I recently worked on a monetization strategy content project in relation to SaaS companies. The research involved taking a hard look at how subscriptions and behavior relate to growing product revenue during economic uncertainty.
I found myself pondering how pricing — and types of pricing — encourage or incentivize spending with customers. And, alternatively, how the traditional model is losing traction given technological advances like automation, integrations, and AI mean fewer user seats are needed to get the outcomes customers want and need from some products.
Research showed consolidation in tech stacks, a healthy reduction in redundant apps and shadow IT. Most importantly, it showed a need to consistently and continuously prove the clear value customers gain from using SaaS products when renewal, retention, and expansion are critical priorities.
Which of course drew my mind back to content. Every content asset we produce must deliver recognizable value to our buyers and customers.
But like subscriptions, content delivers value on a sliding scale.
Stay with me for a minute. Many SaaS companies are adopting consumption-based billing. The more you use, the more you pay. And, presumptively, this increased usage delivers an increase in perceived value.
This differs from a tiered plan with a fixed price at each level for an increasing set of features and capabilities. A consumption basis means you’ve chosen to use more; therefore, you pay for more.
Ok. Back to content. Your content doesn’t do its job if it’s not engaging its intended audience. Not only must it earn their attention but stake a claim to build mindshare.
The Goldfish Fallacy
Is anyone else tired of being compared to a goldfish? Scrolling moves faster. Attention is shrinking. We must get our point across faster. Speed of consumption is an imperative…in less than 8 seconds.
I call B.S. Humans are not goldfish. And — I have yet to find any goldfish fessing up to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Yet, much of the B2B content I see could be responsible for an attention deficit.
As proof that humans still pay attention:
- 68% of people identify with binge-watching TV shows (source)
- 50% of people identify with binging on social media (source)
- 52% of B2B buyers are interested in webinars and digital events (source)
- 50% of B2B buyers are interested in long-form content — white papers, eBooks (source)
We choose to believe the Goldfish Fallacy when buyers fail to engage with our content rather than to consider our content may reflect one — or more — of the following:
- Mediocre content creates drive-by views.
- Content that fails to add anything new — and relevant — is useless.
- Content that doesn’t match the context of your audience makes you irrelevant.
- Random acts of content that don’t build a “hero’s” story leave buyers on the sidelines.
And, as proof humans have attention spans, a nurture program across six touches pulled an average of 4-minute engagement for each article in the series. CTR rate was consistently above 30% on the emails sent to those in the program. And yes, revenue followed.
Applying Subscription Factors to B2B Content
Subscriptions are a good model because the hard work begins once someone subscribes. Now it’s up to you to help them adopt the product and realize the value the product promised, continue using it, and upgrade to use more of its features.
Content is an invitation to engage. Once a buyer engages with your content, it’s up to you to help them explore the ideas you share and choose to engage with more of them. Connecting the points on the problem-to-solution pathway is key to building momentum and confidence that solving the problem with your help will produce the outcome they’re after.
But here’s the rub. Just as a subscriber can choose to cancel a subscription, a buyer can bounce from your content and choose not to return. This, in effect, cancels their attention on you and any promise of a profitable relationship.
4 Subscription Factors to Incorporate into Your Content Marketing
1. Ensure your content UX is on point (attract the right subscribers)
- User experience is key for gaining adoption and usage of a SaaS product; the same is true for your content.
- Context, tone, style of delivery, and meaningful ideas count for buyers choosing to “subscribe” to your content.
- Change happens faster than we can often adapt. This includes more millennials than boomer buyers, new problems and opportunities, and uncertainty, along with disruption in markets. Priorities are shifting or stalling. It’s more important than ever to gain attention and make the case for solving problems that buyers could choose to live with or work around. So, why shouldn’t they?
- See my article on why you need to revisit B2B Buyer Personas and ICPs. This factor sets the foundation for the others.
2. Stack your content to build mindshare (get buyers to subscribe to your content)
- Start small with a premise that matches the context of a buyer experiencing a situation that leads to a problem you can help them solve. This could be a social post that presents a relevant conundrum. (Hint: Your personas should give you this insight)
- Link to content that adds another piece to the puzzle of solving the problem. Then, from this piece, link to the next. It helps to think about question-and-answer progression.
- Then present them with a deeper dive — a webinar or a guide/paper — that pulls together more pieces about how to solve the problem. And include examples of the outcomes your product helps them gain. (not feeds and speeds, but what’s in it for them)
- See my article on how to build momentum with B2B buyer-driven experiences to pick up some tips.
3. Deliver ideas they can use (Help them adopt your content by making them want more of it)
- Buyers are looking for new insights and ways to think about solving problems. Run-of-the-mill content won’t deliver this.
- Apply your company’s point of view about the market, industry, and problem-to-solution story and help them see their role as the “hero” of the story.
