Marketing

Great Content Strategy in Action: Fishbowl’s Leap from Thought Leader to Market Leader

July 15, 2013

Cheryl Connor kicks off a three-part series highlighting some of the most innovative and successful examples of content strategy online by diving into inventory management solution Fishbowl and its focus on authentic thought leadership.

Content Strategy Example: Fishbowl Inventory's Thought Leadership

As the head of a PR and digital communications agency (and as a columnist who produces a fair amount of content as well, in my role as a contributing writer for Forbes), I have been beating the drum for great and authentic content for a very long time. Here’s my most recent article with ideas for how to make your content . . . well, if not mesmerizing, at least highly authentic and interesting: The Kingdom of Content: What Makes It Authentic? (And Why Does It Matter So Much?)
Jonathan Crowe has been spreading the anthem of authentic content in the OpenView Labs and Blog community as well: Are You Pushing Phony Content? 3 Keys to Authentic Content Marketing
To keep the dialogue moving, over the next few weeks I’d like to share a series of case studies, highlighting three companies who do content exceptionally well:

These three companies have programs and strategies that are highly different from one another. But all three have found unique ways to innovate programs around their strengths in content that have helped their companies grow. Perhaps you will find some inspiration for your own strategies in these three stories as well.
This week I’m kicking things off with a look inside inventory management solution Fishbowl. Be sure to come back next Monday when the series continues with a look inside sales automation platform InsideSales.com’s innovative and successful content strategy.
fishbowl

Fishbowl Inventory

Provider of Fishbowl Inventory software, available as integrated inventory management for QuickBooks or asset tracking for enterprise use.
Headed by David K. Williams, CEO, and Mary Michelle Scott, President. Williams and Scott are co-authors of monthly columns for HBR.org. David is a highly popular columnist for Forbes.com and author of The 7 Non-Negotiables of Winning, from Wiley & Sons, premiering July 29.
Two years ago, Fishbowl was a company that excelled in software sales and growth — the company has now been an Inc 500/5,000 and Deloitte Fast 500 winner for six years running — but the company knew that it would need out-of-the-box thinking to continue such a high rate of growth.
The company had always innovated in its business processes, using Pay Per Click (PPC), content marketing, SEO and social media programs to provide inside sales teams with 100 percent of their leads. The firm had also survived several jugular issues in its now 11 year history, emerging from near closure in 2004 to thrive even through the recession. In 2010, when the majority investor needed to divest himself quickly, the business made history again with a successful company buyback during a dire economy and is now 100% employee owned.
In the aftermath of that miraculous incident the company began to formulate the content and communications strategies that have made this small (100 employee) company renowned round the globe.

3 Elements that Make Fishbowl’s Content Strategy Tick

At its core, the company’s content strategy revolves around three focus areas:

1) YouTube Videos

While traditional firms were just discovering visual social media or struggling to come up with the next “viral hit”, Fishbowl created piece after piece of content such as “Kirk’s Tackle Box” (with CMO Kirk Tanner) showing straightforward information about business and inventory management strategy in an interesting and visual way.

2) Open Partner Support

The company created a Facebook page for customer ideas, complaints, and feedback that is wide open. Customers have become friends and partners. When they complain, they complain openly — no problems are hidden, and the customers and company (and the user community) can work together toward getting their ideas implemented and their issues resolved.

3) Active Blogs

Fishbowl actually maintains a total of five company blogs based on various needs and interests, which helps to drive contacts to leads and leads into sales far more efficiently than the company’s PPC efforts alone. Blog articles have become increasingly meaningful and informational as opposed to what social media icon Chris Brogan labels “selly”.
Customers are sometimes invited to guest post. And since websites are generally able to optimize for either closing sales or nurturing customers, the Fishbowl blog (as well as the company’s more recently created VIP newsstand) has increasingly fulfilled the role of nurturing customer relationships as the website itself is optimized to facilitate sales.

Taking the Company’s Content Strategy to the Next Level

Out of these efforts, the company had achieved the position of #17 in web searches on the terms of “QuickBooks inventory management” or even the generic terms such as “inventory control”. Not bad.
David Williams, CEO of Fishbowl
But here’s where the content strategy got really interesting. (Disclosure: Fishbowl is an agency client, which allowed me to be present and even participate directly in the shaping of the company’s current content strategy and some of its goals.)
As the company contemplated the miracle of its successful buyback at the 11th hour, I jokingly remarked to Williams and Scott, “This one is a case study for Harvard Business Review.” Then, as the thought took hold, we remarked to each other, “Why not?”
On the company’s next product press tour, there we went, tenaciously pitching our story to online editor Dan McGinn at Harvard Business Review. He was intrigued. Williams and Scott became contributing columnists. Realizing there was little to be gained by shining a floodlight on the company’s most vulnerable hours, however, they wrote openly and candidly for the benefit of other small and growing companies about their unique business strategies, instead:

The articles went viral. Wiley & Sons contacted Williams and asked if he’d consider writing a book. The HBR blogs also led to a permanent role for Williams as one of the most popular contributors to Forbes.com Entrepreneurs with his column, “A View from the Bowl”.
After Williams’s first mega viral hit for Entrepreneurs, Fishbowl noticed something extraordinary — 200,000 new visitors hit the company’s site in the space of a day. The SEO results moved from position #17 to #6. We laughed, knowing the position would surely retreat to its former rank after the remarkable events of the day. It did not. As Williams’ readership continued to soar, the SEO rank continued to climb to the #1 position, where the company has remained to this day.
7 Non-Negotiables of Winning
The business concepts Williams writes about have become synonymous with Fishbowl. In the final month prior to the official release of The 7 Non-Negotiables of Winning it has already been named to the Amazon Top 10 List for Business and Leadership. With every software purchase, new and renewing customers will receive a copy of the book. And through regional and national presentations, audiences will not only become familiar with the 7 Non Negotiables principles, they will learn about Fishbowl, as well.
The concepts will also provide a new revenue opportunity for certification and training. As these businesses learn to improve their strategies and their operations through the 7 Non Negotiables, guess where they’ll obtain their business and inventory software? In most cases, from Fishbowl.

How Fishbowl’s Content Strategy Has Made a Big Splash

In a nutshell, the company’s content strategy has achieved the following:

  • A front running position as a provider of visual social media (particularly through YouTube).
  • Long-term standing as the #1 non-paid search result for the basic terms of inventory software, inventory management, and inventory control (in a field that spans the entire spectrum from shareware to advanced MRP/ERP).
  • A global following for the 7 Non Negotiables strategy for principles-based leadership.
  • An energized and permanent readership for Williams’s ongoing Forbes column, “A View From the Bowl”.
  • Permanent association around the theme phrases and principles of “Failing Up,” “Everyone Leads,” and “Building a 100-year company”.
  • A growing following around the hashtag search term #7NNs.
  • Successful emergence from the niche sector of inventory management into the broad and universal sector of emerging business.

Not bad at all.
Come back next Monday for Cheryl’s look inside the content strategy at InsideSales.com.

How are you engaging in thought leadership? What are other examples of companies taking their content strategies to the next level?

 

Founder

<strong>Cheryl Snapp Conner</strong> is founder and managing partner of <a href="http://www.snappconner.com/">Snapp Conner PR</a>. She has more than 22 years of experience in public relations for leading technology firms and is a frequent author and speaker on business communication. She is also a regular <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/">contributor to Forbes</a>.