AI & Automation
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Last year, I sat through yet another marketing webinar promising "10 proven SaaS content strategies that work every time." You know the ones - they list the same tired tactics: write comparison posts, create how-to guides, share customer testimonials. Standard stuff that every SaaS marketer has been doing since 2015.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: when everyone follows the same playbook, that playbook becomes noise. I learned this the hard way while working with a B2B SaaS client who was drowning in a sea of generic content, getting zero attention despite publishing religiously.
The breakthrough came when I stopped asking "what should we create?" and started asking "what would our audience actually stop scrolling for?" That shift led to an approach I now call cross-industry content mining - stealing ideas from completely different markets and adapting them for SaaS.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why traditional SaaS content strategies fail in 2025's attention economy
The exact process I use to mine creative content ideas from unrelated industries
Real examples of unconventional content that drove measurable awareness for B2B clients
A step-by-step framework for developing content that can't be copied
The metrics that actually matter when measuring awareness (spoiler: it's not impressions)
This isn't about being different for the sake of it. It's about creating content so unique and valuable that your audience has no choice but to pay attention. Ready to break free from the content calendar hamster wheel? Let's dive into how unconventional SaaS strategies can transform your awareness game.
Industry Wisdom
What everyone tells you to do
Walk into any SaaS marketing conference, and you'll hear the same content advice repeated like gospel. The "proven" strategies that every growth guru swears by:
The Standard SaaS Content Playbook includes comparison posts ("Slack vs. Microsoft Teams"), feature announcements disguised as thought leadership, customer success stories that read like press releases, and how-to guides that explain obvious product features. Then there's the holy trinity of SaaS content: webinars about industry trends, whitepapers behind email gates, and LinkedIn posts with generic business advice.
This conventional wisdom exists for good reasons. These formats work - they're proven, measurable, and relatively safe. Comparison posts capture high-intent search traffic. Customer stories provide social proof. How-to content demonstrates product value. Most importantly, this approach is scalable and doesn't require creative risks.
But here's where it falls apart in practice: when everyone follows the same playbook, the playbook becomes invisible. Your comparison post gets lost among 50 others published that week. Your customer success story sounds identical to every other SaaS company's success story. Your LinkedIn thought leadership blends into the endless scroll of business platitudes.
The conventional approach treats content like a volume game - publish more, rank higher, get more leads. But in today's attention economy, volume without differentiation is just expensive noise. What you need isn't more content; you need content that makes people stop, think, and remember your brand when they're ready to buy.
The solution isn't abandoning proven formats entirely. It's about approaching them from angles your competitors haven't thought of, using insights and perspectives they can't copy because they come from your unique experience and worldview.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The wake-up call came during a quarterly review with a B2B SaaS client. Despite publishing 12 blog posts, 8 LinkedIn articles, and 4 customer case studies that quarter, their organic traffic was flat, social engagement was declining, and most importantly, nobody was talking about their brand.
We were doing everything "right" according to the standard SaaS marketing playbook. Our comparison posts ranked well for target keywords. Our case studies followed all the best practices. Our content calendar was perfectly organized around industry themes and product features.
But something was fundamentally broken. Our content was forgettable. People might read it, but they weren't sharing it, discussing it, or remembering it days later. We were creating content for search engines and lead scoring systems, not for actual humans.
The turning point came during an unrelated project where I was helping an e-commerce client with their content strategy. I noticed they were using tactics I'd never seen in SaaS: product unboxing videos, behind-the-scenes stories, seasonal trend predictions, and lifestyle content that barely mentioned their products directly.
Their audience engagement was through the roof. Comments, shares, saves - metrics that SaaS marketers often ignore because they're harder to tie to revenue. But here's what I realized: high engagement content builds the awareness that eventually drives conversions, even if the attribution isn't direct.
That's when I started asking: what if we approached SaaS content creation like e-commerce brands, media companies, or even entertainment platforms? What if we stopped trying to educate prospects about our features and started trying to genuinely capture their attention first?
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's exactly how I transformed boring SaaS content into scroll-stopping awareness drivers, using what I call the Cross-Industry Content Mining framework:
Step 1: Industry Reconnaissance
Instead of studying competitor content, I started following creators and brands in completely different industries. Fashion brands for visual storytelling techniques. Food bloggers for behind-the-scenes authenticity. Tech YouTubers for explanation frameworks. Entertainment companies for hook strategies.
For my B2B SaaS client, I spent two weeks analyzing how Netflix announces new shows, how fashion brands launch collections, and how food companies tell ingredient stories. The goal wasn't to copy these tactics directly, but to understand the underlying psychology that makes content shareable and memorable.
Step 2: The Translation Process
I developed a simple framework: take a high-engagement content format from another industry and ask "How could this work for a SaaS company?" For example, Netflix's "behind the scenes" content became "behind the code" - showing actual development processes, bug fixes, and feature iterations in real-time.
