How Product-Led Content Marketing Drives You to Success

Yauhen Zaremba

Director of Demand Generation at PandaDoc.

Yauhen Zaremba

Director of Demand Generation at PandaDoc.

Last Updated
April 25, 2023
Estimated Reading Time
7 minutes

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If you’re going to be successful in business, you need to convince potential customers that your product is the only one for them. 

To do this, you need to promote the product without sounding too sales-y – which is where product-led content marketing comes in.

With highly-targeted blog articles, you can push readers to buy your product by demonstrating how it solves a specific pain point. In this post, we’ll show you some examples of product-led content and explain how to create the perfect product-led article.

Contents

  • What is product-led content?
  • Why is product-led content still under-used?
  • How product-led content marketing drives success
  • How to craft a winning product-led article

Product-led content is both flexible and powerful. Let’s get into it. 

What is product-led content?

Often taking the form of user guides, how-to listicles, and especially blog articles, product-led content puts a product at the heart of the content’s narrative, but does so without a hard-sell.

It demonstrates how the product is the solution to a problem the reader has. It identifies pain points they’ll likely experience, showcasing how their product can help.

For instance, if you’re selling manual and automated testing solutions, your target reader might be an app developer who’s struggling to release software quickly. 

As a result, they may search for a solution using the terms “speed up software release cycles and keep quality”.

An article with a title such as “How to Speed Up Software Release Cycles and Maintain Quality” would address the main issue and explain how testing can help.

a screenshot of a google search about how to speed up software release cycles and maintain quality
Screenshot taken from google.com

Within the educational nature of the content, you can position your product as the “hero” that provides the best solution to the problem.

a screenshot taken from global testing app about how to speed up software release cycles and maintain quality
Screenshot taken from globaltestingapp.com

Why is product-led content still under-used?

Despite the benefits, product-led content is not used as much as it could be. 

Why is this?

1. It requires in-depth knowledge of the product

Creating an effective product-led article requires knowing the product inside out, so you can highlight its capabilities correctly. If a company wants to convince customers that its online secure file sharing product keeps documents safe, the article should describe the security protocols in perfect detail.

Although its rewards are worth the time and effort, this sort of content isn’t the fastest and easiest to churn out. Marketers may prefer to harness the benefits of interactive marketing campaigns.

2. It requires marketers to constantly update customer data

Content marketers are aware of the need to get details right (see chart below). For product-led content, getting the customer data right—so you can emphasize the needs of the user—is crucial.

a graph of what concepts b2b marketers always take into account while creating content for their organization
Image sourced from contentmarketinginstitute.com

For example, if you’re promoting CRM software, you can include a statistic that shows why it’s important to house customer data in one place.

An image showing the statistics of Dialpad
Screenshot taken from dialpad.com

However, sourcing the latest data is time-consuming, which means some marketers may prefer to use another form of content marketing.

3. It doesn’t follow the usual marketing metrics

Product-led content marketing isn’t necessarily driven by common metrics such as click-through rate, which can reveal which topics are popular with audiences. You still need to consider search volume, but be aware that it may be lower and the keywords will be high-intent keywords.

Let’s say you want to highlight how your marketing automation tool amplifies growth. You can do it by targeting relevant keywords connected to a topic such as how targeted email campaigns can drain an SME’s time and resources. 

By doing so you are addressing a pain point your potential users might be facing and, with the help of keywords, positioning your post to appear higher up on the search engine’s results page. Within your article, you can suggest how an automated tool would be a big help.

A screenshot taken from Pixel Productions Inc
Screenshot taken from pixelproductionsinc.com

How product-led content marketing drives success

Now let’s take a look at the main benefit of focusing on product-led content

1. It educates customers without being too pushy

Telling a compelling story in non-sales-y language means you can empathize with your audience from the start and grab their attention. Show that you understand their situation, challenges, and difficulties.

Get it right and the audience won’t feel like they’re being pushed towards a product. By letting them know your product’s the answer they’re looking for, you’ll educate them about your brand as a whole.

A graph showing the reasons to use content marketing
Image sourced from firstpagestratregy.com 

2. It establishes a brand as a solution to customers’ pain points

Marketers are aware content often works best when it’s used to tell stories. As noted, product-led storytelling works because it works hard to earn an audience’s trust. 

For example, PandaDoc is producing an article addressing how a business can go paperless. The piece’s aim is to demonstrate how brands might do that. But for PandaDoc, the aim is to champion itself as a hero. 

