Playbooks and guides by Grizzle

While 94% of B2B buyers now use LLMs during their buying journey, Google still receives over 5 trillion searches annually.

Customers are discovering your brand on more channels than ever before. But the authoritative, well-structured content that earns the #1 SERP position is the same content that AI engines and social algorithms amplify.

Use this list of nine B2B SEO agencies to find a few that fit your growth stage and goals. Then, reach out for a chat to pick the right one.

Why we built this list

Grizzle has worked in the B2B SEO space since 2016, so we know who consistently gets tangible results for clients.

Every agency on this list is a competitor. But a curated list that conveniently excludes anyone we’re up against wouldn’t be useful.

Selection criteria were straightforward:

• B2B-only or B2B-heavy focus
• Concrete SEO outcomes and case studies
• Evidence of generative engine optimization (GEO) and AI search tactics

Who are the 9 best B2B SEO agencies in 2026?

The agencies worth hiring The agencies worth hiring in 2026 are those that recognize search behavior has shifted and have evolved alongside it.

SEO still drives measurable results as a standalone channel. But 84% of B2B SaaS CMOs now use LLMs for vendor discovery.

It’s also important to note that many “successful GEO tactics” (e.g., building topical authority and earning high-quality brand mentions) are rooted in SEO fundamentals.

These nine agencies help you with both SEO and GEO:

1. Omniscient Digital

Omniscient Digital is an organic growth agency that helps B2B software companies turn SEO, content, and AI search visibility into measurable pipeline.

Founded by former growth/marketing leads at HubSpot, Shopify, and Workato, Omniscient brings operational rigor to content programs that have outgrown initial processes.

The agency’s own thought leadership genuinely sets the industry standard.

Omniscient’s original research, frameworks (e.g., the barbell content strategy), and resources on GEO and B2B buyer behavior are cited widely across the space.

Clients include Jasper, Smartling, SAP, and Loom.

Case study: Omniscient helped Smartling generate $3.7M in pipeline through organic search. It also grew Jasper's organic sessions by 810%, while increasing product signups 400x.

Omniscient Digital’s key capabilities:

• SEO and content strategy. Bespoke organic growth programs built on voice-of-customer research, product marketing alignment, and proprietary frameworks.
• AI search visibility services. A partnership with Peec AI helps clients appear in LLM outputs and Google AI Overviews.
• Programmatic SEO. High-velocity page production for B2B software companies targeting large keyword sets at scale.
• Technical fixes. Site architecture, crawlability, and indexation improvements to underpin content performance.
• Link building and digital PR. Authority building through targeted backlink acquisition and brand mentions in high-value publications.
• Digital marketing analytics. Custom reporting dashboards that connect organic performance to pipeline and revenue.

What clients say about Omniscient Digital:

“Omniscient felt like a true strategic partner. They took the time to understand our business and industry, answered every SEO question, and delivered a tailored strategy and content roadmap aligned with our goals. Their recommendations were thoughtful, and they operated like they were an extension of our team.” — Derek Stangle, VP Marketing, RightCapital

2. Grizzle

Grizzle is a B2B organic growth agency that builds high-performing SEO, GEO, and content engines.

The team embeds directly into your workflows, scaling multiformat content and SEO programs alongside marketing, product, and customer success.

Grizzle’s performance-driven approach maps every content asset to the buyer journey, ensuring organic content contributes to revenue.

A dedicated R&D motion means we continuously experiment with new GEO and multichannel search approaches to drive visibility, mentions, and attributable pipeline.

For example, this video marketing agency guide reached the #1 SERP result for target keywords in just four days. Plus, got cited and mentioned in relevant AI Overviews and ChatGPT prompts:

Clients include Pipedrive, Semrush, Tide, and Tipalti.

‍Case study: Grizzle helped Pipedrive increase user sign-ups by 33% and revenue by 39% through a comprehensive organic content program that augmented paid acquisition.

Grizzle’s key capabilities:

• SEO and GEO strategy. Performance-driven roadmaps that identify immediate wins and build long-term demand across traditional and AI search.
• Content production. Expert-led editorial and video content mapped to buyer intent, built to drive pipeline across the funnel.
• Digital PR. Data-driven campaigns and original research designed to earn high-authority links and brand mentions that compound over time.
• YouTube and video. End-to-end video production to drive visibility and engagement on every channel where you have a presence.
• Content optimization. Systematic improvement of existing content portfolios, on-page SEO, and performance monitoring to protect and grow rankings and AI mentions.‍
• Translation and localization. Market expansion support for B2B brands scaling into new regions and languages.

What clients say about Grizzle:

"Working with Grizzle has been a great experience. They've helped us scale up our SEO and content program, folding in seamlessly with our internal content operations. All while maintaining a high standard of content quality." — Kyle Byers, Director of Growth Marketing, Semrush

3. Directive Consulting

Directive Consulting is a B2B performance marketing agency that connects SEO, paid media, and revenue operations into a single methodology built around qualified pipeline.

The agency has served over 420 B2B brands across technology, industrial, and professional services, generating $1B+ in client revenue.

Directive Consulting’s DiscoverabilityOS methodology aligns every project to how ICPs discover and evaluate (now with GEO alongside traditional SEO).

The proprietary Stratos platform also unifies CRM, paid media, SEO, and operational data to give marketing teams real-time visibility into revenue.

Clients include WordPress, Cisco, Calendly, and Adobe.

Case study: Directive Consulting’s content strategy repositioned Seagate into a new, highly competitive keyword category. Organic blog traffic increased by 75% MoM, while average position of core keywords improved by 50.6%.

Directive Consulting's key capabilities:

• SEO and content. Performance-driven SEO and content programs built around how modern B2B buyers search, mapped to ICP funnel stages and purchase intent.
• AI discoverability. GEO is built into every engagement via DiscoverabilityOS, ensuring clients appear in LLMs like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
• Paid media. Full-funnel paid search and social strategies designed to capture high-intent demand and accelerate pipeline.
• Performance creative. Campaign and landing page design built for testing, optimization, and conversion (including CRO without full redesigns).
• Revenue operations. Marketing data and process management ensure SEO and demand gen efforts tie directly to sales stages and closed revenue.
• Stratos AI platform. The AI-powered intelligence platform unifies cross-channel data for predictive insights and smarter budget allocation.

What clients say about Directive Consulting:

“I loved our account team, and Gabby was absolutely amazing. Directive helped us drive significant traffic growth over the last four years and has been a grade-A partner.” — Owen Ray, Director of Content Marketing, Invoca

4. Perceptric

Perceptric is a B2B content marketing agency that builds BOFU-first SEO and GEO programs to generate sales-qualified leads.

Around 80% of searchers now rely on “zero-click” results around 40% of the time. So, Perceptric targets BOFU content where buyers are already evaluating solutions. Then works upward.

The agency reverse-engineers how LLMs choose sources to build a GEO approach that gets clients cited in ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.

Perceptric differentiates itself further with interactive content experiences that embed directly inside articles to drive time on page, brand recall, and sharing.

Clients include Katalon, Scout, DeepIDV, and Anduin.

Case study: Perceptric helped Katalon achieve 150K+ in traffic growth and $12M+ in revenue from SEO over three years. Plus, secured citations from ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity for commercial terms.

Perceptric's key capabilities:

• SEO and content production. BOFU strategy around sales interviews and SME input, targeting in-market buyers.
• AI SEO and GEO. Getting clients cited in LLM outputs across ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity—reverse-engineering how AI engines surface and reference sources.
• Interactive content experiences. Custom modules embedded inside blog posts that let buyers engage with products and compare options.
• Technical SEO foundation. Full technical and website audits with immediate executions, plus UI/UX optimization to set the site up for content performance.
• Conversion tracking and pipeline attribution. Full attribution setup in HubSpot and GA4 to track your customer journey and connect content directly to MQLs, SQLs, and pipeline revenue.
• Content calendar and strategy sprints. A full 60–120 topic content calendar aligned with your buyer journey and prioritized by conversion potential.

What clients say about Perceptric:

“As a bootstrapped founder, I know that organic growth is the way to grow. We're handling social media and DevRel in-house, while Perceptric handles all of the content production and organic growth. Thanks to their help, we're seeing tremendous growth that allowed us to prepare for our next funding round.” — Huy Tieu, Founder of Scout

5. Foundation

Foundation is a distribution-first digital marketing agency for B2B content that performs across search, LLMs, Reddit, social, and every channel your buyers actually use.

Founded by Ross Simmonds (one of the most widely cited voices in B2B marketing), Foundation is known for an approach that goes well beyond production.

Ross’s mantra, “create once, distribute forever”, underpins everything. His team researches, creates, and then amplifies across all relevant channels.

Foundation has generated over 220M organic visits for B2B SaaS clients. The agency’s original research into backlink formats, Reddit strategy, and LLM visibility is consistently referenced across the industry.

Clients include Canva, Bitly, Procore, and Mailchimp.

Case study: Foundation helped an anonymous SaaS tool generate 1M+ impressions in search results within 12 months, producing 63 search-driven articles that earned 1,800+ unique links.

Foundation’s key capabilities:

• SEO strategy and content creation. Data-driven briefs and long-form content built around search intent, ICP pain points, and keyword research.
• LLM visibility. Assets created to surface in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews alongside traditional search rankings.
• Content distribution and repurposing. A systematic distribution engine that amplifies content across LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, email, and social.
• Reddit strategy. A proprietary playbook for B2B brands to build presence and drive pipeline through one of the fastest-growing sources of BOFU search visibility.
• Link building and digital PR. Backlink acquisition and outreach programs grounded in original research and data-driven content that earns high-authority links at scale.
• Content optimization. Ongoing audits and refreshes to improve LLM visibility, conversion rates, on-site SEO, and content performance as algorithms and buyer behavior evolve.

What clients say about Foundation:

“Foundation knows content marketing. Their team has taken our blog from a random collection of thoughts to a strategic content machine that speaks to our customers and drives our sales funnel.” — Anonymous, CEO

6. Powered by Search

Powered by Search is a B2B marketing agency that combines SEO, paid media, content, and ABM in a single revenue-focused growth model.

With over a decade of working exclusively with B2B companies, the agency operates under its “Predictable Growth” methodology.

The framework gets B2B brands in front of decision-makers, converts them with compelling offers, and builds a scalable model that compounds over time.

By speaking directly to buyer pain points and pointing to next steps with clear CTAs, Powered by Search promises to drive $5 ARR for every $1 invested.

