Did Salesforce really need another content project?
The company’s mega-successful Trailblazer program, launched way back in 2007 as IdeaExchange, had evolved into a global community (mainly Salesforce admins and developers) that helps members learn and succeed in their careers and businesses. In 2014, the free online learning platform Trailhead launched as an additional step in the experience.
But sales professionals — the primary users of Salesforce’s OG product, Sales Cloud — weren’t interested in taking that trip.
As competitors sprouted to take market share and website traffic declined, Salesforce’s visionary CEO Marc Benioff planted a seed. “He saw these headwinds coming and wanted our company to get ahead of it,” says Melissa Leu, senior director of content strategy at Salesforce.
The Salesforce team asked: “How do we reestablish market leadership? How do we show that we’re innovating? How do we show that we care about salespeople? How do we show that we’re here to serve their needs?”
The answer manifested in a new trail designed for sales professionals — Salesblazer, which debuted in spring 2023.
The adventure is paying off. Among its audience victories are 5 million unique page views in the first year and 15,000 people who joined the Slack community in its first six months.
Salesblazer was named the Project of the Year among the competitive entries in the 2024 Content Marketing Awards after being named Best Content Marketing Launch and Best Content Marketing Program. It also earned Melissa a spot on the list of finalists for 2024 B2B Content Marketer of the Year.
Starting down a different path
Salesblazer started, as most content marketing projects do — by identifying the problems the audience is facing.
Senior Director of Content Strategy, Salesforce
2024 B2B Content Marketer of the Year Finalist
“Sales can be a pretty lonely career in some places. In other places, it’s a team sport. It’s very much like a numbers game. You just have to hit your quota, figure out how to do it, and go,” Melissa says.
Yet, Salesforce research found that only 28% of sales professionals expected their team to hit their quotas. Conversations with customers revealed that many wanted more than Salesforce’s software. They wanted help to succeed and grow in their sales careers.
Once the Salesforce team identified the primary challenges for the target audience, they looked at the company’s strengths — its expertise and a network cultivated over 20 years as a leader in sales.
Salesforce had built the Trailblazer program around those same strengths, but that community targeted a more technical group. Sales professionals didn’t see it as a program for them.
Melissa says the Salesforce team thought, “We can be the curator of all this knowledge from the community, from experts in the field. How do we share that with everyone out there?”
The Sales Cloud content team blazed a new trail. “It was fail fast, learn fast,” Melissa says.
Failure never happened. However, the project did evolve after the team learned a few lessons.
Building the Salesblazer trail
The Salesblazer-building team had to be scrappy. Though Salesforce employs over 72,000, fewer than 15 people make up the core Salesblazer team. In just a few months, they created the website, crafted the content, launched the community, hosted events, and obtained professional certification accreditation for its online courses.
“It was a lot at once,” Melissa says.
Fortunately, they could draw on their own and others’ content marketing expertise and subject specialists elsewhere in Salesforce. “There were dozens and dozens of people we could reach out to to share their expertise on how to do things,” Melissa says.
Salesblazer’s high visibility within the company, a sign of leadership’s commitment, meant the team’s calls, emails, and messages were returned quickly. Still, it wasn’t all smooth going, Melissa says. “With anything new, you have to teach people what it is. You have to convince them why it’s important. That happens both externally and internally.”
The Salesblazer content hub stands as a testament to that widespread expertise and cooperation. It serves as a centralized sales career hub filled with free resources, including a mix of Salesblazer-specific content and other relevant Salesforce articles.
Visitors can follow a path based on their role — sales representatives, operations, or leadership. They can download Salesforce’s State of Sales Report or dive into a Salesblazer Ask Me Anything feature provided by an industry expert. They can watch demos and webinars. They can download free templates, worksheets, reports, and guides. They’re also invited to sign up for a twice-monthly newsletter and join the Salesblazer Slack community.
No matter the tactic, all the content is filtered through the lens of whether it helps a sales professional grow their career. “That’s really our North Star,” Melissa says.
But the Salesblazer debut tactic wasn’t the content hub. It was an educational event in New York in April 2023. “We wanted to start with our core group of customers, prospects, and people who are fans of Salesforce and see [their] reaction, get some feedback, and then grow from there,” Melissa says.
The event included Salesblazer partners, including household names like Dale Carnegie and industry organizations like Women in Sales.
The team reached out to Dale Carnegie because it aligns with Salesforce’s goal to help salespeople better their careers, Melissa says. “There was natural overlap and complementary skills we could bring each other.”
The partnership with Women in Sales came through someone in the existing Sales Cloud’s influencer program. “The whole group of influencers were critical in providing feedback to our program, helping us create content, and generating word of mouth about the community,” Melissa says. “They’re real salespeople, so they were our focus group.”
Delivering results and evolving for bigger impact
In its first year, Salesblazer hit over 5 million unique page views, fueled by ranking for thousands of keywords on search. Merchandising Salesforce product offerings within the content led to a 250% increase in referrals to product pages.
Salesblazer generated over 3.2 million social impressions and 102,000 social engagements. Over 45,000 people subscribe to the newsletter, and over 230,000 engage on community platforms. The Salesblazer community has earned 320,000 badges through the Trailhead learning platform, and thousands of people have expanded their networks at 46 events.
Success, though, didn’t happen without an evolution.
“We learned we had disconnected the content from our business. It was solely community-based and community-focused,” Melissa says.
The team realized it had disregarded some of the best practices in content marketing — linking and SEO. As a result, the content didn’t hit the organic heights they expected. “Once that push was over past the launch, we were like, ‘OK, well, we want to build an audience; we want the audience to return. How do we do that?’” Melissa explains.
They pivoted, implementing those best practices, linking to related content, and doubling down on search engine optimization efforts.
They also told a better story internally, so people understood that Salesblazer wasn’t just a fun side project but something that led to views on product pages and long-term engagement. And that was the moment the content side of Salesblazer accelerated to produce impressive results.
Another lesson learned: What works for one audience won’t necessarily work for others. “With this program, it’s a lot of seeing what works, investing in what works, and moving on from what doesn’t. It’s a lot of listening to the reactions of our community and what they’re looking for,” Melissa explains.
The biggest change from the launch is the Salesblazer community gathering place. Initially, it used the same forum infrastructure as the Trailblazer group.
“We found that salespeople aren’t necessarily attracted to a forum experience. They want that real connection. They want a real-time ability to reach someone,” Melissa explains.
So Salesforce moved the Salesblazer community to a Slack channel, where it’s grown at two times the pace of the forum iteration (attracting 15,000 members in six months).
“When audiences are not yet ready to buy,” Melissa explains, “these [Salesblazer] engagements play a crucial role in keeping Salesforce top of mind and positioning us as a leader in empowering sales professionals.”
But for the Content Marketer of the Year finalist, a personal moment helped her appreciate the Salesblazer impact.
“It didn’t hit me until we were at one of our events. Somebody came up to me and said, ‘I’m so thankful for this program. It changed my career. It brought inspiration back, and I’m so thankful to have this as a resource.’ They got a job from the connections they had made in the community and the learning they had taken in,” Melissa shares.
“It’s a moment like that when you feel like, ‘Oh my god, we did it.’”
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute