My phone is in my left palm, as my left thumb scrolls LinkedIn. It’s 8:43pm. I got up from my work desk 13 minutes ago, heading out of my home office. While I lock the office door, my eyes are still fixed on LinkedIn’s feed. It’s been so for about 11 minutes. I’m scanning for what’s worth my attention, as you likely do, too. 

I stop at a video post by Jaleh Rezeai. It’s a fundraising announcement. We’re not connected on LinkedIn. But LinkedIn’s algorithm must’ve suggested it because dozens of our mutual connections liked Jaleh’s post. Over nine hundred people have already engaged.

Intrigued, I click the linked article to learn more. 

It’s my first time visiting Mutiny’s website. You’ve probably also discovered a SaaS startup you didn't know existed this way, too. 

Jaleh’s fundraising announcement article starts with why they’re building Mutiny. Her point of view resonates so much that I head over to their homepage. “Wow,” I’m thinking in my head. “How have they managed to acquire all these fast-growing enterprise logos?” 

Enterprise sales isn’t straightforward. 

Sales cycles are longer. Because even when there’s an obvious need for your product, extensive due diligence, particularly in hot areas like data privacy, legal, and cybersecurity, still slows things down. Despite these hurdles, Mutiny, the website personalization B2B SaaS, has amassed dozens of enviable enterprise customers. 

Acquiring fast-growing enterprise logos is already impressive. Most startups can only dream. But you know what I found to be even more impressive? The specific buyers Mutiny is able to attract, engage, and convert —B2B Growth Marketers who are immune to generic marketing tricks. 

For months, I remained fascinated by Mutiny’s amazing growth and success acquiring such, hard-to-get enterprise customers. That fascination drove me to extensively research two things: 

1. How is weaving their product into content pieces (AKA, product-led content) helping Mutiny unlock enterprise sales? 
2. What can SaaS Founders and B2B Marketers learn from them?

The result of my extensive research is this guide you’re reading. I even went the extra mile, interviewing Mutiny’s Head of Content, Stewart Hillhouse, for an inside peek into how they do content. 

The first lesson he stressed?  

Have a Unique Point of View (PoV)

It was the first thing I fancied about Mutiny. So I wasn’t surprised when Stewart said: 

The usual advice for launching B2B content programs is to design a content marketing strategy. And there’s a place for that. However, as the book, “Your Strategy Needs a Strategy,” noted, designing a content marketing strategy isn’t the most important thing required for effective product-led content execution. 

You first need, as Mutiny does, a unique PoV or an overarching story to build that on. But don’t take it from me. The book cited above succinctly outlined why: 

Stewart corroborated. 

He told me that having a unique PoV isn’t only helping Mutiny stand out in the increasingly competitive MarTech space. But it also helps them resonate more with enterprise Growth Marketers who are immune to generic marketing: 

This stance fits well into VEC Studio’s recommendation for building demand-generating B2B SaaS content programs.

Say you want us to help you design and execute your product-led content marketing strategy. Our first step would be to align with (or help you articulate) your PoV, as illustrated in this owned media funnel framework: 

And what’s their PoV?

Your website can be your #1 revenue channel. 

Their CEO, Jaleh Rezaei, elaborates: 

“Marketers are under extreme pressure to deliver revenue to their company. They spend billions of dollars to acquire customers online, but $19 out of every $20 spent is wasted because buyers don’t get a relevant [website] buying experience and leave. That’s why we built Mutiny. To automate growth engineering for all companies and turn their wasted marketing spend into revenue.”

With their PoV defined, what does the content strategy aiding Mutiny to execute demand-generating, product-led content look like? 

Before I unpack that…

Mutiny’s Product-Led Content Marketing Strategy

According to Stewart, it comes down to this: 

“Our content marketing strategy includes diverse formats like videos, articles, and webinars, all tied together to form a comprehensive content ecosystem that speaks to different segments of our audience. It’s crucial that every piece of content we create connects to our bigger story. This way, we’re not just publishing isolated pieces but building a narrative that supports our broader objectives.”

Put the first part of Stewart’s words into the owned media funnel framework above, and you’ll have something like this: 

But these are content formats, of which product-led content is one. To understand how Mutiny unlocks enterprise sales through product-led content execution, you need to consider the second part of what Stewart said about their content marketing strategy design. 

