Mastering Content Strategy for SaaS Startups | Karina Babcock from Causely

Ernesto Quezada: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98% of your website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments. With relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more, stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work and get access to 50% more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us on Pathmonk.com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Karina from Causely. How are you doing today, Karina?

Karina Babcock: I’m doing well, how are you?

Ernesto: I’m doing great. Great to have you on today’s show and, well, let’s kick it off. You being a marketing consultant for different startups, can you tell us a little bit more about what you do?

Karina: Sure. So my background is all in the kind of enterprise software SaaS technology space. I’ve spent my career kind of going back and forth between having full-time in-house roles and being a consultant, doing a lot of customer marketing, content strategy, content marketing, corporate communications, corporate marketing. Right now, what I mostly spend my time on is helping startups in that sort of enterprise software SaaS space with their content strategy, content creation, and doing a lot of customer marketing for them to help them achieve their growth goals.

Ernesto: Okay, awesome to hear that. And on that note, so that way our listeners can get a good understanding of, in this case, if we use an example here, Causely, what would you say are some of the key problems that you guys like to solve at Causely?

Karina: Yeah. So Causely’s goal is to essentially eliminate human troubleshooting, specifically within IT ops and DevOps teams. They’ve built a causal AI platform that takes a step beyond what you would get from your typical observability tools. It plugs right into your observability stack, but it uses structured causal models to automatically do root cause analysis and help to remediate any issues that are coming up in your environment. What I do for them is it’s still kind of early days for the company. They’re pretty small, so I’m kind of a jill of all trades doing a bunch of different marketing stuff. The goal is ultimately to help get them engaged in relevant communities where they can add value, get them connected with DevOps and IT and engineering leaders that would be interested in learning about their technology and potentially being early design partners as they get ready to launch a GA version of their product later this year.

Ernesto: Absolutely perfect. Awesome to hear that from you. And so, is there a specific vertical ICP that you like to go for and to do some marketing consulting with them?

Karina: Yeah, for me personally, I think generally I’ve worked mainly with startups anywhere from their first handful of employees. Working with Causely, I’ve kind of been the first marketing person helping them do all the things as they get off the ground. My sweet spot is companies that have about 1000 employees. So kind of like that early growth phase where you need to be able to wear a lot of hats, do a lot of things. You need to be able to think strategically, but also execute and get the dirty work done and not be afraid to dive into the details and tackle a bunch of stuff.

Ernesto: Definitely important. Great to hear that. And so, as far as some website lead generation, what would you recommend to our listeners? As far as some tools, tips, or methods, is there anything that you would recommend?

Karina: I would say generally my focus areas tend to be a lot more on the organic side as opposed to paid media or digital sponsorships and things like that. My background is a lot more around trying to engage with people organically, finding them in the communities they’re in, figuring out how we can get conversations going in relevant Slack channels or LinkedIn groups or Reddit threads even, and then also doubling down on SEO content. Trying to figure out what are the key terms that we have an interesting perspective on or we can be an expert on that people are actively looking for and how can we align the content that we’re putting out with those terms to help people find us because we’re so small that people aren’t going to be actively going out and searching for us by name.

Ernesto: Okay, great. Interesting tips and methods for our listeners. And well, let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about you. You being a marketing consultant, what are some key tasks you like to focus on in your day-to-day work?

Karina: So I guess I spend a lot of my day seeing how we can make the most of the content that we have. Building a steady drumbeat of communication and engaging with people across many different channels. Making sure, especially when you’re working with a small team, you don’t have a lot of resources. Every time you have a really interesting piece of content, you want to get the most mileage out of it as you possibly can. So extracting it into little bite-sized pieces of information, creating a few different posts. One of them is talking specifically about your company or your product, another is pulling out an interesting quote, mixing in a weave of different formats like video clips and written pieces, and then pushing them out in relevant channels and communities. Not sounding spammy, but engaging people in conversations and discussions in LinkedIn groups or on Reddit threads. Finding other avenues that are okay for more promotional posts where you’re specifically posting about the company that you work for or your product. Finding that nice balance and making sure you’re getting the most mileage out of every piece of content that you have because you have limited bandwidth and resources on the team. So it’s not like you’re just creating tons of content every single day.

