Ideas for product-led marketing campaigns

(+ Examples from Databricks, Metadata and more)

The biggest problem I see with social media marketing for B2B? It rarely discusses the product.

Most social media marketing campaigns in B2B belong to one of two camps.

One is the performance marketing camp. This is the straight-to-the-point, no-bullshit option: Signup now! Book a demo! Get their money!

The funnel here usually consists of a banner featuring some generic promise (Reduce TTV by 50%!)  and a short landing page whose only job is to get you to click the big signup button.

Second is the so-called thought leadership camp. This sophisticated big brother of the performance marketing camp wants to educate the user rather than purely sell the product.

Here you are mostly invited to download a white paper or eBook that loosely discusses the problem your product solves (“Collaboration in modern finance teams,” “SOC2 Compliance: The full guide”, etc.)

The problem with both camps? Neither really discusses the product.

Sure, at the end of the white paper about SOC2 compliance, a section will discuss your solution for automating SOC2 security checks.

And yes, your landing page will mention some key features someone told the demand generation team the users like.

But mostly, that’s about it. 

This is a colossal waste: You already paid Linkedin’s ridiculous CPMs, you got someone to click on an ad, and yet, they end up knowing almost nothing about your product?

Ah 🤦

I believe that marketing should be product-led: It should educate about the product, not just drive users to signup or leave their details for an SDR to bug them.

And here are some ideas for how you can do it.

On-demand demos

Show how your product works. If you’re traditional B2B, frame it as an on-demand demo. Here is how Smartling does it:

Alternatively, if you’re a developer-focused startup, you can frame it as a tutorial, a workshop, or a training session, as Databricks is doing:

Either way, the concept is the same: Generate and distribute educational content that explains how your product works.

Success stories

Let your customers explain why and how they are using your products. 

Metadata.io, for example, is doing it with short 60-second clips designed for in-feed consumption:

Yet, you can also take a more traditional approach and direct your users to a formal case study, like Colab Software does:

Playground/sandbox

That’s something I don’t see startups leverage enough: Allowing users to play around with their product without creating an account.

This is so much better than any product tour, especially for a more technical audience that does not like to be spoon-fed.

In Axiom.co’s case, that is the secondary CTA in their website:

If I were them, I’d create a set of banners directing to the playground and distribute it over Linkedin or Reddit. 

Such an offer is 10x more attractive than a simple “Get Started.”