Clients include Elastic, SentinelOne, Basecamp, and PointClickCare.

Case study: Powered by Search helped a data privacy SaaS company generate $11.1M in SEO pipeline. The agency also increased TouchBistro demos by 324% in six months.

Powered by Search's key capabilities:

• B2B-specific SEO. Programs built around pipeline contribution rather than traffic volume, with content mapped to ICP buying stages and conversion points.
• Demand generation strategy. A proprietary “Predictable Growth” methodology that stacks SEO, paid, and content into a compounding system that grows CLV over time.
• Paid advertising. Full-funnel PPC and paid social campaigns built to capture in-market demand and deliver leads that convert to demos and trials.
• Account-based marketing. Targeted ABM programs that engage specific decision-makers, compressing deal cycles and improving MQL-to-SQL conversion rates.
• Content publishing and marketing. Buyer-stage content that educates prospects, addresses objections, and drives next-step actions.
• Digital PR and link building. Authority-building through backlink acquisition that creates credibility in competitive SaaS categories.

What clients say about Powered by Search:

“Everyone talks about mapping content to the buyer stages, but few people, few agencies can really execute on the actual content that will actually drive next step demo requests in a way that Powered by Search can.” — Neil DuPaul, Senior Director Demand Gen, ThreatX

7. Evolv

Evolv is a UK-based SEO and GEO agency for B2B SaaS companies, built by the team behind Accelerate Agency.

Evolv operates on the “search everywhere optimization” principle. The team targets traditional rankings to AI-generated mentions as part of a single, unified strategy.

The agency embeds across product, PR, content, and partnerships to build coordinated search visibility.

Evolv customizes its SEO strategy to each client, based on industry, audience, and goals.

Clients include Dialpad, Databricks, PandaDoc, and RingCentral.

Case study: Working under the Accelerate Agency brand, Evolv helped Dialpad grow organic traffic by 4,130% through targeted SEO and content creation.

Evolv's key capabilities:

• SEO strategy and implementation. Customized programs derived from in-depth competitor analysis and keyword research.
• Generative search optimization (GSO). Content optimization for RAG systems and schema markup enhancements to ensure clients appear across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.
• Technical SEO consultancy. Deep expertise across site architecture, Core Web Vitals, crawl budget optimization, mobile-first indexing, and generative search blockers.
• Bespoke content creation. Brand-immersive content production that combines tone of voice, SEO, and GSO research using proprietary tools.
• In-depth keyword research. Competitor gap analysis and ROI-based keyword evaluation to identify high-value opportunities with clear conversion potential.
• Cross-functional search strategy. A coordination-first methodology that aligns product, PR, content, and partnerships around a shared visibility framework.

What clients say about Evolv:

“Working with this team transformed our organic search performance. Their technical expertise and strategic approach delivered results that exceeded our expectations.” — Anonymous

8. Tao Digital

Tao Digital is a UK-based B2B content marketing agency specializing in SEO, PPC, and web design for regulated industries with long, complex sales cycles.

The team follows a search-first philosophy: every website they build has SEO fundamentals in the foundation (whether or not a client continues with ongoing services).

Where most agencies on this list focus on SaaS, Tao Digital’s sweet spot is B2B companies in sectors like insurance, legal, and fleet management.

The agency starts with a full site health check when onboarding. Then, combines technical SEO, content marketing, and digital PR into a single bespoke strategy.

Clients include Stanmore Insurance, Fleetcover, Thornton & Lowe, and Cowgills.

Case study: Tao Digital increased qualified insurance leads for Fleetcover by 751% over 12 months. A content and technical SEO program secured the #1 SERP position for core target keywords.

Tao Digital's key capabilities:

• Complex industry SEO. A search-first strategy, built around bespoke audits and continuous competitor monitoring.
• Technical SEO. Site architecture, crawlability, and performance improvements delivered from day one (including clients who only engage Tao for web design).
• Content marketing. Research-led production built around ICP search behavior in regulated, complex B2B sectors where educational content builds trust.
• Digital PR and link building. Outreach-led link acquisition and brand mention campaigns to build domain authority in niche B2B verticals.
• PPC management. Paid search and paid social campaigns across Google and Bing, managed with ROI and lead quality as primary metrics.
• Web design and development. Bespoke WordPress and Aero, ensuring technical performance and search visibility are baked in.

What clients say about Tao Digital:

“For years, we’ve been looking for a company to do exactly what [Tao Digital] has done, and I can honestly say in 12 years of being involved in marketing, this is the first time that any marketing company has proactively gone ahead and done something for us in this way. I’ve whinged about it for so long that it made my day when it dropped in my inbox. Really chuffed.” — CEO, Fleetcover

9. Embarque

Embarque is a productized SEO agency built for early-stage SaaS companies that need fast, revenue-focused results without the overhead of a traditional retainer.

The agency operates on a transparent, tiered pricing model with 3–6 month plans. There are no rolling monthly contracts, but you do get a money-back guarantee—a slightly different positioning to most agencies on this list.

A BOFU, product-led approach ensures Embarque’s team always writes content to drive sign-ups and revenue.

AI SEO is included from Tier 2 upward, covering visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

Clients include VEED, Riverside, Flick, and Mailjet.

Case study: Embarque created a product-led SEO and content program to help MentorCruise grow YoY revenue by 1,600% in three years. Plus, monthly trials increased by 1,000% over 18 months.

Embarque’s key capabilities:

• SaaS SEO strategy. Revenue-based keyword strategy and content planning built around sign-ups, trials, and MRR growth.
• AI search optimization. Dedicated GEO to get clients cited and visible in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews (available from Tier 2 upward).
• Content production. Product-led, BOFU-first content that puts your product at the center of the story and drives readers toward conversion.
• Link building and digital PR. Backlink acquisition and off-page authority building focused on earning high-quality links that improve domain authority.
• Programmatic SEO. High-velocity, template-driven page production for B2B companies targeting large keyword sets at scale (available from Tier 3).
• Reddit and forum marketing. Community-led visibility strategy across Reddit and niche forums to build organic presence where B2B buyers increasingly discover and evaluate tools.

What clients say about Embarque:

“Since implementing Embarque’s strategy, we’ve seen some of our pages gather significant search traffic. In particular, our podcasting name generator gets thousands of search clicks.” — Adrian Spataru, Founder, Cleanvoice

How do I choose the right B2B SEO agency for my company?

The best way to narrow down agencies with overlapping services is to arrange calls, ask hard questions, and get a feel for how they think.

But before you do, get clear on what you actually need.

Zero-click searches have cut organic web traffic by around 15–25% across the board. This means traditional rankings don’t create the same direct traffic they did even a couple of years ago.

The agencies worth hiring in 2026 connect SEO to revenue and create AI search visibility at the same time.

Before you reach out to anyone on this list, ask yourself these five questions:

FAQs for the best B2B SEO agencies

What does a B2B SEO agency actually do?

A B2B SEO agency helps your company get found by the right buyers at the right stage of their journey. Usually, through a combination of technical SEO, content strategy, and link building. 

The best ones go beyond rankings to connect organic search directly to pipeline, revenue, and (increasingly) visibility in AI-generated answers.

How much does a B2B SEO agency cost?

Retainers typically range from $2,500 to $20,000+ per month, depending on scope and your existing program’s maturity. Most offer flexible contracts.

How does SEO relate to GEO or AI SEO?

SEO and GEO are more connected than most people realize. LLMs cite content from trusted brands with credible, first-party insights that they can’t pull from training data.

Building topical authority, earning high-quality brand mentions, and producing expert-led content serve both traditional and AI search.

(Think of GEO as the next layer on top of a strong SEO foundation. It’s not a replacement for it.)

What’s the difference between a B2B SEO agency and a GEO or AEO agency?

A traditional B2B SEO agency focuses on ranking in Google and driving organic traffic. A GEO or answer engine optimization (AEO) agency focuses on getting your brand cited and visible in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews answers.

In practice, the best agencies in 2026 are doing both. If an agency you’re evaluating only talks about one service or the other, ask why.

In this article, we’ll show you an agile video production process to help you build and scale your media marketing efforts.

Aligning video content with marketing objectives

The purpose of video marketing is to support demand generation and user acquisition. Done right, video content inspires action while contributing to a delightful user journey.

For example, here’s how video might contribute to different stages of a product-led user journey for digital PR software:

• Awareness: An agency founder (a segment of the digital PR brand’s ICP) watches a social media video created by an employee that talks about the importance of building journalist relationships. They then watch a long-form YouTube video on setting up outreach systems for clients.
• Acquisition: The agency founder visits the brand’s website and navigates to the agency use case page. They watch a video that dives into how specific features apply to their needs and sign up for a free trial.
• Activation: Thanks to proper segmentation, the agency founder—now on a free plan—receives a tailored onboarding experience and product video. It shows them how to get started using features that will help them kick off outreach for a single client.
• Retention: The user receives an invite to a webinar that dives deeper into how to use the product across their entire client base, including managing multiple inboxes and personalizing outreach for several audiences. The agency founder requests their team to attend and come up with action points.
• Revenue: Thanks to segmented email workflows and an increased number of users across the account, the agency founder enters their credit card details after they hit usage limits.

Here, video allows the digital PR brand to make a bigger impact by hooking their audience and nurturing segments to conversion as they proceed through the user journey. The formats vary, but each video has a specific purpose.

Drift uses similar tactics to attract and funnel potential users into its pipeline. They use simple animation and motion graphics to produce product marketing videos that educate users on their products:

Drift’s marketing team has also built a library of webinars that dive into new trends and marketing approaches:

This, on top of their library of blog articles, ebooks, and reports, helps position Drift as an educational media brand. The library of content they’ve built attracts an audience looking for solutions to relevant challenges.

Drift has a blog full of high-value content, and it utilizes strong copywriting across landing pages and product experience. Investing in video provides new methods to deliver value and cater to their users’ consumption habits.

Later follows a similar blueprint, going all-in on video with its Instagram training videos. Video is used as a platform for:

• Collaboration: Later partners with social media experts to present and share their experiences. This gives Later’s audience more value while tapping into a wider audience.
• Positioning: Later doesn’t offer “just another webinar.” You’re enrolling in an in-depth course that will help you achieve a specific result for your business.
• Design: Landing pages communicate huge amounts of value and look visually stunning:

Video content and employee advocacy help position Later as a trusted authority. Empowering Later’s roster of experts helps them build a personal connection with users at scale.

