe and that, yes, maybe you did apply a bit too much eye shadow.

But don’t worry, that’s all in the past. Now you know your audience better, you just need to make sure your messaging is reflected across your site and key touchpoints.

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Your Site

Updating your messaging could also mean you need to tweak the structure of your site or certain pages within it. There’s no need for a full rebrand though, you’ll want to make these changes as quickly as possible.

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Sales materials, social profiles, PR boilerplates

Is your messaging reflected on every well-trafficked touchpoint that you control? Your sales narrative should flex to fit the demands of each format. At times it’ll be just a paragraph, at times it’ll span a whole deck.

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Ad campaigns

Be careful here. If you’re running high-converting campaigns with your old messaging, you’ll want to test how your new messaging compares before it replaces your old campaigns.

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Prospect lists

Exclude prospects that no longer fit your target audience definition and include those that do. You’re likely to have a smaller but more coherent list of targets.

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Internal comms

Present the new sales narrative to your team, and update internal docs that tackle targeting, positioning, and messaging.

But first let’s take a closer look at how to introduce your sales narrative to your site.

How to apply your Sales Narrative

For folk that land on your site, your sales narrative offers a well-crafted story that bridges the gap between their situation and your solution. Even if they don’t buy, presenting a clear sales narrative makes it so much easier for them to see the benefit of your tool, and recommend it to someone that will.

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Aside from some structural changes to your home page, and the addition of new copy, this shouldn’t be a big job. You’re not rebranding and relaunching, you’re making tweaks to improve your site’s ability to communicate and convert.

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Sometimes the structure of your site, not just your homepage, will need to change too. Admittedly, this will take some time. If you don’t think certain pages are in service of how your audience learns or buys, or your site analytics tools are showing that key pages are getting disproportionately less traffic, then you’ll want to consider a reshuffle.

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If you’re only in need of a simple, high-converting site, this site structure works well. Your top navigation could look something like this:

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1. Homepage that features sales narrative
2. Product page that features product narrative
3. Use case or case study pages that feature proven value for your target audience
4. Pricing page
5. Sign up or contact page

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You might also want to introduce less commercially focused pages for folk that aren’t ready to buy yet, or need a different journey :

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1. About Us
2. Careers
3. Resources
4. Blog

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Here’s how a simple site like this would support both learning and buying journeys.

Although the site structure prioritizes the commercial journey, the backup learning journey is your opportunity to introduce content based on your content pillars. The bucket of people that are ‘ready to learn’ will always be bigger than the bucket of people that are 'ready to buy’.

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This site structure and the journeys it enables are just a suggestion. Whichever way you choose to present this information, your decision should be based on what your audience wants to see, how you expect them to behave, and what’s going to help your sales narrative shine brightest.

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How to build a simple funnel

Every early-stage marketer finds the customer acquisition funnel a little daunting at first. Who knew that a prospect had to work through so many steps to become a customer? And how long will it take to set up a funnel that carries them to a sale?

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Although a prospect’s journey to becoming a customer can be a long road, it doesn’t have to be. The funnel offers many handy shortcuts, with certain types of content doing the job of several funnel stages at once.

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For example, a prospect could see a case study you’ve achieved for a competitor. Even though this is their first interaction with your brand, they understand that your software is responsible for achieving the results they need to see in their own business and are motivated enough to get in touch and book a demo.

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So instead of building content for each stage of this funnel, let’s build the shortest and most simple funnel possible. That probably looks a bit like this: a prospect learns about your product, and then that prospect buys your product.

If we can make a funnel like this work with as few campaigns and channels as possible, we’ll get the best possible outcome from the smallest possible input. That’s an equation every early-stage startup should live by.

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We’ll start at the bottom of the funnel, with content that helps prospects buy, because this is the quickest route to converting customers. We also need the bottom of the funnel to convert, so the top-of-funnel prospects aren’t blocked on their way to becoming a customer.

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You’ll want to prioritize bottom of funnel content with the potential to reach a large audience, before moving on to both top funnel content with a large reach and bottom of funnel content with a small reach.

For bottom-of-funnel content to be effective, it should give satisfactory answers to these questions:

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1. How does your software solve my problem?
2. But what if… [insert customer’s objection]?
3. Can I trust this software to deliver on the promises made by marketing?
4. How is this software different / better than whatever else is available?
5. Will the software deliver a return on investment?

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Let’s break down each of these questions and give some examples of how content can solve this for your prospects.

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1.  How does your software solve my problem?

