Article's Content
Article's Content
Welcome to Volume 181 👋
Happy Thursday!
In this week’s newsletter, we cover:
- 📈 Stripe’s Million Dollar Page: Why Some Content Is Worth $$$
- 👀 What’s the Latest in B2B SaaS This Week?
- 🧠 This Week’s Brain Food
- ➕ The Best Content across the Web
Let’s get into it.
🚨 New Podcast Alert: Ross Simmonds X John Tyreman 🚨
Fresh marketing intel coming down the pipe!
Ross recently sat down with John Tyreman, Founder of Red Cedar Marketing and host of Podcasting in Professional Services, to discuss all things content and distribution.
Here’s a quick glimpse at what these two founders cover in their half-hour discussion:
- The role of experimentation in realizing success — from starting a fantasy football blog to diving headlong into platforms like Reddit and Quora.
- How Foundation helps B2B SaaS unicorns plan, create, and distribute content that moves the growth needle.
- The innovative strategy that Zoho uses to divide and conquer a crowded CRM market with up-market and down-market options.
- How marketers should use ChatGPT and other AI tools to augment and enhance their creative output, not replace it entirely.
You can catch the full episode of Podcasting in Professional Services now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!
B2B SAAS NEWS
A Million Dollar Stripe Page: Why Some Content Is Worth $$$
If I asked you to guess the monthly organic traffic value of a 900-word blog post with minimal CTAs, a few internal links, and no images, what would your guess be?
A few dozen dollars? A hundred? Maybe a few thousand, depending on the keyword?
The page in question, Stripe’s resource page on “How to accept credit card payments from customers,” has an average monthly traffic value of over $75,000 for the past year. It’s absolutely mind-boggling.
Brands looking to recreate Stripe’s success are quite literally asking the million-dollar question: Why (and how) does some content generate a massive amount of high-value traffic?
Well, you’re in luck. My colleague Chris just published a Foundation Labs case study looking at how Stripe has developed the perfect content engine for creating high-performing resource pages.
It turns out that this specific page is one of Stripe’s many how-to-style resource pages, which attract hundreds of thousands of high-value visits every month.
Just look at the spike in monthly traffic and traffic value over the past year:
In this case study, Chris walks through the simple, effective recipe that Stripe uses to generate this traffic:
- Creating widely accessible content that simplifies complex payment processing concepts
- Targeting high-intent keywords that bring in users actively seeking payment solutions
- Optimizing each resource page for easy navigation by a global audience
Check out the full Stripe resource page case study on Foundation Labs and learn how to build (and improve) a seven-figure content engine!
Introducing Foundation’s AI Marketing Console
A few years ago, if someone said that mastering a single SaaS tool could save you 500+ work hours every year, make you a better creator, and increase your chances of landing a leadership position, you’d probably laugh them out of the room. Well, no one’s laughing now.
Generative AI is projected to add billions of dollars to the marketing industry in productivity savings alone, and the vast majority of professionals in our industry are incorporating AI this year.
Like all emerging technologies, there’s a huge advantage to moving quickly. Experimentation and research are key to building the skills you need to stay ahead. Unfortunately, these are also time-intensive processes.
That’s why we’re excited to announce the release of the AI Marketing Console.
With the AI Marketing Console, you get an arsenal of 130+ battle-tested ChatGPT prompts to help you create everything from landing pages and email drip campaigns to reports and customer research.
Plus, you’ll get exclusive access to the following:
- A visual AI toolkit with 20+ video walkthroughs.
- Two keynote presentations on the state of AI in marketing.
- An AI content evaluation checklist to level up your outputs.
Get full access to the AI Marketing Console, and start building your AI skills now!
If you want more information on why we’ve created this offering, check out this video from Ross!
👀 What’s the Latest in B2B SaaS This Week? 👀
- Thriving budgeting app Copilot secured a $6M Series A following the recent demise of Mint
- Google finished rolling out its March 2024 spam update
- The Browser Company, creators of Arc, raised $50M in a recent round to reach a $550M valuation
📩 The Ultimate Guide to Content Distribution 📩
If you’ve followed Foundation long enough, you know there’s one thing we always preach:
D.R.E.A.M. — Distribution Rules Everything Around Me
It’s easy to forget about the critical role distribution plays in connecting your target audience to your content — from sales posts on LinkedIn to community hubs like Reddit and Quora. That’s why we’re bringing back this gem from Ross.
In this comprehensive guide, you’ll learn how to do the following:
- Master the art of leveraging Owned, Earned, and Paid Channels for maximum reach.
- Discover strategies to stand out in the content overload and effectively connect with your target audience.
- Gain actionable insights on choosing the right distribution channels to boost brand awareness and drive conversions.
Check out Ross’s Ultimate Guide to Content Distribution, and transform your content to engage your audience and grow your business!
🧠 This Week’s Brain Food 🧠
Recently, I was called out for being overly verbose in my writing. It’s an unfortunate habit that I slip back into on occasion.
Funnily enough, a few hours after this happened, I stumbled upon a Reddit discussion on the accessible writing styles of influential figures like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Sahil Bloom. It mentioned how these figures convey complex ideas in ways that are accessible to high school and even middle school audiences.
It was a funny little coincidence and a great reminder that being wordy, while enjoyable, usually isn’t necessary — especially when you’re creating promotional or educational content for a diverse audience. But for whatever reason, I have the pesky misconception that simplicity equals simple-mindedness (All of my Condé Nast subscriptions are probably to blame).
In reality, the ability to distill complex ideas into clear, comprehensible language is a hallmark of deep understanding and, arguably more importantly, respect for one’s audience.
It’s one of those lessons that’s easy to forget, and I’m always grateful for the reminder. Just wanted to pass it along!
Want to sponsor our next issue? Reply to this email, and we’ll share how you can reach more SaaS founders and marketers today.
🏅 Twitter/X Thread of the Week
A quick copywriting tip: The Right/Wrong Bullet by Andrew Gould
🎖️ LinkedIn Post of the Week
The 57-year-old sales system that might fix your “mid funnel” problem forever by Brendan Hufford
🤳🏽 Nice Finds You Should Binge
- The metrics you can’t ignore: What the best CEOs know | VentureBeat
- Pitch Deck Teardown: Protecto’s $4M seed deck
- Research shows why now is the best time to invest in SEO | Foundation Lab
- Financial Times tests an AI chatbot trained on decades of its own articles | The Verge
🎧 What We’re Wired into This Week
Hermanos Gutiérrez: Tiny Desk Concert
This smattering of SaaS stories is brought to you by Ethan Crump!
If you have any feedback, suggestions, or ideas you want to see in this newsletter, feel free to email me at ethan@foundationinc.co. We always look for ways to improve and provide the best B2B SaaS marketing resources.
Have a great weekend, and see you on the other side!
