Letter #97: Doing product-led content the right way [a teardown-cum-template]
Hello hello!
I’m back to keep the promise I made in last week’s issue — a BOFU piece teardown 🙌
But first, a quick refresher:
We talked about mapping your product features to the target reader (ICP), their pain points, and ideal outcomes (jobs-to-be-done) like this:
We also settled on using this info to plan and write your content.
Now for the real-life ‘exactly how to do it’ with a piece that I wrote for a CRM client 🥁
Our target readers? Sales managers.
Our aim? To educate about unified customer view (a dashboard that shows everything a business knows about a customer in the CRM).
The framework we followed to write the content that you can use as a template:
Let’s look at this in action:
Introduction:
1. Hook and hiccup
Start with speaking to your target reader. Aim to show you know them.
To do so:
i. Highlight the ideal outcome readers desire.
ii. Elaborate on the roadblocks to that outcome/JTBD.
Example:
2. Bridge/Solution
Now tell the reader there’s a solution that can help them go from point A (the state of struggle) to point B (their state of achievement).
Then, briefly explain what the solution is.
Example:
3. Promise (transition)
Remember, the promise should always be how you can help them overcome their struggle/achieve their ideal outcome.
Example:
“[…] For you, this would translate into building better teams that knock their targets out of the park. So, let’s walk you through how you can achieve this with a unified customer view in this guide.”
So altogether, your intro’s job is to:
Speak to the reader by taking them on a journey from pain point (team silos) to JTBD (seamless customer experience = more conversions) using your solution (unified customer view).
Content’s body:
4. Outcome-oriented use case subheadings
Begin with planning out subheadings that highlight the ideal outcome readers want to achieve.
Example:
Build a high-performing team
Accurately forecast sales
These subheadings will introduce a new feature use case, one by one.
5. Tactical content under each subheading
Here’s where you’ve to make sure you don’t lose sight of readers’ struggles and JTBD.
Follow these steps to talk about each use case:
✅ Lightly touch on the problem + introduce feature
Again, the idea is to tell readers you understand them.
Which, in turn, helps you continue building trust as a reliable solution provider to their problem.
You can also use data at this point to demonstrate how grave the problem is.
✅ Elaborate on how the feature works
Use product screenshots, customer stories (or real examples if relevant stories aren’t available), and tactical advice to engage readers and explain how things will work when they start using your product feature.
Here’s how I did it:
Repeat this with more use cases and close with a product sign-up CTA.
There you have it — a highly resonate product-led piece of content 🥳
Found the teardown-cum-template useful?
You’ll love the surprise news I’ve for you tomorrow 😁 Keep your eyes peeled 👀