How to create really good BOFU content (Exit Five Newsletter #123)

Hello and welcome to the Exit Five Weekly Newsletter - read by 20,000 B2B marketing professionals around the world. Exit Five is a membership site designed to help you build a successful career in B2B marketing. Join 4,000 other members at exitfive.com.

🧮 By the numbers: how many marketing leaders are using freelancers?

Fiverr Pro surveyed over 500 marketing leaders on how they’re working with freelance talent in 2024.

Check out some highlights from the report:

• 63% of marketing leaders engage freelancers on at least one out of every four projects
• 69% of marketing executives report an increase in freelancer utilization this year
• Over a quarter (28%) of executives turn to freelancers to fill skill gaps resulting from workforce reductions.

And those marketing leaders that work with freelancers regularly? 99% (not a typo!!) recommended it.

Ready to take them up on their advice? Explore Fiverr Pro to see what freelancers you can add to your marketing team.

💰 How To Turn Customer Pain Points Into High Performing Content

You're sitting on a (likely) untapped goldmine of inspiration for bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) content.

You've talked to your customers. You know their pain points. Their insights. There's SO MUCH of that inside your company.

And Lashay Lewis, founder of Authority Plug, knows exactly how to turn it into some of the best (read: high converting) content.

She sat down with Dave a while ago to share her step by step process – and it's one of the most popular podcast episodes we've ever done. Plus, she shared a cool example to follow along with when I DMed her on LinkedIn yesterday.

Here's how Lashay does it:

Break Down the Product, Feature by Feature

The first thing Lashay does is break down the entire SaaS product and dissect it down to individual features.

Imagine Salesforce as an example – it’s a beast with tons of features that can mean totally different things to different roles:

• A Chief Data Officer might see Salesforce as an order management tool
• Head of IT views it as a customer service automation solution
• For a Business Intelligence Director, Salesforce is a sales analytics software

Different features solve different problems, depending on who’s using them. That’s why starting with specific features is key—it helps you target unique pain points for each customer type.

Map Each Feature to a Pain Point

Once the features are laid out, Lashay maps each one to a real, relatable pain point.

Think about it this way: what’s the actual problem this feature solves? If a feature in Salesforce automates reporting, the pain point might be “spending hours on manual reports.”

This approach forces you to think about your content from the customer’s perspective, making it way more likely to grab their attention.

Link Pain Points Back to Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs)

After matching features to pain points, Lashay connects these to specific customer profiles – that feature on automated reporting might speak directly to a CMO juggling endless data tasks.

This link between pain points and ICPs ensures that your content resonates with exactly the right audience, making it laser-focused and much more effective than generic content that tries to appeal to everyone.

Lashay also very kindly let me know that you can also swap this out ICP for a use case (like in her example image below).

Do Keyword Research Last, Not First

Here’s where Lashay flips the usual content creation process: keyword research comes after feature mapping, not before.

Once she knows the customer pain points and the exact features that address them, she can find keywords that directly reflect those needs.

This way, the keywords are grounded in real customer issues, making it far more likely that your content actually meets searchers where they are.

Why This Works

When you put it all together, Lashay’s method results in content that isn’t just informative; it’s actually designed to convert.

Instead of starting with a keyword and forcing a connection, this process ensures that each piece is both targeted and genuinely useful.

For SaaS companies or any brand with complex products, feature mapping allows you to avoid that generic “one-size-fits-all” content and dive into what really matters to each customer type.

P.S. Since Lashay is also one of the most helpful people in B2B - she sent over this example of feature mapping she did for Podia.

As always, let me know if you want me to send over the full interview with Lashay and Dave (one of our most popular episodes of all time).

📺UPCOMING EVENTS

🤠 NEXT WEEK! See you in Austin!

We're headed to Austin, y'all! After Drive, we heard you loud and clear: you want more chances to meet other awesome marketers in person.

Here's all the details:

• Wednesday, November 13, 2024
• 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM (doors open at 5:00 PM)
• @ Antone’s, 305 E 5th St., Austin, TX
• $49 for Exit Five members, $99 for non-members 
• 100 B2B marketers
• Networking, fun prizes, and a conversation with top B2B CMOs  

Meet the Marketers is an evening of new connections, “speed dating” style networking (low pressure), and a panel discussion and live Q&A with Dave and some of Austin’s top CMOs.

See more details at exitfive.com/austin.

Tickets are limited to 100, and we've only got single digits left — grab yours now.

Meet the Marketers in Austin

🏢 OPEN ROLES

Who's Hiring Right Now?

HOT JOB OF THE WEEK: We're hiring at Exit Five – we're looking for an Account Manager to be our sixth teammate. You'll be the primary owner of our sponsorship business - a $1m/year revenue stream. We've barely scratched the surface of what’s possible here, and you'll be the driving force in taking us to the next level.

Interested? Apply here.

Other open roles on the Exit Five job board this week:

• • SpeedWork is hiring a Senior LinkedIn Ads Specialist
  • Dragon360 is hiring a Advertising & Media Strategist
  • AROYA is hiring a Performance Marketing Manager
  • Rhapsody is hiring a Content Marketing Manager
  • Peak Support is hiring a Head of Marketing ($140k-$185k)
  • PDQ is hiring a Senior Customer Marketing Specialist
  • Clara is hiring a Marketing Operations Specialist
  • Circle is hiring a Head of Marketing

See All Open Roles >>

Have an open role and want to make sure the best B2B marketing talent sees it?

Just reply to this email and we'll send over more info on how you can post it on our job board + get it in front of 20k+ marketers.

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