Take stock of the channels and marketing strategies you’re already investing in. Find ways to deliver more delightful experiences by adding video into the mix.

A video production workflow that scales with ease

Many marketers assume video marketing involves lengthy lead times and large production teams.

This is mainly due to how many traditional production agencies still use old school playbooks. Dozens of middle-men have a stake in the creative process. Not only does this bloat production timelines, but it’s also incredibly expensive.

By the time a creative brief has reached the talent needed to produce that content (such as videographers and animators), most of the budget has already been used up.

For us marketers, this amount of bloat is unacceptable. Simplifying the process is critical in order to scale efficiently and get it all done within budget.

Once we boil the video production process down to its core 11 components, it starts to look far more manageable. These components are:

1. Pre-visualization: Marrying content strategy and visual research, this stage involves gathering reference materials from sources like YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram—as well as other films, animations, and aspirational video content.
2. Script: An important step to streamline the rest of the process, your script communicates the content, flow of information, tone of voice, and supporting visual cues (motion design, visual motifs, etc.). Good scripts define the narrative and how you’ll communicate your message while keeping viewers hooked.
3. Storyboarding: Each “panel” of your storyboard communicates visual elements, content, imagery, and the layout for your video content. Most importantly, it allows all stakeholders to agree on the video’s direction to reduce expensive and time-consuming revisions later on in the process.
4. Music production and voiceover: Sourcing background tracks (known as the “music bed”) and voiceover talent early on will aid editors, animators, and motion designers throughout the process. It informs the flow, pacing, and overall “vibe” of your video.
5. Animatics and skeleton edits: This is where imagery, audio, and stock footage are used as placeholders for the final edit. This allows editors to build pieces of the final product as new videography and animation assets are delivered.
6. Shoot day: Coordinate videographers, locations, and any direct-to-camera talent (unless someone from your team will step in front of the lens). Batching shoots for several videos at once helps to accelerate the production process.
7. Editing: Footage, motion graphics, and animation is gathered and crafted into a finished narrative. For some projects, this process will be ongoing from stage three onwards.
8. Colour Grading: The process of balancing and altering colors to capture a specific look and feel. This includes raising lighting levels in darker scenes.
9. Visual effects (VFX): Can include simple environment alterations (replacing clouds shot on set with a bright, sunny sky), stylized sparkles from a magic wand, or complex set replacements (actors shot on green and blue screens).
10. Animation & motion graphics: These two are used interchangeably and can be added to live video or used as a storytelling vehicle for the entire video.
11. Rendering: The final product is signed off, rendered, and exported. Your video must be rendered in the right format for the purpose and platform you intend to use it on.

Great video content used to require dozens of directors, producers, and creatives. But the workflow outlined above is lean and simplified, speeding up the production process end-to-end. It removes unnecessary expenses, all while ensuring the final product is perfect.

Much of this process can be done once and replicated with templates. For example, coming up with motion graphic elements that can be reused in the same way across dozens of social media videos.

Another point of friction when producing video content is the fear of stepping in front of the camera. As Vidyard says, it’s a lot less scary when you’re not making it up as you go along:

“If you’re planning to record yourself, set aside a little time to determine what your message is. Plan out your main talking points. Make some notes.

“If you’re going to be in a scripted video production, ask to see the script in advance to review and get to know your lines

“Regardless of the situation, it’s always going to be easier when you know what you want to say.”

Preparing a script will help you feel more confident when standing in front of the camera. It also allows you to produce a tighter and more compelling message.

Detailed brand guidelines make this process even smoother. For example, Shopify’s brand style guide includes several detailed breakdowns of visual elements:

Typography, color, iconography, and even interaction states (e.g. how button colors change between clicks) have been given careful consideration.

Brand guidelines allow Shopify’s team of creators to produce beautiful experiences without dozens of unnecessary and frustrating revisions.

While creating video content may seem like a daunting process, it becomes far easier after the first project. Start with a pilot to get your production house in order. Document the process and standardize elements into a visual style for your brand guidelines.

For example, when we begin working with new video marketing clients at Grizzle, we only commit to a single project in the first month. Once completed, assets are standardized and templated. This allows us to scale to eight video projects a month (and many more when repurposing for short-form video).

Imagine having a single video operation that serves all divisions of marketing and sales from one place. Over time, it becomes easier to test new ideas—without needing a six-figure budget for a single campaign.

Sourcing video talent

The workflow above exists to make life as easy as possible for all parties. But you still need the right people with the right skills to bring your projects to life.

If you’ve collected plenty of reference material, then a good videographer, motion designer, or animator can remove the need for a creative director.

The same goes for production crews. By boiling the process down to critical stages, you only need a single project manager or producer.

At a minimum, these are the people you need to take a video from idea to output:

1. Videographer: Takes care of preparing the location, prepping your team or on-screen talent, and supplying filming and lighting equipment on site.
2. Motion designer: Adds visual elements to your video content.
3. Animator: Produces animated video from start to finish (or animated elements for live action).
4. Editor: Takes the raw materials of your video and organizes it into a narrative based on your script. Good editors will obsess over timing to make sure your content is engaging.
5. Producer or project manager: Sources and coordinates the right talent, locations, and assets. Ensures projects are kept on track and in scope.
6. Content strategist: An in-house marketer or agency to take ownership of video ideation, premise, and promotion activity.

Batch stages of the process together. If you commit to a particular format or framework (and use a script and set processes), you can produce several video assets at once. This will reduce costs while allowing you to scale for a faster turnaround.

For example, if you’re aiming to create four long-form YouTube videos a month, shoot the live-action portion in one day.

When looking for talent, use job boards like Upwork, LinkedIn, and YunoJuno. You can also find specialists on websites like Soho Editors and The Voice Over Network.

Finally, take a leaf out of Wistia’s book and attract a crew that believes in your vision:

“Ideally, you should aim to hire a director, director of photography, sound producer, and gaffer (i.e., lighting technician and head electrician) who are all aligned with your creative vision and direction; any arguing or push-back will be a big time-suck once you’re on set.”

Streamline processes with video frameworks

Like any marketing activity, a proven framework helps you get started with less friction. You can then “break the mold” and test new and creative formats as you grow.

These frameworks provide you with the building blocks needed to share a narrative that keeps viewers engaged.

It’s easy for your audience to click away on the next shiny thumbnail they see. Your job is to keep their attention while adding as much value as possible.

Luckily, there are frameworks that work for every objective and video format. Here are four frameworks used among product-led brands:

1. Explainer videos

Explainer videos are typically used to communicate the benefits, features, and problems your product solves.

High-quality animation and motion graphics are key, as they allow for engaging and entertaining storytelling while keeping your customers wanting to learn more about your product.

But there’s a trap many fall into when writing explainer video scripts: focusing too much on outlining well-known problems.

Users are smart. They can fill the gaps on how a tool applies to their specific use case. The first 10 seconds should “call out” your audience by their challenges before moving on to specific, relevant problems and the features that solve them.

For example, many SaaS explainer videos spend 30 seconds outlining pain points that the viewer is already fully aware of:

With some careful scripting, these surface-level pain-points can be simplified into two sentences. This demonstrates you “get” your audience while quickly cutting to the chase.

Specific pain points can be tied to features and JTBD. For example, this line:

“Stand out from the crowd with stunning templates that go way beyond the standard PDF.”

Can be repositioned to:

“Make a great first impression with prospects and decision makers with stunning proposal templates.”

Not only does this framework get to the good stuff quickly, but specific solutions and outcomes are also associated with each feature set.

Companies are flogging a dead horse by reminding users of their surface-level problems. And we’re bored of it. Get to the point and go deep in order to stand out. Here’s a simple structure you can use for your next explainer or product video:

• Introduction: Two or three sentences, no more than 10 to 15 seconds. Be succinct and get specific with the problems that really inflict pain on your users.
• Core features: Introduce your product and get right into it. Showcase three or four of your core feature sets, including outcomes and what makes them different.
• Social proof: Feature customer reviews, G2 ratings, and testimonials. Show your audience why they should trust you.
• Call-to-action: Ask the viewer to take the next step in the relationship.

2. Webinars

Webinars are a tried-and-tested format for lead generation. But they have a positioning problem.

Take a look at the majority of webinar landing pages, and you’ll notice a lack of compelling copy. Great webinar landing pages make users truly want to turn up and watch them.

Content positioning is a principle we use on all our content at Grizzle. It’s a statement we include in all of our briefs. The sole job is to answer the question: “How will this content be compelling, different, and better?”

When someone sits down to watch a live webinar, you’re in control of their time. If it’s a topic they care about, it’s hard to switch tabs and watch later without completely losing attention.

One of our favorite webinar formats is the case study. As TwentyThree put it, it’s a great way to build trust and move prospects along the sales funnel:

“The format is a great way to bring your case studies to life, either by repurposing your video or written case stories or creating an entirely new one.

“You can either interview the client or let them talk about their experience. However, the best case studies all have one thing in common: great storytelling. You should ensure that your speakers have a proper narrative and storyline, including the problem, the resolution, and the (happy) ending.”

To effectively position your webinars, you must do three things:

1. Go deep on a topic
2. Overload your content with value
3. Communicate every single thing a viewer will learn (and what they can achieve) in your landing page copy

Here’s a webinar framework you can use to structure your training:

• Topic Introduction: Open up with a story that connects with your audience (while remaining relevant to the topic). Avoid talking about your product at this stage.
• Expert Introduction: Once you have their attention, introduce yourself (or any experts you’re collaborating with) to ease skeptical minds. Why are you qualified to be teaching this?
• Introduce what they’ll learn: Briefly provide a high-level overview of what you’ll cover and why each element is important.
• Value, value, value: Treat the rest of your webinar like a how-to blog post. Provide actionable steps, strategic advice, data, and third-party examples to help visualize each principle in action.
• Conclusion: Wrap up overarching themes. Remind them why this topic is important and what they can achieve by taking action.
• Call-to-action: What’s the next step? Craft an offer that guides the user forward in their journey.

Creating beautifully designed slides will differentiate your webinar, keep your audience engaged, and improve the experience. Go all-in with your slide designs to make an impact.

3. Long-form video

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. For SaaS and product-led teams, it’s a blue ocean opportunity due to how many marketers are sleeping on it.

For example, Semrush uses its YouTube channel to produce educational and product-led video content:

The video above teaches viewers how to find keyword opportunities with low competition, featuring the Semrush platform as a way to fulfill relevant JTBD.

