How software companies can use their knowledge base for abstract content marketing

Your company knowledge base is a fantastic way to market your company in this late age of advertising and marketing. It’s all part of going for the soft sell, sharing your knowledge with potential customers in exchange for their attention.

How marketing and advertising has changed

It’s widely agreed that the nature of advertising has changed. Adverts used to be a lot more direct, and frequently consisted of a message that amounted to BUY OUR PRODUCT.

Image source: Vintage Ad Browser

You can try that now, but you probably won’t attract that many customers. There’s still a place for this sort of advertising, but it won’t sell your software. This is because you’re not selling a concrete object, like a potato, but an abstract idea. 

Nowadays, people are resistant to broadcast advertising and obvious marketing tactics. In this late age of capitalism, people are alert for the hard sell. Technology has accelerated the pace of change, and suddenly the internet is saturated with adverts for everything from web-hosting to dog collars.

It used to take a huge marketing budget to reach any kind of customer. This was needed in order to secure a spot on one of the limited advertising channels available (television, billboard, newspaper). Now, digital marketing has somewhat levelled the playing field.

Image source: Pexels

To market products that aren’t strictly necessary to daily existence (like potatoes), more sophistication is required in order to convince customers that they should buy your product.

The subtlety of good marketing

Previously, brands performed the function of exposing customers to products. There was no other way to discover a new brand of camera film or gravy powder.

Now, people can find whatever they want on the internet with a few keystrokes and button clicks. They consequently expect personalization in marketing. This means that your content should speak directly to them, not as an individual, but to their highly-targeted user group.

Good marketing is also about getting customers to come to you, not distracting them while they’re trying to watch a video or read an article. Your target customers should barely notice that you’re marketing at all (but not because you’re tricking them with paid content!). The valuable content you provide should subtly persuade them to trust your brand. This method of marketing requires that you have confidence in your product and clear company values.

The web is so awash with ads and other marketing content, that it’s really not difficult to stand out by being genuine and engaging. It’s a lot easier to do this, than it is to concoct complicated ploys to trick customers into buying your products.

The different types of content

We now have a content marketing model that prioritizes the customer. Forget about what your company wants, and focus on the needs of your target audience. This means producing content that is of some value.

Companies can product content that falls into one of four categories:

1.  Useful - solves a problem or teaches some new information (a big part of content marketing is tutorials)
2.  Inspiring - uplifts the soul by sharing emotionally-stimulating or motivational content (such as customer stories or the impact of your CSR programme)
3.  Humorous - content that makes people laugh (cat GIFs, satirical videos)
4.  Touching - sharing a moving story that tugs on the heartstrings of your customers (such as a charity campaign, or how your company has given back to the community)

Useful content is most common for B2B software companies. It teaches your target audience how to do something, or imparts knowledge they didn’t have before, in an area that is highly related to the software you sell.

You can expand your repertoire of useful content by viewing your knowledge base as a marketing tool.

For example, when a prospective customer is researching your company, they may visit your knowledge base to check for basic compatibilities, features and integrations. You should take this opportunity to market your company effectively and provide insight into the problems your product solves.

Examples of knowledge base marketing

First, we’ll just take a second to admire Squarespace’s beautifully laid out knowledge base with their prominent search bar.

If you scroll down, you’ll see that their help content caters to a mixture of existing users and potential customers. 

Click on the first article, and their help article is clean, appealing and helpful. It’s serving the same function as a marketing page, except it’s focusing on providing no-frills, in-depth information for potential customers.

It’s also teaching audiences about the type of products that are out there, which are being used by other customers just like them. It helps them understand just how easy their life would be if they just purchased a subscription to Squarespace. This is a type of content marketing with your knowledge base.

It’s the same with email marketing software provider MailChimp. It has developed a sleek, well-organised and eye-catching knowledge base to ensure they market themselves effectively. (It’s also good for existing users, too!)

Again, if you click through the first section aimed at new users, we can see that MailChimp are subtly marketing themselves to potential customers. They know that many B2B customers will be working in office teams, where they will probably be obliged to provide lots of information to senior management in order to gain approval for new vendors.

MailChimp anticipates this complication for B2B customers, and makes it easy to learn all the basics of how MailChimp works, without even needing to sign up for an account.

Exchanging knowledge for brand loyalty

As you can see from our two examples, you don’t need to miss out on marketing your brand in your knowledge base. It’s a great opportunity to reach potential new customers and convince them what a helpful company you will be to work with.

It’s a sign of bad marketing if your main selling point is ‘our product works!’. Customers will generally assume that your software works if you say it will, and simply staying in business should be an encouraging sign. By providing valuable content for your customers with your knowledge base, you’ll be earning their loyalty, instead of demanding it. 

For SaaS companies, it’s not a one-time sale but a subscription that you need to market. The relationship with your customers is likely to be ongoing, as you engage with them to support your product, fix problems and roll out new features.

This makes it all the more important for SaaS brands to humanize themselves with great content, and demonstrate an appealing brand personality.

Final remarks

Even large companies can be engaging if they streamline their brand values and get everyone on their team to speak the same message. We feel like we ‘know’ a big company such as Apple because their marketing is so effective.

Your knowledge base is a chance to showcase your brand to potential customers with useful content, showing what it would be like to enter in a relationship with your company. If you don’t make the most of this potential funnel for your customers, it might make them think you won’t provide much support for your product.

Focus on your customer’s needs with subtle marketing to build loyalty for your brand.

If you would like a free trial of our knowledge base software combined with excellent customer service, sign up today.