Content Strategy - Alcor
Client
Alcor
Service
Content Strategy
Year
2023
Introduction & Background
Product
The company is a B2B SaaS platform offering a wide mix of HR, recruitment, accounting, EOR, legal, compliance, real estate, visa, travel support, and tech infrastructure services tailored for American mid-market and large companies aiming to hire global talents.
Problem
The company's flagship product had stagnant growth due to a lack of systematic and predictable lead generation. To overcome this, we recognized the need for channel diversification to reach a wider audience and increase our market share.
Target Audience
US-based mid-market and enterprise companies that would like to hire at least ten people abroad (10 is based on the calculation showing that the product will provide most of the value thanks to scalability economics).
Role
Managed a team of copywriters, SEO managers, and marketing specialists. Led cross-functional communication to get buy-in on strategy and engage in-house experts on thought leadership topics.
Purpose
Primary Goal
Develop a lead generation machine through content marketing.
Secondary Goal
Enhance brand awareness and establish thought leadership in the industry.
Introduction
In order to build a content marketing strategy, It's important to better understand the target audience with its pains, gains, and challenges with a focus on:
A decision-making process to better understand how our buyer persona behaves before, during, and after a buying cycle
Buyer persona with their challenges, emotions, and preferences
Implementing content types and channels
Alcor's Positioning Statement
For US-based mid-market and enterprise technology companies that need to hire software engineers globally at scale, our "Your own R&D center solution" product is an EOR platform with recruitment services to help companies open an office overseas.
This includes: hiring (recruitment service), EOR, and operational support on the ground (e.g., buying equipment and renting an office).
RESEARCH & ANALYSIS
Customer Journey Map
Based on our target audience research (qualitative, quantitative, product analysis, sales team interviews, and more), I started building a Customer Journey Map with a focus on potential content and channels.
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Buyer Persona
Then, I proceeded to compose a Buyer Persona to dive into the personality of our decision-makers. I wanted to emphasize the emotional side of our buyer persona so that the content resonates with them on all levels.
John Smith
Age
35+
Gender
Male
Job Title
CTO, VP or Director of Engineering
EDUCATION
Master's Degree in Tech
Favorite Blog & Resources
Mass media about management
Tech mass media
Communities
BIO
I started as a developer, have been promoted a few times, and currently work in a management role. I care for people (software engineers), the development process, product delivery, and stability. I report to the CEO or VP and Board.
Reasons they search for a solution
They need to scale the product, and for that, they need to scale a team. They need local support to hire people and set up operational comfort, including processes, legal, tax, and compliance optimization, equipment, and an office.
Emotions
Stress, fear of failing, and pressure due to the complexity of moving abroad, deadlines, and commitments to clients and investors.
Systems
HRM, ATS, Payroll, equipment management.
Personality
Creativity
Methodical
Emotions
Numbers
Extrovert
Introvert
Why they choose us:
Full control, all-in-one, transparency, tired of outsourcing, on-the-ground support, cost-effective.
Pain Points
Access to talented software engineers while maintaining reasonable costs.
The complexity of expanding overseas.
The exhaustion from outsourcing.
Lack of transparency.
Lack of knowledge about local labor laws and business practices.
Difficulty ensuring equipment for local employees.
Difficulty renting an office.
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Summary
After building the CJM and analyzing the buyer persona, I embarked on generating content ideas.
Building a content strategy
Decision-Making Process
To analyze our target audience, I composed a step-by-step guide to direct key decisions throughout the buying cycle.
1
The process starts with choosing a country including talent and skill availability, salary expectations, as well as political, economic, cultural, and other factors;
2
After selecting a country, the client decides on an engagement model: a) outstaffing/outsourcing; b) own office, c) EOR
3
The client chooses a provider(s) who can support clients on the ground.
Competitive Analysis
After that, I composed a competitive analysis with a focus on content and behavioral indicators:
Content Creation Process
Based on this process, I created a spreadsheet with topic ideas (see below). It mentions:
[01]
Status
New - just added topic;
Approved - the topic/idea was approved for writing;
Ignore - not approved;
Done - published.
