20 Blog Content Playbooks CEOs Used to Get 2m Website Hits

In this article, you’ll discover how top software CEOs harness the power of strategic blog content to attract new users and drive millions in revenue, complete with real-world examples. You will learn from the exact playbooks used by companies like ClickUp, which leveraged competitor-focused articles to kickstart their growth, and Expandi, which generated over a million in free clicks from Google with hyper-practical guides.

You’ll get a 5-part playbook to launch your own high-impact blog content strategy, backed by over 40 case studies you can use as inspiration. These examples are from top Founders like Zeb Evans at ClickUp, Stefan Smulders at Expandi, and Ross Buhrdorf at ZenBusiness, collected directly from keynotes at Founderpath events.

The 5-Part Playbook for High-Growth Blog Content

1. Identify High-Intent Keywords by Solving Problems: Don’t just target what your product does; target the problems your customers have. This includes creating content comparing your tool to competitors. For example, ClickUp’s early strategy involved writing articles like “Asana vs. Trello” to insert themselves into the decision-making process of users looking for a new solution, which helped them bootstrap to $25 million.
2. Create Pillar Content, Guides, and Playbooks: Instead of short, generic posts, focus on creating comprehensive, in-depth guides that establish your authority. Expandi’s CEO, Stefan Smulders, wrote detailed playbooks and “growth hacks” that their audience could immediately implement, which helped them grow to a $7 million run rate in just 20 months with almost no paid acquisition.
3. Leverage Programmatic SEO for Scale: Identify a repeatable content formula and scale it massively. ZenBusiness used programmatic SEO by creating thousands of landing pages combining a core term (“LLC”) with variables like states and cities (e.g., “LLC Florida,” “LLC Austin”), capturing massive long-tail search traffic.
4. Use Free Tools as Content Lead Magnets: Build simple, free tools that solve a small but painful problem for your audience. Neil Patel’s team acquired UberSuggest and offered it for free, turning it into a massive lead generation engine that funnels thousands of leads to his agency, NP Digital, every month.
5. Distribute and Promote in Niche Communities: Don’t just publish and pray. Actively share your content where your target audience congregates. Pavel Ershov from Directual got his initial traction by providing tutorials and webinars to various no-code communities, which was crucial for growing to $15,000 in MRR.

