Hotjar Content Marketing Teardown + 5 Takeaways

Want to improve your content marketing strategy? 

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, you can learn from companies who are already seeing awesome results with their content.

Today's example: Hotjar.

About the company:

Hotjar's Behavior Analytics software makes it easy to go beyond traditional web analytics and understand what users are really doing on your site. Visualize behavior with Heatmaps. Eliminate guesswork with Recordings. Understand the reasons behind behavior with Surveys and Feedback (source: Capterra).

In this post, we’ll do a teardown of their content strategy to see what works for them.

You’ll get actionable takeaways that you can use to improve your own blog posts.

Disclaimer: We don’t work with Hotjar and haven’t worked on any of their content. All credit goes to their team!

Let’s jump in.

Takeaway #1: Own Your Top of Funnel Terms

Hotjar understands who their customer is, and what they care about. 

Top-of-Funnel (TOFU) keywords don’t drive immediate conversions, but they’re a good way to add your brand to the initial consideration stage of the buyer journey.

Some of these keywords Hotjar rank for include:

• survey question
• close ended questions
• market research
• user personas

By owning these terms, HotJar positions themselves as a trusted advisor to people interested in customer research. It links Hotjar directly to the deeper pain point someone has.

It’s also a perfect chance to show off your product to a big audience. 

In the article “Survey questions 101: over 70 survey question examples + types of surveys and FAQs“, there’s nice screenshots of HotJar that fit into the posts well. Ahrefs data says the keyword has a volume of 26,000 searches every month. Hotjar is getting in front of those people for free.

It’s a perfect way to add their software into the top-of-funnel stage and position themselves as an authority in the field of customer feedback.

Bottom-of-funnel content because drives conversions, but going after top-of-funnel keywords is a great long-term play.

Takeaway #2: Don’t Be Afraid to Mention Your Competitors

No one likes to mention competitors, but it can work in your favour if done tastefully.

In Hotjar’s post, ”Top 5 session replay tools for analyzing user behavior”, they include multiple companies that can be classed as competitors: FullStory, Smartlook, Mouseflow, Crazy Egg.

They trust their visitors to make the right buying decision. Instead of doing a hard sell, they emphasize why Hotjar is a fit for a certain type of person/company, with certain needs. 

They highlight key features of their competitors, and are honest about their limitations. The key is that they never criticize them -- that’s never a good look.

Now, you may not want to mention or link to your competitors. But, if even if your visitors end up choosing your competitors it’s a good thing for your article. Google rewards the most relevant post for a given keyword. If people are using your article to find the best solution for their needs, your article fulfills the search intent and is doing its job well.

If your product is at the top of the list post (it should be), you’ll get the vast majority of clicks anyway.
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Takeaway #3: Product Screenshots Everywhere

The great thing about SaaS content marketing is that you can add product screenshots and it won’t feel like you’re selling to the reader.

Hotjar consistently adds screenshots to improve their points and articles.

Check out the example below:

The screenshot fits contextually into the article and helps the reader understand what an off-site survey looks like in practice.

It’s also a good way to improve product engagement. Readers will learn about your features from your content, then head to your product to test them out for themselves.

If you create content that is useful for your existing customers, it’ll help them use your product more successfully and improve retention.

Takeaway #4: Be As Helpful As You Can

Giving your audience free things is good.

Whether it’s templates, examples (see  below), or practical strategy advice, your brand will be seen as an authority figure if you give people the answers to what they need help with.

Hotjar shows practical examples of the topics they talk about.

In the example below, they’re giving a variety of examples of close and open-ended questions that their users can go and test on their own customers.

Giving your readers free information helps them succeed in their business, and with your product. 

In this example, even if someone didn’t sign up to Hotjar immediately, the reader will remember them as being helpful. They might bookmark the resource and come back to it later.

If they need a solution like theirs in the future, they’ll check them out before they look at their competitors.

Takeaway #5: Answer Every Related Question

People use Google because they have questions.

At the bottom of big articles, like this one on market research, they include an FAQ section.

FAQs are a good way to get your content picked up by Google’s FAQ sections and featured snippets for relevant terms.

If you’re leaving sections out of your content because you don’t think it’s fully relevant, there’s no harm in throwing in a short and structured FAQ section.

It’s a good way to optimize your post for long tail keywords that are still relevant, or link out to other relevant posts on your site.

For this term, Hotjar’s article shows up in Featured Snippet, as well as one of the People also ask boxes. 

Summary

• Own Your Top of Funnel Terms
• Don’t Be Afraid to Mention Your Competitors
• Screenshots Everywhere
• Be As Helpful As You Can
• Answer Every Related Question