The rise of content over the past 20 years has dovetailed neatly with the rise of Silicon Valley and SaaS businesses. This is not merely coincidence—many of the most successful businesses of the 21st century (the so-called “unicorns”), have used content as a low-cost marketing strategy.

In fact, 76% of content professionals working today are employed by organizations with less than 5,000 employees. And much of the new job growth in content is happening in the tech sector.

Through high-quality content creation, these organizations have been able to build brand awareness, foster dedicated audiences, educate consumers on their solutions, generate qualified sales leads, and turn customers into loyal advocates for their brand. We’d venture to say that these businesses’ dedication to content has played a crucial role in their success.
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But as any content expert will tell you, it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a well-defined strategy, a deep understanding of your target audience, and a talented team of content creators.
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In this article, we’re going to show you what that looks like by highlighting 8 fast-growing enterprises doing content right. These are companies that:

• Have annual revenues under $5 billion.
• Have between 1,000 - 5,000 employees.
• Were founded after 2000.
• Are generally experiencing rapid growth.
  

These organizations prove that you don’t have to be a trillion-dollar behemoth to be a market leader in content.

Coinbase

Cryptocurrency is still in its infancy in terms of broad market acceptance. That means any business involved in crypto has their work cut out for them in terms of getting the audience to understand their product or service and see its value.

Coinbase—one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency marketplaces—manages to do this well through their blog content and explainer guides. Their blog primarily serves as a news source for all things crypto. They write content around developments in the crypto space, new product and service updates, and recent market trends. This information caters primarily to experienced Coinbase users, keeping them abreast of everything they need to know to manage their crypto responsibly (and in turn, continue to use the Coinbase platform).

For those new to crypto, Coinbase has developed a “Learn” section of their site that serves to answer basic questions related to crypto, such as “what is crypto,” “what is Bitcoin,” and “what is Blockchain.” All in, Coinbase uses content across every stage of the funnel to draw prospects in and keep them engaged. 

Paylocity

HR and payroll technology company Paylocity has one of the largest content operations of anybody operating in their industry. Through the “Resources” tab on their homepage, you can browse content in a variety of different formats, including blog content, podcasts, case studies, ebooks, webinars, product training guides, and more.

Paylocity also makes it easy to browse their large content library by filtering all content by category, or multiple categories at the same time. Topics that Paylocity focuses on include benefits administration, employee management, payroll, taxes, COVID-19, and more.

Each piece of content is designed to be educational and relevant to Paylocity’s target audience—business owners. Most content also features insights from subject-matter experts, or direct messaging on how the Paylocity product can simplify certain business processes.

All together, Paylocity is able to create more educated consumers through their content, which in turn will help those consumers realize the need for Paylocity’s solutions.

Peloton

Peloton has a blog called “The Output” where they regularly share content related to exercising, and health and wellness. Recent articles include a guide to indoor running during the winter and the importance of sunscreen for outdoor workouts.

The Output also features two additional sections that are designed to appeal to Peloton owners. In the “Community” section you’ll find articles around fellow owners’ experiences with Peloton, product updates, profiles of Peloton instructors, and more.

The blog is a simple but elegant approach to provide prospective customers with value while also fostering brand loyalty among current customers. Through “The Output,” consumers can understand how a Peloton could benefit their life, and current customers can feel more closely tied to the broader Peloton community—which is one of Peloton’s key value propositions. 

RingCentral

RingCentral sells cloud-based office communications systems. Kind of confusing, no? For that exact reason, RingCentral invests in content in a variety of different formats to educate consumers on the need for enterprise-grade voice, fax, text, and conference collaboration tools.

Their blog shares information on all the different ways integrated comms can help your business run more efficiently. Outside of their blog, they have dedicated pages for case studies, product videos, press releases, webinars, and data reports—the latter of which leverage RingCentral’s internal expertise to share unique insights.

