Work directly with John Bonini to…

start marketing like a content brand

Content Brands is the consulting program that helps B2B companies turn their expertise into a content engine that builds awareness, trust, and an audience that cares every time you publish.

No more boring, disconnected, and undifferentiated content.

Who is this for?

  • You should be doing more with the content you have.

    You feel like there’s a ton of great insights and content locked up in podcast episodes that you’re not doing anything with. You publish, promote a few links, and move on to the next thing without leveraging what you already have.

  • You need a strategy beyond “just publishing stuff.”

    Your blog, social media, podcast, email…everything is siloed, disconnected, and hard to keep up with. The lack of any consistency makes it harder to see any results. You need to tie it all together.

  • You want to be an authority in your space.

    Most of the content you publish is transactional. It might drive some traffic, but lead quality is lower than you’d like because you lack the trust and authority required to keep the attention of of the right people.

  • You have no long-term content plan.

    Your content strategy is living month-to-month with little vision for where things should be going and how other channels, mediums, and launches should tie in. Nothing changes as you continue doing more of the same.

Trevor Larson, CEO at Nectar

“Working with John paid off huge dividends in audience and signup growth. The TLDR is that he’s a legend and the top content operator I’ve seen or worked with in SaaS.”

Most B2B marketing teams are facing the same struggle:

Undifferentiated Content.

People couldn’t tell your content apart from any of your competitors. Or, even from AI. If you ripped the label off of your content, no one would ever know it was you.

Your strategy is really just “publishing more stuff.” (Actual quote from a prospect turned client.)

You’re mostly following the same playbook that everyone else has since 2012, hoping the right people find you.

You’re focused on volume and have little time to get more out of what you already have.

You’ve taken a more transactional approach to content, and as a result, have very little community around your brand to help market for you.

This results in a lot of people who do not care about the content they create, and a lot of content that people do not care about.

When people don’t care, they also won’t remember you. If they don’t remember you, there’s no chance you will earn their business.

Publishing more undifferentiated content won’t solve the problem. It’ll actually make it worse.

With your current “strategy”, you and/or your team will continue to be swamped publishing more content that drives low engagement and questionable lead quality.

Content Brands solves this problem by switching the game up. We’ll work together to build a program around your strengths –– your unique insights and perspectives as well as those of your audience –– to develop your content IP (podcast, newsletter, social presence, etc.) and put forth a strategy that cannot be replicated or forgotten.

Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs and bestselling author of Everybody Writes

“John is like a Portkey into the content marketing world — transporting your ordinary content into something far more magical. No actual magic is involved, of course: He just knows a lot more about the specifics and mechanics of content than most Muggles.”

Stop blending in

There are 3 reasons why so many content programs struggle.

No Original Thinking

The earned experience and unique perspectives of your internal team are not represented in the content you create.

You’re struggling to outsource expertise in your content and are wasting time and effort by looking at the same keyword data, from the same tools, as everyone else to find your angles.

You’ll never differentiate, or build trust and authority, by approaching content this way. You’ll blend in.

The more you work your team’s collective experiences, observations, and points of view into the content strategy, the more opportunities you create for the right people to feel seen and heard.

No Original Research

Your audience does not see themselves represented in the content you create.

It becomes impossible to publish content that resonates with members of your audience who are in the trenches doing the actual work.

Your audience shouldn’t only be consumers of your content, but also participants through your own research.

Research doesn’t mean dense, month’s long reports.

A one-to-one interview on a podcast. Webinars with industry experts. An email interview series.

It’s all research and acts as raw material to create content that resonates in every other channel you care about.

No Community

No one is waiting for your next post, podcast episode, email, etc.

Most teams focus their content strategy almost completely on keyword-driven SEO content.

It’s purely transactional. It doesn’t build relationships.

No one is waiting for your next content piece. They’re not sharing, bookmarking, or talking about your content.

There’s no community of readers to help create the editorial momentum needed to break through any channel.

You end up doing it on your own and feel like it’s become increasingly more difficult as competition amongst every channel has grown.

The more you create content that’s uniquely your own, the easier it is to build momentum with the help of those you’re helping and inspiring.

Therese Brinkman, Chief of Staff at Denamico

“John has gone above and beyond content strategy and has become a true advisor to our business. It’s rare that you find these really strong working relationships and John has been an amazing partner for us. We’ve done tremendous work together and we’re all really excited about what we can continue to keep doing together.”

The Content Brand program

Here's how it works:

Phase 1:

Design your editorial model

Phase 1 is dedicated to the design of your model by establishing your core editorial narrative and themes, developing your content IP (podcast, newsletter, etc.), and building your editorial roadmap complete with topics, unique angles, and collaborators.

“John worked closely with our team to craft a tailored content roadmap that aligns seamlessly with our goals and values. And we're genuinely excited to execute it! Now, we're equipped with a content strategy that not only resonates with our audience but also reflects the essence of who we are as a company.”

