Move all the way over, WordPress. There's a new favorite CMS in town, and they've achieved a lot in a short amount of time. These are the Webflow content marketing strategy examples that are worth paying attention to.
Are you ready for another content marketing teardown? Want to spy on your B2B brand crushes? Craving content marketing examples that can help you master your own strategy?
Then you're going to love our teardown of Webflow's content.
Side note, if you missed our previous teardowns, you can check them out here:
- Teardown: Drift's BOLD Content Marketing Strategy
- Teardown: Invision's Authoritative Content Marketing Strategy
In this teardown, we'll explore how Webflow (a responsive web design tool, CMS, and hosting platform) attracts an audience of experienced agency owners and newbie designers alike.
Table of contents:
- Content marketing examples in multiple formats
- Content marketing examples in different categories
- Content navigation
- How Webflow converts blog readers
- Webflow University
- How Webflow builds community
- Understanding Weblow's overall strategy
Content marketing examples in multiple formats
Webflow posts content in a variety of formats on their site. We'll explore their community and their resources later on. For now, let's take a look at what's happening over on their blog subfolder.
Blog posts
Needless to say, the backbone of Webflow's blog is well...blog content! They regularly use images and GIFs on their blog posts to make them more visual and more helpful to their audience of web designers.
Reading lists
Webflow also organizes individual blog posts into what they call "reading lists." Here's one on building an agency website using Webflow.
These reading lists are brilliant. Getting traffic is only half the battle.
Engaging readers in further site content can prime them to become a customer, but it's a difficult task. Publishing content is not the same thing as building an audience.
Creating reading lists of content that is highly related and sequential is a smart but simple way to keep readers engaged.
Webflow also has reading lists on:
- Ecommerce store management
- Ecommerce
- UX design
- UI design
- Freelance
- SEO
- Web typography
Ebooks
Ebooks play a big role in the Webflow content marketing strategy. They have three ungated ebooks, all of them within the subject of web design. These ebooks are quite long, with multiple chapters, and are intended to be high-value resources that keep readers coming back to the website.
Content marketers will typically gate their most valuable resources and require an email address in order to receive the content. We can only wonder if keeping these resources ungated is a way to get people coming back to the site to keep reading the book (instead of downloading a PDF via email and opening that later). The website has tons of CTAs to signing up for Webflow, so that may well be part of the motivation.
Guest submissions
Webflow takes guest submissions, and they even prioritize this with a menu button on their blog that says "Submit."
In the submission guidelines, we can get a deeper understanding of the target audience of their blog:
"We publish content for creative professionals and entrepreneurs who build websites and digital products. Your post should appeal and speak directly to one or more of these audiences. "
That's a clear way of describing their audience. "Creative professionals and entrepreneurs who build websites and digital products."
Can you identify your audience as succinctly? You should be able to.
Content marketing examples in different categories
Categorizing your content makes life easier for your readers and your content creators. Webflow only creates content within these topics:
- Inspiration
- Resources
- Announcements
- Entrepreneurship
- Tutorials
- Freelancing
- Design process
- Web design
Let's take a deeper look at some of the content categories more frequently seen on their blog.
Inspiration
The inspiration category is pretty straightforward. It contains posts on example websites, example portfolios, personal branding, and design ideas. This content category is a smart way to keep their creative audience coming back for more.
Tutorials
Similar to InVision, Webflow's content team that to attract, retain, and convert designers, they need to educate them. You can always turn to Webflow and learn how to use a new trendy tool or master typography mixing.
Announcements
In the announcement category, Webflow's blog contains feature updates, events, and interviews. Depending on your product and its maturity in the market, you need to be careful to not overwhelm your main blog with "me me me" content about your company. Webflow does it sparingly, and they have built up a community that genuinely wants to be kept in the loop about company news.
Entrepreneurship
Within the entrepreneurship category, Webflow primarily publishes about e-commerce. Given this insight and the two reading lists dedicated to e-commerce, it's clear that the Webflow team has decided that beyond web designers, e-commerce store owners are their second-best target audience.
Freelancing
Webflow is a favorite among freelance web designers because it's simple to use and requires no coding. This allows freelancers to charge for the entire website start to finish instead of having to partner with a developer on the project. Webflow uses their blog to attract more freelance customers with tips and tricks on growing their businesses.
