7 Sales Content Strategy Examples That Boosted Annual Revenue

7 Sales Content Strategy Examples That Boosted Annual Revenue

7 Sales Content Strategy Examples That Boosted Annual Revenue

Is your sales team struggling to generate leads and bring in revenue? Maybe it’s the way they conduct the conversation. Or maybe, they don’t have the right assets to encourage a conversion.

In this case, content marketing can be the answer.

Typically, sales and marketing teams aren’t aligned because marketing wants brand awareness, and sales want leads. But, by creating middle and bottom funnel content—they both win.

Most companies have already recognized the power of content, as it has helped close deals and improve customer engagement. To give you an inside look into how they did it, we’ll look at seven examples of sales content that companies used to drive their business forward.

From engaging storytelling techniques to creating thought-provoking content, these examples show how effective MOFU and BOFU content can be when converting leads into sales.

Let’s dive in.

7 sales content strategy examples to inspire your next campaign

Example 1: Jasper

Type of business: AI-powered content and image-generating tool

Target audience:

  • Content marketers
  • Content and copywriters
  • Social media managers
  • Heads of Marketing

Goal:

  • Reduce reliance on sales teams for revenue
  • Turn their blog into a growth channel
  • Increase product sign-ups and customer base

Content formats:Company blog

Why it works:

Jasper’s team knew they needed to reduce their reliance on their sales team. In addition, they also wanted to stand out from the rest of their competitors due to the increasing interest in AI content and the number of new players in the market.

To facilitate that, the team focused on high-converting content like comparison blogs, product-led content, and thought leadership pieces to create product awareness. Plus, their keyword strategy focused more on industry topics instead of branded keywords (despite the heavy brand presence) so that they could capitalize on trending topics.

What’s more interesting is how their current blog page is designed. It’s highly focused on conversion (as seen in the image below). They published highly focused comparison blogs comparing their products to established and up-and-coming competitors.

Moreover, users can easily access an on-demand demo or directly sign up for a 5-day free trial right from the same page—making it easier to mark it as a touchpoint. Users can immediately book a demo or review the product’s capabilities as they already have the options right there.

This approach resulted in a 415% growth in organic sessions and 121x growth in product sign-ups in just one year.

alt_text

A breakdown of Jasper’s blog and how it’s focused on conversion

Source

Impact on revenue:

  • The average time to sign up after reading the blog was 1 minute 53 seconds
  • Blog to registration rate: 6%
  • Blog attributed revenue: $1 million (annual recurring revenue)

Example 2: Convertkit

Type of business: Email marketing platform

Target audience:

  • Online creators (Bloggers, YouTubers, etc.)

Content formats: Webinars

Why it works:

In early 2016, many professionals felt the effects of webinar fatigue. These webinars were basically a pitch to sign up for a product or service. This is what ConvertKit’s founders capitalized on.

They created a webinar strategy to create awareness by doing things differently. Instead of focusing on how their products benefit their target audience—they chose to show them

Taking advantage of their affiliate program, they invited existing users to conduct webinars irrespective of their audience size. This meant that people would sign up for webinars that were meant for creators of all sizes. By shining a light on their current customers, they could show the actual use cases of the product without making a direct sales pitch.

Plus, by narrowing their target audience to only bloggers, they created a hyper-focused strategy. Due to their interest in these webinars, they could host 150 (averaging about 2 to 3 a day) that year.

At the end of it, ConverKit and its creators received massive awareness and interest in their business. While the company increased its MRR by 637%, the creators earned a nice 30% commission for each sign-up they influenced—resulting in a win-win situation for everybody involved.

Impact on revenue:

  • Growth in monthly recurring revenue (MRR): 637%
  • Webinar attributed revenue: $90,000 to $625,000 in 1 year

What tools can help you streamline the sales enablement process? Check out our CEO’s recommendations: What sales enablement tools should you have in your sales stack?

Example 3: Capgemini

Type of business: IT services and consulting

Target audience:

  • Multiple verticals: Aerospace and defense, Banking and capital markets, Consumer products, Healthcare, etc.
  • Technical teams like IT looking for digital transformations services

Content formats: Blog posts and LinkedIn posts

Why it works:

Capgemini’s content wasn’t generating revenue because it wasn’t targeted toward its customers. They were focused on promotional campaigns that did more for employee engagement than their bottom line. When Rena Patel, the company’s then-digital campaign manager, conducted customer interviews, she found that most customers were looking for specifics on their services—not random awareness campaigns.

Soon, she focused their campaign on Capgemini’s offerings and answered common questions on Big Data, Cloud, Technology, and consulting services. She promoted this via their website and LinkedIn because most of her target audience was already present on LinkedIn.

Within a year, the company booked projects worth $1 million, and a year after that, they could 8X their revenue through content.

The main reason this strategy worked was that Rena focused on catering to the burning questions of her target audience—and presenting it to them where they were already present.

Impact on revenue:

  • Booked projects that resulted in $1 million through content in the first year
  • For every dollar spent, there was a 10x return on investment (ROI) in the second year
  • Generated more than $8 million in the second year of the program

Example 4: SAP

Type of business: Enterprise software

Target audience:

  • Senior leadership roles in teams like Finance, Supply Chain, IT, etc. (VP, Director, Head)

**Content formats:**Blog posts, guides, webinars, and daily newsletter

Why it works:

Initially, SAP’s generous spending on advertising wasn’t getting them the results they expected. With a 95% bounce rate on landing pages and a lack of organic search traffic, Michael Brenner, then marketing leader at SAP, convinced executive leadership to give him half the advertising budget. It was necessary as he didn’t have executive buy-in or the budget to run a successful program.