Ernesto: Important. And in between those tasks, how do you stay up to date with all the marketing strategies and trends? Is there a preferred channel that you like to go with?

Karina: Lately, I never used to really be a podcast listener, but I’ve recently started exploring that space. I’m probably a little later to the game than everyone else in the world, I think. But I found that it’s a good use of my time, especially if I’m driving around in the car or something and I can put on a podcast. I still feel like I’m learning and figuring out what the latest and greatest companies are doing. I’ve recently been listening to your podcast. There’s a content strategy podcast I’ve been listening to a lot lately. There’s a newsletter and a podcast that I find myself both listening to the podcast and also reading the newsletter. I think it’s called Letty’s newsletter, but it’s all geared toward smaller companies that are building products in the enterprise or the SaaS space.

Ernesto: Perfect. Awesome. Podcasts are always nice, so it’s good to jump into that as well. Let’s jump into our next section here then, Karina, which is our rapid fire question rounds. Are you ready for them?

Karina: Sure.

Ernesto: Perfect. Awesome. First off, Karina, what is the last book that you read?

Karina: I admit that I don’t read as many books as I would like. I usually only end up reading books when I’m on vacation. But the last time I was on vacation, I read “The Bonfire of the Vanities” by Tom Wolfe, which I probably normally wouldn’t even pick up and read, but I didn’t have a book. My husband had one in his backpack, so I read it and I actually liked it. It’s a fiction book that sort of gets into the different societal classes in New York City. I think it takes place in the eighties, and it actually is pretty interesting.

Ernesto: Perfect. Awesome. Great to hear that. It’s always different types of books that people think, oh, it’s all about business, or it’s all about science fiction. So it’s great to hear a variety. Next up then, Karina, if there would be no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Karina: I think one thing that would be useful is a more efficient way of going through long-form content like videos and white papers and pulling out little bite-sized pieces and clips from them that you can use across the different social platforms. There are different tools and technologies that have come out in recent years that definitely help with that, but they still need a lot of oversight. I find that some of the things they pull out automatically are not that insightful. You want to have something that actually has some personality and is compelling, interesting, and unique. So having improved tools in that space would be useful.

Ernesto: Awesome. Great to hear that. Next, if there’s one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Karina: For me, as a consultant, being able to better and more automatically keep track of what hours I’m spending with which client. I think that tends to be manual, and at the end of the day, I end up going back and looking at my calendar to figure out how I divided my time today, especially when you’re trying to make sure that you’re allocating the right amount of time to each client. I don’t think there’s a great way to automatically do that, at least not that I’m aware of, but that would be really helpful.

Ernesto: That would be really helpful. I totally agree with you. Lastly, Karina, you have a lot of experience already in the marketing world, but what is that one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Karina: I think the thing that I would say to myself is not to be afraid to speak up and to trust my instincts. When I was earlier in my career, and even not that long ago, I think sometimes people fall into the trap of taking what leadership says or wants to do as gospel and just going with it, even though your instincts are telling you, I don’t know if that’s a great idea, or maybe I would do this differently. Afterward, I feel like it ends up turning around. They end up doing what you wanted to do in the first place anyway. You think, I should have been louder. I should have trusted myself. I should have stuck to my guns, and then maybe we would have cut out some of the time spent or unnecessary toil on any particular project.

Ernesto: Definitely some great advice there, not just for yourself, but for our listeners as well. Karina, we are coming to the end of the show here, but before we do end, I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about you?

Karina: Content is king.

Ernesto: Perfect. Marketing has evolved, or it’s always evolving, but content is great for everybody. Karina, thank you so much for being on with us today. I do appreciate it. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot, Karina.

Karina: Thank you.