3 Unique Content Strategy Examples (And How to Build Your Own)

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Over the years, I’ve created contented strategies for companies similar Google, Algolia, DocSend, and galore more. No substance however large the institution oregon however analyzable its product, the contented strategy ever boiled down to answering 3 straightforward questions.

These questions are adapted from the legendary publication Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. They’re designed to:

  • identify the occupation that needs solving;
  • surface immoderate unsocial strengths you tin usage successful your strategy;
  • and brace your occupation with the close benignant of contented for the job.
My transcript  of the publication  Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt

1. What challenges bash you privation to overcome?

Most companies person the aforesaid halfway problem: they request much customers, and they request much wealth from those customers. But each institution is unique, and solving that occupation usually requires overcoming a big of much circumstantial challenges, like:

  • Building a income pipeline from scratch. Many newer companies crook to contented to build request for their product erstwhile determination wasn’t request before.
  • Stopping reliance connected advertising. It’s communal for businesses to trust connected paid advertizing arsenic their main root of customers, but astatine a definite point, it starts becoming excessively costly to maintain.
  • Getting much income from existing traffic. In different cases, companies mightiness make plentifulness of postulation but conflict to person those visitors into paying customers.
  • Reducing lawsuit churn. Some companies person plentifulness of visitors and leads, but conflict to support radical astir erstwhile they go customers.

Each of these challenges (and galore others) tin beryllium helped by content.

Crucially, the much circumstantial you are with your diagnosis of your challenges, the easier it becomes to enactment retired a solution.

2. What leverage tin you exploit?

The champion contented strategies see leverage: your company’s concealed weapon, thing that makes contented easier to create, oregon helps it execute better. Virtually each institution has immoderate benignant of leverage to use:

  • Unique data. Many companies person entree to unsocial information from their users oregon products.
  • Personal brands. Others person the payment of well-known founders oregon squad members with large societal media followings.
  • Team expertise and skills. Some teams person unsocial experiences that tin beryllium turned into unsocial contented (like our precise ain Patrick Stox, a.k.a. Mr Technical SEO).
  • Network of experts. If you’re fortunate to cognize tons of astute and superb people, you tin see their experiences and perspectives passim your contented (like First Round Review, and their articles penned by seasoned startup founders).

Recognizing and utilizing your unsocial strengths is the cardinal to creating a contented strategy that can’t simply beryllium copied by your competitors.

3. Which types of contented tin flooded those challenges?

There are plentifulness of contented types, from search content to income enablement, each with its ain strengths and weaknesses. Building the close contented strategy is astir choosing the close benignant for your circumstantial challenges.

For example,

  • Search-optimized content is cleanable for gathering a predictable root of website traffic, period implicit month… but it mightiness not assistance to scope elder execs oregon founders who don’t Google communal problems.
  • Thought enactment content (like sentiment pieces oregon probe reports) tin beryllium large for generating word-of-mouth treatment and backlinks, but usually suffers from “spiky” postulation that doesn’t turn predictably each month.
  • Sales enablement content (like case studies oregon gated content) helps to adjacent income deals, but it’s seldom absorbing to the casual reader, and does small to pull caller visitors to a company.

Or, to enactment it successful ocular format:

Let’s usage these questions to reverse-engineer 3 precise different, precise palmy contented strategies, to recognize wherefore they enactment (and however you could emulate them successful your ain business).

Zapier’s integrated hunt strategy

Zapier is an automation level that connects antithetic pieces of bundle unneurotic into adjuvant workflows. Zapier’s strategy is built astir integrated search, generating an estimated 8 cardinal monthly visits:

Traffic graph of Zapier's 8 cardinal  monthly integrated  visits

Most of that postulation comes from 3 types of search-optimized content:

The Zapier blogZapier’s “best app” lists screen dozens of antithetic industries and make immense amounts of integrated traffic.

Looking astatine their tract operation successful Ahrefs, you tin spot that an estimated 92.8% of their monthly integrated hunt postulation comes from their blog and app integration pages combined:

Using Ahrefs to spot    the operation   of Zapier's website

Digging deeper, it’s imaginable to spot which apps make the astir visits for Zapier (in presumption of Organic traffic), and which person the top fig of pages dedicated to them (in presumption of Organic pages).

For example, Zapier person created implicit 1,000 pages successful their /google-sheets subfolder, which generates an estimated 4,000 integrated pageviews per month:

Exploring Zapier's /google-sheets subfolder successful  Ahrefs

What challenges does Zapier’s strategy solve?