Using the allocated budget, he created a content marketing platform that focused on three things: increasing organic traffic, increasing social shares, and reducing the website’s bounce rate. After that, he conducted extensive competitor research to determine what their audience was looking for and started targeting early-stage buyers who needed more product education.

Soon, he realized that those who did become product-aware through a webinar were more likely to convert. This was when he created content that focused on the middle of the funnel, like ultimate guides and company events. Due to this, in the first year, the programs generated 1000 leads, leading to $750,000 in revenue.

This approach worked because Brenner focused on what his audience wanted at a particular point in time. Only when he knew they were slowly moving down the funnel he switched his strategy to capitalize on warm leads—which worked.

Impact on revenue:

  • Generated 1000 leads from the entire content marketing program
  • Resulted in a 7X ROI based on the initial investment of $100,000
  • Resulted in $750,000 worth of revenue within a year

Curious about the top sales enablement tools in the market? Check out our article here: Top Sales Enablement Tools

Example 5: Groove

Type of business: Customer support SaaS

Target audience:

  • Customer support executives
  • Heads of Customer Experience, Customer Support, Customer Success

Content formats: Blog posts

Why it works:

Groove’s success can be attributed to solid audience research and robust content distribution.

Considering that Groove was in a crowded space with competitors like Zendesk, the team had to take a different approach. Alex, the CEO and co-founder, started the process by investing a lot of time in small business communities and social channels where they hang out. The goal was to understand their problems and use that as a source of content ideas.

Based on what he found, they created a blog that specifically spoke about the challenges and journey of their own business to create a space where founders could learn from their journey. Within 24 hours, they hit 1000 email subscribers and, in a month, 5000 subscribers.

It led to increased brand awareness, and more readers turned into paying customers. But Alex didn’t stop there. He personally wrote to them to ask them what kind of challenges they were facing so that Groove’s team could address them.

alt_text

An example of a sign-up confirmation email that Alex sent to his subscribers

Eventually, Groove was able to build a readership through content that resonated with its audience, leading to word-of-mouth and more business. The team also spent significant time in link building and distribution efforts with the right people—which built their topical authority. Within three years, the team built a readership of over 250,000 readers resulting in $5 million in annual recurring revenue.

alt_text

An example of a blog comment that indicates how Groove’s content was resonating with its potential customers

Impact on revenue:

  • Resulted in 250,000+ regular readers and 5000+ customers
  • Generates >$500,000 per month and ~$5 million in revenue each year

Example 6: Leadfeeder

Type of business: B2B lead generation SaaS

Target audience: B2B medium to enterprise-level companies (US & Europe)

Content formats: Blog

Why it works:

In 2017, Leadfeeder focused on a storytelling approach that got them many social shares, resulting in market awareness. But, they were facing two problems: minimal organic traffic and a lack of revenue from the blog.

They worked with their agency to move towards a pain point SEO strategy to fix that. This meant they focused on bottom-of-the-funnel keywords, which barely had search volume (according to keyword tools) but had a high purchasing intent.

For example, product comparison posts, how-to posts, alternatives posts, etc. Within four months, they increased readership by ~1000 visitors. It didn’t make a huge difference—and that was for two reasons:

  • Inability to promote the post in communities due to a high product focus
  • Technical SEO issues — the blog existed on a subdomain

alt_text

A marked increase in blog visitors once Leadfeeder shifted to a pain point SEO approach and moved their blog to a subfolder

Source

Once they moved the blog to a subfolder, the numbers shot up by ~4000 visitors. Within a year, the blog was amassing 21000+ visitors per month—resulting in 215 product sign-ups each month. To date, they follow this approach and publish pain point SEO posts which you can see in the image below.

alt_text

An example of blog posts that Leadfeeder still publishes to date — with a focus on conversions

Source

Impact on revenue:

  • After two years of regular testing and strategizing, the blog generates ~200 product sign-ups per month
  • In 2022, the company reported ~$3 million in revenue — in part due to the blog

Example 7: Webflow

Type of business: No-code website builder

Target audience:

  • Website developers
  • Agency owners

Content formats: Blog and templates

Why it works:

Webflow’s increase in revenue can be attributed to its product-led SEO strategy. The company leveraged topics tailored to their buyers' intent, created detailed user personas, and segmented them to identify their needs. You can see this by the fact that they created a content library that was diverse in its formats too. For example, they published multiple e-books, videos, and newsletters too.

alt_text

Webflow’s blog library offers additional content formats for their increasing audience

Source

First, they had to ensure they had the right pages to drive traffic to. They created a library of website design templates and conversion-focused blog posts. To allow users to find relevant topics easily, they segregated the template library and blog based on specific audiences and use cases.

alt_text

Webflow’s library of website design templates categorized by use case

Source

alt_text

Webflow’s blog library is categorized based on specific topic clusters

Source

By building a vast content library of conversion-focused assets, they could generate thousands of site visits every month. Also, because they had a freemium model, it educated customers while encouraging them to sign up for the products. It resulted in thousands of dollars each month—contributing 21% of total revenue. Ultimately, this strategy led to Webflow becoming one of the leading no-code solutions for building websites without HTML/CSS knowledge.

Impact on revenue:

  • The blog contributes to 21% of Webflow’s overall revenue
  • As of 2023, that would amount to $300,000 in revenue per year

Creates a sales content strategy framework to build a revenue-generating content engine

Creating a sales-focused content strategy can be an effective way to generate revenue. But it’s important to learn what your audience wants and needs.

Taking the time to listen, observe, and understand your customer base creates a solid foundation for a revenue-generating content engine. As a result, even brand awareness-creating blogs can be turned into a channel that contributes to your bottom line.

If you need help managing or tracking all your content under one roof, start a free trial of Content Camel today.

Not there yet? Sign up for our newsletter instead to access curated best practices to manage your content internally.