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Plan and batch several projects at once. Spend a couple of weeks producing four scripts. If you’re producing direct-to-camera format, shoot all four of them on the same day. This will accelerate the production process and increase your publication velocity.

Alternatively, you can use a “remote” format by utilizing voiceover talent (in-house or external) overlaid to animation and motion graphics.

4. Social video

Bottom-up SaaS is an increasingly popular go-to-market approach. Targeting your end users and generating freemium users helps you build advocacy across entire organizations large and small.

Because of this, social media is a critical product-led marketing channel. Social video content helps you build thought leadership and connect with your audience at scale.

While the sheer production quantity needed to get traction may seem daunting, there are three methodologies you can use to accelerate the process:

1. Employee advocacy: Individual contributors and leaders hold a wealth of knowledge. Create a program that makes it easy to get them in front of the camera and share it.
2. Repurposing: Take your long-form videos and podcast episodes and cut them up into shorter snippets.
3. Hire creators: Build out a team of video and social talent to build and execute on a multi-channel content strategy.

For example, cold email SaaS brand Lavender blends all three of these methodologies together, making a big impact on social that’s amassed 28,000 followers on their LinkedIn company profile alone:

Here, Lavender’s social marketer, Will Aitken, uses short-form video to outline a cold email framework that their users can test. It just so happens to be even more effective when used with Lavender’s product.

Build processes and systems around internal talent and existing content assets. Find employees who come alive and feel natural in front of the camera. Make life easy for them to share their expertise with your audience.

Video marketing made simple

We created this process to cut the fat and waste from video marketing.

Reducing bottlenecks in the process makes a cinematic level of video quality a realistic goal for any marketing team.

Simplify the process by hiring the right people and putting the necessary processes in place. Try it once and produce templates from your first project. Scale your efforts to increase production velocity and start engaging users on a personal level.

In this article, you’ll learn how to create a digital PR-driven link building strategy, the content formats that generate natural backlinks, and how to achieve a link acquisition rate of 44% from your outreach.

Link building and the law of shitty clickthroughs

Most link building advice focuses on tactics like “broken link building” and the “skyscraper technique.” However, these approaches quickly lost their effectiveness due to how popular they became.

People bombarded link creators with emails that followed the same framework:

1. A personalized first line containing a superficial compliment
2. Details on the broken or outdated links in their content
3. A request to replace it with newer, “better” content

It’s not an attractive offer. You’re competing with dozens of SEOs following the same advice, even using identical email templates word-for-word. Some people suggest nurturing link creators on social before reaching out, but this is both time-consuming and insincere.

This results in burning relationships before they’ve even begun. There’s a misalignment between common practice and what link creators care about.

The more link creators are exposed to an approach, the more they’re aware of the intent behind it and the less effective it becomes. It’s the law of shitty clickthroughs in action.

The solution: produce creative and data-driven content

The link building practices above lack three critical elements to successful, long-term link building:

1. Creating something truly interesting;
2. Providing link creators with something they value, and;
3. Intelligent, well-targeted outreach.

This means producing data-driven and creative content while establishing long-term partnerships with link creators, not treating them as commodities.

This philosophy is how we’re able to generate an average response rate of 37.5% and a link acquisition rate of 44% across our B2B digital PR campaigns.

Two proven principles must act as the foundation for your digital PR and link building campaigns:

1. Data: Collect data in the form of studies or benchmarks, or curate existing and third-party data to create a unique narrative
2. Creativity: Produce assets, media, and tools to ride trends and delight audiences

Let’s dive into three specific formats that employ these principles, along with examples from brands who use them:

1. Become a go-to source of data with industry reports

Studies and data-driven reports are a tried-and-tested approach to digital PR. They help link creators back up their claims while offering readers new insights.

However, most industry studies fail to share something new. If they do, it’s executed in such an uninspiring and uninteresting way that they capture little attention.

This low bar for quality means it’s easy to stand out for marketers willing to put the work in. Providing a better experience, using good content design principles, or building interactive user experiences give link creators something attractive they can use in their stories.

For example, Mailmodo has positioned their State of Email 2023 report as a product they’ve heavily invested in:

Mailmodo improve the report’s perceived value by:

• Collaborating with other SaaS brands during the production and promotion phases
• Communicating the value of the ebook with benefit-driven copy
• Increasing social proof by adding the Product Hunt “#4 product of the day” badge, further cementing its positioning as a standalone product

Buffer is another example of how great content design can improve performance with their State of Social report:

At the time of writing, Buffer’s report has generated over 2,800 backlinks across 1,220 domains—including mentions in Entrepreneur, HubSpot, Search Engine Journal, and other leading business and marketing publications:

While these reports generate little search traffic, the increase in domain authority combined with intelligent internal linking lifts all ships.

1. Find a relevant and unique angle

All great data-driven projects start with a unique angle. For example, dozens of sales studies are conducted every single year. Pipedrive is one of the few to create a statistically-backed, journalistic-style dive into the state of diversity and inclusion in the sales workforce:

Find an evergreen angle, or uncover a newsworthy trend that’s top-of-mind in the industry zeitgeist. You can do this by:

• Following influencers who regularly share industry updates
• Using tools like SparkToro or BuzzSumo to identify emerging trends

Focus on rising trends that are most relevant to your brand, product, and audience. 

Furthermore, prioritize those where you have experiences, stories, and expertise to further hypothesize around the data. This is how you position yourself from a “resource hub” to a true thought leader.

2. Collect and source statistically significant data

The most challenging part of this process is sourcing a statistically significant dataset.

We’ve found the most effective methods of collecting data are:

• Analyzing owned product data. For example, an email marketing platform organizing open rate benchmarks across industry segments.
• Scraping publicly available data. For example, scraping the backlink profiles of data-driven content from Ahrefs.
• Industry and persona surveys. For example, collecting 500 to 1,000 responses from content marketers for a “State of Content Marketing” survey.
• Collaborating with other brands. For example, offering an audience intelligence brand to analyze their owned data to produce a benchmark report.

Collecting data is just the first step. Finding if there’s a story worth sharing requires careful and honest organization of the dataset you’ve collected.

Finding a data analyst to help you is key. The best analysts also understand that the way data is framed will inform the narrative. Get them involved from the very beginning of your project to ensure good data hygiene and accuracy.

3. Package up key findings for link creators

While data is the foundation of great data-driven content, presentation is key. Accompany your data with beautiful visual assets that content creators and journalists can easily embed in their content.

For example, Pipedrive repurposed the most interesting findings from their State of Sales report into a blog post, complete with easy-to-share infographics:

This makes earned content more engaging for readers while extending the reach of your owned content. As more people organically discover your story, the more natural links you’re likely to generate.

Add your opinion to build thought leadership around your findings. Include this in your outreach as commentary to empower journalists to tell the full story.

2. Elicit emotional responses with video content and documentaries

While there will always be a place for information, stories allow you to build a stronger connection with your audience and, importantly, the buyers considering investing in your solution.

The term “B2B” can be misleading. We’re really marketing to the people within an organization. Using media to share your customers’ struggles and successes not only establishes deeper connections, but help improve content marketing and SEO performance in the process.

For example, Mailchimp Presents is a solid example of using documentary-style video content to share customer stories. Creating their own Netflix-style platform, each series focuses on various topics in the realm of entrepreneurship, business, and the future of technology:

Their series “Book Shook,” as illustrated above, partners with influential and successful women like Reese Witherspoon and Jameela Jamil to share the books that have influenced them:

Mailchimp’s collection of video content is a tremendous source of backlinks, garnering media coverage every time they launch a new series. Each series launch is met with bursts of coverage followed by sustained backlinks:

How to create video content at scale

The best marketers make sure their brand gets out of the way of a good story. They make sure their customers or partners are the star, elevating the struggles and successes that their audiences truly care about.

Black Fish covered the corruption of Sea World, but the story was really about Tilikum.

The first step is to find your muse. What story do you want to tell, and who does it belong to? This can include experts within your organization, but don’t forget to look outside and ask yourself: who else would our audience be interested in learning from?

Next, decide on a format. Will it be an episodic series, a one-off video for YouTube, or a podcast?

Understand which formats and platforms your audience is already familiar with and cater to those tastes. Kristen LaFrance does a terrific job of this with Shopify’s Resilient Retail:

Don’t forget about the repurposing power of your content. Each video can be repurposed into podcasts, short-form video for social, and long-form blog content. Recycle it over and over again for maximum visibility.

Video content production can seem daunting, but it’s not nearly as complex or expensive as it used to be. Check out our complete guide to video content production to learn more about scaling your video marketing.

By starting small, you can replicate Mailchimp’s approach to building a media brand centered around high-end production values.

Collaborate with other creators to enrich your stories while helping them access a wider audience to capture as much attention as possible. This improves the quality of your content, broadens the stories you can share, and gives you access to a wider audience in the process.

3. Generate buzz and excitement with standalone resources and tools

Launching standalone products, tools, and microsites can generate vast amounts of buzz and attention. A great example of this is Mention’s Influencer Marketing Stack:

This standalone resource has generated over 1,900 upvotes on Product Hunt and over 847 backlinks from publications like Inc., The Next Web, and Content Marketing Institute.

Here’s what Mention did that helped make this resource a success:

• They exceed value expectations: The microsite provides tools, a directory of agency vendors, and how-to information that marketers can learn from.
• They partnered with top brand: Collaborating with the likes of HubSpot, Later, and BuzzStream extended their reach while increasing the authority of the resource.
• They followed a deliberate launch plan: Mention didn’t achieve success by accident. They coordinated with partners and advocates to make as big an impact as possible on launch day.

Not only do microsites and standalone resources serve your audience, they also provide link creators with a source they can refer to in their own articles and stories.

How to rapidly create and launch resources and tools

Even when building products for digital PR, you must start by discovering what the market is hungry for—or at least curious about—and validating it. Just like you would any other product.

Talk with link creators you already know for their opinion on your project. Share its purpose and how you plan on delivering value to your audience. Ask them for their opinion and validate its coverage potential.

Customer research is critical for finding new angles and validating what you’re building. We’re not building a startup here, so a burning problem isn’t required. However, your resource or tool should provide utility and garner some level of excitement.

If you’re building an app or software, enlist the help of in-house engineers or an agency like Grizzle. Alternatively, use no-code tools like Bubble and Webflow to build an MVP without technical know-how.

The same goes for microsites. Building standalone experiences is easier than ever, thanks to no-code development tools and website builders.

Create something worth linking to

If your link building KPIs look a little flat, consider evaluating what you’re creating and how you’re reaching out to link creators.