Rephrasing him, every piece of content you create must connect to your bigger story, build your startup’s narrative, and support broader business objectives. From our experience working with numerous startups, achieving this is easier said than done. 

Which is why, through hands-on experience, we designed the Topic Clusters Content Strategy (TCCS) framework: 

From thought leadership (builds your startup’s narrative) to how-to guides, and sales enabling resources, the TCCS framework helps. As shown above, it provides guardrails that ensures every content piece your company publishes builds on the last, keeping your target audience engaged across the customer journey. 

Stewart reiterated why this is crucial: 

“You want your audience to be ready for your next thing, so every piece of content should build on the last, creating a journey that keeps them engaged and looking forward to more.”

Mutiny’s Product-Led Content Execution

I could sum it in four words: 

Educational and immediately applicable. 

Before I explain, let me stress that the phrase, ‘product-led content,’ doesn’t mean shove your product down people’s throats. It means you should articulate a problem, the steps a target buyer can take to solve it (with your product), and the possible growth outcomes if they act. 

Stewart agrees: 

But really, from my research, Mutiny’s exceptional product-led content execution doesn’t start with their articles. 

It starts with the end in mind. 

Say you want prospects to signup for your product’s free trial or book a sales demo. Where will you send them? If I’m guessing right, that will be your homepage or landing pages optimized for conversion. 

Correct?

If you agree, then ensuring those core pages are crafted to compel conversion is the first thing to nail. And that’s the first thing nailed to the letter in Mutiny’s product-led content execution.

1. Story-Driven, Product-Led Landing Pages

Starting with Mutiny’s homepage, there are no verbose claims. All you get across sections is a combined, yet subtle indication of who the product is for, real demonstrations of how it works, what it can help you achieve, and why using it is in your own interest. 

The most interesting part? 

All these are told through the lens of customer success stories. Take the section just below the hero section. Here, Mutiny doesn’t just tell visitors that their product can help them get 40% more leads. But they sample a customer who achieved that and show you the microsites they created with Mutiny to achieve that: 

As I’ve annotated, you can immediately see WHO the product is for, WHAT problems it solves, and WHY you should even care. All put into relatable context by showing (not just telling) you how Mutiny helped a customer succeed. 

The next sections create a side-by-side message and visual cue. The copy on one end tells you what problem Mutiny solves, then they show —with real product visuals— how it solves it. Again, done side-by-side to illustrate a cohesive product-led story: 

Most people visiting your site, even after seeing how your product can help them, still want to see real examples. They’ll also want to hear what others say about your product. 

Mutiny addresses these by:

1. Inviting website visitors to explore real examples backed by real results others have achieved with their product.
2. Showing off the special things others (mostly the ICPs they’re trying to convert) have said about their product: 

Their other core landing pages —use cases and features— follow this same pattern. Like their homepage, only the hero and before the footer sections have direct sales CTAs. The sections between these all try to compel conversion by articulating four things: 

1. WHO the product is for, 
2. WHAT problems it solves, 
3. HOW Mutiny solves the problem,
4. WHY you should even care:

Take their audience segmentation feature page: 

The importance of starting your product-led content execution journey with the end in mind as Mutiny does can’t be overstated. As you’ll see, they enable Mutiny to redirect engaged content readers, irrespective of where they are on their customer journeys, to these conversion-optimized landing pages more likely to convert. 

To demonstrate, consider a recent article by Stewart on building an ABM program. In the introduction and other areas within the article, he linked to relevant conversion-optimized landing pages: 

This is another benefit of our TCCS framework. 

As shown below, it enables you to cluster content pieces per the customer journey stages, while enabling a seamless redirection of traffic to your core, conversion-optimized landing pages: 

With these core pages crafted, the next thing, as shown above, is redirecting traffic to ensure potential customers find them. This is where the individual product-led content assets Mutiny uses to earn traffic, attract, and engage prospects comes in. 

2. Collaborative Product-Led Content Playbooks

For me, this has to be the highlight of Mutiny’s product-led content marketing execution. Mostly because each one is a masterclass in story-driven content crafting and distribution. 

