"I've Heard Of Them, But I Don't Know What They Do."

By: Todd Clouser

Content marketers are in a unique position to solve a lot of the biggest GTM problems we have right now.

One of those problems is product awareness. We've been told for the past several years that we need to become thought leaders and "build affinity" for our brands. Except there's one thing nobody talks about: That audience needs to know what we do, not just our points of view on topics.

We're all familiar with the 95/5 theory at this point: Only 5% of our audience is in market for our product at any given time.

And we've been led to believe that our job is to stay in front of the 95% until they're ready to become part of the 5%. And that's all good, but the question we need to be asking is,

"Do the 95% that we're staying in front of actually know what we do?"

Because for most of us in startup land, the scary answer to that question is probably closer to,

"I've Heard Of Them, But I Don't Know What They Do."

And that's a problem, because if our job is to:

Stay in front of the 95%...

To create affinity...

So at some point in the future they need to fix the problem we solve...

But they don't actually know what our product does...

We've failed to do the one thing we've been preaching this whole time...Make them think of us first.

Because if we don't figure out a way to do product marketing to the 95% in a way that they actually care about, they won't actually think of us first when they become part of that 5%.

But we can't do traditional product marketing either because the 95% of our audience that isn't in market doesn't care about the product. 

So how do we educate the audience on the problem we solve and how our product solves it, while still creating audience-first content that they care about?

Product-led Shows are a series of recurring content with the intent to highlight a specific feature of your product through more conceptual, memorable, and creative ways. Those conceptual ideas are the things that allow us to talk about the product in a way that the audience actually likes.

This is the kind of content that you watch without even realizing you're watching product marketing because it helps you with whatever problem you're facing.

Here are two examples from popular SaaS brands:

Wynter: Do You Even Resonate

In this series Peep Laja does website message testing on real sites that are submitted by his audience. He goes through each homepage giving you the highs and lows, how the subject's ICP actually felt about it, and ideas on how to fix it. It's highly informative to anyone who is in charge of the website and messaging. In the process of doing this you see that Wynter is a message testing tool, because Peep uses the tool to gather the insights he presents. But as a viewer, the product is only adding validity to the insights, so instead of a pitch, it's adding value.

Lavender: Jen vs. Will

In this series the two co-hosts battle it out in product-based challenges. Rather than taking a purely educational approach, this show entertains the audience by teaching them how the product works (is that even possible?). They use the tool (which uses AI to score emails and provide suggestions) to judge who wins and loses each week. 

Both of these series are examples of how Wynter and Lavender have taken a product-led approach to producing content for the 95% so when they actually become part of the 5%, they know what the product does.

Product awareness is a real problem in SaaS and this is how you help fix that problem as a content marketer.