Accounts and finance is not typically the sexiest department of a business. It typically conjures thoughts of accountants hunched over calculators and deep-diving into spreadsheets—but the industry is swiftly changing. The market is turning to automation, and the industry market size is expected to grow from $3.74 billion in 2023 to $4.5 billion in 2024, according to data published by The Business Research Company.
But, despite North America generating the highest revenue in the accounts payable automation market in 2023, it’s been reported that over 80% of US-based businesses still use checks, at least occasionally.
And for increasingly globalized markets and businesses, ensuring complete compliance and a fully streamlined process is crucial. Which is where SoftCo comes in.
Here, we’ll go through exactly how we’d tackle this project through a well-researched, SEO-led content strategy that can boost visibility, performance and help generate leads for your brand.
Let’s jump in!
Analysis: SoftCo’s competitive landscape
Despite being headquartered in Dublin, a massive 80% of your customer base is in the USA where, as previously mentioned, businesses are still relying on paper checks. This provides a huge opportunity for you to streamline these outdated business processes in some of the largest corporations based in this region.
Off the bat, we noticed that there are plenty of relevant keywords in Google ads that are increasing by upwards of 900%—both YOY and also QOQ. Many of these ads were appearing for competitors, including Tipalti, Wise and others. However, SoftCo doesn’t appear to be bidding on these terms, which are considered to be low competition.
We’d recommend taking a look at Paid activity from a search perspective, and conducting an audit of existing keywords you’re bidding on and looking for opportunities where competition may be less, but with a potentially higher ROI.
SoftCo vs. Tipalti
Taking a look at the competitors within this region, Tipalti is one of the biggest players in the industry, taking up over 90% of the traffic share across the major competitors and ranking for over 130,000 organic keywords. In comparison, you currently hold 1% of the US traffic share, with 4,000 keywords ranking organically. As well as this, 95% of these ranking keywords are non-branded, meaning Tipalti is appearing for industry-related queries, as opposed to users searching for the brand itself.
A quick audit of the Tipalti website shows headers across the website are well optimized, with relevant terms that allow readers to scan through the page and quickly navigate through the website without having to read through paragraphs of content. Collapsable menus also allow users to click and choose which content they’d rather read through, ensuring there’s not an overwhelming amount of content on screen for them to scroll through.
In order to go up against such a key performer in the industry, we’d recommend a complete content overhaul, backed by solid keyword research, in order to get SoftCo ranking for more keywords and in the top positions for tier 1 keywords. We’d also look at reorganizing the landing pages in order to create content that’s easily digestible and user friendly, in a similar way that Tipalti has done.
Alongside a content refresh, we suggest taking a look at the layout and graphics on your website. Engaging storytelling shows, as well as tells. Tipalti’s homepage features more imagery and animations that show the benefits available, summarizing the ease of use of the platform to the user.
For example, alongside the messaging “80% of manual workload eliminated” is an image of a smiling worker. In contrast, SoftCo pairs “industry-leading innovative AutoML Matching Engine” with a cryptic screenshot of your software. We’ll work with you to update your imagery to show your audience how your software can benefit them. After all, a picture is worth 1000 words.
Similarly, using the right language to speak to your audience is crucial. Tipalti does this well by using clear, concise language that even newbies can understand. On the other hand, SoftCo language is more technical and feature-oriented, speaking to industry professionals as opposed to the wider teams. After all, it may be founders and executive assistants that come across your website instead of professional procurement departments, who may not fully understand what your software actually does.
SoftCo vs. Medius
Another one of your major competitors is Medius, which owns 3% of the traffic share in comparison to other competitors. A little closer to SoftCo, Medius ranks for just over 6,000 organic keywords. One thing they do well is consistent blog posting, publishing a few blogs every month, which are nicely spaced out (as opposed to publishing multiple articles within a short space of time).
Regular, consistent posting signals to Google—and other search engines—to continually crawl your website, which leads to improved rankings for your targeted keywords. This regular posting could be in the form of blog posts targeting new keywords or through refreshing service pages to ensure it’s kept up-to-date.
Medius does this regular posting well. Blogs range from how-to guides to comparison pieces to discussing trending topics, ensuring that the reader (and search engines) always has something fresh to read through.
