Trailer: 95% of B2B SaaS companies do content marketing the wrong way, it should be like this.

One of the main problems our potential customers come to us with is they either don't know or don't have the clear ROI from their content marketing efforts, or they don't know how to write and rank content that converts. So content that actually Gives them real customers. It's not just about traffic that you get or search volume. That's a vanity metric. At the end of the day, what matters is how much money this article brings to my business.

Welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Show. I'm here with Ugi Jurek, who's joining me all the way from Serbia. Ugi, hi, how are you doing?

Yeah, I'm doing great, Jim. Thank you very much for having me here.

Now, Ugi, you are a person who understands content really well. And on this show, you're going to help us to understand how your 2 companies, Content Horse and Perdino, can help business owners to get noticed. So tell me, Ugi, tell me about how you help B2B SaaS owners to get noticed.

Yeah, definitely. We help B2B SaaS companies craft bulletproof content marketing strategies that resonate with their target audience. We help them write compelling and engaging content that converts and that of course ranks first on Google. And later we help them distribute that same content and optimize it for conversions. So we actually help companies become thought leaders and let's say first choice for someone who is looking for a service like theirs by Positioning them on the market and Google with great high-quality content.

Now, it sounds as though that's a big task, but you've chosen a niche, which is the B2B SaaS. Can you just clarify for us then what kind of companies are you working for?

Yeah, definitely. So we work with B2B SaaS companies. SaaS stands for Service as a Software. So for example, like every tool that you use online, that's in some way SaaS. So for example, You probably use like something like HubSpot or Salesforce or GetResponse, for example. We work with companies like that, so B2B, business-to-business, SaaS, services as software. For example, one of our clients is GetResponse, that's an email marketing automation platform and sales automation platform as well. And yeah, that's the kind of the companies that we work with.

What would be the number one problem that that company faces? Because there are so many of these SaaS products now online. One can go to a platform like Capterra, for example, as to find the source and compare. So, Ugi, what's the number one problem those business owners are facing in this really hypercompetitive market?

Yeah, definitely one of the main problems our potential customers come to us are they either don't know or don't have the clear ROI from their content marketing efforts, or they don't know how to write and rank content that converts. So content that actually gives them real customers. It's not just about traffic that you get or search volume. That's a vanity metric. That means not— at the end of the day, what matters is how much money this article brings to my business.

And how are you doing that? Because most of us are guilty, I am for sure, of generating content that doesn't have an ROI. So walk us through the steps that someone could take to look at their own content and start to make it add value for their business.

Yeah, definitely. So first of all, there are 2 things that you need to keep in your mind. The first one is the Maturity of your company, right? So the approach, strategy, process is different if you're like an early stage company, if you have product market fit, than if you're like an enterprise company or a company with 50+ employees, right? So that's the first thing that you need to keep in your mind. And the second thing is what's the maturity of your market, right? So for example, When you take a look at Google, when you take a look at the content that you can find, blog posts that you can find at Google, if you search like the marketing and sales industry, right? This market is very saturated. There are millions of articles out there. But if you, for example, take a look at— if you go down, if you go niche down and you take a look at marketing for real estate or for the injury law firms, for example, these markets are less saturated and what works in that market doesn't mean that will work in the other market and so on. So essentially when we work with early-stage companies, so the companies who don't have big resources, who don't have like millions in revenue, the first thing that we start doing, we write bottom-of-the-funnel content. So that's content that's searched Or let's say that's content that ranks for keywords, for bottom of the funnel keywords who are searched by people who are almost immediately ready to buy your product.

Okay. So that's what you mean by bottom of the funnel is people that are about ready to make a purchase.

