Goals and how to measure them
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2025 9:37 am
It's a strange feeling knowing that a million people have read what my team and I have written in the last month. (A million plus two if you count my parents.)
That's a whole bunch of unique, human, real people.
It's even stranger when you consider that we don't write about sexy topics like celebrity divorces or the latest episodes of Game of Thrones (no spoilers!).
Instead, we write about business-to-business software.
B2B software is not sexy.
B2B content marketing strategy
No matter how hip the nerds of Silicon Valley (both the region and the TV series) have made technology entrepreneurship, a network monitoring tool will never generate the same excitement as consumer-facing products like movies , consumer technology , or even some beverages .
Jack Barker is happy about a server box
B2B software is about as sexy as a corporate server… ( Source )
This means that when you publish B2B content, it is especially difficult to make it engaging and find (let alone grow) a loyal audience.
I know. I've experienced it myself as Capterra's Content Marketing Director.
Content Strategy Lessons from Capterra's Road to a Million
When Capterra first started investing seriously in content marketing in late 2013, we had no idea what we were doing: our blog traffic was barely worth mentioning, we had a completely unfocused approach to topic selection, and we had only a vague idea of what metrics we should be tracking.
Even though we struggled and finally found methods that worked, it was a long and arduous process.
Traffic growth chart to one million
Our blog traffic in four years. We did it – eventually.
The difficulties we had reflect the experiences of the vast majority of B2B content creators: the median traffic for the best-performing article on most SaaS (software-as-a-service) blogs is just 77 visits per month.
The average traffic for the bottom 10% of articles? Three visits. Per month.
Our missteps in 2013 were the same mistakes that thousands of other companies are making today.
We've spent five years refining our strategy to finally get it right . In this article, I'd like to share our B2B content marketing strategy and our key learnings along the way, so you don't have to make the same mistakes we did (you're welcome to make others, of course).
Below are the five most important lessons we learned over these five years that helped us increase our blog traffic to 1,000,000 visits per month.
Many other great people have already written great content on this very topic and I highly recommend checking it out ! This article looks at some of the less frequently covered, but hopefully equally useful, lessons from our own experience.
Plus “Silicon Valley” GIFs.
Dinesh waves with a Pied Piper glove
Yay! ( Source )
Note: At the end of this article, you'll find a free pack of bonus resources, including our original content strategy documents, a checklist, and other free templates and tools you're welcome to steal.
Lesson 1: Go all out and hire full-time writers
We had a blog at Capterra long before 2013.
As a freshly qualified intern in 2009, I even wrote some of our very first blog posts. They're still online somewhere. No, I won't link to them here.
We had heard that companies should have a blog, so we started one. Sort of. Half-heartedly.
The problem was: we weren't getting any traffic. Our blog wasn't focused on one topic, was only updated irregularly, was barely promoted and wasn't really well written.
Traffic growth during JP the intern's time
The traffic during J. P. the intern’s time – I am not proud of it
The reason? The blog didn’t really belong to anyone.
Officially, the marketing department was in charge of it. Or was it our CEO, who also seemed to be managing it? Or the customer service representative who also managed our company's Twitter account ?
Articles were written when someone had time, and we viewed it as secondary work that we would take care of once all the real tasks were done.
This problem only disappeared when we properly addressed content marketing.
To be honest, we were motivated to do this because a competitor (who now belongs to the same brand as us) was way ahead of us with their content and we didn't want to fall behind.
Capterra started with two full-time writers for our blog (me and another), and soon added a third (now we have more).
Full-time writers gave us several competitive advantages:
We were able to create more content: A full-time writer can, for obvious reasons, write more blog posts than someone trying to write articles on top of their day job.
We were able to create better content: If you try to get content written by existing employees, they'll probably have a lot of expertise, but they won't necessarily be good at writing. Staff writers also have an advantage over freelancers: they gain expertise over time.
We were able to plan a unified strategy: if something belongs to everyone, it doesn't really belong to anyone. A dedicated team can create and pursue a single, unified vision for your content.
Are full-time writers a big investment for a small business?
Undoubtedly.
But this investment is worth it.
Our content has brought Capterra nearly a million visitors per month, as well as numerous other great benefits:
SEO benefits for our main website: When readers share, discuss and link to our content and search engines recognize how it links to the rest of our domain, the ranking of linked pages from our website improves .
Building brand image: We benefited from mentions and backlinks in prestigious publications such as Inc. , Entrepreneur and Time , as well as well-known digital personalities such as Neil Patel .
New customers: Potential customers who discover our content (or traffic from our content) contact us.
Relationships with industry experts and influencers: This helped us gain collaboration opportunities, reach new audiences, and speak at conferences .