There are also content blocks that Medius features on its homepage that SoftCo may benefit from, such as case studies, awards, and a savings calculator. Having these prominent features on the homepage clearly shows your USP to the audience without them relying on clicking through your website.
A coherent content strategy to build SoftCo’s pipeline
One of the biggest pain points in accounts payable management is the lengthy approval times. In fact, 60% of AP leaders consider this to be a major challenge in their day-to-day jobs. And that’s exactly what SoftCo can help with, and the messaging we can help push.
As you explained to us: “We develop and sell accounts payable and procure to pay automation software. The whole idea is that we reduce the number of manual touchpoints from that process.” This allows customers to drastically reduce the admin work behind the accounts payable process, freeing up time to dedicate to other tasks, and is a USP we want to push to your audience.
It’s crucial to understand exactly what SoftCo—and competitors—does, so that we can conduct comprehensive research, which will influence our strategy. We’ve taken a deep dive into the industry, competitors, and even the audience to come up with a plan to kickstart a campaign with SoftCo.
Deepen US market penetration
From your own research, the US currently makes up 80% of SoftCo’s market—providing plenty of opportunity for us to help you break through the noise. As discussed, American businesses are partial to paying via check, which is an outdated method of finance management.
Luckily, we know the US market very well. We’ve worked with fintechs such as Wise and Chipper on expanding their US client base, and our American CEO has extensive experience in B2B SaaS marketing—specifically in the US markets.
We can put your brand in front of those decision makers, ensuring specific key terms are targeted, frequent questions are answered, and solutions to common problems are provided. We’ll do this through carefully targeted keywords aligned to the commercial search intent of your customers, as well as optimizing the website for branded terms. The American market is typically loyal to its favorite brands—especially when that product actually delivers.
We’ll also implement specific lead generation strategies and engagement drivers, such as clear CTAs around the website, offering free product demos, and even special offers for enquiring customers. Providing a clear customer journey and focusing on excellent user experience and satisfaction naturally leads to a drive in traffic, engagement and, ultimately, leads.
Stenn
We’ve seen great success with Stenn, which is an online platform for financing small and medium-sized businesses in international trade. When it came to expanding its market share in India and China, we turned to creating premium assets such as one-pager PDFs and whitepapers, helping to increase its share of voice in these territories.
Payoneer
Similarly, we worked closely with Payoneer in order to improve visibility in Central Asia. By creating SEO-led blog posts, webinars and very geographically specific content, we helped it expand into this new market and the team was so impressed with the results, we’re replicating the process to move Payoneer into the North American and Israeli markets.
Results we saw from the initial strategy included:
- 154% increase in users,
- 265% increase in direct traffic, and
- 105% increase in conversions for users in Central Asia.
We also created an infographic centered around the Payment Landscape in Kazakhstan, showcasing the best ways to send and receive money internationally, with a focus on Kazakhstan, in a visual way. This went viral with shares on Telegram, and led to a 988% YOY increase in traffic from Kazakhstan users.
Chipper Cash
Based in San Francisco, Chipper Cash is a no-fee peer-to-peer cross-border payment service for people across Africa and the African diaspora. Our strategy with the company was to target three ideal customer profiles (ICPs) around the world, ranging from the everyday user, to African folks in the US and UK, and potential employees to attract fintech talent.
We provided a concise content calendar that targeted Chipper’s main keywords, alongside “shoulder niche” subjects that the audience was interested in (we chose the 2022 World Cup, creating content surrounding the teams representing Africa in the tournament). We also provided web development support.
Results included 1.6 million new website visitors, gained between Q4 2021 and Q1 2023. We also saw:
- 61,000 new visitors MOM (January 2023 – February 2023)
- 36,000 sessions driven by organic search
- 139% increase in organic searches YOY (February 2022 – February 2023)
Wise
Formerly known as TransferWise, this company makes it easy to send money around the world by making transfers free. The main goal for this campaign was to lower customer acquisition costs, and we did this through content marketing backed by SEO-led keyword research. This allowed us to create truly helpful content that the audience was actively searching for.
By creating these useful pieces of content, we were able to grow organic traffic to the Wise website by 10x in the span of almost a year.