  • Generating tons of signups to substance growth. Zapier is simply a freemium company: the bulk of its users wage thing to usage the product, and lone a tiny percent go paying customers. To grow, contented needs to make tons and lots of visitors. Organic hunt contented provides the predictable, compounding postulation maturation needed to make the freemium exemplary work.
  • Marketing to radical successful dozens of antithetic industries. Zapier is simply a horizontal product, utilized crossed galore industries, from selling to finance, truthful Zapier writes astir topics and tools utilized successful dozens of industries.
  • Helping users get much worth from the product. Zapier is casual to commencement with but tin rapidly go much complicated. “How to” contented helps usher users toward adjuvant use cases.

What leverage does Zapier exploit?

  • Integrations with hundreds of tools. Zapier tin link to a mind-boggling array of tools, from calendars to website builders to databases. This creates a large root of leverage: it’s worthy penning astir fashionable apps, similar ChatGPT oregon Figma, due to the fact that users of those tools person the imaginable to go Zapier customers.

Animalz’s thought enactment strategy

Animalz is simply a contented selling agency. While astir different agencies absorption their contented strategy connected SEO, Animalz’s focuses connected thought enactment content:

The Animalz blogAnimalz’s contented strategy shares opinions and deep-dive probe to pull an assemblage of savvy selling professionals.

SEO is an afterthought, but due to the fact that sentiment and probe contented are distributed chiefly done connection of mouth, societal media, and manufacture newsletters, their contented people attracts dozens and dozens of good prime links:

Using Ahrefs to presumption    the fig   of referring domains foir Animalz's blog posts

What challenges does Animalz’s strategy solve?

  • Attracting experienced marketers. As an agency, Animalz doesn’t request immense volumes of postulation and thousands of users to grow. Instead, it needs to pull the attraction of a fistful of experienced selling executives astatine B2B bundle startups—something which opinions and probe are amended astatine than hunt content. 
  • Standing retired from competitors. Most contented agencies people immense volumes of hunt content, creating lots of contention for keywords. By ignoring search, Animalz differentiates itself from its competitors.
  • Proving that their merchandise is great. Writing high-quality, journalistic essays enactment arsenic a merchandise showcase for Animalz, successful the aforesaid mode a escaped proceedings oregon demo would for a bundle company.

What leverage does Animalz exploit?

  • Unique experience. As a contented agency, Animalz has penetration into hundreds of companies’ contented strategies, allowing them to spot which types of contented execute best, and make data-based show benchmarks—a unsocial root of information that nary different institution possesses. 

Freshpaint’s income enablement strategy

Freshpaint is simply a healthcare selling compliance tool. Their contented strategy is focused astir wholly connected income enablement: creating resources that assistance their income squad nurture and adjacent imaginable customers. That means:

  • Use lawsuit content, similar explaining however Freshpaint tin beryllium utilized to embed YouTube videos connected your website successful a HIPAA-compliant way.
  • FAQ content, similar exploring however their merchandise integrates with GA4.
  • Detailed merchandise documentation, explaining however Freshpaint integrates with the company’s existing tools and processes.
The Freshpaint blogFreshpaint’s contented is laser-focused connected a azygous topic: however healthcare providers tin marketplace successful a HIPAA-compliant way.

What challenges does Freshpaint’s strategy solve?

  • Closing deals with hospitals and healthcare providers. Almost each of Freshpaint’s customers find the institution done word-of-mouth successful the tight-knit healthcare industry. Finding caller customers isn’t the issue: it’s persuading risk-averse companies to buy, thing that lawsuit studies are designed to support.
  • Persuading aggregate stakeholders. Lawyers, compliance teams, adjacent IT teams, tin each halt income dormant successful their tracks—a communal situation successful B2B contented marketing—so Freshpaint creates contented to code income objections from everyone progressive successful the buying process.
  • Explaining method topics successful elemental language. HIPAA compliance, BAA, PHI… healthcare is rife with method jargon, and written contented helps explicate however Freshpaint handles compliance problems successful simple, straightforward text.

What leverage does Freshpaint exploit?

  • Hyper-focus. While different companies person to disagreement their contented efforts crossed aggregate audiences and symptom points, Freshpaint is capable to absorption each portion of contented solely connected solving the occupation of HIPAA compliance for selling teams. 
Using Ahrefs to spot    the "hipaa" keywords Freshpaint ranks for

Final thoughts

Content strategy tin consciousness complicated, requiring you to juggle antithetic goals, audiences, and contented types. But creating a elemental strategy tin beryllium arsenic elemental arsenic answering 3 questions:

  • What is the azygous astir important occupation we privation to solve?
  • What unsocial strengths tin we usage to assistance america solve it?
  • What benignant of contented is the champion for solving our problem?