Directly attributable monthly revenue: Traffic from blog posts to conversion pages on our main website generates revenue that is three times the cost of the entire content team.
When we first took the venture into full-time writing, we didn't know if we would succeed. It was a calculated risk that fortunately paid off.
Dinesh and Gilfoyle interview content marketing experts
Content Marketing High-Flyers: Hire Them! ( Source )
Will you gain the same added value by relying entirely on content?
This is something your company will have to figure out for itself, but in our experience, you might be pleasantly surprised.
Are you ready to take the same leap as we did? Here are a few tips for hiring full-time writers:
Choose writing skills and cultural fit as decision criteria: Industry knowledge and technical knowledge are much easier to learn on the job than basics like writing talent or a friendly demeanor.
Find someone who can write a lot: Our writers write up to three in-depth, well-researched blog posts per week, usually between 1,500 and 3,000 words long. Longer, detailed, helpful content is best for SEO, and writers who can produce high-quality content in a short amount of time will grow your traffic even faster.
Look for someone who writes on the side: does the person have a secret blog or is passionate about writing a novel ? Then writing is really important to them and they enjoy making money from it.
Once we decided to go all out and hired two full-time writers, we knew it was time to brainstorm strategically. This brings us to the next lesson we learned.
Lesson 2: You need a written content strategy
Our first content strategy document was a two-page Word document that we wrote after an hour-long brainstorming meeting.
Note: I've put together some bonus materials at the end of this article, including that original strategy document and numerous other templates, checklists, and actions that you're welcome to adopt.
Jared
Nothing beats a few strategic resources at the right time ( Source )
The plan was quite simple, but its basic building blocks still guide our strategy today. It was an important exercise for several reasons:
Committing to something written forced us to think through the details of our content poland telegram data marketing plan. Why were we doing it? Who were we writing for? How were we going to reach an audience?
Seeing it all in black and white showed us where there were gaps in our thinking. Our target audience for the previous (unsuccessful) blog attempts had been anyone and everyone. We needed to be more specific.
An official strategy with a time frame and a name made it easier for writers and managers to openly commit to this daring new experiment.
We had principles we could refer to when certain questions arose. Should we write this article comparing Guardians of the Galaxy to project management ? Does it meet our written goals and our target audience? If not, do we need to change the strategy or rethink the content we're proposing?
Our content strategy consisted of five main areas:
audience
content types
content distribution
content promotion
There is so much to discuss in each area that I could make it into an entire article, so I will now limit myself to the most important points.
That's a whole bunch of unique, human, real people.
It's even stranger when you consider that we don't write about sexy topics like celebrity divorces or the latest episodes of Game of Thrones (no spoilers!).
Instead, we write about business-to-business software.
B2B software is not sexy.
B2B content marketing strategy
No matter how hip the nerds of Silicon Valley (both the region and the TV series) have made technology entrepreneurship, a network monitoring tool will never generate the same excitement as consumer-facing products like movies , consumer technology , or even some beverages .
Jack Barker is happy about a server box
B2B software is about as sexy as a corporate server… ( Source )
This means that when you publish B2B content, it is especially difficult to make it engaging and find (let alone grow) a loyal audience.
I know. I've experienced it myself as Capterra's Content Marketing Director.
Content Strategy Lessons from Capterra's Road to a Million
When Capterra first started investing seriously in content marketing in late 2013, we had no idea what we were doing: our blog traffic was barely worth mentioning, we had a completely unfocused approach to topic selection, and we had only a vague idea of what metrics we should be tracking.
Even though we struggled and finally found methods that worked, it was a long and arduous process.
Traffic growth chart to one million
Our blog traffic in four years. We did it – eventually.
The difficulties we had reflect the experiences of the vast majority of B2B content creators: the median traffic for the best-performing article on most SaaS (software-as-a-service) blogs is just 77 visits per month.
The average traffic for the bottom 10% of articles? Three visits. Per month.
Our missteps in 2013 were the same mistakes that thousands of other companies are making today.
We've spent five years refining our strategy to finally get it right . In this article, I'd like to share our B2B content marketing strategy and our key learnings along the way, so you don't have to make the same mistakes we did (you're welcome to make others, of course).
Below are the five most important lessons we learned over these five years that helped us increase our blog traffic to 1,000,000 visits per month.
Many other great people have already written great content on this very topic and I highly recommend checking it out ! This article looks at some of the less frequently covered, but hopefully equally useful, lessons from our own experience.
Plus “Silicon Valley” GIFs.
Dinesh waves with a Pied Piper glove
Yay! ( Source )
Note: At the end of this article, you'll find a free pack of bonus resources, including our original content strategy documents, a checklist, and other free templates and tools you're welcome to steal.
Lesson 1: Go all out and hire full-time writers
We had a blog at Capterra long before 2013.