A screenshot showing PandaDoc's article addressing how a business can go paperless
Screenshot taken from pandadoc.com

3. It assists with customer acquisition

Attracting leads that result in acquisitions is a big challenge for content marketers. The picture-painting approach of product-led content helps you establish better-quality leads, because the target audience understands not only what a product can do, but how it can solve a problem.

For instance, PandaDoc demonstrates the need for non-compete agreements (and thereby promotes its contract-creation software) by mentioning the prevalence of related lawsuits in the US.

A screenshot of PandaDoc's article demonstrating the need for non-compete agreements
Screenshot taken from pandadoc.com

4. It helps throughout the buyer journey

Because they directly address customers’ needs, product-led articles are flexible in how they can be used during the buyer journey. If you do your research, discover pain points, and target them, you can use product-led content wherever you want in the funnel.

If your audience is at the top of your funnel, your content can educate and address a specific pain point they may have. The blog post in the example below clearly does this. It provides a step-by-step guide to help the reader solve their problem.

A screenshot of PandaDoc's blog post on how to attach files to documents and templates
Screenshot taken from pandadoc.com

Articles can target readers in the middle of the funnel with more detailed information such as as in the example below. These will place your product at the forefront and provide evidence as to how your product will be able to help your audience.

A screenshot from Dialpad showing  their product reviews or case studies
Screenshot taken from dialpad.com

Your product-led content can also provide value to readers at the bottom of the marketing funnel. Content such as product tours and demos will help validate their decision that your product is the right one for them.

A screenshot of PandaDoc's product tour
Screenshot taken from pandadoc.com

How to craft a winning product-led article

Now we understand the benefits of product-led content, let’s dive deeper into how you can create it for your audience.

1. Know your product and use it as inspiration

Armed with the correct details and data, and a thorough understanding of your product, you can get started on your product-led article. 

At PandaDoc, we ensure that all our content marketers paint a vivid picture for our target readers—and that each article sets up one of our products as the “hero” of the story.

For example, perhaps you’re tasked with promoting a digital waiver product. Our tip would be to put together an educational blog post explaining exactly what a waiver is, and why a business would use one. Or you could create a comparison of the top solutions on the market.

For either of these options, you’ll need to use your in-depth product knowledge to position it as the best choice for users. In the example below, the writer casually mentions that PandaDoc provides a template to make waiver creation simple and fast.

A screenshot from PandaDoc  mentioning that they provide a template to make waiver creation simple and fast
Screenshot taken from pandadoc.com

2. Find the balance between product and content creation

Now, writing product-led content may not be the easiest thing for those getting started, but there is a saving grace. Finding the balance between sympathizing with the customer and promoting your product isn’t as hard as it may seem.

You need to avoid anything that seems like a hard sell, and instead focus on subtle nudges toward your solution. It’s a good idea to introduce your product through casual examples. For instance, in an article about electronic signature software, you could say:

“When you send a contract out, you need to know that the client has read and signed it. Some software (like PandaDoc) sends you notifications when this happens.”

or: “In the interest of speeding up the signing process, it’s useful to get real-time notifications—just like you do with PandaDoc.”

3. Create content with the buyer in mind

You can only present your product as the answer to your customers’ problems if you have their best interests at heart – and create content that appeals to those interests. But how do you discover what their major pain points and concerns are?

At PandaDoc, we use a combination of techniques, including feedback from customer surveys, data from our CRM system, and keyword research. Once we’ve identified the most common topics raised by customers, we can create content that keeps potential buyers in mind at all times.

For example, if you were going to write about a free pdf compressor, you’d need to search through your data to see what people are asking about. One of the issues you may discover is that prospects are concerned about maintaining the quality of documents and images during compression

If so, you should angle your article to address those worries. You could state that the best compression tools don’t compromise file quality—and make sure to mention that your product fits into that category. This will reassure the buyer and generate trust in your brand.

A screenshot of PandaDoc's frequently asked questions
Screenshot taken from pandadoc.com

Product-led content is both flexible and powerful

Going down the product-led content route means taking a different approach to content marketing. Yet, owing to its flexibility and trust-winning nature, this route can be very powerful in driving brand engagement and customer acquisitions.

As long as you focus on identifying your target audience’s interests and concerns, you’ll earn the right to introduce your product as a hero, and then that all-important call to action.

A screenshot of PandaDoc's call to action
Screenshot taken from pandadoc.com

The secret is demonstrating you care about the concerns of your customers, as well as about your own product. Empathy is the key – success is the reward.

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