From Unknown SaaS Startup to Global Market Leader in Under Two Years

Market and Competitor Research

First, I needed to understand what kind of content Agile CRM's competitors were producing and where the gaps were. Doing so would allow me to identify and fill obvious gaps. This, in turn, led to market differentiation for Agile CRM by providing unique value to its audience that no competitor was delivering.

I spent days researching the competition, reading countless resources, and consuming as much information as possible.

I conducted audits of competitors' content, reading through their websites, and subscribing to their blogs and newsletters to:

1. Gauge the quality of their work and how often they released new content 2. Understand the types of content they were producing and the topics they were focused on

I methodically reviewed it all with a fine-tooth comb to identify the content types and topics that were resonating the most with Agile CRM's target audience.

To validate my findings, I went a step further and spoke with his professional network to gain added insights and confirm the conclusions I'd reached were accurate. This preliminary work is tedious, but critically important to creating an effective, scalable growth strategy. It's the foundation upon which you build, so it must be unshakably solid and reliable.

Creating Consistent Messaging

The next step was to create company and product messaging to ensure consistent representation of the company by all internal employees. Agile CRM didn't previously have messaging, positioning documentation, or even an official value proposition.

I involved other teams so that everyone would be on the same page and had the opportunity to contribute their unique insights as part of the process. This built camaraderie and left my colleagues with a true sense of collaboration, as they were making an important contribution to the company's future success.

Create Branding Style Guide

To maintain this consistency, companies need an official branding style guide. However, I quickly realized that one had never been created. So, I got to work on it.

Consistent branding is super important to a consistent customer experience. Creating Agile CRM's branding style guide was a way to ensure nobody sent out content featuring an old logo, for instance, or used the wrong color scheme in a PDF. I later wrote a blog post for the company on how to create a brand style guide.

Internal Content Audit

Next, I took inventory of all pre-existing internal marketing content to determine which pieces were still usable, which needed updating, and which I could re-purpose.

Data analysis was key to the audit process. I analyzed a variety of data to pinpoint the most engaging topics, then used that insight to inform the company's editorial calendar and overall, long-term content strategy.

Although high-level content strategy doesn't need to be very granular, I did need to ensure that my understanding of the audience's needs, challenges, and goals was accurate. Without that knowledge, I couldn't address those issues in the content I produced. Nor could I effectively manage and ensure high quality work from the social media specialist I hired.

An element of this was creating buyer personas and ideal customer profiles. These aren't new concepts, but I'm consistently taken aback by the number of companies and business leaders that make the mistake of assuming they know exactly what their customers need and want. Most of the time, they're wrong. It's critically important to speak with your customers directly and validate your assumptions if you want to produce content that meets their needs.

Content Strategy Development

Having a roadmap (a high-level, long-term plan) to follow is critical in content and growth marketing. I created a 12-month content and inbound marketing strategy.

Getting started can be the most challenging part of the equation. So, I jumped in with the expectation that new insights would come to light and alter the strategy along the way. Once you have that initial skeleton, it's so much easier to move forward.

That year-long strategy was eventually broken down into monthly editorial calendars. For example, the company didn't have any eBooks and I knew we needed them. So, I added them to the strategy document, popped them onto the editorial calendar, and mapped them to appropriate stages of the buyer's journey.

Content Writing & SEO

I didn't wait for finalized messaging documents, buyer personas, etc., to start writing. I wrote the first of over 150 blog articles on my second day. That's how I tend to operate. I like to dig right in and the company was keen for me to do so."

Since he was the only in-house writer, Gabriel outsourced perhaps five blog posts over the course of two years. Everything else, he wrote himself.

At the same time, I was also optimizing the content for search engine results and creating messaging documents and buyer personas. It was like starting construction on a building before the blueprints were finished. And that's alright in some scenarios. For example, you can cut the glass for the windows while the plans are still being finalized, but you don't install them until the plan is complete.

In the end, my industry knowledge allowed me to do just that without any hiccups. I work with sense of strategic urgency, despite my calm demeanor. I cut my marketing teeth in New York. It's a cut-throat atmosphere there and you have to adapt to it or be eaten alive. I never adopted that competitiveness, but I'm uncomfortable doing nothing when there's work to do.