- Deliver content that shares meaningful ideas consistently to gain steady content adoption and momentum. Help them self-serve what they need to know to keep moving forward as they decide whether the problem is worth solving — now.
- See my article on the Content Value Equation to help you plot your course.
4. Get them to go for the upgrade (enable your sales team to engage and close the deal)
- B2B buyers say “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” when they are ready to buy. And your sales team needs to be ready and primed when this happens. Or, know when it’s the right time to reach out to help buyers get to know what they don’t know they don’t know, so they can make the best decision.
- Make sure your sales reps know the story you’re sharing with buyers, what buyers have engaged with, and what resources are on deck for the next steps.
- Knowing that reps won’t read marketing content or know how to use it, create Cliff’s Notes versions to help them step into the conversation seamlessly.
- See the section, Sales Plays a Crucial Role in the Buyer’s Story, for an example of how to do this.
Subscriptions are a constant in our lives as consumers and professionals. Applying the aspects of the model to your content marketing strategy will help you stay on point and increase your relevance with B2B buyers. This mindset also helps you think about content like a product — which it is. Your challenge is to “sell” your content as well as your reps sell your product. In a self-serve world, the opportunity is huge for marketing to contribute to revenue growth. A subscription mindset will help.
One big point about subscriptions: content marketing should be also growing opt-in email subscribers. That one detail is what distinguishes content marketing from every other form of marketing. And it’s just like any media site.
If you aren’t building subscribers to your content, then you are not doing content marketing. You are just making content for marketing purposes. These two things are not the same.
I think you took “subscription” too literally. The post is addressing how marketers need to think about and enable the impact of their content. And, I disagree that opt-in email subscribers are the distinguishing detail of content marketing. It’s a limiting view given the self-service approach of buyers who say “don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
If a potential buyer avoids your content, ideas, and POV because your content is gated, then some other vendor is influencing their approach to solving the problem. Your likelihood of getting on the Day 1 list when they come in market is not good.
If, on the other hand, you mean create content that’s so compelling that your target audience seeks out a way to “subscribe” to your content, then I’m all for that version 🙂
Subscriptions with respect to “content marketing” ARE literal.
You literally must have subscribers to have an audience – and the development of an audience is the whole point of content marketing.
Web traffic is not an audience. Google can and does take it away.
Social media followers are not an audience. The platforms own the relationship and access.
Downloads from gated content are not an opt-in audience. In fact, many would prefer not to be put on a drip campaign, they just wanted to read that piece of gated content.
“Content marketing” means running a site/blog/newsletter/podcast like a media site. That is publishing useful and relevant content at the same place, at the same time, and doing it consistently over time to build an audience of potential buyers.
That’s the Joe Pulizzi version of content marketing.
It’s not the same thing as “making content for marketing” because marketing has always made content.
If you do not have email subscribers, then you do not have an audience and you are not doing content marketing.
Hmm. If you want to invoke Joe Pulizzi’s (CMI’s) version of content marketing, it’s actually:
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Attracting and retaining a defined audience isn’t limited to email subscribers.
For example, I read your work on The Sword and the Script – have for years – yet I’ve never clicked the Subscribe by Email button. But I find your ideas useful, so I drop by and consume them quite often. I wonder how many others do, as well. If one of those readers reached out to buy your agency’s services because of the content you share, would that not be a result of content marketing?
The ideas you share are meant to expose your expertise, hence that of your agency, and to show you understand them, right? Your goal, from what I see is to get them to think critically about B2B marketing. Help over hype. Those ideas attract a specific audience interested in them because they’re relevant and valuable. And I’m guessing they’re also helping you win business… Whether the buyer is on your email list or not.
It’s worked well for me for the last 17 years. I’m betting it’s working for you, too.
That’s CMI’s current definition. It has, shall we say, evolved since old Junta Joe started figuring out what to call “it” circa 2008 — about 16 years ago.
He was going to call it “custom publishing.” Publishing revolves around the subscriber.
Even so, the operative phrase is “a clearly defined audience.” Without subscribers, marketers have no idea as to the definition of their audience.
The random web visitor that raises a hand? There’s no link to the content. None. The salesperson who closes the deal will claim attribution.
Unless you have an email address, a phone number, or a mailing address for print distribution, marketing doesn’t have a case to lay claim to attribution.
You’re example as an anonymous web reader of my blog is a good one.
Aside from this content, I have no idea who you are, no demographics, no firmographics, I can’t see what you’ve read, how often or how long you’ve lingered. The only thing I can do is retarget you because the site is cookied. But I won’t know who you are specifically unless you answer the retargeting in some way.
But I cannot call you as part of my audience because I cannot define anything about you. However, with an email address, that all changes. Completely.
In sum, it’s not content marketing unless you have subscribers. It’s just marketing content. The same thing marketing has been doing forever.
Doing it right, and obsessing over subscribers, will absolutely make every other aspect of marketing better.