Table of Contents
After Reading This Guide, You’ll Understand 🡭
- How to write conversion-focused content
- Product-led content
Concepts To Know Before Reading This Guide 🡭
It is recommended to learn the above concepts first and then come back here.
Traditional Approach 🡭
One of the goals of writing blog posts is to generate leads for the business.
And, how do you do that?
By placing CTA (banner, text, button, etc.) within the article.
Here’s an example of a banner CTA placed at the end of the article:
[Blog Topic: Vendor Management Tools]
Another example of Text-CTA is placed within the article:
This type of CTA added within the article is mostly ignored by the readers or has a low conversion rate.
Two Key Reasons
1/ Banner blindness: Most banner ads look like advertising. This is why Users consciously or subconsciously ignore the banner ads placed within the content or on the sidebar.
2/ Too Generic: Using one or two subscribe buttons for all the blog posts is not a good choice. This makes the CTA too generic or irrelevant sometimes. Hence, low conversion rate.
Better approach?
Product-led content is where you turn your service/product into an integral part of the blog post.
Let’s dive right into the details with real examples.
Product Led Approach- Introduction 🡭
“Content where the product is woven into the narrative to illustrate a point, solve a problem, and/or help accomplish a goal.”
In simple words:
The goal of blog posts is to solve users’ problems or help the users perform a task. Now, with the product-led approach, your product is a part of the solution.
Here’s an example from Shopify:
Shopify published an article about “How to Start Dropshipping in India.”
Users’ need: To learn the dropshipping process
But Shopify didn’t just share the process to start dropshipping. Instead, they have turned their product (eCommerce platform) into a solution to teach about the dropshipping process.
Let me show you another example from Notion.
Notion publishes a lot of helpful articles for startups.
One of them is about “How to improve knowledge sharing within your startup,” where they have presented notion as a solution by adding:
- Product screenshots
- Gifs
- Product features, etc.
This is what it looks like:
Product Led Approach- For Service Business 🡭
Product-led content isn’t only applicable to SaaS businesses. Even service businesses can get a high conversion rate with this approach.
Here’s an example from GrowAndConvert (a content marketing agency):
One of their popular articles is about “SaaS content marketing.”
In the traditional approach, you’ll see articles sharing the strategies of SaaS content marketing or some marketing examples of brands.
But here, the GrowAndConvert team did a great job by turning their service into a part of the solution.
Here’s how:
In the article, they are not only sharing the strategies but also case studies where they got results for their clients using the same strategies.
This informs the reader that the brand is a content marketing agency, and it also works as social proof for their work.
The key message here is:
Try to integrate the client’s case studies with the content. For example →
If the article is about product positioning, then share strategies for product marketing and how the same strategies helped your clients.
Do This Now 🡭
Follow these steps to execute the product-led content for your organization.
Step 1. Prioritize Content Ideas With a Product-Led Approach In Mind
Businesses sometimes create content on topics that are irrelevant to their product/offerings.
Imagine a gifting company creating articles about the mental health of employees. Here, the company won’t be able to use the potential of a product-led approach.
Solution?
Start with prioritizing content ideas.
Make a list of all the possible content ideas you already have.
Next, score each content idea between 0 → 3 (See the below example):
This way, you’ll easily eliminate/postpone content ideas where you cannot integrate your product/service as a solution.
Step 2. Make A Content Guideline For The Writers
Prioritizing content isn’t enough. The most important part is to write the content.
As a content marketer, it is your job to inform your writers or editors to write content keeping the product-led approach in mind.
The best approach I found is creating a content guideline for the writers.
Here’s what I made for one of my clients.
Try to share examples and screenshots, and educate them about the product-led content. Related Examples To Study The Product Led Approach 🡭
Study the below pages to understand how they have applied the product-led content approach →
1. Ahrefs
2. Shopify
Optional Assignment 🡭
Pick one SaaS business and service business. Next, read their blog articles and observe how well they have applied the product-led content idea.
Also, answer the following questions:
- Do they still rely on the traditional way of adding CTA within the article?
- Are they covering content topics irrelevant to their product/services?
- Create a list of suggestions that you’d like to apply for better conversions?