As a freshly qualified intern in 2009, I even wrote some of our very first blog posts. They're still online somewhere. No, I won't link to them here.
We had heard that companies should have a blog, so we started one. Sort of. Half-heartedly.
The problem was: we weren't getting any traffic. Our blog wasn't focused on one topic, was only updated irregularly, was barely promoted and wasn't really well written.
Traffic growth during JP the intern's time
The traffic during J. P. the intern’s time – I am not proud of it
The reason? The blog didn’t really belong to anyone.
Officially, the marketing department was in charge of it. Or was it our CEO, who also seemed to be managing it? Or the customer service representative who also managed our company's Twitter account ?
Articles were written when someone had time, and we viewed it as secondary work that we would take care of once all the real tasks were done.
This problem only disappeared when we properly addressed content marketing.
To be honest, we were motivated to do this because a competitor (who now belongs to the same brand as us) was way ahead of us with their content and we didn't want to fall behind.
Capterra started with two full-time writers for our blog (me and another), and soon added a third (now we have more).
Full-time writers gave us several competitive advantages:
We were able to create more content: A full-time writer can, for obvious reasons, write more blog posts than someone trying to write articles on top of their day job.
We were able to create better content: If you try to get content written by existing employees, they'll probably have a lot of expertise, but they won't necessarily be good at writing. Staff writers also have an advantage over freelancers: they gain expertise over time.
We were able to plan a unified strategy: if something belongs to everyone, it doesn't really belong to anyone. A dedicated team can create and pursue a single, unified vision for your content.
Are full-time writers a big investment for a small business?
Undoubtedly.
But this investment is worth it.
Our content has brought Capterra nearly a million visitors per month, as well as numerous other great benefits:
SEO benefits for our main website: When readers share, discuss and link to our content and search engines recognize how it links to the rest of our domain, the ranking of linked pages from our website improves .
Building brand image: We benefited from mentions and backlinks in prestigious publications such as Inc. , Entrepreneur and Time , as well as well-known digital personalities such as Neil Patel .
New customers: Potential customers who discover our content (or traffic from our content) contact us.
Relationships with industry experts and influencers: This helped us gain collaboration opportunities, reach new audiences, and speak at conferences .
Directly attributable monthly revenue: Traffic from blog posts to conversion pages on our main website generates revenue that is three times the cost of the entire content team.
When we first took the venture into full-time writing, we didn't know if we would succeed. It was a calculated risk that fortunately paid off.
Dinesh and Gilfoyle interview content marketing experts
Content Marketing High-Flyers: Hire Them! ( Source )
Will you gain the same added value by relying entirely on content?
This is something your company will have to figure out for itself, but in our experience, you might be pleasantly surprised.
Are you ready to take the same leap as we did? Here are a few tips for hiring full-time writers:
Choose writing skills and cultural fit as decision criteria: Industry knowledge and technical knowledge are much easier to learn on the job than basics like writing talent or a friendly demeanor.
Find someone who can write a lot: Our writers write up to three in-depth, well-researched blog posts per week, usually between 1,500 and 3,000 words long. Longer, detailed, helpful content is best for SEO, and writers who can produce high-quality content in a short amount of time will grow your traffic even faster.
Look for someone who writes on the side: does the person have a secret blog or is passionate about writing a novel ? Then writing is really important to them and they enjoy making money from it.
Once we decided to go all out and hired two full-time writers, we knew it was time to brainstorm strategically. This brings us to the next lesson we learned.
Lesson 2: You need a written content strategy
Our first content strategy document was a two-page Word document that we wrote after an hour-long brainstorming meeting.
Note: I've put together some bonus materials at the end of this article, including that original strategy document and numerous other templates, checklists, and actions that you're welcome to adopt.
Jared
Nothing beats a few strategic resources at the right time ( Source )
The plan was quite simple, but its basic building blocks still guide our strategy today. It was an important exercise for several reasons:
Committing to something written forced us to think through the details of our content poland telegram data marketing plan. Why were we doing it? Who were we writing for? How were we going to reach an audience?
Seeing it all in black and white showed us where there were gaps in our thinking. Our target audience for the previous (unsuccessful) blog attempts had been anyone and everyone. We needed to be more specific.
An official strategy with a time frame and a name made it easier for writers and managers to openly commit to this daring new experiment.
We had principles we could refer to when certain questions arose. Should we write this article comparing Guardians of the Galaxy to project management ? Does it meet our written goals and our target audience? If not, do we need to change the strategy or rethink the content we're proposing?
Our content strategy consisted of five main areas:
audience
content types
content distribution
content promotion
There is so much to discuss in each area that I could make it into an entire article, so I will now limit myself to the most important points.