Building Content Engines for eCom Tech Startups

At Verbatim, we partner with fast-growing SaaS companies – with a focus on commerce and fintech infrastructure. For a bit of background – Verbatim’s origins lie in eCom infrastructure. 

From the start, we’ve focused on helping eCom enablement companies build, refine, and scale content engines – engines that in turn enable teams to help the best DTC brands win.

In this deep dive, we unpack how we help eCom infrastructure teams – both large and small – tell stories, build case studies, and shape narrative arcs in the modern commerce landscape.

PDQ’s Case Studies: Social Proof and Implementation

With the explosion of eCom, customers are shifting their spending habits online, so merchants have to find a way to replicate the in-store experience there.

With face-to-face shopping, the entirety of the logistics for fulfillment and delivery took place within a shopping bag. You take the item, put it in a shopping bag, and you’re done.

With eCom, that process is much more complex and forces brands to answer questions:

• What's the product that's getting delivered, and how do we box it? 
• Where's the customer, and how are we delivering their product? 
• Are there any special shipping requirements?

Companies now realize there are many things they need to understand where previously they didn't pay much attention to business logistics.

PDQ needed to show brands that, if done correctly, delivery can improve profitability, customer experience, and customer retention, and ensure profitable transactions.

Due to the complexity of delivery, PDQ’s CEO Avi sees that there's education required for businesses to understand their options.

There isn’t a magic button to make the delivery experience awesome.

Understanding the relevant variables requires education. However, businesses are unique, so a flower shop, a clothing store, and a bakery will all have different needs. 

Avi highlights that merchants, like most entrepreneurs, need to see how their peers use PDQ and then draw parallels to their own brand to visualize how it can add value for them – case studies, enter stage left.

"Case studies help merchants understand that there is help out there that can come quickly, cost effectively, and make a material impact for the business." –  Avi Moskowitz, PDQ Co-Founder & CEO

Novel Drives Value and Revenue via Editorial-Led Education

As a part-eCom, part-web3 tool, Novel is building up a brand-new ecosystem that the average consumer knows little to nothing about. 

The team realized early on that, while there was a ton of demand for NFTs and what Novel was building, no one quite knew what it actually was or what to do with it. 

As such, content has become a de facto guide for Novel users to understand the larger ecosystem and learn how and where they, as brands, fit in. Anna, Novel’s CO-Founder and COO, highlights some use cases for their resource guides. For instance: 

• Follow-ups — Every time a Novel team member ends a customer call, they’ll include links to Novel content that’s relevant to the reason for the call. 
• User support — Novel articles can explain customer support questions in greater depth. 

Overall, strategic content (which can double as user resources) means the Novel customer experience doesn’t stop after the point of transaction or initial onboarding. 

The company can go further to actively educate and guide new users — without the lift of extra support team efforts — throughout their early days in web3. 

“There are three big segments where we win by leveraging content: credibility, guiding use cases for customers, and painting a picture of who we are at Novel.” – Anna Merzi, Novel Co-Founder & COO