– Lauren Schneider, Head of Brand & Comms at Compt

Phase 2:

launch, publish, and engage

Now that your editorial model is in place, you’ll launch your new and/or updated content IP, publish supporting content across different mediums, and immediately begin testing and aerating your newly developed editorial narrative across social and email to begin engaging your audience.

“Once we've worked together to perfect the initial idea, John always does a great job at pushing us to think bigger and scale up the idea. How can we repurpose the content into a larger strategic narrative and spread it across as many channels as possible.”

– Natalie Marcotullio, Head of Growth and Operations at Navattic

Phase 3:

Repurpose & distribute content natively across mediums

Now that your editorial roadmap is filled, this phase is devoted to getting the most out of each piece (through repurposing and distribution) so that your audience and demand can scale.

We’ll also refine the editorial model based on the signals we’re receiving from the work you’ve published.

“Before, we just published content. Now, we’re creating unique content across different mediums and distributing it in a way that’s more native to each medium. On LinkedIn alone, we’ve generated over 1 million impressions based on his guidance—3x more than we were getting before we worked with him.”

– John Short, Founder at Compound Growth Marketing

Phase 4:

expand content formats & channels

Now you’re cooking. Once we’ve reached the point where you’re consistently publishing and repurposing differentiated content, we’ll expand your distribution efforts through additional mediums, like an email newsletter, to amplify your content and further create demand.

It’s also at this point where we begin to define and plan around your next anchor asset to further expand your strategy.

“We’ve used John’s frameworks and advice to build a content program at my org that has been beating competitors nearly 10x our size. We’ve leaned into John's program in a way that our competitors either can’t or won’t.” 

– Ross Andrew Simons, VP of Customer Growth at Flimp Communications

here’s what’s included

weekly calls

You’ll be making progress starting day one. Each session, I’ll provide guided implementation through the strategy, processes, and execution necessary for building and establishing your Content Brand.

guided implementation

Along the way, you’ll be provided with tasks and exercises to guide you through the implementation of the framework. From establishing your editorial themes, developing your content IP, publishing unique angles –– you’ll have everything you need to make progress.

editorial roadmap

Once we complete phase one, you’ll have the workings of a 6-12 month editorial roadmap to guide you and your team. Complete with themes, topics, unique angles, and even the working titles, everyone will operate with more clarity and direction allowing them to focus more closely on the details of making good content.

training & templates

Along the way, you’ll be provided with templates and training for writing hooks, newsletters, LinkedIn posts, blog post introductions, etc., to ensure unique and differentiated content no matter where you publish.

real-time collaboration

From high level strategy down into the weeds of execution (that blog post introduction, writing a newsletter, structuring questions for an upcoming podcast episode, etc.), we’ll use Slack to make progress in between calls.

“Working with John has been a game-changer for us. From the outset, he brought a refreshing perspective, challenging us to think differently about how we communicate with our audience. He dove deep into our existing content and identified our “anchor asset” that we hadn't fully capitalized on. Now, it’s a full blown brand with content across all of the channels that are important for our audience.” 

Lauren Schneider, Head of Brand & Comms at Compt

“John helped us change the way we approach content. Before, we just published content. Now, we’re creating unique content across different mediums and distributing it in a way that’s more native to each medium. On LinkedIn alone, we’ve generated over 1 million impressions based on his guidance—3x more than we were getting before we worked with him. He just gets content better than everyone else.” 

John Short, Founder at Compound Growth Marketing

“Before working with John our content felt very one-off and less creative. He has such a clear understanding on not just how to create content but how to make it stand out, speak to your specific audience, and scale that content up to create a whole strategic narrative and campaign.”

– Natalie Marcotullio
Head of Growth & Operations at Navattic

“John helped put Databox on the map. He knows how to build an engaged audience while also collaborating with that audience for content. This allowed us to scale up our content program in a novel way. We wouldn’t be where we are today without him; he’s the best content marketer in the world.” 

– Pete Caputa, CEO at Databox

Hi, I’m john 👋

I’ve spent the last 12+ years working for content-driven B2B brands in order to drive growth.

I spent the majority of that time in B2B SaaS, first as head of growth at Litmus and later as head of marketing at Databox.

I’ve been on both sides of it.

I’ve been on the venture-backed side working for a company that raised 8 figures to accelerate growth. There was no inside sales team, so that growth had to come from content.

I’ve also been on the bootstrapped side, implementing programs and building a lean team that would allow us to grow efficiently in order to hit and maintain profitability.

In both cases, following the traditional playbook wouldn’t have worked.

Now, I’ve gotten to take what I’ve learned and help other SaaS companies grow through content. As a consultant, I help you develop your strategic narrative, launch and/or level up your content channels, develop differentiated topics and angles, implement distribution plans, and tie all of your content together under one editorial strategy.

Need help? Let’s talk.