Hey Everyone,
Hope you're having a great week. Here are a few things I've been reading, writing and pondering lately. Enjoy!
1. Why B2B Marketing Needs To Care About PLG
In the last issue, I expressed my skepticism of the product-led growth (PLG) model. PLG comes up in conversations about content marketing all the time, so i did some more reading to better understand why people are so hot on it right. This article did a good of explaining its importance. A few highlights:
- "We are in the end-user era and the purchasing power is shifting (if not already shifted) from a buying committee to the actual users in the organization."
- "Product data can tell you more about the customer intent, their pain points, and “Aha” moments with a better degree of certainty than their interactions with your gated content."
- "What exactly is product-led is blurry. What is consistent with product-led is the marketing focus after signup, whereas the traditional SaaS playbook is basically all pre-sign up (pre-opportunity, really)."
If you work in any marketing capacity, I think you'll enjoy this piece.
2. 5 ways to level-up lazy listicles
Long live listicles! Seriously, this is a great post. Listicles are an excellent way to create engaging, helpful content. But as Ryan Law describes in this piece, they are often lazy. These are good tips—and the piece itself is a good example of a listicle done properly.
Many writers assume that listicles don’t need to be persuasive. After all, they’re intended as an educational resource, a repository of objective information that allows the reader to make their own informed choice. As a result, most list articles dump things on a page and leave the reader to reach their own conclusions.
But I would disagree with this assumption.
I think that it’s more important to be persuasive because the entire premise of your list hinges on a promise to your reader: that the items you’ve featured really are the best, most relevant, most carefully selected choices from a sea of myriad alternatives. Your job is to persuade the reader that your selection and your selection methodology are worth trusting.
3. Random Links
- Superpath is hosting a happy hour in NYC on Monday. If you live in the area and work in marketing, come have a drink on us!
- I'm into this: How a $2 Notebook Helps My Insomnia
- Have content briefs run amok?
- Player's Tribune is always great, but I particularly appreciated this piece from skiier Mikaela Shiffrin about losing her dad. She happens to live in my town and I've followed her career closely and have followed this story closely too. It's a tough, but ultimately beautiful read.
Have a great weekend!
Jimmy
The Bulletin Board
- Check out the free Superpath Slack community.
- Want to brush up on your content marketing skillz? Check out my course 5 Days to Better Content Marketing. Join 400+ people that have taken and enjoyed it.
- If you’re interested in promoting your product or service to 4,500+ incredibly smart people, reply to this email to chat more.