Most journalists, bloggers, and influencers are always looking out for new stories to cover. However, if you’re not seeing the results you expect, it’s likely they’ve seen what you’re offering a thousand times.

Reverse engineer where their attention is going. Think beyond skyscraper content. To acquire links, offer something truly interesting. Do away with superficial outreach and see your response rates soar.

Your content brief is the roadmap that paves the way for high-quality content.

Without a solid brief, you’re likely to produce content that fails to meet expectations. A good brief connects your strategy and traffic goals with expertise and audience needs.

After collaborating with dozens of clients, content marketers, and writers, we’ve found the best approach to removing production headaches is a strong angle, detailed outline, and collaboration at the brief stage.

Your audience, why this topic matters to them, and how you’ll inject your expertise should be crystal clear for every stakeholder.

This article will detail the process and components of a content brief that drives high performing blog posts, landing pages, and more.

Content positioning

Content marketing is suffering from a case of “blind leading the blind.” For SEO-driven content, research often starts and ends by reverse engineering the SERPs.

Reverse engineering Google is critical for search. However, it will hurt your credibility if used as your only research method. Copying other articles “because they rank” is symptomatic of a lack of subject matter expertise. Your buyers can smell it a mile off.

Solid research is the bedrock of a great content brief. Conducting SME interviews, taking inventory of your own experiences, and diving into the rabbit hole of a topic is critical when writing for skeptical and experienced audiences.

But let’s assume you’ve acquired this expertise and done your research. It’s time to create a content brief, but where to start?

There are two key steps that must be followed when beginning the content brief creation process:

1. Analyzing the competition to see what they’re doing right, what they get wrong, and gaps they’re leaving open.
2. Establishing a unique angle that will ensure your content stands out—no matter which channel you prioritize it for.

These two elements are the most effective ingredients to establish a strong position in the market. One will give you the data to make creative decisions, while the other will help you stand out.

This is what we call “content positioning.”

Content positioning means treating your content like a product, differentiating it in a competitive marketplace, and helping your ICP solve their jobs-to-be-done (JTBD).

How to find an angle that outperforms the competition

Content positioning requires an understanding of the value other articles are offering and how they’re currently getting attention.

To identify competitive gaps, you must first understand what you’re up against. There are three approaches to competitive content analysis:

1. Content quality: What’s the overall quality of other articles? Do they lack value? Are they repeating the same conventionally held (yet incorrect) beliefs as everyone else? It’s often possible to outcompete on quality alone or by focusing on a hub-and-spoke strategy to build topical authority.
2. Brand equity: Are you up against a number of industry incumbents? Do they have a monopoly on the topic, or are they dipping their toes in? This is a reality that should inform your overall content strategy, not just your brief. For example, a project management brand like Asana writing a one-off article on “remote working” is unlikely to have much authority on the topic.
3. Distribution landscape: For SEO-driven content, how hard would it be to rank based on the number of backlinks other articles have earned? What’s the keyword difficulty for your primary term (as well as the average across your entire keyword cluster)?

Your findings will inform how you approach the production and distribution of your content. For example, you may find a top competing article from a startup has lots of backlinks, but is poorly written and contains little utility. This is a prime opportunity to outcompete by creating more authoritative and value-driven content.

Competitive analysis will help you inform your content positioning and create original blog articles. Here are three practical ways to apply your findings:

1. Finding unique angles for search

Too many content marketers continue to create content by reverse-engineering and emulating the SERPs. But this presents a deeper issue, as content begins to look the same and, over time, erodes the user experience.

While aligning content with search intent is critical for organic growth, it mustn't be followed blindly. Use the SERPs to evaluate competing content and identify gaps that you can fill.

For example, when writing an article on CRM technology, you might find that nobody covers how to evaluate and choose the right platform. Instead, everyone focuses on definitions, benefits, features, and the like.

In this scenario, you could include an entire section that teaches readers a process for evaluating CRM vendors. This creates a temporary moat around your content and provides the reader with more value in the form of practical next steps in their vendor research.

2. Communicating credibility and authority

Marketers often make lofty claims with no data or proof to back them up. This provides you with an opportunity to build a more credible and original piece of content.

Building authority is more than writing in the language of your audience. It means collecting or leveraging experience and expertise on a topic.

For example, if you’re writing for a senior marketing audience on ICP research, you’d ideally seek input from an expert that has experience conducting countless customer interviews.

Using your audience’s language will generate more engagement. But to build trust, don't just emulate their words, speak their mind. Reflect back what they're thinking but nobody else is saying out loud. This will build deeper emotional resonance and connections. These insights can only be gleaned from someone your reader would consider a peer.

3. Be controversial

In marketing, zigging while everyone is zagging can be all you need to differentiate yourself.

Rand Fishkin, founder of SparkToro, did this when a customer asked for advice on cold outreach. After searching Google, he found the SERPs contained repetitive and outdated advice:

So he decided to write an article on the topic to call out these outdated practices, titled “Outreach Tips (better than anything you’ll find searching Google):”

He opens up with a controversial introduction before moving on to a subsection that promises the reader eight tips they won’t find anywhere else.

This article is one of the most commented on the SparkToro blog and ranks below the featured snippet for the term “outreach tips:”

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When a seasoned marketer or salesperson next searches for cold outreach tips, which result do you think will stand out in the SERPs? We’d hazard a guess that Rand’s article gets the lion's share of clicks.

A controversial angle breaks the mold and grabs attention in a sea of sameness. Allow your content to stand out by framing it around earned, accurate, and proven advice.

Building an outline using data & creativity

A good outline creates context around your content and communicates the narrative to other stakeholders involved in the production process.

Including a clear objective will keep everyone aligned on outcomes and avoid the problem of “too many cooks in the kitchen.”

Let’s say you’re a SaaS startup and your primary goal is “generating organic traffic with high buying intent.” In this scenario, your article should sit within the sweet-spot of these three areas:

1. Algorithm: What themes, questions, and sections has Google deemed important for the user to fulfill search intent?
2. Audience: What are your customers hungry for and what gaps are competitors leaving unfulfilled?
3. Product: How will your content align with your value proposition, solution, or product?

Templates and frameworks can guide you through the production process and reduce the friction in getting started.

For example, a “how-to guide” template follows a step-by-step instructional narrative, which is perfect for anyone targeting individual contributors looking to solve a problem or JTBD.

Alternatively, when targeting senior decision makers, you might use a framework that outlines their problem, builds an argument for new solutions, and demonstrates a new way of doing things.

Use tools like Clearscope when planning SEO-driven content to uncover which themes to include. Here’s what some of those relevant terms look like for the term “DOOH” (digital out-of-home media):

Avoid stuffing these terms without context, as you’ll ruin the content experience and undermine trust. Use this data to inform sections and themes to include in your content.

Finally, don’t worry about perfecting the subheading copy. Subheadings should simply communicate what each section will cover. Once you’re writing the draft, your subheadings should communicate the benefits or outcome that each section promises to deliver. This grabs the attention of skimmers and communicates the overall value of your content.

Outline collaboration

Everyone has their own method of writing outlines. Instead of providing you with a rigid framework, here’s a scrappy example using the DOOH topic introduced above:

Here, we see a portion of the outline that includes details to add context around what each section will include:

1. Outcomes that the target audience will benefit from using DOOH
2. Statistics and data to back up certain claims
3. Key DOOH metrics to measure, what they mean, and why they’re important

Your outline also provides a canvas for stakeholders to get involved. Including lots of white space and nested bullets will create a hierarchy that’s easy for everyone to follow. Stakeholders can add comments with their thoughts and insights with ease.

Collaborating on an outline will mean fewer draft revisions as the narrative and structure was agreed upon well in advance.

Content briefs are your roadmap

Many marketers see the brief as a hurdle to overcome between having an idea and writing it down.

Your content brief is the compass and your outline is the roadmap. Both allow you to find a gap in the content landscape and uncover an angle that your audience is hungry for and will stand out.

Point in the direction you want to go in, chart a course, and pave the way for content that resonates with your audience.

In this article, we’ve compiled “link acquisition velocity” data from Buffer’s backlink profile and 10 of the top SaaS blogs to answer this question.

You’ll learn where data-driven content fits in the content ecosystem, how to get started, and methods to accelerate your organic growth with digital PR experimentation.

The discrepancy between blog content creation and link acquisition

92% of the 1,500+ marketers interviewed in a study conducted by Semrush say they invest in blog content. Further, 89% said they rely on organic search for distribution—making SEO the most popular distribution channel.

However, only 24% said they rely on external publications or guest blogging (what we call digital PR) and 22% said they create original studies and data-driven content:

If data-driven content generates more links than editorial content, this means that over 75% of marketers are leaving opportunity on the table.

But is this truly the case?

How Buffer generated 100 links in 14 days

Buffer is well-known for its social media marketing content.

On top of in-depth editorial content, they also produce data-driven studies like the "State of Social" report:

Here, Buffer surveyed 1,800 marketers about their social media strategy, presenting their findings wrapped in a bespoke UI.

At time of writing, there are over 1,280 referring domains (RDs) pointing to this single piece of content.

Let’s compare this to the top 10 Buffer blog articles that rank for position 1 on Google (ordered by search volume):

From this data we observe:

• The average number of backlinks from unique referring domains (RD) across their top 10 articles is 373.45.
• “Social Media Sites” is a clear outlier, generating more than 1,300 RDs.

To gauge the impact Buffer’s content has on their link building efforts, we’ll use a proprietary metric called link acquisition velocity (LAV). 

LAV is a measurement of how quickly it takes for a piece of content to generate a specific number of backlinks. Let’s say your goal is to generate 50 links, and it takes 32 days to reach that goal. That piece of content would therefore have a LAV of 1.56:

LAV = No. Links Generated / No. Days Taken to Acquire Them

Focusing on LAV allows you to experiment and iterate, which is critical for SaaS brands with long-term distribution and digital PR programs. If you find a specific content format has a higher LAV than others, you can deploy more resources with a higher level of confidence that they’ll perform.

When experimenting, it’s a more reliable metric than total links as it gives a greater sense of demand for a specific type of content in the market.

Going back to Buffer’s link profile, let’s compare LAV between their “State of Social” report and “Social Media Sites” article:

According to this data, LAV was 293% greater for “State of Social” than “Social Media Sites.”

Furthermore, “State of Social” generated 243% more links than “Social Media Sites.”

Before drawing any conclusions, we must factor in how Buffer has brand equity and a large existing customer base on their side. They already have the attention of other bloggers and journalists they can launch to in order to gain traction.