I love them for two reasons. 

The first is, of course, the relatable storytelling approach. Mutiny’s product-led playbooks are unlike regular case studies focused solely on highlighting what customers achieved with your product. Instead, they are a collaborative effort where the stories are told in ways that highlight the day-to-day of customers and their specific workflows. Scroll each, and you’ll not only realize Mutiny’s unique value. But you’ll also see how their product fits nicely into complex GTM (go-to market) workflows most enterprise target buyers can resonate with. 

The story-driven execution, I must add, is typical of VEC Studio’s Product-Led Storytelling approach. This involves using stories to attract, show, and compel engaged readers to signup. More like turning your marketing assets into subtle sales funnels. 

As illustrated below:   

I asked Stewart how they collaborate with customers to create these story-driven playbooks. He told me that they watch out for successful product usage triggers. Then they go talk to the customers behind those triggers to understand how Mutiny was fitting into the problems they were solving. 

In his words: 

“It’s essentially like product discovery. As if you were a startup founder finding problems to solve. Except in this case, the customer already used your tool to solve their problem. So, you’re trying to go upstream to, like, what was the bigger problem you were facing? This gives us an idea of where they considered using our product and why they didn’t use it to solve other problems [in their workflows]. It also gives us lots of ideas for other product-led playbooks we can create, because [we often discover] there’s a thousand different problems, where our product could be used.”

One of my favorites is this one featuring Casey Patterson, the Senior Manager of ABM at Snowflake. The draw on this playbook is the story of how Casey drove 150% more pipeline. 

But when you dig in, you also get exposed to what their outbound workflow looks like. And how the tools in their ABM techstack (including Mutiny) worked together to achieve results:

The benefits of this can be profound: 

• Target buyers can reference this playbook when building their outbound workflow from scratch. If they do, the chances that they will include Mutiny in their ABM techstack is higher. 
• Target buyers may have some or all the highlighted tools in the playbook except Mutiny. In that case, they will see Mutiny as the missing piece in their stack for achieving desired results. 

The second thing I love about Mutiny’s product-led playbooks is the content distribution possibilities collaboration with customers can unlock. As I’ve stressed, these playbooks don’t just spotlight Mutiny. But how it works together with other GTM tools. By showcasing other tools, especially the company whose story is told in the playbook, those companies will see a need to distribute these assets, too. 

It’s a classic win-win situation. But to make customers and spotlighted tools excited about co-distributing such product-led playbooks, keep it about them, not your startup.  

To do this well, Stewart advised: 

This advice brings us the 3rd step of Mutiny’s enterprise sales-unlocking product-led content marketing execution. 

3. Winning Fresh Eyeballs Through Events

On this podcast, Mutiny’s Head of Marketing said: 

“It probably drove more pipeline this quarter than any sort of big campaign we’ve ever run before… Our previous biggest spikes in pipeline were funding announcements and product launches. This quarter, we had nothing external to the marketing team we could leverage. So it was pretty like, how can we manufacture excitement and demand and pipeline out of thin air? (Through our Suv-ai-vor event) we were able to 3x or 4x our previous pipeline hikes.”

This response by Ryan Narod was to a question on results Mutiny got from its Surv-ai-vor event in Q4 2023. But it wasn’t the results he shared, though impressive, that got my attention. It’s the often ignored impact of hosting such pressworthy events. 

Product launches and fundraising announcements are both pressworthy milestones. If Product Hunt and, say, TechCrunch respectively feature yours, you’re guaranteed traffic spikes. 

With a solid product-led content foundation in place as Mutiny has, a fraction of that traffic will spill to your playbooks and landing pages optimized for conversion. For me, this explains Mutiny’s continued investment in such events. For example, after Surv-ai-vor, in Q1 2024, they launched ABM MBA that’s still running at the time of writing this guide. This is in addition to several in-person events they host across major US cities and those they partner with other startups. For instance, this one with Sequel scheduled for Q2 2024.  

All these help you win fresh eyeballs. 