The sales narrative we’ve put together is geared towards helping folk understand that your software can solve their big, annoying, expensive problem in the easiest way possible. So it makes sense that much of the early content you produce focuses on helping folk solve this challenge.

Instead of me telling you what content types are going to work, take cues from your customer and competitor research. How did customers tell you they approach solving problems where they work? How can you position what you produce as an improvement on what your competitors have already put together?

Some examples of content types that show how your software can solve problems include:

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1. Case studies
2. Demos and product videos
3. Ads that introduce your product
4. Outreach emails that intro your product
5. Bottom-of-funnel search-focused blogs like comparison articles, 'best tools for' articles and how-to blogs

2.  But what if…?

No matter how convincingly you promise to resolve your prospects’ big problem, they’ll hesitate somewhere. Because your audience is likely to view new software as a risky choice, a chunk of this group won’t want to touch it. But others can be convinced if you’re smart about how you tackle their objections.

By checking your customer interview notes and speaking to your sales team, you should be able to uncover what the most common objections are. Your sales team is used to handling objections but think of all the folk who never got in touch because your competitor did a better job of soothing their nerves. It’s your job to salvage some of those lost deals.

Recommended content types for handling objections include: 

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1. Case studies, testimonials, and reviews
2. FAQs and help docs
3. Dedicated landing pages to tackle the biggest objections
4. Social content that outlines your approach
5. Use case pages that show how you serve a specific audience segment

3.  Can I trust this software to deliver on its promises?

Every first-time marketer underestimates the trust needed from a buyer to make a sale. I remember sending out campaigns and expecting to win customers the same day. In fact, for the first six months of working in marketing, I would cycle quickly between thinking ‘Marketing is easy!’ and ‘Marketing is hard!’

Don’t underestimate how little trust your prospects have in your software, particularly if they’ve not heard of your brand before. The average B2B sale is made after 27 interactions with your brand, according to 2022 research from Forrester.^[5] 15 of those interactions are digital and self-guided (the other 12 are with your sales team), which puts a lot of pressure on content to build trust.

While some buyers might be desperate, in a rush, or focused on price, even if these folk become customers, they aren’t likely to stick around for long. The quicker you earn your audience’s trust, the easier it is to win and retain their business.

Building trust takes many forms: your friend may recommend a product to you, you might read reviews on Trustpilot, you might read examples of case studies with businesses like yours, a site might look similar to a brand you like, or the copy on a site might use the same language you would.

Here are a few trust-building content types to prioritize:

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1. Case studies with clients most relevant to your target audience
2. Stats that show your product’s effectiveness
3. Reviews from clients relevant to your target audience
4. Ads that use your clients’ logos and creative
5. Content that draws on expert opinions from others in your community

4.  How is this product different from everything else on the market?

‘Oh, so it’s just like a…’

You probably have more competitors than you expect. Looking beyond the other tools your prospects could choose instead, they’re also likely to do nothing, give the problem to someone else on their team, or build a crude alternative themselves on a tool like Excel.

The work you’ve put into speaking to customers will help you understand what’s important to them, and how you can position your tool to beat out the competition. Meanwhile, your competitor analysis can help you identify where your competitors aren’t doing a good job of reaching your audience, and where their content falls short of your audience’s expectations.

Here are some content types that lean on how you’re different from competitors:

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1. Any content that’s aligned with your content pillars
2. Content your competitors aren’t producing but your customers are consuming
3. PR stories
4. Stunts and guerilla marketing
5. Content that puts your mission front and center

5.  How does this product deliver a return on investment?

How do you contextualize the price of your product, so it seems like an investment, rather than a cost?

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There are two ways to do this. The first minimizes the perceived cost of the product. One of the best examples of this I can think of comes from the on-demand design service Superside. They justify the price of their product with a video that tots up the hidden costs of hiring an internal design team, compared to their monthly retainer.

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Superside is significantly cheaper than an internal design team, but significantly more expensive than many of their competitors, so this is a smart way to frame their service.

The other way to frame your pricing is to maximize the perceived size of the potential return. Usually, this involves telling stories and sharing insights that show how you’ve contributed to the growth of brands that have ‘made it’ in their niche. Showing you’ve already achieved the success your buyer aspires to is a simple way to justify your prices.

Content that shows how your product delivers a return on investment includes:

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• Pricing page
• Case studies
• Product pages
• ROI calculators
• Competitor comparison pages

How to prioritise campaigns that are most likely to convert

Now you know what content is likely to have the biggest short-term impact, that’s exactly what you’re going to prioritize.

