4 big companies using product documentation for marketing

Contents: 

• Yoast
• Apple
• Microsoft
• Method

Documentation is often an untapped opportunity for your company to market their brand. Many companies are starting to recognize the potential of marketing documentation to relieve pressure on their support teams, and to provide a better self-service customer experience.

But, far from a boring technical necessity, documentation is a chance to promote your brand in front of existing and potential customers.

How you present your marketing documentation gives a strong indication of how your company will treat its customers. If it’s sloppy and slapdash, this may suggest your company doesn’t really care about its customers, or isn’t willing to invest much time in helping them.

There are several companies leading the way when it comes to using their knowledge base for marketing documentation. More than just providing top-tier documentation, they also market their brands in a way that may win them more customers.

Let’s go ahead and examine some of these.

Yoast

Yoast documentation reads more like a blog than a knowledge base. And that’s a good thing! It’s easy to fall in love with Yoast for its docs alone, which funnel you towards its amazing products.

Yoast is a fantastic example of not only marketing through docs but using content marketing to drive traffic to its knowledge base. So much of its content is related to demystifying SEO for the average user, which is appealing to a far broader audience spectrum than its own customers.

Yoast’s tagline is SEO for everyone. It’s tapped into the trend that most SEO advice out there is almost deliberately obscure, constructed to bedazzle and confuse. That’s partly because many SEOs aren’t too sure what they’re doing, and if they wrap their content in opaque language then they won’t easily get found out.

Yoast makes SEO accessible for the average person online. By fulfilling this mission and demonstrating that through its marketing documentation, Yoast strongly communicates to its knowledge base audience that it deeply cares about helping its customers.

Despite how Yoast must have abundant knowledge of this complex and deep topic, Yoast makes sure all its content can be easily understood, without watering it down.

It’s the perfect example of knowledge base marketing.

Apple

Apple’s marketing is second-to-none, naturally. With a budget like theirs, it would be surprising if Apple missed any opportunity to market to potential customers.

Their support site shows that Apple pours lots of resources into marketing and branding through marketing documentation.

Their knowledge base reflects the young, hip, smart vibe that Apple consistently portrays throughout its customer journey and customer touch points.

When you turn to Apple’s marketing documentation, you’re not just trying to fix a technical problem. You’re interacting with the brand.

Their documentation reads like a sales page, with large glossy images and snappy sales copy. Its custom symbols for each one of its products gives the impression that Apple’s support docs will be detailed and specific.

Apple’s knowledge base isn’t just an afterthought tagged onto the dramatic main event. It merges seamlessly with the customer experience and is branded to reflect Apple’s dedication to its customers.

Plus, if a potential customer was researching Apple products before buying, the support site would tell you that Apple customers are treated like royalty.

Apple breaks up what can be monotonous marketing documentation with custom images to highlight important tips. You normally only see this level of design effort on sales pages, but Apple clearly knows that any touchpoint with its brand has the potential to lead to a sale.

Its support site also utilizes a long scrolling page to give customers a broad overview of all the content contained within the topic. This kind of design is encouraging user interaction with the site and gives the impression that Apple wants using its docs to be a pleasurable experience.

From tech royalty like Apple, you wouldn’t expect anything less, but it’s surprising how many big companies still manage to neglect their support. Apple gets 5 stars for its knowledge base marketing!

Microsoft

Microsoft seems like it’s taking its lead from Apple in its marketing documentation, just on a smaller scale. It’s trying to depart from its reputation as a slightly uncool, technological behemoth.

It’s brightly coloured, geometric product symbols try to give the impression of trendiness and energy.

Of all the companies included in this post, Microsoft has the most overt sales content in its knowledge base. It’s using its documentation to promote features of Office 365 in the cloud.

Microsoft clearly knows that many people, especially B2B customers, research product specs before they buy. Of these people, a significant number will head straight for the product knowledge base to obtain a feel for the product and find out how it works.

Microsoft even includes links to buy Office 365 at the bottom of its documentation pages, overtly signalling to documentation users to buy more products.

Microsoft is definitely marketing through its knowledge base, but is less customer-centric than the other companies featured here. Microsoft’s business objectives are coming through loud and clear.

Method

Method is company that sells environmentally-friendly cleaning products. They humbly call their documentation ‘FAQs’ but in reality their knowledge base is rich with useful content.

Immediately as you arrive at their docs you can see that Method knows its customer base.

They’re a trendy, quirky, conscious bunch who want to help save the environment through their product choices. Method avoids becoming too serious with this fun, eye-catching image.

Method knows that its customers are curious and will be quickly hitting the docs to check out the credibility of its products.

The copy in their knowledge base is similarly off-the-wall. They avoid stuffy, corporate language, and instead talk to customers on their own level.

Environmentally-friendly products are often on the upper end of the pricing tier, and marketed as somewhat ‘luxury’ items. That’s why it’s so important for Method to infuse its brand into the marketing documentation, to substantiate their claims as the more ethical cleaning choice.

Method’s knowledge base is a lot more basic than the other companies featured here, but successfully markets their brand as customer-focused and down-to-earth.

How docs can market your product

So how can you put this information into practice for your own company?

There are many ways that docs can help you market your brand and your products.

We’ve presented the top ones in the following list:

• Use striking imagery to connect with your target audience.
• Highlight latent features of your product in the docs.
• Maintain a professional impression from sales to support.
• Use official company branding to convey ownership of the docs.
• Enable product browsers to discover more benefits.
• Help potential customers research your product online.
• Assist B2B customers in the sign-off process with content that creates buy-in from decision makers.
• Use keyword targeting to improve your site’s SEO and drive more traffic.
• Tackle problems that may occur during onboarding with specific help content and create a better customer experience.
• Show your customer they’re at the center of your business’s operations by creating stellar docs.

Let us know your own memorable examples of marketing in product documentation.

You can take KnowledgeOwl's knowledge base software for a free spin. It may be the answer to your documentation needs!

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