Fashion brand seasonal lookbooks became "quarterly feature showcases" presented with the same visual quality and storytelling approach as luxury brands. Food companies' ingredient spotlights became "integration spotlights" - deep dives into how different tools work together in customer workflows.
Step 3: The Founder's Perspective Angle
Here's where I discovered the secret sauce: the founder's personal journey and opinions are infinitely more interesting than product features. Instead of "5 Ways Our Tool Improves Productivity," we created "Why I Built This Feature After My Worst Client Meeting Ever." Personal stories with business lessons attached.
One piece that went viral was titled "I Almost Shut Down Our Startup Because of This UI Decision." It told the real story behind a product pivot, included actual screenshots of the failed interface, and ended with insights about user feedback. Zero product pitches, maximum engagement.
Step 4: The Documentary Approach
I started treating content creation like documentary filmmaking. Instead of explaining what the product does, we showed what problems it solves in real customer environments. We created video series following actual customers through their daily workflows, highlighting pain points and solutions naturally.
This meant getting customer permission, setting up proper video equipment, and creating content that felt more like mini-documentaries than marketing materials. The authenticity was impossible to fake and impossible for competitors to replicate without the same customer relationships.
Behind-the-Scenes
Document real development processes, team decisions, and product evolution rather than polished case studies
Cross-Pollination
Study high-engagement content from fashion, entertainment, and food industries to inspire SaaS adaptations
Personal Stakes
Share founder stories with real consequences rather than generic business advice and thought leadership
Documentary Style
Follow customers through actual workflows instead of creating theoretical use case scenarios
The results weren't immediate, but they were undeniable. Within six months, our unconventional content approach delivered metrics that traditional SaaS content rarely achieves:
Engagement Quality Over Quantity: Our average content engagement rate increased by 340%, with comments becoming actual conversations rather than generic praise. People started sharing posts with specific insights highlighted, and our content began appearing in industry newsletters we'd never heard of.
More importantly, brand recall improved dramatically. In follow-up surveys, prospects could accurately describe our company's personality and approach, even if they couldn't remember specific product features. This brand clarity translated into shorter sales cycles because prospects came to demos already understanding our differentiation.
The founder-focused content created an unexpected side effect: recruitment became easier. Top talent started reaching out because they wanted to work for a company that thought differently about business problems. This wasn't a planned outcome, but it demonstrated how authentic content attracts aligned people across the entire business ecosystem.
Perhaps most significantly, our content started getting referenced in competitor sales calls. Prospects would mention our approaches and ask why other vendors weren't thinking about problems the same way. This meant our content strategy was actually influencing the entire market conversation, positioning us as thought leaders rather than feature vendors.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Looking back on this content transformation, several critical lessons emerged that challenge conventional SaaS marketing wisdom:
Lesson 1: Authenticity beats optimization every time. Our highest-performing content came from real stories with messy details, not polished case studies. Prospects connected with struggles and honest mistakes more than sanitized success stories.
Lesson 2: Cross-industry inspiration is infinitely more valuable than competitor analysis. Studying what other SaaS companies do keeps you trapped in the same thinking patterns. Looking at how completely different industries solve attention and engagement problems opens up creative possibilities.
Lesson 3: The founder's voice is your most underutilized asset. Generic business content written by marketing teams sounds like generic business content. But founder stories, perspectives, and decision-making processes are inherently unique and impossible to replicate.
Lesson 4: Don't measure awareness content like lead generation content. Shares, saves, comments, and brand mention quality matter more than immediate conversions. Awareness builds compound interest over time.
Lesson 5: Behind-the-scenes beats front-and-center. People are fascinated by how things actually work, not just what they do. Process stories, failure analyses, and decision documentation engage audiences more than product demonstrations.
Lesson 6: When everyone zigs, zag strategically. Being different isn't enough - you need to be different in ways that genuinely serve your audience better than conventional approaches. Contrarian for the sake of contrarian backfires.
Lesson 7: Content differentiation compounds. Once you establish a unique content voice and approach, each piece builds on the previous ones, creating a brand personality that becomes increasingly difficult for competitors to match.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups looking to implement this unconventional approach:
Start with your founder's most controversial industry opinions and turn them into content series
Document your actual product development process with full transparency
Study how media companies create binge-worthy content and adapt those hooks for business topics
Focus on engagement metrics over lead metrics for the first 6 months to build true awareness
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores adapting these awareness tactics:
Share the real stories behind product sourcing, supplier relationships, and inventory decisions
Create seasonal content that positions your brand perspective, not just your products
Document customer unboxing experiences and authentic usage scenarios rather than staged photos
Build content around lifestyle integration rather than product features alone