We’ve got lots of options for content to produce now, but you’ll need to fight the temptation to spread your bets and try everything. Most marketers tend to underestimate the time that goes into building campaigns for different channels (me included), so they bite off more than they can chew.

So let’s be clear: if you’re trying to do everything, you’ll spend most of your time working on campaigns that won’t make a meaningful difference, and neglect spending time on those that do. Matt Lerner, ex-marketing at Paypal, said:

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“From any successful startup, it’s obvious in hindsight, 90% of their growth came from 10% of their ideas.”^[6]

Because we’ve already built a rich picture of how your customers behave, and what appears to be working for your competitors, it’s possible to recognize what content types and campaigns are likely to be successful without spending time testing everything first.

Here are a few principles to help you ruthlessly prioritize your content and campaigns:

1.  Reliably reach your audience without permission

That means building content for channels where your audience regularly spends time, and where you won’t need them to subscribe or opt-in to see your comms. Channels like search and social offer ‘in-built’ audiences that you can reach as a reward for producing compelling content or in exchange for your ad dollars. Accessing in-built audiences is the quickest way to engage the people you need to reach.

2.  Revenue is the only good metric to measure content success

In large organizations, making the link between content and revenue is the cause of much chin-scratching. In startups, it’s much easier. Your sales team should ask leads how they heard out about you, and what they saw that made them want to get in touch. With answers to both questions, you have the ‘original marketing source’ and the ‘marketing activation source’.

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Or in other words, you know how their journey to become a lead started and finished. When your content gets mentioned, you attribute revenue to it. Because you won’t have that many campaigns live to begin with, figuring out what’s working should be straightforward.

3.  Work with what you’ve got

Does your sales guy have a deep understanding of the market? Does your software gather valuable insights? Does your platform allow customers to do something they couldn’t do before? Make that one special thing obvious and accessible to your audience, so they experience the value of being your customer before they become one.

4.  Content means ads too

When you’re confident in your audience and message, you stand a good chance of making a good return on ad spend. In this case, Message = your ads’ creative and copy, and Audience = targeting. Linkedin has the most granular targeting options for B2B audiences, so you know your ads are being put in front of your target audience. If your audience spends time on Linkedin, that’s a good place to start.

5.  Prioritize what happens in public

Word of mouth is the best-value marketing channel, and you have more control over it than you think. When you launch campaigns on public forums like social media, events, or other communities, their success depends on your messages being well-received and actively supported by your audience. No likes or comments means no reach and no impact. It’s frustrating at first, but this focus is helpful.

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Through trial and error, you’ll quickly understand what content your audience wants to side with and share. Done right, your vocal audience will attract a public following that’s hard for your buyers to ignore.

6.  The smaller you are, the bigger you swing

Let’s imagine your best-known competitors have been knocking about for a while. They’re sponsoring every event, they’re all over social media, they’re producing two search blogs per week, and a webinar every month. If you mimic their approach, you’ll fail. You don’t have the team, the budget, or the following they do. But not running the intense content program they do is an advantage, too.

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Your monthly revenue isn’t tied to a cycle of content promotion your customers have become accustomed to, and potentially bored by. So avoid doing an underwhelming version of what your competitors have already aced. Instead do a big, unignorable version of something only you can do. We’ll explore what that could look like in practice toward the end of the book.

Understanding channels

Channels are funny things.

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Marketers care deeply about the channels they distribute content on because investing in the wrong channel can mean the difference between reaching an audience of 1,000 vs an audience of 100,000.

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But from your audience’s perspective, there’s nothing intrinsically special about channels. Each channel has different approaches to content discovery, content sharing, and presentation, but ultimately, they are a vehicle for the content itself, and that’s what matters to your audience. It doesn’t matter if you turn up to pitch new business by train or by car, only that you get there and give a solid presentation.

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In the B2C world, this is demonstrated by the copy-paste features that TikTok, Snapchat, Youtube, Twitter, and Instagram have launched. The functionality of these apps has quickly converged to support newly popular content formats like 15-sec vertical video clips. The content presented is the pull for audiences, while the channels exist to host, promote, and capitalize on that engagement.

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I want to clarify here that this section of the book will not help you uncover which channel is going to be the channel that scales your business. While most businesses see their biggest growth from a small number of channels, I don’t have experience scaling every channel, so I’m not the right person to tell you how to crack ‘em.

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Instead, we’ll look at channels through a content lens. But before you try to build content for every channel your customers mentioned in interviews, here’s an idea of what building and promoting content for each channel involves.