40+ Examples of High-Growth Blog Content Strategies

• Chris Cunningham of ClickUp shared that their initial growth to bootstrapping to $25M came from a strong focus on blogs and SEO. The entire early team, regardless of role, was required to write blog posts every few days and used tools like Market Muse to improve the SEO value of even poorly written drafts.
• The team at ZenBusiness generated massive organic traffic by creating tens of thousands of programmatic SEO pages targeting keywords like “LLC Florida” and “LLC Texas,” helping them dominate search results for business formation queries.
• Expandi’s CEO, Stefan Smulders, relied entirely on content playbooks and guides to grow from $0 to a $7M run rate in 20 months. Their strategy of scraping competitor Facebook groups and then creating targeted content for those users resulted in booking over 40 appointments every week in their early days.
• Joe Hyrkin at Issuu emphasized the importance of creating content for humans, not just algorithms. By shifting their focus to valuable, human-centric content, they aligned their product with user needs, which was a key part of their strategy to become profitable.
• Neil Patel explained how he turned UberSuggest into a powerful lead magnet. By offering the SEO tool for free, it attracts millions of visitors, and 40% of his nine-figure agency’s customers now originate from UberSuggest users who are later upsold on services.
• Omnisend’s CEO, Rytis Lauris, grew his company to $50M ARR by making SEO a core growth driver. His team focused heavily on building domain authority by creating industry research reports that were quoted by top-tier publications like Bloomberg and Forbes, generating high-quality backlinks at scale.
• Marie Martens of Tally took on giants like Typeform by using a “build in public” content strategy. She identified what users disliked about competitors, built those features, and shared the journey publicly, helping her bootstrap to over $600,000 in ARR.
• Directual’s CEO Pavel Ershov achieved his first 50 paying customers and $2,000 in MRR by creating “how-to” articles and tutorials for no-code communities on platforms like HackerNoon, demonstrating the value of targeting niche audiences with educational content.
• Madhav Bhandari, the CEO of Storylane, grew website traffic from 25k to over 150k visitors per month in just three months. He implemented a demo-led SEO strategy, creating thousands of interactive demo pages for “how-to” keywords related to popular SaaS tools his customers use.
• John Doherty of GetCredo generated over $250 million in leads by creating an authoritative industry pricing guide. This single piece of pillar content attracted countless high-quality backlinks and established his company as a thought leader, driving significant organic traffic.
• Sri Swaminathan from Factors.ai highlighted how his team leverages LinkedIn Lives as a primary content format. They can create a live event, repurpose the video for YouTube, transcribe it for a blog post, and create short-form clips, all from a single content session, which helped them grow 6x post-pivot.
• AJ Eckstein, CEO of Creator Match, explained that only 1% of LinkedIn’s one billion users create organic content regularly. He advises brands to fill this gap by producing consistent, valuable content to break through the noise in a relatively untapped channel.
• Charles Dairo, the founder of Beezop, generated over 50 demo requests from a single LinkedIn story. He used a five-step storytelling framework (Problem, Idea, Product, Result, CTA) to explain his founder journey, which resonated deeply and drove 66,000 views organically.
• The CEO of Review Wave, a bootstrapped company that hit $18M in ARR, shared that their early growth was powered by a call center strategy fueled by strong SEO and content that established them as a trusted voice in their niche.
• Armando Biondi from Breadcrumbs shared that while at AdEspresso, they grew to nearly 400,000 monthly unique visitors in three years by focusing on content that had a unique data point, a counter-intuitive perspective, and a compelling narrative, a strategy that compounds over time.
• The founder of API deck, which hit $600k in ARR, used a strategy of focusing on outsourced developers to create API connection content, which increased their speed and authority, allowing them to ship content faster than well-funded competitors.
• Credo’s founder John Doherty published an industry pricing guide which became his most valuable piece of content. This single guide attracted numerous backlinks and positioned his company as an authority, leading to over $300,000 in revenue from one mention on the Moz blog alone.
• Nasheed, the CEO of WeSoar.ai, uses AI to scale content creation for his HR Tech SaaS. He replaced junior marketing roles with AI tools to write blog posts and information security policies, allowing his small team of seven to do the work of 25 people and grow from $1k to $23k in MRR over 12 months.
• Derek Steer, the former CEO of Mode, shared how his co-founder’s high-quality analytical blog posts were critical in their early days. The content, which was entertaining and insightful rather than just educational, built a loyal following of analysts and data scientists who became their first users.
• Adam Sandman of Inflectra, which reached over $10M in ARR, emphasized using AI to generate listicles like “Top 10 Project Management Tools.” These targeted pages have high search intent and allow his small marketing team to produce hundreds of unique content pieces that rank well.
• The team at Factors.ai, which grew 6x after a pivot, uses LinkedIn organic posting as a low-cost, high-leverage channel. Their founders and sales team consistently post relevant content, which builds their personal brands and generates high-intent inbound leads for their marketing analytics platform.
• The founder of Overcast HQ, which grew to a $1.2M run rate in 16 months, used a white-label content strategy to gain market share against a heavily funded competitor. This allowed him to deeply integrate with partners and win deals without a large marketing budget.