Where do other SaaS brands stand?

Data-driven content is one of the most linkable assets a B2B brand can produce.

But Buffer might be an outlier. Where do other SaaS brands stand when it comes to data-driven content and digital PR?

We’ve compiled a table of data-driven reports produced by 10 SaaS brands (including Buffer) and the number of RDs and backlinks they’ve each generated:

The number of RDs vary, even for well-known brands. However, considering the first result in Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than pages ranking at positions two to three, even a dozen or so links can make a huge impact.

The best way to generate backlinks is by producing content that link creators are hungry for. Clearly, for B2B and SaaS companies, these formats include proprietary data, studies, analysis, and expert commentary.

A key issue is that data-driven content doesn’t necessarily generate search traffic as a standalone asset. Not many people are searching for “state of social reports.”

So, to improve the performance of content across your entire topic cluster, use intelligent internal linking practices.

For example, Ninja Outreach increased search traffic by 40% just by fixing the internal linking between blog articles:

To further back this up, Google has explicitly said‍ that internal links are important;

“Google must constantly search for new pages and add them to its list of known pages. Some pages are known because Google has already crawled them before. Other pages are discovered when Google follows a link from a known page to a new page.”‍

Building a digital PR strategy at the intersection of expertise, data, and growth

Based on this research, we can conclude the following:

1. Links are critical for organic growth
2. It’s far easier to generate links to data-driven content than editorial content
3. Internal linking impacts organic traffic across our entire content portfolio
4. Editorial content generates large amounts of search traffic for high-volume keywords (when done right)

Embedding data-driven content into a hub and spoke strategy is the best way to generate links and accelerate organic growth across the board.

A hub and spoke model that integrates data-driven content looks something like this:

Here, data-driven content acts as an "entry ramp" for backlinks to enter our content portfolio.

Let’s say your goal is to generate links from publications with a high domain rating (DR). Doing this increases the page rating (PR) of your data-driven content, which is then passed down to your content hub and blog articles, further boosting your topical authority.

Your data-driven content ideation should fit in the sweet spot between:

1. What journalists and editors are hungry for;
2. What the market is talking about;
3. Your growth and demand generation priorities.

For example, if you’re looking to build topical authority in the “talent acquisition” space, consider running a study on “top hiring challenges among HR managers.” Avoid adjacent topics like performance management until you’re ready to enter that arena.

The same goes for promotion. Outreach and relationship building must be baked into your content distribution roadmap, allowing you to establish content-channel fit.

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Reduce uncertainty with digital PR experimentation

Many SaaS marketers invest huge amounts of resources into data-driven content.

This can make a big impact, as link creators love to cite original sources in their own content. While no marketing endeavor is guaranteed to get results, the time and money involved in data-driven content creation may seem disproportionate to the potential ROI.

Therefore, a better approach is to run several low-effort experiments across a quarter or two. 

This involves planning, producing, and distributing data-driven content, quickly, using the following process:

1. Analysis & Ideation: Identify trending topics in the market and source data from owned or publicly-available sources. Create a unique narrative around your findings. Recruit subject matter experts across your organization to give commentary that link creators can use to build out their stories.
2. Data-Driven/Creative Content Production: Package up your data and commentary in a way that link creators can deploy quickly and easily. This includes blog posts, visual content, and access to raw datasets (as long as it complies with data protection laws).
3. Personalized Outreach: Get your content in front of the people it’s most relevant to. This is how you build long-term relationships and stand out in an inbox full of generic pitches.

Furthermore, give yourself multiple chances to win by coming up with several angles. For example, if a study on the “best cities for marketing careers” falls flat with marketing blogs, try recruitment or HR publications instead.

Build upon content formats with a high LAV by investing in more ambitious projects.

Diversify your content portfolio

Data-driven and creative content has been proven to generate links. If your goal is to accelerate organic growth, focus on the formats with a high link acquisition velocity (LAV).

Build out your topic clusters, produce content that link creators need, and utilize internal linking to create a content portfolio that ranks for even the most competitive keywords.

In this article, we’ll outline the content-driven acquisition methodology we use to help companies get results like this:

• Fintech company: Avg. ~5,000 leads generated each month using a content-driven paid media strategy (over a 6-month period)
  
  
• MarTech company: Avg. 47% conversion rate from content
  
  
• Consulting company: Avg. 42 marketing qualified leads (MQLs) a month

🤫 We’ve included anonymized data throughout this article. Want to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes? Get in touch.

What is Content-Driven Acquisition

Content-driven acquisition is the process of taking marketing channels like Facebook Ads and using value-driven content as the centerpiece of those campaigns.

It’s an approach that utilizes blog posts, lead magnets and other content assets to attract new users and expand your audience. While some may not be ready to buy from you now, you can educate and nurture them into customers over the long term.

It’s great for ecommerce, DTC and consumer tech brands looking to build an audience, as well as B2B and SaaS organisations with lengthy sales cycles that rely on lead generation.

Blending paid & organic acquisition channels

Using content to fuel your paid media efforts can help you:

1. Diversify and expand your target audience/visibility
2. Generate better long-term results (traffic, conversions and brand building)

If you’re looking to raise funding, it can also help you control your growth narrative. Do this by showing investors you’ve built an active and engaged community.

We’ve seen our partners use content to generate traffic at a lower CPC (and CPA). It also helps us to generate a burst of short-term traffic while invigorating long-term growth.

In other words, you can play the short- and long-term game with every content asset you produce.

Test on a small scale with a portion of your ad budget. Measure the results at all stages of the funnel (subscribers, leads, sign-ups and purchases). If the results are favorable, allocate a higher budget to scale.

This requires you to have a full understanding of your audience and customer journey:

• Without proper targeting, you’ll end up wasting money on unqualified traffic
• Without an understanding of the customer journey, you risk losing sight of the true, long-term ROI

For example, if you’re a DTC brand, you may find subscribers don’t necessarily convert immediately. But they may, on average, make their first purchase in 30 days.

Use long-term thinking as a way to accurately calculate and forecast ROI. The way you segment audiences into cohorts is up to you. Make sure your content efforts are getting the attribution they deserve.

Optimizing content for conversions

You may be creating epic content, but what happens during and after engagement? Are you optimizing your offers and calls-to-action to capitalize on this attention?

For example, readers of a how-to guide might simply want more information to help overcome a specific challenge. Therefore, creating a lead magnet that covers the topic in more depth is likely to drive action.

Conversely, you can include more commercially-driven offers if the topic is related to your product. For example, a coffee subscription brand writes a piece on the health benefits of coffee. They could include a call-to-action to sign up for a subscription at the end of the article.

Generating conversions from your content requires an understanding of the following:

1. Context: Why are people reading your content? What are they motivated by? Help them take the next step in this journey by offering the right information or products.
   
   
2. Experience: Don’t include calls-to-action that ruin the experience. For example, pop-ups that interrupt the reading experience can frustrate some readers.

People are more critical of content these days. Information is abundant, and if you get in their way, they’ll happily look elsewhere.

Using email marketing to educate & nurture

As you generate subscribers and leads, you’ll need to nurture them. This can be done through education, additional content and product offerings.

Your email marketing strategy will vary based on the nature and complexity of your product. Two of the most common formats are:

1. Email newsletters: Regular digests containing content and product offers
   
   
2. Nurture sequences: Automated emails sent over time that are designed to educate the audience on your brand and product

Many marketers use a blend of both. For example, SaaS companies often use email sequences for lead nurturing and product onboarding. I’ve also seen DTC brands use automated emails to introduce their brand before sending scheduled monthly newsletters.

Your emails must guide prospects and customers through the customer journey and give them the content they need, when they need it.

Conclusion

Content-driven acquisition caters to all stages of the customer journey. Each touch-point is designed to educate and empower your audience.

Fostering this approach can be as simple as using content to fuel your existing paid media efforts.

You won’t know until you speak to your customers. It’s the insight they give you that should fuel your content efforts. Listen, and then produce the content they need.

Many brands reach a stage where they no longer wish to rely on paid ads and performance marketing alone. Transitioning to organic acquisition is an attractive prospect.

When built the right way, B2B influencer relationships can be invaluable.

• They can lead to business development opportunities
• They can help you distribute your owned content to a larger audience
• They provide an opportunity to work on co-marketing projects together

The trouble is, most advice begins and ends with “provide value", which usually comes in the form of sharing content, mentioning them on social, and commenting on their blog posts.

But busy influencers are bombarded with these social notifications and cold emails on a daily basis. What influencers really need help with is getting their message, brand, and story in front of a larger audience.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to build long-term, meaningful relationships with influencers by getting them in front of a wider audience. You’ll learn how to engage with them, create content for other people’s audiences and create win-win scenarios for all involved.

The best bit? You get to create amazing content for a wider audience in the process.

Here’s how.

Identify relevant influencers

Not all influencers are made equal. And those you target will depend on your marketing goals.

For example, if you’re looking to establish co-marketing efforts (e.g. a co-branded eBook) with another non-competing brand, you’ll want to target senior marketers.

Perhaps you’re trying to expand your audience? Then you’ll want to engage with thought leaders who create great content for a large, engaged audience.

You should already have an idea of who you want to connect with. But you might also be looking for other opportunities outside of your “frame of reference.”

Here are some techniques to identify the best thought leaders in your space.

1. Use BuzzSumo for data-driven validation

Influencers are already sharing great content. You just need to find it.

BuzzSumo is just the tool for this job. With it, we can identify top-performing content and the influencers who shared it.

Let’s say we want to engage with influencers interested in chatbots. Type a keyword (e.g. “chatbot marketing”) into BuzzSumo and look at the top results:

Click on “View Sharers.” You’ll be taken to list of Twitter users who shared this content:

If you’re on the free version of BuzzSumo, order the list by Twitter Followers and identify individuals who would be a good fit.

For those on the premium version, we can download a CSV and perform some data wrangling. Click the “Export” button at the top right of the list and select “CSV.”

In Excel or Google Sheets, filter the data as follows:

• num_followers: > 5,000
• person_type: deselect any with [company]
• num_followers: order by largest to smallest
• Place name, URL and bio columns together (you may need to paste filtered data into a new spreadsheet to do this)

Moving these columns together makes it easy to sort through the list. You want to find users that have authority beyond the size of their followers.

Phrases such as “author,” “CEO” and “founder” are all indicators of legitimate influencers. Ignore users with their Pinterest or Facebook profiles listed.

