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

Linkedin

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

Slides, infographics

Market overview, how-to guides

1-2 per month

Linkedin, Slideshare, Quora

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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