Now let’s map each of these channels onto a funnel, so we know how they work together.

From here, you should be able to plan a simple route from the top of the funnel to the bottom.

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Picking your priorities

After so much preparation for your first campaigns, maybe you feel as though there’s too much information to make a clear decision about what to launch. So, to help us prioritize which campaign is going to be most effective, we’re going to build a table to compare them.

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Add a row for each campaign you’re considering launching, and then add each of the below bullet points as columns:

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• Customer alignment: How closely does the campaign align with your customers’ priorities?
• Competitor differentiation: Does the campaign set you apart from your competitors?
• Content pillar alignment: Which of your content pillars does this campaign talk to?
• Relevant channels: Which channels are relevant for this campaign?
• Ability to access new audiences: How effectively will this campaign put your content in front of relevant audiences that don’t already know about you?
• Ability to convert audiences to qualified leads: How effectively will this campaign encourage relevant audiences to get in touch?
• Size of opportunity: Can you quantify the impact the campaign will have? Perhaps by looking at previous campaigns, competitor campaigns, or potential audience sizes?
• Examples of similar campaigns: Can you think of any related campaigns? How did they go?
• How to test the campaign: What early steps will you take to ensure the campaign is working as intended, and how do you plan to step up activity from there?
• Resource required: How long do you expect the campaign to take, what internal and external talent do you need to draw from, and what budget do you need?
• Expected results: What would a good result look like?
• Effectiveness score: Taking all other columns into account, how effective do you expect the campaign to be?

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Or you could just use my example sheet.

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And then, once you've launched the campaigns, you can add the following:

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• Actual results: How do these results compare to what you were expecting?
• Other notes: What went well, what went poorly, what still needs to be understood, and what should happen next?

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If this level of planning seems like overkill, try wading into a campaign that doesn’t land and realizing far too late that you’re not going to be able to make the difference you expected to. The fact that I made this mistake too many times is why this framework for campaign prioritization exists.

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Setting targets

“What gets measured gets managed”, as the saying goes. The often-forgotten part of that saying adds, “even if what you’re measuring is pointless”.

Your targets need to be tightly geared to contribute to a broad, business-wide change to have any impact at all. For example, owning a ‘$ qualified new business pipeline sourced by content’ figure clearly influences the revenue figure your business wants to hit. On the other hand, optimizing what you do to win more contact form submissions is likely to reward tactics that prioritize lead volume over quality.

The ‘revenue sourced by content’ metric from the previous example is a good one, so let’s use it as part of the OKR approach that companies like Google use. From that objective (O), we’ll work backward to decide on the key results (KRs) that need to happen to reach it. Part of this is guesswork, but OKRs are more about pushing hard in a single direction to achieve a specific result than building an inch-perfect plan.

So far, so simple. But beyond your key results, measuring content gets a little complicated. Even though attribution sources help, they’re not perfect, and some of the righteous efforts you’re putting into your content will fly under the radar.

So now we need to make a leap of faith, based on what we already know about the fundamentals of content: Audience + Message + Intent = New Business. You should be confident in your audience targeting and message’s relevance, so any content campaign that puts your messaging in front of your audience should, sooner or later, contribute to your business’ growth.

As an early-stage company, this level of conviction helps you deliver impactful content campaigns quickly, and without the second-guessing and toe-dipping that holds up your competitors’ execution. And best of all, your ‘best-guessing’ can be proven to contribute to revenue.

Let’s fill out these KRs, then. Use content performance metrics that prioritize an output that needs to be ‘won’, rather than an input that can be achieved by producing a certain number of something. So instead of setting a target of ‘building and promoting 10 client case studies’, the KR could be to ‘win 100,000 impressions to case studies via Linkedin’.

This approach makes content production more than just a tick-box exercise. Instead, the content must win engagement that leads to revenue, presenting a puzzle for the KR owner that can only be solved with creativity, prioritization, and speed.

Underneath each KR you can add initiatives or deliverables which straightforwardly outline what you’ll commit to doing.

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Every recommendation I’ve shared so far has come with a big, red warning: only follow this advice if it makes sense to your audience. This applies more than ever to this next part, where I’ll recommend five content campaigns for early-stage software businesses.

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Without offering any silver bullets or making any Tony Robbins-style promises, I do think that most early-stage software businesses that have their Audience and Message pinned down would benefit from getting started with one of these campaigns.

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It’s up to you to decide which is most relevant.