Build a free tool, not another blog post
A small free tool that solves one real problem can bring you traffic, links and leads for years.
Content marketing isn’t the only way to be useful in public. You can also build something: a calculator, a checker, a generator, a grader. One small tool that gives people a useful result in seconds, made by the company that can solve the bigger problem behind it.
HubSpot did this early with Website Grader. Type in a URL, get a free score and tips for your site. HubSpot’s own blog says the tool launched in February 2007 and was created to generate buzz, organic and viral traffic, inbound links and leads, and to support the sales process. It went on to grade over 2 million website URLs, and each report arrived with HubSpot’s name on it.
The trick is alignment. Your tool should solve a problem one step before your product does, so the people who use it are the people who’d pay you. A fee calculator for a payments app. A subject-line tester for an email tool. Keep it single-purpose and instant, and don’t hide the basic result behind a signup wall.
The example
- Instead of
- “New blog post: 10 Tips to Get Your Invoices Paid Faster”
- Try
- “Free tool: paste a client’s payment history, get a late-payment risk score in 5 seconds”
Before you flush
List three questions your customers google right before they need you, then pick one that a simple calculator or checker could answer instantly.