Furthermore, RingCentral maintains an email newsletter they use to share new content with prospects and bring them closer to a purchasing decision. Similar to our previous examples, RingCentral’s approach to content succeeds by taking something difficult to grasp, breaking it down, and showing consumers all the ways it can help them.

Shopify

Shopify—one of the largest eCommerce platforms in the world—designed their blog to offer consumers a direct path from education to decision. They offer advice on eCommerce business ideas, starting your business on Shopify, marketing your business, and how Shopify can support you throughout the entire journey.

Furthermore, Shopify also creates stories about founders who have had successful outcomes using Shopify. And all of this is packaged on a slickly designed blog that features custom imagery and a great UX.

Shopify is also smart about leveraging SEO in all the blog content they create. Most pieces are long-form, keyword-focused, and link-heavy. This approach makes it possible for Shopify to expand their reach by ranking highly in Google for queries that eCommerce business owners may be searching.

SoftServe

SoftServe is a consulting and software development company that offers a wide range of services to clients, including engineering services, DevOps, AI, and machine learning, cybersecurity, and a whole lot more. 

This means SoftServe has a deep well of topics from which they can pull content ideas. And their blog reflects this. There are sections for security, data & analytics, research & development, quality management, business analytics, and a whole lot more.

To personalize the experience for each blog visitor, SoftServe also allows users to filter the content they receive by industry and by their current computing partners, thereby making it easier to find information relevant to them. It also helps SoftServe learn more about their audience, which in turn allows them to create content that more directly speaks to their needs.

UiPath

Next up is UiPath, a company that offers robotic process automation (RPA) to enterprise businesses. This is yet another service that may not be easy to grasp. UiPath understands that, which is why they feature a section on their homepage called “What is RPA” where they tell you exactly what UiPath does and how it could benefit your business.

From there, you can visit their “Resources” section, which features their blog, testimonials, reports, webinars, white papers, and more. Like previous examples, their blog is designed to educate consumers on how RPA can help their business, and keep them in the loop on the latest developments related to automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

Yet another example of a brand understanding their customers’ needs, and using content to drive toward their services.

Urgently

Last we have Urgently, which offers a well-understood service compared to some of our previous examples—roadside assistance. Because of this, Urgently offers a bit more practical advice on their blog. Their main topics include travel safety, car care, innovations in driving, and the automotive industry.

Some of their content is timely—such as this report on American travel during the holidays. Others pertain more to thought leadership, including this article on how smart vehicles will be able to navigate areas where there is poor infrastructure. 

Through their content, Urgently offers readers an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the Urgently brand. Ideally, their interest will be piqued, and they’ll want to learn more about the services Urgently provides.

What These Fast-Growing Enterprises Teach Us About Content

These examples have several things in common that make them successful with content. They are as follows:

• Understanding of target audience: It’s impossible to make content that does its job unless you know who you’re making the content for. Each of these brands picks topics it knows matter to the people who would potentially buy from them. 
• Defined customer journey: Based on their understanding of their target audience, each brand strategically picks content to serve consumers at each stage of the buyer’s journey. You’ll notice that most blog content is designed to educate consumers. Other resource pages on the site feature more overt product pitches, and are optimized for conversion.
• Quality over quantity: Each of the examples we featured have been investing in content for a while, allowing them to build up a large content library. But when you read their content, you’ll notice that each piece is thoroughly researched, well-written, and is well-designed. This is the golden rule when it comes to content — quality over quantity. One great piece of content is more valuable than 10 mediocre pieces.

How Knotch Helps Content Teams Like These

Knotch helps fast-growing enterprises plan, measure, and optimize their content programs to achieve desired business outcomes. The Knotch Content Intelligence Platform is designed to help content teams identify whitespace in the market, collect sentiment feedback from users, holistically measure content performance, and package all of that information so that content teams can see how their output is impacting their company.

If you're at a fast-growing enterprise that’s interested in connecting content to outcomes, increasing your content ROI, eliminating the need for third-party data, and eliminating wasted effort, join our webinar on January 28th, "Fast-Growing Brands Making Big Strides With Content."