Add these to your list of target influencers.

2. Find Popular Brands to Partner With

When we think of influencers in the B2B space, we often think of bloggers, authors, and thought leaders.

While there’s some overlap, we often overlook “organizational leaders” – the senior decision makers and movers and shakers who work for other brands.

There are several benefits to strategic partnerships like these:

1. They can help you reach a larger audience
2. You can establish a partnerships to promote your content to each other’s audience
3. You can create co-branded content

For the sake of this guide, we’re going to focus on co-branded content.

So, what exactly is co-branded content?

Co-branded content is a long-form asset (usually an eBook, report or webinar) co-authored by two (or more) brands. It helps increase the awareness and authority of both brands while generating qualified leads.

When starting up his agency, KlientBoost, Jonathan Dane decided to sacrifice “owned” content for partnerships. He identified software companies with access to his ideal clients and created co-branded eBooks with them:

As a result, KlientBoost grew from nothing to $1 million in revenue within a year. That’s the power of other people’s audiences.

Find brands using the BuzzSumo technique above. This time, include companies in your search. Look for influencers who have their company and job title in the bio.

LinkedIn is another great place to find potential partners. Using the advanced search features, you can find individuals within companies who would make great partners:

Tracking influencer activity & metrics

When identifying target influencers, you must keep track of the right metrics, activities and contact information.

This information includes any engagement touchpoints, as well as audience metrics.

Let’s break down the kind of information you should be collecting:

Social engagement can include likes, shares, and Tweets. But you need to get into the interview phase as quickly as possible.

As you’re aiming to add value through content, you should see a generous response rate during the outreach phase. We’ll cover influencer engagement in step 3.

Step 2: Creating Insanely Valuable Influencer Content

Once you’ve created a list of influencer targets, you’ll need a topic that brings them together.

There are two ways you can do this. The first is to make them the central focus of your content.

This is exactly what I did when writing a guest post for CrazyEgg, titled “7 Side Projects That Became Marketing Engines.” I reached out to marketers at the organizations featured, asking questions to get insights on their experiences on those projects.

The second approach is to find a common theme that links your content to your target influencers.

Let’s say you’re writing a piece on content distribution, and you want to connect with CMOs at technology companies. The approach would look like this:

1. Position your article as a content distribution guide for SaaS companies
2. Identify 10 to 20 CMOs with access to your audience/work at target accounts
3. Interview them about their distribution strategy, predictions, and results from their efforts

Finally, you can dedicate an entire piece of content about a single target influencer. This approach is especially effective if the influencer conquered a challenge that your offer solves.

Here’s an example of this in action on the Fieldbloom blog:

As you can see, the article positions Sarah Jones front-and-center. The result is a thorough and actionable case study that exposes Sarah to a wider audience.

Here’s a simple formula you can use to come up with story-driven articles:

“How [INFLUENCER/BRAND] Grew/Generated/Reduced [PROBLEM] [QUANT] in [TIMEFRAME] by [ACTION]”

Let’s break each element down:

• Influencer/Brand: The individual or organization you’re featuring
• Problem: The challenge they solved or the results they generated
• Quant: Provide specific numbers on the results
• Timeframe: How long did it take them to achieve this?
• Action: How they got those results. This is the topic of the article

From here, you need to create a killer piece of content. Whichever format you choose, it must be actionable and practical.

Take the insights generated from your conversations and provide actionable takeaways for the reader. You’ll learn how to do this in step 4.

Step 3: Influencer Engagement They Can’t Ignore

The most difficult step to influencer engagement is “getting past the noise.”

Here’s the good news:

The methodology outlined in this guide is designed to cut right through it.

Getting an influencer featured in industry and business publications is a sure-fire way to grab their attention.

The best method to reach out will depend on each target influencer. And to make matters worse, once GDPR ruins everything in May this year, you may want to diversify away from email.

Regardless, here’s how to reach out to B2B influencers and begin the relationship.

Pre-Engagement for Familiarity

While not always necessary, you can get on an influencers’ radar before reaching out.

Let’s look at some common methods of building familiarity.

Yes, I’m aware a “poo-pooed” these at the beginning of this guide. But these techniques are designed to nurture, not as a way of pretending to give superficial “value.”

1. Comment: If they’re publishing content, add meaningful comments. By meaningful, I mean useful. Don’t just say “Nice post!” Ask questions, add your “two cents” and inspire debate.
2. Social Engagement: Respond to their posts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Go beyond “likes” and get involved in the discussion. Tweet at them, comment on their posts and mention their name when sharing their content.
3. Communities: Find the forums and groups they’re active in and get involved. You can do this directly or indirectly. Indirectly means contributing to the entire community.

These are just a few easy methods of getting on an influencer’s radar. The underlying principle is a simple one:

Go where your influencers are and start a conversation with them.

Influencer Email Outreach

If you can find the right email address, this form of outreach is often the most effective.

I’m not going to share any templates. They can quickly saturate and ruin an approach. Instead, here’s a framework you can follow to write your own:

1. Personalized Opener: The expectations on personalization moved on long ago. “First name” variables no longer count as “personalization.” Instead, reference conversations and content where your paths have crossed.
2. Get to the point: State why you’re reaching out, and why it’s relevant to them.
3. Take the lead: The responsibility must be on you. Whether you’re guest blogging or creating co-branded content, you should be the one taking care of the heavy lifting. Make this clear to them and working with you will be a no-brainer.
4. Soft CTA: Your call-to-action shouldn’t be assumptive or pushy. Simply ask them if they’re interested in collaborating.

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If you’re reaching out to executives within an organization, Elucify is a great lookup tool for professional details and email addresses.

Social Engagement

Use the following approaches if you’re unsure of the legal aspects of cold outreach. This is a hurdle will affect many of us thanks to GDPR in 2018 and beyond.

Start with Twitter. Send a DM if your target influencer follows you. Use the same principles laid out for email outreach above.

If they don’t follow you, then you’ll have to tweet @ them. You have less room to make a case here, but 240 characters should be enough.

Get to the point quickly. “Hey @username, I’m writing a piece on TOPIC for PUBLICATION and wanted to get your thoughts on CHALLENGE THEY OVERCAME. Can I DM or email you?”

Alternatively, there’s LinkedIn. When connecting with your target influencer, add a personal note to state the intention. A note will increase the accept rate on your connection requests.

(Details blurred out for privacy)

What if influencers don’t respond? Try again on another channel, and keep following up until you get a “yes” or a “no.” Persistence is key, especially if you believe you’re adding real value.

Step 4: Influencer Interviews For Awesome Insights

So, you’ve established a relationship, and you’re ready to create content or establish a partnership.

Influencer interviews are the final step. Here, you’ll learn how to set up these discussions, the right questions to ask and how to turn their insight into content.

1. Digital Interviews

Some influencers just don’t have the time to chat with you on the phone. Deal with it and interview via digital channels.

I took this approach when creating the CrazyEgg post mentioned earlier. In fact, I conducted an entire interview with Sujan Patel on Twitter:

Just like any other interview, you can then dig deeper into their responses to understand the larger impact and thought processes behind these strategies.

Don’t let them drag on too long. Try and limit to three to five exchanges. Otherwise, you’ll see response rates drop.

2. Phone Interviews

Interviewing over the phone is the preferred approach for two reasons:

1. You can dig deeper into responses while getting honest, raw insights on their motivations, needs, and experiences.
2. It’s much easier to build rapport and lay the foundations for strong, long-term relationships.

When asking influencers for the interview, give them the option to talk on the phone or via email, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

What should you ask them when you have them on the phone? Here’s a framework I’ve borrowed from customer development frameworks.

• Really, really listen: Don’t wait your turn to respond. Instead, soak up everything influencers have to say. Learning to listen will help you use the next principle.
• Be open: Avoid scripts at all costs. Instead, ask questions that probe and dig deep into their answers. Allow yourself to be flexible depending on their response.
• Don’t lead: Avoid questions that imply an answer. E.g. “What impact did your side project have on lead generation?” vs. “How did this side project impact your business?” You’ll get more insights this way.
• Make friends: People do business with people they like. Spend one or two minutes at the beginning of the call to learn more about what they’re up to, but get to the point quickly.

Go in with three or four open-ended questions. Let their responses drive the rest of your questions. Get an understanding of the true impact their experiences and results had in their business or career.

Turning Influencer Insight into Content

You’ve conducted the interviews, and you have pages of notes. It’s time to turn that insight into content.

Your content must be actionable and practical. Whether it’s a guest post, webinar or podcast interview. The reader/listener should be able to execute on what you teach.

A good litmus test is to ask yourself “does this thoroughly guide me through the solution?” If the answer is no, add more detail to your content.

The introduction should outline the challenge, pain or complication in the market. What’s the problem that your content is about to solve?

One way to boost credibility here is to include third party data and statistics. Cite them when backing up your points throughout the entire piece of content.

Influencer insight will allow you to tell a story. What was the challenge, and why was this such a pressing problem for them and their business? How did they overcome these challenges?

Then, it’s time to drive practical value. Extract takeaway lessons from your influencer’s story. Provide actionable steps with examples, screenshots, and instructions on how your audience can do the same.

Include as many quotes, statistics, examples, and images as possible. These ramp up the perceived value of your content, leading to more shares, traffic and, most importantly, leads.

Conclusion

This methodology is designed to work across all platforms and content formats.

Looking for interview opportunities on podcasts? Need examples for an upcoming webinar? Influencer interviews will help with that.

The importance is that you’re adding value to all three parties:

1. The creators or editors for the platform/publication your content will feature in
2. The influencer you’re engaging with
3. You and your business

Drive as much value to all three, and you’ll see your audience expand rapidly.

In this article, you’ll uncover a compelling argument for taking more creative risks, the importance of expanding your frame of reference, and learn specific methods to build a competitive moat around your content and brand.

Why creativity is more important than ever in an AI-generated world

The late futurist Jacques Fresco once said:

"Creativity takes known elements and puts them together in different ways.”

Jacques’ work was famous for its creativity. He consistently challenged the status quo in city design, resource management, and social engineering. This reimagination of how to use modern technology was born out of frustration at the lack of industrial innovation.

Today, your audience feels that same frustration due to how common bad content has become.

Blog articles have rapidly lost their zest and originality. As marketers compete for the same keywords, they rely on identical frameworks as their competitors.

But buyers can see that most SEO-driven articles are unreliable and copy each other, which undermines their trust in Google as a source of information.