[02]
topic/idea
Topic ideas based on research.
[03]
Main keyword
To be used for SEO purposes.
[04]
volume
It's the number of requests per month to understand how popular a topic is.
[05]
competition
An indicator shows how easy/difficult it gets to overrank competitive articles.
[06]
Priority
Priority to allocate resources.
[07]
Competitors
Link to a competitor's article on the same/similar topic.
I used tools like Ahrefs, BuzzSumo, Spyfu, etc., to ideate and analyze content ideas.
As you may notice, the topics are aimed to cover each stage of the decision-making process:
1
For the top of the funnel content, there were articles with talent market overviews in a particular country.
There were more specific topics about salary and taxes and more general ones with an overview of the economic, legal, and political environment.
1
2
For the middle of the funnel, it was necessary to cover topics to show how different engagement models are compared.
So, the topics were an overview of one model or a couple, an apple-to-apple comparison, and an overview of models for specific use cases and target audiences.
2
3
Alcor’s product, capabilities, and differentiators were the bottom of the funnel topics.
The topics included pricing calculations, timelines, transition processes, KPIs, etc.
3
I also used a subset of content topics that explicitly compared Alcor’s products with competitive products (or models) to emphasize that there is a new product category capable of solving all the pains related to expanding abroad with no hidden or explicit drawbacks, as competitive models suggest.
Distribution Channels
The Alcor product is niche and complex (since the number of companies that consider expanding abroad with at least 10 hires is limited), with a high check per deal. I realized it was critical to find the right product-channel fit to broadcast the value propositions efficiently.
Since the Alcor product is complex, I decided to use channels that offer longer engagement time with our target audience: SEO, PR, and social media platforms like Linkedin, Slideshare, Quora, and others.
Channel plan
Content Types
Content Topics
Content Frequency
Distribution Platforms
Creative Example
Blog articles, reports, surveys
Industry trends, local talent market overview, case studies, how-to guides, thought leadership from in-house experts
6 pieces / month
then 9 pieces / month
Own website (SEO), PPC, SMM, newsletters, Quora, Medium
PR articles
Industry trends, how-to guides, case studies, exclusive statistics, and surveys
1-2 per month
REDACTED Tech-oriented mass media
Social media posts
Market overview, case studies, customer stories
8-12 per month
Linkedin, Twitter
Content creation process
To keep up with the schedule, I built a content process with clear and transparent stages.
I paid a great deal of attention to the article research stage in order to provide the best quality. It had two sub-sections:
1) Using paid and free resources to receive quantitative data. and 2) Ensuring the buy-in from the management team to allocate time so they could share their experiences and real-life examples.
KPIs
I used lagging and leading metrics to track the effectiveness of the campaigns.
I paid a lot of attention to behavioral and engagement indicators such as bounce rates, scroll deepness, time spent, and others to understand if we received attention from our target audience.
Lagging
Revenue generated
# of qualified leads
Leading
Website Traffic
Redacted %
growth per month
Conversion Rate
Redacted %
Engagement Indicators
Redacted %
Likes, shares, comments, etc.
Behavioral indicators
Radected %
bounce rates, scroll deepness, time spent, etc.
The entire strategy presentation is here
Results
With this strategy, we achieved a remarkable 25% monthly growth and maintained that KPI for 2 years!
The content strategy contributed 80% YoY growth in qualified leads (attributed to redacted % revenue).
Organic inbound traffic became a top source of company leads.
CHALLENGES
The initial assumption was to split the content into three groups and drive visitors down the funnel with each content piece. However, after publishing content for a month or so, I realized that people were more interested in one piece of content covering all the stages (or at least most). To address this, we switched to publishing long-reads with 2-3 funnel stages (for example, salary overview of AI engineers with options to hire them and Alcor benefits).
I aimed to use PR and SMM content to provoke public conversations. We created varied content using models or even providers. Some of it went viral, bringing excellent results in terms of attracting leads. Other times, the competitor’s reactions were harsh in public. However, it was a great experience to work with a communications team that handled these conversations in a diplomatic and professional manner.
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