Hi Jeremy, thanks so much for this question!
It’s funny, I was talking to our head of marketing today about this very topic.
One thing that I realised on the call – I have never referred to them as “channels”. I don’t know if I am just delirious or if I am speaking any sense at this point, but I have often found channels to be a misleading way to look at our marketing mix.
Because, if we look at our “content marketing” channel – I would say as a whole that’s been the bedrock of our growth from the start. But within that channel, only a few things have worked, and then a whole lot of it has been totally useless and wasted effort and energy.
So as a channel, content has been great, but that obviously doesn’t mean “do more content!” – it means, to me, we need to establish exactly what actions and projects we should take on within the broad channel of content that work.
A few things that don’t work for us (or, I believe, anyone):
- Getting people to write about topics they’re not deeply familiar with.
- Hoping people will read a blog post and adopt our product in the same session.
- Pushing visitors to convert too early.
- Writing “SEO” content without a substantial good human readable core.
- Telling ourselves that anything in content will have fast or obvious results.
A few things that have worked for us:
- Building a trusted name, that is synonymous with quality.
- Taking customer questions and support requests as a source of inspiration for blog content.
- Asking customers where they heard about us, rather than relying on cookies.
- Running a weekly newsletter for over 200 issues.
- Sharing other people’s content, not just our own.
- Building an inherently viral product – every customer can drive 100s more.
- Continuing to find time for the founders to write and contribute to our content efforts.
- Never letting our quality bar slip on content, writing, design.
- Building a network of awesome people, and helping them, building trust, and only sharing what we believe will be valuable to their network rarely.
- Working really really really hard.
I hope this helps a little Jeremy, of course happy to expand in any way you want here 