• The team at Clearview Social, which reached $2.4M in revenue, built their initial traction through content and a strong personal brand from the founder, who wrote books and spoke at conferences about social media for lawyers before launching the SaaS.
• The CEO of Omnisend noted that even with a domain authority of almost zero, they focused on aggressively building backlinks. They did this through guest posting and producing original research, which was key to scaling their organic traffic and growing to $50M ARR.
• The founder of Directive Consulting, an agency that works with major SaaS brands like Sendoso and ZoomInfo, uses a content methodology called “Customer Generation.” It focuses on creating content that gets people to commit to a sales meeting directly from a platform like LinkedIn, moving beyond traditional MQLs.
• The CEO of Testimonial.to, a bootstrapped company, grew from Twitter-only marketing to an omni-channel approach by building in public. His founder wrote about his journey stopping the sharing of revenue numbers, which got featured on Hacker News and drove significant traffic.
• Anthony Kennada, former CMO of Gainsight, explained that content is the “oxygen of the marketing flywheel.” At Gainsight, they radically served their persona by creating content and events around the emerging “customer success” category, which was foundational to building their $1B brand.
• Kyle Poyar of OpenView detailed how grammarly built hundreds of landing pages answering common grammar questions (e.g., “affect vs. effect”). This user-focused SEO strategy brings in massive traffic from users in their moment of need, who are then introduced to the product.
• Adam Baker, a three-time SaaS founder, described how he uses a five-page Google Doc to manage call scripts. His team reviews recorded calls weekly and iteratively updates the master document, ensuring the whole team benefits from what’s working in sales conversations.
• Irina Novoselsky, CEO of Hootsuite, which has over $200M in revenue, shared that 65% of B2B searches now start on social media, not Google. Her strategy involves creating 13+ pieces of content to engage buyers on social platforms before they ever talk to a sales rep.
• Vladimir Blagojevic of Fullfunnel.io uses an “engagement-based outreach” content strategy on LinkedIn. He identifies prospects who engage with his posts and then reaches out with a relevant offer, achieving a 40%+ response rate and landing five-figure deals.
• Guy Rubin, the founder of ebsta, has grown his company to over $10M in revenue by integrating content with his sales process. His team writes blog posts and articles targeting their ideal customer profile and then uses their sales engagement tool to track which prospects read the content, enabling highly relevant follow-ups.
• The founder of Clearview Social, a tool that grew to $1.5M ARR, started his journey by writing a book on social media for lawyers. This established him as an authority and built an audience, which he then leveraged to launch his SaaS product, turning his expertise into a scalable business.
• The CEO of Reply.io explained how they used content to get their initial traction, including launching free tools and interviewing sales experts for articles. This strategy helped the experts’ audiences discover Reply, contributing to their growth to over 1,000 customers and $100k MRR.
• The CEO of Dealpad, Adam Baker, uses a simple 5-page Google Doc to manage and refine sales scripts and playbooks. By recording and reviewing all sales calls weekly, his team iteratively improves their messaging, a key part of their growth to over $2.4M in ARR.
• The CEO of DashThis, a bootstrapped reporting tool with $4.2M ARR, focused heavily on SEO and helpful content from day one. His strategy was to be a “sniper,” targeting very specific, high-intent keywords and creating comprehensive content that answered user questions better than anyone else.
• Randy Frisch of Uberflip explained how they doubled their ACV to $60k by enabling marketers to create highly personalized content experiences at scale. Their platform allows teams to use existing content assets and tailor destinations for specific accounts and buyers without needing a developer.
• The founder of Izooto, a browser notification platform that hit $98k in MRR, uses content marketing as a primary lead generation channel. They create blog posts and case studies to build their marketing list, which is a key part of their inbound strategy.
• The CEO of WeSoar.ai, an HR tech tool, uses AI to write all of the company’s blog content. This allows a very small team to produce content at scale, a strategy that has been central to their growth from $1k to $23k MRR in one year.
• Adam Sandman of Inflectra, which is over $10M in ARR, shared how they use Generative AI to create listicles and RFP responses. This speeds up their content creation process and allows them to target long-tail keywords and respond to enterprise sales opportunities efficiently.
• The founder of Techpion, Alex, shared how his team achieved 24,000 organic monthly visits by focusing on keywords with high search volume and low difficulty. They also offer discounts to SaaS companies in exchange for writing an article about Techpion, creating a flywheel of backlinks and content.

Conclusion

You have just learned the 5-part playbook for leveraging blog content to add millions in revenue, supported by insights from over 40 top SaaS founders. The common thread is clear: creating genuinely helpful, authoritative content that solves a real problem for a specific audience is the most sustainable way to grow. Whether it’s through programmatic SEO, in-depth playbooks, or repurposing live events, the opportunity to turn your blog into a powerful customer acquisition engine is immense. To get started tracking your own growth and connect your revenue data, get your free Founderpath account today.

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