A justification for doing the same is apparent in Mutiny’s organic search analytics. As this SEMrush report shows, most of their organic search traffic, over 65%, to be specific, are from branded queries. This is despite accounting for less than 300% their search keywords: 

Apparently, people —including potential customers— hearing about Mutiny through these events go on to search for them organically, using brand-related terms. Events like these are opportunities for startups leaning towards creating necessary buzz for demand generation and not obsessing over SEO or keywords. 

Stewart corroborated: 

When an event-like marketing campaign is novel, interesting, and fun it earns you fresh eyeballs and prospects’ attention. This attention, if captured, can be nurtured into qualified sales pipeline. 

Mutiny’s product-led content enables that, too. 

4. Demand Capturing & Nurturing

Recall the owned media funnel framework? 

How Mutiny captures and nurtures demand with their product-led content execution is exemplary of leveraging it. Their events, short courses, academy, blog articles, and product-led content playbooks are all ungated. Mutiny distributes these marketing assets organically, with paid media, and through partnerships for anyone to consume.

AKA, smart, consumption-focused distribution:

I became one of their email subscribers after someone shared one of Mutiny’s articles on social media. I started following Stewart, their Head of Content, on LinkedIn after reading one of his exceptional story-driven, product-led content pieces. 

And I’m definitely not alone. 

Mutiny has grown its newsletter to 55K+ email subscribers. They’ve admitted thousands of B2B Marketers into their exclusive community, M2. Across members of their team, they’ve amassed tens of thousands of social followings. All of these, using myself as an example, most likely came from those who read and enjoyed their content. 

Now scroll back up to the owned media funnel framework above, and you’ll notice something. Capturing demand starts with getting people —especially your potential buyers— into audiences you own: 

The significance of this? 

Owning this audience, your team will have better control of the distribution of managerial content for nurturing prospects into pipeline. In Mutiny’s case, it’s their newsletter, which anyone can join for free. 

But relative to growing an audience composed mostly of potential customers, it has to be their exclusive community, M2. Exclusive because you must apply to join. Exclusive because Mutiny vets all applications manually. And as anyone would guess, are most likely to only admit those who fit their ideal customer profiles: 

I’m yet to be admitted since I applied about six months ago. Apparently, when they reviewed my application then, they didn’t find me worthy of joining M2 at the time. A reason I think they’ll have a preference for only admitting their potential (or existing) customers. 

However, being a loyal subscriber of their newsletter, I can imagine how Mutiny nurtures people in their owned audiences to capture demand. First, they take the same consumption-focused approach to their newsletter. In other words, they deliver so much value right there in the email body, I often don’t have to click to learn more. 

But when I see a need to, it’s often one of their story-driven, product-led content playbooks demonstrating Mutiny’s value: 

Here’s the takeaway from this. 

As shown, distributing and redistributing their story-driven, product-led content playbooks to those in their owned audience is how Mutiny nurtures and captures demand. I’ve seen a startup win over hundreds of undecided tech buyers doing something similar. 

So I was curious to know if Mutiny prioritized the creation and distribution of product-led content because they performed better. To confirm this, I asked Stewart on our coversation. 

His response? 

If you’re still on the fence, let’s see… 

Why Product-Led Content Works Better

Almost all startups create and distribute content. 

This content, often good and informative, drives website traffic. But more often than not, the traffic doesn’t generate demand or impact sales. A cause for this is best captured by the German researcher and psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus. His study, “The Forgetting Curve,” revealed that people tend to forget un-applied information. 

Per Hermann’s study, about 75% of information provided through content marketing will be forgotten in just six days if not applied:

This research should remind you of Stewart’ words: 

“Each [product-led content piece] we create is designed to be a comprehensive guide. It includes a problem, the steps taken, and the growth thesis behind it, ensuring that it’s not just educational but also immediately applicable to real-world scenarios.”

Apparently, through product-led content execution, Mutiny is overcoming “The Forgetting Curve” hurdle. Specifically, they use customer-relatable storytelling to show (and not just tell) how their product solves problems within content pieces. This way, prospects who read these content are more likely to resonate with and see how to use their product to apply the provided information. 

We call this Product-Led Storytelling. 

Done right, it will increase, as it does for Mutiny, your chances of generating demand, nurturing prospects, and unlocking enterprise sales. This is exactly why B2B SaaS startups trust VEC Studio for: 

You can see our process here.