Creating a piece of content for SoftCo will require US-based keyword research, which will allow us to create an organic-focused strategy that targets these key terms and even highlights potential paid activity. For example, if we find that there’s a high search volume for ‘automating invoice management’, we can create a blog post that details what someone needs to do in order to set this up—without delving into the how. Then, we can include a CTA to sign up to a free webinar (that’s pre-recorded but gives the impression that it’s free) that goes into detail about how to set up invoice management with SoftCo.
Better briefs = better content
Content is king. And we’re not being biased. We work closely with our clients to develop specific messaging that differentiates it from competitors, speaking directly to the customers to tell human-centered stories about the business.
With Grapeseed Media, we’ve partnered with their technical team to learn everything about the product, ensuring that this specialist information shines through in every piece of content we create. This means working alongside their team to create high quality, informed content briefs, so the writer knows exactly what information needs to be included, and always in the brand tone of voice.
We’d replicate this strategy with SoftCo, and work closely with your team to immerse ourselves in the tone of voice, the brand vision and mission, and the product itself, so we know exactly what’s being offered and any pain points customers may be facing. This way, we’d know what kind of content needs to be created and in what format the audience will respond best to—such as tutorials, thought leadership blogs, whitepapers and reports, and infographics—to better target those potential leads.
When it comes to creating briefs, we’re thought leaders in our industry. We’re constantly working on building better briefs and improving how agencies work with their clients. We can be your partners in developing briefs that deliver high-performing content that drives leads and generates conversions. You can learn more about how to brief an agency here.
Optimizing web copy
Creating optimized and relevant web copy is crucial when it comes to differentiating yourself from competitors. To understand where your gaps may lie, we work on understanding everything we can about your specific audience, by prioritizing chats and interviews with SMEs, existing customers, and product leads.
Having a complete understanding about the audience we’re talking to allows us to create web copy that stands out to them, in formats that they’re going to respond best to. After all, there’s no point in creating a website that’s not going to be clicked on.
Once we know what needs to be done, we focus on optimizing the content and pages. Our content, design, and web development teams work together to craft beautiful web pages to house snappy content that will generate leads. Just look at what we achieved with Pepper in a website overhaul—which we completed in just six weeks!
Brand differentiation
This is crucial in order to help your business stand out. And we do this very well. Creating comparison content is just one way we focus on this. By creating premium content assets such as whitepapers and ebooks, we attract readers to client websites to learn about the various platforms available and the benefits for them. While this does mean talking about direct competitors, it also gives us an opportunity to share your unique selling points that readers may not otherwise know about.
However, we know that this may be seen as difficult for SoftCo, considering that, by your own account, it’s “difficult to differentiate one [brand] from the other”.
But this isn’t a challenge for us. We’ve seen success stories from clients who are in equally challenging industries. For example, we have created comparison content for Grapeseed which is generating almost 1,000 sessions per month and appearing in the top 3 positions on Google SERPs for over 40 keywords throughout June 2024.
We love a challenge, and we’re certain we’d help SoftCo generate equally impressive results through comparison content in order to help you stand out from the crowd. In fact, as you explained on our call: “When we’re demonstrating to our customers what we can do and what competitors can do, their technology is nowhere near as good as ours.”
Well, Daragh, we can help you push that message out there through clear comparison content.
SoftCo: let’s grow your market share with content that works
One thing we’re really, really good at is working closely with our clients. We’d be able to fully immerse ourselves in your brand and business, working closely with your product specialists, marketers and writers to create content that sings to your audience.
As part of our thorough onboarding process, we’ll conduct interviews and surveys with you, your customers and your prospective customers in order to identify your ICPs, customer pain points and ideal outcomes, and complete competitor research to fully understand where you stand in the industry.
On top of this, we’ll audit your website and current organic (and paid) positions to see how well you currently align with the recommended positioning and messaging. This audit will consist of on- and off-page SEO, UX and design, content, social media, engagement, and user journey through your website.
We’ll also create a benchmarking document, so you can clearly see your current standing, which will accompany a customized data dashboard that’s tailored to your KPIs, so you can keep track of all activity we’re working on together—and see those all important results!
