AI sales platform goes customer-first

I talk to Ben Harper, CEO of Clarity Stack which provides business data insights to B2B companies through its AI platform so that they can find and win more business opportunities.

G: You've recently had a rebrand, what was the reason behind the decision?

B: We have always been Clarity Stack but our products were branded differently. These brands were Meet Hugo, Hey Prospect, and Meet Hugo Exclusive Leads. We realised that providing multiple products with various brand names under one umbrella brand could cause confusion and potentially hinder our future growth plans – something we wanted to avoid, of course.

So, at the start of 2022, we decided to bring these three products under the Clarity Stack banner, renaming them Clarity Stack Data, Clarity Stack Insights, and Clarity Stack Leads.

G: How important has customer research been in shaping your proposition?

B: Customer research and feedback has been and will always be crucial to us in terms of shaping and developing our product. After all, our aim is to provide sales teams with the most intuitive and seamless platform to empower them to sell better. We regularly ask for honest comments and feedback from our customers about what we’re doing right and where we can improve.

Our talented tech team then reviews and develops monthly product upgrades taking into account the suggestions and ideas received.

G: Do you use personas to tailor messaging and content? How?

B: Our content is generally tailored towards two key audiences: Marketing Managers/Leaders and Sales Managers/Leaders. We’ve found that these personas, along with their various challenges, are the ones that benefit from our product offerings the most.

When creating both our Sales Academy and blog content, we write with a particular challenge or consideration of theirs in mind. For example, some of our recent pieces include How to increase efficiency in your sales team, and Why you should run digital events.

G: How important is talking benefits over features when it comes to differentiating yourselves?

B: Many businesses are facing new challenges due to the rising cost of living. As such, these organisations are now looking to get the most they possibly can out of the resources they currently have.

Presenting our platform's benefits above its features is a priority at the moment. The platform is helping sales teams work more productively and spend less time contacting dead-end leads.

We’re hoping that this value-led approach will cut through the noise of our competitors in the coming year.

G: You have a whole library of how-to guides for sales and marketing people, what role do these play in the content funnel?

B: As briefly mentioned, our platform was developed with the sole purpose of supporting sales teams and helping them close more deals. Therefore, we wanted to provide valuable sales and marketing content to further support not just our customers, but other teams, too. This knowledge, combined with our AI-powered business intelligence platform, gives sales and marketing teams the very best chance of finding new business opportunities, smashing their growth goals for increased revenue.

G: Much of your downloadable website content isn’t gated, how does this relate to your content strategy?

B: That’s correct. Our Sales Academy content is available to download ungated. As a growing startup company, providing such widely available content is part of our effort to strengthen brand awareness and build a trusted relationship with customers and prospects.

At this stage, offering valuable, useful, and ungated information with the aim of solidifying our brand is more important than capturing data from our audience.

G: How many touch points on average do people have with your brand before becoming a customer?

B: Around 14-15 touch points on average, this being a mix of marketing emails, social posts, Sales Academy articles, blog posts, and platform demos, and sales calls.

Ben, thank you for sharing your strategy for content creation and marketing. A crucial insight that many other SaaS providers can take away is to prioritise providing value for the target market through content over collecting audience data at every opportunity.