Web design
Of course, web design is a key content category. This category isn't nitty-gritty tutorials, however. It contains content about being a better web designer: choosing the right strategies and tactics for the job, staying fresh on trends, and CRO and SEO best practices.
Content navigation
Webflow is creating a lot of content. They publish 10 posts per month. That adds up quick.
How do they help website visitors find what they're looking for? How do they engage them further?
Well, first off, their blog has its own separate menu which helps readers navigate through it. Here's what in the blog menu:
- Popular
- New
- Ebooks
- Reading lists
- Topics
- Submit (guest submission guidelines)
This Webflow content marketing strategy is a pretty nice organizational strategy. Regular readers can click on the New tab to see something they haven't seen before. Intermittent or new readers can click on Topics to peruse what interests them.
On the topics page, Webflow makes it really easy to navigate their content categories.
And of course, the reading lists help readers gain mastery in a specific subtopic while making it easy for Webflow to get more eyeballs on an article with an older shelf life.
How Webflow converts blog readers
All of this content is great, but how are they are converting it? At the bottom of every page on their blog — that's right every page, meaning every subpage and every blog post — Webflow has two sections:
- The "What's Webflow?" section - Shows the product features
- The sign-up section - Offers the freemium plan alongside customer logos to establish trust
We all know that the purpose of content isn't to sell. Content is designed to attract, educate, and entertain.
And yet, content must still find a way to convert readers into new customers.
With those two sections displayed prominently across the entire blog, Webflow's content creators can produce content without worrying that readers will never know what Webflow has to offer.
There's no fear or frustration around selling. Put the content in the post and let the sales sections do the selling. Pretty dang smart and easy to implement (if you're using Webflow 😉).
You might also have noticed the "See made other sites #MadeInWebflow" tab at the bottom of their blog. This shows new blog readers very clearly what Webflow can do.
Webflow University
Hooray for free design education!
Thanks to the Webflow content marketing strategy, new designers can learn the basics, and experienced designers can master Webflow if they're switching over from some other platform.
Webflow University offers everything from introductions to their CMS to the Ultimate Web Design Course, which is 5+ hours of material broken down into shorter videos that follow a systematic course structure.
While most of their content will be helpful for attracting new designers, there's plenty of good stuff for pro designers new to Webflow and to entrepreneurs tasked with setting up their own site.
How Webflow builds community
While Webflow University is a valuable content library loved by newer designers, Webflow has plenty of other ways to engage their entire community.
Website Showcase
With the Website Showcase, Webflow designers can share their work with the community. Webflow users can like and comment on the portfolio pieces. This is a great example of community building because a brand's community should offer plenty of ways for its members to interact with each other (not just the brand).
Forum
The forums are another way that Webflow builds a community that's bigger than itself. Webflow designers can ask any question and get feedback from other users. At the top of the forum, there's a place to highlight informational live streams.
Don't assume that a forum can't work for your company. This concept isn't only for technical products, but it can also work for any product used by a specific job role or persona.
Events
Webflow offers regular meetups on web design topics. These meetups are hosted around the world. Their first-ever No Code Conf is happening this November in San Francisco to celebrate the future of visual development and no-code tools.
Live streams
And finally, Webflow hosts live streams regularly. These live streams are deep dives into content that matters to their more advanced users. One recent live stream showcased how Webflow onboard new users. Another live stream gives a user the chance to share how he designed his agency website.
Take a page out of Webflow's (and Drift's book). Feature your employees and customers regularly as thought leaders.
Understanding the strategy behind all of these content marketing examples
Now that we've dissected all the parts, let's put Humpty Dumpty back together.
Here's what Webflow is doing to attract, convert, and retain an audience of professional web designers and entrepreneurs:
- Web design education
- Web design inspiration
- Content for brand new designers
- Content for experienced designers who are new to Webflow
- Content for top verticals (freelancers, agency owners, e-commerce)
- Thought leadership for designers who are experienced in Webflow
- Community building with forums and showcases
- Future-focused branding by spreading the message of "no-code"
These Webflow content marketing strategy examples can show you exactly what you need to be focusing on with your own content.
To create a winning strategy, you need to be thinking about today and tomorrow. You need to cater content to all of your best users while making that juggling act look effortless. You need easy navigation and simple conversion funnels. You've got this.
p.s. StoryChief integrates with Webflow so your content marketing operations can run super fast. Check it out.