Yeah. Yeah. They just need a little more information on what vendor to choose. And especially in the SaaS world, there are many keywords like that. So for example, we work with one e-commerce company, right? One e-commerce sales SaaS, and they have like 100+ competitors. And what we do when doing keyword research, we type down in Ahrefs like competitor name alternative, competitor name alternative, and then we get like a bunch of keywords. For example, that one keyword can be Mailchimp alternative. So that particular keyword, for example, if I remember correctly, has a search volume of around 2,000. 3,000 a month. But there are also a lot of other keywords that have a search volume of around 20 or 50 a month, but that doesn't matter because all 50 people who type that in their Google, right, there are high-quality leads for you. And then you go out, you write one in-depth and comprehensive article on, for example, 5 best Mailchimp alternatives, Where of course your product, your service is one of those 5 alternatives. And that's how you get leads through content in an early stage. If you're an enterprise company, then the content approach is a little bit different, right? So then you start positioning yourself, then your entire content should position yourself as a thought leader in the market, should bring some new innovations in the way on how people think in your industry and so on. So yes, that's pretty much it. We can talk about this like for days, but—

I was going to say, when you say that's pretty much it, I think you've summarized in a couple of minutes what is obviously both a lifetime of work, but also a real skill set. So it sounds as though one needs different strategies, both for the different kinds of companies and the different stages that a company is at. How do you then start to work with the company as a, as a vehicle for the vision of the founder? Because the product you have, like for Capterra, for example, but then also the people leading the business become also very important, don't they, in terms of differentiating the company from others? So how do you help a company to differentiate itself beyond the feature set?

Yeah, definitely. That's even now, a lot of companies make a mistake and they compare themselves and even position themselves inside the market by features, by product specifications, and so on. Right now, like you said, like there is thousands of tools that do like completely the same thing as, for example, Mailchimp, right? So there are like thousands of tools and all of them have 99% same features and similar product specifications, but that's where positioning and messaging comes in game, right? So every day, like, you're getting 3, 4, 5 new competitors, right? Every month, every week you're getting new competitors, and differentiating yourself just by better product, it's not enough. You need to differentiate yourself by the messaging. First of all, you need to know who exactly is. Your target audience can't be everyone, right? It needs to be a super specific group of people, and you need to know that target audience the same as your mother, right? As your wife, as you know your husband. So you need to know them very in-depth. You need to know where they hang out on the internet, what they read, what type of content they consume, what What powers even engage with them? And then once you know that, you craft better messaging on your landing page, in your lead magnets, on your content, and so on. Of course, like you said, founders play one very important role in all of that. So we know there are like plenty of examples where founders were the main drivers of growth for the company. For example, Russell Brunson for ClickFunnels. So he published like 3, 5 books, I don't know how many, and many people are there because of him, not because of the product. Like ClickFunnels, my personal opinion is that ClickFunnels is not a great product, so there is like way better products than ClickFunnels, but people are there because of Russell Brunson. So founders definitely play an important role in overall positioning of the company, but they're also useless if they don't know who is their ideal customer persona, dream customer, call it like however you want. So once they know who is your dream customer, then go out, write guest blog posts on other high-authority sites in your niche that have your target audience, that have your dream customers, right? And write about big things, right? Write about big ideas. You want to create a buzz. You want to create a buzz around your name, around your product, around your industry. Like, for example, just like Slack went to market, like Slack, when Slack was launched, their PR was, we killed the email. And in some kind of a way, they really killed the email. Yeah, it's all about being omnipresent, And like knowing who is your, who are your dream customers and serving content they're gonna like.

Now, speaking of content, one of the areas that more and more people are getting into, of course, are podcasts, Uğur. So share with us about Poddino because more and more people are seeing podcasts as an alternative to traditional media interviews. So what role are you playing there and how do you think podcasts can help with personal branding?

Yeah, definitely. So you, I suppose you, Jim, drive a car, right? And you drive behind some billboard at the speed of 70 miles per hour or more. You hardly notice that billboard. You also scroll your feed on Instagram, LinkedIn, Instagram at the same speed, right? So you hardly see any ad. But when it comes to podcasts, I, as a guest, you as a host, right? We have access to listeners who dedicate 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour of their time to listening to our voices. So they listen to me, they listen to what I have to say, and they remember it. So I have 1 hour, 30 minutes of their attention, and everyone else has. So by far, I would say that podcasts are one of the best ways to get noticed among your dream customers because they have biggest engagement, right? So through podcasts, you build the best relationship with your dream customers. And once your dream customers like constantly listen to you on a couple of different podcasts, when they think about something that you offer, right, you will be the first person who will come to their mind.