What’s worse, tools built on top of OpenAI and ChatGPT are exacerbating the problem. While this will ultimately make our jobs as marketers and creators easier, in the present reality they’re being misused to create terrible experiences.

Consumers are already calling out media brands who churn out low-quality content. Just take this comment from a recent Unilad post:

How do we alleviate doubt and delight readers? How do we offer an experience that surprises them and builds trust?

Injecting creativity and doing what robots can’t is the only way.

Use creativity and benevolence to build a content moat

Creativity elevates your content and builds trust with skeptical readers.

As Jacques Fresco said, this requires putting “known elements” together in unique ways.

But we still need to generate business results. Content that generates the lion’s share of attention does so for a reason: it fulfills search intent.

The problem is, everyone ends up copying each other. Trust is eroded as your customers bounce from one article to another.

Creative applications to SEO-driven content helps your content stand out. It keeps the reader on the page, sending engagement signals to Google. The longer a user sticks around, the more likely they are to take action.

Let’s say you’re writing an article on relationship selling. Typical advice for this topic includes “giving value” and “solving objections.”

However, based on your experience, you know it’s important to build intimacy by counter-intuitively challenging prospects and introduce them to their peers.

This perspective offers a unique approach to relationship selling into your article. It builds trust with your readers and creates a stack of value.

Why go through so much trouble for a single piece of content? Because it’s the only way you’ll break through your audience’s “B.S. shield” created by copycat and low-effort AI content.

In their “How People Read Online” report, Nielsen Norman Group found that there are two components to building trust in content:

1. Credibility: The user believes you have the ability to provide the information they’re looking for.
2. Benevolence: The user believes you have good intentions for providing that information.

One participant of the study shared their experience reading an article from Cleveland Clinic about the health benefits of kombucha. However, despite reading the entire thing, they decided to find a second opinion:

“[The Cleveland Clinic article] was very pro-kombucha. Which is why I was like, I’m going to look somewhere else.”

They ended up reading a Healthline article that shared both the positive and negative effects of kombucha. Healthline offered a complete and impartial perspective. In turn, the reader learned to trust Healthline on the topic over Cleveland Clinic.

Benevolence is an often overlooked element of establishing trust, which is impossible to do if you’re only emulating other articles in Google or relying solely on what AI tools give you.

Broaden your inputs to uncover new creative ideas

Creativity isn’t an ephemeral characteristic. Remember, creativity is simply the act of “putting known elements together in different ways.”

New creative endeavors, therefore, require us to do two things:

1. Collect new inputs (such as content, conversations, and data from new places)
2. Expand your frame of reference (by investing in new experiences or experimenting)

As a B2B content marketer, a practical way to broaden your inputs might involve researching what other industries are doing to promote their products.

For example, if you’re charged with growing enterprise software, you might find unique content formats in the ecommerce world.

But there’s so much more to it than this. To drive these principles home, let’s explore three specific methods for collecting new inputs to elevate your content.

1. Pay attention to how journalists tell stories

A good hook will communicate why readers should care about your message and earn their attention to continue reading.

Take this example of an introduction found in a blog post on digital transformation:

Digital transformation is a global business phenomenon, capturing the attention of enterprises in every industry and spurring major investment.

Learn why digital transformation matters now, what successful initiatives look like, and how to avoid common pitfalls.

It’s unlikely this introduction makes you feel emotionally invested to continue, even if you’re eager to learn about digital transformation.

Let’s compare this with an introduction from The Atlantic, taken from an article titled “Coffee really does make you happier:”

“I remember the night I fell in love.

“The year was 1977, and I was 12 years old. A neighbor kid’s parents had bought an espresso machine—an exotic gadget in those days, even in Seattle. There was just one Starbucks in the world back then, and as luck had it, we lived within walking distance. The neighbor kid and I bought a pound of coffee and had about eight espressos each. Feeling fully alive and inspired to get closer to the universe, I climbed onto the roof of his house. In the process, I cut a gash in my stomach on his gutter. Bleeding profusely, I marveled at how intense the stars were.”

Not only is an emotional connection made, the story is relevant. The headlike makes a promise before the click, and the introduction sets the reader up to go on a journey that’s likely to have a satisfying payoff.

Using relevant stories will hook readers in and keep them engaged throughout your entire article. When relevant, they can quickly communicate what’s possible with your advice and help your audience relate to your experiences (or those shared by third-party contributors, subject matter experts, etc.)

If you get abstract with this approach, make sure to get to the point quickly. For example, when I shared the story about Jacques Fresco, you may have wondered how it was relevant.

While it hopefully piqued your interest, I didn’t expect to keep your attention for long. So, I made the story succinct and quickly tied it back to the underlying point I wanted to make.

You can use this journalism-inspired technique to create a pattern interrupt. Done right, stories can offer a welcome respite in industries known for dry or technical language.

Here are some methods for finding a worthy subject for your journalism-inspired stories:

• Historical figures and industry legends: Share the lessons learned by those who paved a new way of doing things. Lay the foundations for your argument by blending timeless stories with current issues.
• Underdogs: Avoid leaning on unrelatable lessons from brands like Apple and Coca Cola. There are plenty of small businesses and startups that have achieved a more relatable definition of success. Few can emulate the actions of a billion-dollar brand, but most can apply the principles that helped a business generate its first $100,000.
• Behemoth backstories: If you must use a Fortune 500 brand to make a point, go back to its roots. Marketing blogs love talking about Apple’s branding, but nobody talks about Steve Jobs’ time as a video game designer and his Buddhist pilgrimage to India.
• Individual contributors: Celebrate how practitioners achieved a specific goal. For example, by breaking down the nuances of Apple’s product photography to provide relatable takeaways.

Finally, don’t neglect your own experiences. You have a tremendous amount of wisdom to share.

2. Find an investigative angle with complementary or conflicting data

Many content marketers and writers have a habit of using stats to back up ideas they’ve already committed to.

But it only works if that data is statistically significant, presented honestly, and adds value to the reader.

The best writers use data to share additional perspectives while offering the most suitable conclusion for the reader.

Take this piece on mushroom intelligence from Psyche:

The entire article is a science-backed exploration into the behavior profile of mushrooms.

Here’s how the writer talks about an experiment involving beechwood:

When researchers followed the transfer of nutrients in the lab, further remarkable discoveries were in store. In a tray of soil, hyphae were observed to make contact with a block of beechwood. [...] The fungus in these experiments showed spatial recognition, memory and intelligence. It’s a conscious organism.

They then use data taken from several studies to to interpret how different mushrooms behave:

The behavioural complexity of fungi increases when they interact with living trees and shrubs rather than dead wood. Some of these relationships are destructive while others are mutually supportive. Pathogenic fungi can be very cunning in how they feed on plants and evade their defences.

The author provides an in-depth analysis of fungi, generating over 10,000 shares on social media— a tremendous amount of engagement for a story about mushrooms.

Taking an investigative approach to data-driven content can provide unique angles for your content.

For example, our article on the backlink profile of Buffer and other SaaS brands took a very different direction to the one we originally intended.

The investigative journey that fueled this article looked liked this:

• Use seed data: We started our investigation with this Semrush study, which found that “only 22% of respondents are creating original studies and data-driven content” and “24% say they rely on external publications (digital PR) or guest blogging” for distribution.
• Check your assumptions: Many SEO studies have found that links do matter when growing search traffic. If this is true, why is nobody creating data-driven content, which has been proven to generate links?
• Ask a better question: Do how-to articles, definitive guides, and other SEO-driven content formats still generate links? From our experience, link building outreach that relies on these formats is ineffective.
• Apply your first investigative layer: To answer these questions, we identified data-driven content from 10 well-known SaaS brands and collected backlink data from Ahrefs.
• Add a second investigative layer: We found that these data-driven articles generated an average of 847 backlinks. However, this still didn’t answer whether or not they get more backlinks than editorial and SEO-driven content.
• Add a third investigative layer: We dug deeper into Buffer’s most linked-to pieces of content to find an anecdotal answer.
• Identify the conclusion: Not only does Buffer’s “State of Social” report stand out in terms of backlinks, but we found it was 293% faster to generate the first 100 links to this report than their most linked-to blog article.

Imagine if we stopped at the Semrush study. This article would have looked like every other piece on data-driven content.

Curiosity is the only thing you need to uncover engaging narratives, and access to the data that fuels them is often democratic.

Allow yourself to be proven wrong. If you find two sources that contradict each other, dig deeper into both.

Are there differences in sample size or representation of survey respondents? Use these methodologies to your advantage. Share your findings to tell a story that helps your customers solve their problems.

We talk all about how to use stats honestly and with integrity in this episode of the Demandist podcast.

3. Establish an expert committee to poke holes in the status quo

Subject matter experts (SMEs) can inject your content with credibility.

If the content on page one of Google looks similar, they’re likely exacerbating the same falsehoods.

SME insights can help you break the cycle of false information by calling out what conventional advice gets wrong.

This can build trust with your audience—especially if you debunk an unspoken yet well-known falsehood.

Going back to our article on relationship selling, we found that most blog posts oppose the idea of being likable.

However, our internal SMEs with decades of experience selling to the c-suite inherently disagree. And they can prove it.

Not only will this angle make your content stand out, it will undermine the falsehoods your competitors amplify, giving your audience more reason to trust you.

Jakub Rudnik, Head of Content at Scribe, uses this approach to make his content more original:

As a trained journalist, I look for opportunities to bring in experts wherever possible. Who is the best-case source? What other sources can offer different perspectives? This may not be completely original, but so few content marketers are willing to take these steps.

Get SMEs invested in your content by making it worth their time:

1. Batch conversations into topical themes: Schedule one call a month to discuss a single theme or series of articles.
2. Communicate asynchronously: Allows SMEs to share their expertise in their own time with Slack voice messages.
3. Fuel their personal brand: Many SMEs aim to elevate their message to build awareness. Offer to repurpose your blog content into a LinkedIn post or Twitter thread for SMEs to share with their audience. Better yet, get it featured in a guest post.

SME insights will also help you build E-E-A-T. Featuring the voice of known experts sends a signal to Google that your content is credible, establishing you as an authority in your topic cluster of choice.

Inputs shape your outputs

Creativity is suppressed if we drink from the same altar. Outputs become homogenous and we end up creating the same thing as everyone else.

To inject your content marketing with creativity, collect new inputs and broaden your horizon with new content formats.

Build a moat by doing what nobody else is willing to build. Watch as it provokes thought, influences the conversation, and builds trust with even the most skeptical audience.