5 SaaS Companies Nailing Template Marketing - Inbound Marketing's Carrot Flavour

Yes, this article's title makes very little sense.

But neither do some of these ice cream flavours at Humphrys Locombe:

They even have carrot flavor. And Jalapenos. And Corn.

Ok, I'll stop.

You would "think" that people wouldn't have an appetite for this kind of an ice cream gig. Well, think again. According to Square2Marketing, their outlets are often found to have long queues. Their Facebook page has over 10,000 likes. Their Twitter account has over 277,000 followers. How about that?

Explanation? I guess having unconventional ice cream flavours generates intrigue and interest among the common consumer. But that's not enough, of course. Humphrys backed that up with ice cream that apparently tastes pretty good too.

Inbound marketing requires something similar at times. Not only does your content need to exude quality, you also need to keep experimenting with various content types and creative executions to engage your audience in novel ways.

While building a business plan recently for a new SaaS product that I'm working on, I did some online research to see what the SaaS world was doing in terms of inbound marketing.

I saw much of the usual - blog posts, gated content, E-Books, infographics, industry articles, case studies, whitepapers and datasheets. But I noticed another interesting trend. Showcasing Templates. Product sites were putting up extensive repositories of templates to tickle the creative senses of people and also, of course, demonstrate what's possible with their product. This strategy is what I call "Template Marketing".

For example, I saw a couple of email marketing apps host a comprehensive directory of email layouts/templates complete with interesting template titles, layouts, colours, copy etc. Now, yes, sites do typically show what is possible with their product via screenshots but traditionally, a searchable repository of available templates would be presented only after the user signs up/makes a purchase and is in the midst of using the application.

The interesting part was that the content pages weren't solely geared towards pushing the actual product in the user's face. The templates offered real value independent of the SaaS business as well. I was left inspired after browsing through them. I got several creative ideas by simply scanning the various web designs and email templates for my own purposes. In other words, audiences not looking to buy any product could still derive value from those template showcases. And that's where the site takes a "share of mind". That's effective inbound marketing for you.

Too abstract?

Right then, let's dive into a list of companies that do this very well. By no means is this comprehensive, so feel free to add to this list in the comments!

1. Campaign Monitor - Email Templates

I googled "free email templates" expecting to see a bunch of content portals and theme marketplaces occupy the search results. Instead, the top result I saw was this SaaS app:

I bet their snatching decent traffic by topping keywords like that.

Click on the link and you land on this treasure box:

Apart from the fact that the call-to-action is encouraging users to sign up, take a look at all those email template ideas! Inspiration galore.

2. Mailchimp - Email Templates

Speaking of email, you know that email marketing juggernauts Mailchimp can't be far behind from the action. I removed the word "free" from the previous keyword search and guess who popped up as the top organic result?

And again, you click through and you get email templates eye-candy:

Notice how front-and-center the templates are kept. As a user, you're thinking about how your next email campaign could potentially look like while the product is sub-consciously being fed. What's interesting is that I'm already a Mailchimp user and I still found this page useful!

3. Canva - Design Templates

Let's up the ante. Let's say you're searching for something as generic as "design templates". You're hunting for inspiration for a work of art to include in your next blog, social post or presentation. You key in the magic words and you see this:

You get curious about what that is all about. You click through and are greeted by this gorgeous page with inspiration overload from one the hottest SaaS startups in the design world:

What I really like about Canva's execution is that they allow users to browse by category and search through their listings to facilitate them to quickly find an idea they would truly love.

And take a look at that pagination count! 358 pages of visual goodness. That's quantity and quality - a truly amazing hook into their application.

4. Webflow - Website Templates

A lot of businesses are looking to make websites for themselves now in this digital era and there is no shortage of powerful SaaS applications out there to help you get there.

One of the buzzwords people love to throw out is that they need something that looks awesome and is thoroughly "responsive". So, I thought I'd see what comes up when I search for "responsive website templates":

Webflow, the cutting-edge drag and drop website creator, topped the organic rankings.

Let's take a peek at what this page had to offer:

Boom! A beautiful assortment of web designs is laid before you complete with a nice search bar and category browsing nav tabs. Most of these are paid templates but scroll down a bit more and you'll see a whole bunch of free ones too. And just generally, if you're a designer looking for what's trending, this page is a fantastic resource to get ideas.

5. Workable - Job Description Templates

If I was to think of what kind of template marketing an applicant tracking system could potentially do, I would probably suggest a showcase of different Career Page executions.

But that's me.

People at Workable thought otherwise. They chose to take a more epic route by creating an entire encyclopedia of job descriptions complete with responsibilities and job briefs - content that even recruiters/agencies not interested in an ATS at the time might be looking for!

Google rewards them well for the quality of content that they've built - again, a top rank:

 And then they back it up with an intuitive interface:

Here's a sample job description page:

Their job description content is concise and generic enough to be used in a variety of situations. (I've even used some of the templates while hiring for a few positions recently). And it serves as an effective foot-in-the-door for Workable to get people to also consider their primary offering. After all, people searching for job descriptions are perfectly relevant leads for their ATS product.

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That's my list folks. All in all, when you're dealing with inbound marketing ice cream, think about some interesting flavours you can serve.

Over to you. What flavours are you serving? What kind of twists have you applied to your content? Do you think your business could think of a template marketing play? Know of other sites that do this pretty well? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.