So in terms of podcast quality, How do you help people to determine that? Because with traditional media, you have audits, you have circulation, it's fairly easy to track, and they've got history. How do you help someone not end up on a show that frankly only gets listened to by them and the host and maybe a couple of friends?

Yeah, yeah, understanding metrics of some podcasts is pretty, pretty hard. So there is no way to know how many downloads per episode or listeners some podcast has. Like, you can ask podcasts, but they can either give you the right number or they will lie to you. They will say the number is bigger than it actually is. One of the best, not the most precise way, but one of the best ways is something, is a metric called Global Rank. Global Rank is developed by Listen Notes, so listennotes.com. It's a like a Google, but for podcasts. It's a search engine for podcasts. And there each podcast has its global rank. And when you go to listen-ons, you will see some podcasts have a global rank of 10%. That means that podcast is in the top 10% in the world. So we have partnerships with a lot of podcasts. We know their numbers. So when we see that some other podcast is in top 10 or top 3, top 5%, doesn't matter. We roughly know what are the ranges of audience that they have. But anyway, at the end of the day, it's not about the quantity of the people that hear you, it's about the quality.

And Ugi, let's just link those 2 points from the beginning and the end of this talk about, in the first, you're doing SEO content and keywords, and now we're talking about being on a podcast. How do you link those 2 together so that it's a unified strategy?

Yeah, definitely. So at the end of the day, no matter what you do, no matter in what industry you are, everything comes down to creating content, right? And there are like various types of content that you can create, but the thing is Many people, they try to reinvent the wheel, right? When actually, from one piece of content, for example, from one article that you write, you can create like 30 or 50 other content pieces, right? You can repurpose that one article in 10 social media posts, in 3 newsletters, in 5 podcast episodes. Then you jump on a podcast and you can use that audio to create like 10 other social media posts. So everything comes down to creating as much content as you can. And believe me, in 6 months, in 1 year, you will become a thought leader in your industry, in your market, right?

Then presumably when you've been on a podcast, you're also trying to use some of those keywords in your podcast answers or certainly adding them into your transcripts. Would that be the case?

In some cases, yeah. In some cases, yeah.

And can you recommend a tool for this content repurposing that you're talking about? Any platforms as you're doing work for so many SaaS companies, is there one that you recommend?

There are many tools for content repurposing. It depends on the type of content that you're repurposing. So for example, if you have a podcast and you want to repurpose a podcast episode and you want to create 5 or 6 different social media posts, there is a tool called Wave. For that. So you just upload an audio, choose like snippets from, from the audio, put a background image, and you have 5 or 6 Instagram, Facebook posts, whatever, with your audio in the background. There's like Wave for that. There is Canva for like design, creating visuals, creating infographics, and so on. Then you can just take one article that you wrote and make 5 different Twitter threads or LinkedIn posts. You don't need a tool for that. Just take your article, open 2 windows on your laptop and repurpose it to be a Twitter thread. So yeah, like it's more often creativity than having the right toolkit.

That's wonderful. Thanks for sharing your creativity and obviously a great deal both about being creative, but also about the tools. If people want to find out more about you, how can they do that?

Yeah, definitely. So if anyone needs any kind of help or needs advice on content marketing, they can reach out to me. on ugi@contenthorse.com. Website is contenthorse.com. Or if they need any help getting featured on podcasts, they can reach out to me through— the website is podino.io. And the email is the same, ugi@contenthorse.com.

Ugi, thank you for joining me all the way from Serbia, especially as you're just about to expect your first child. So really appreciate you taking the time for us today.

Thank you very much, Jim O'Zell. It was my pleasure.

You've been listening to Ugi Djuric over there in Serbia talking to us today about content marketing and also about playing a part in the internet, both through your written content, your social content, but also as a podcast guest. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Unnoticed Show.