Software is Executable Content
When most people think of "content marketing" they think of written content like blog posts, infographics, or videos on social media.
But what if we thought of software as content? Not just the release notes or changelog (though that is certainly a form of content marketing), but the actual executable code itself?
Software is just packaged up utility that a user can interact with. Similar to how a user reads a blog or watches a video.
As quiet technical founders, we often struggle with the marketing and promotion of what we've built. But what if what we love doing -- building -- was actually a form of marketing?
HubSpot famously pioneered this by building Website Grader all the way back in 2007. And it's still live today. It's a simple, free tool that has generated vastly more audience engagement and leads than most of their written blog posts combined.
Later, this concept was codified as "engineering as marketing" by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares as a chapter in their 2015 book Traction.
So while this is not a new idea, what if we dialed this up to the extreme? What would that look like?
Just as we add new features to the core product, we can extract parts of those features out and put them on dedicated, SEO friendly pages for marketing purposes.
Benefits include:
- Higher Perceived Value. People bookmark and share useful tools far more readily than average articles or newsletter issues.
- Inbound Intent. Free micro-tools rank exceptionally well for search engines because they directly solve a specific task rather than just explaining a concept.
- Natural Virality. Interactive tools, generators, and widgets encourage users to share their outputs, driving organic reach without requiring written promotional content.
- Less saturated channel. Building software still requires some level of technical expertise and infrastructure (even with the help of AI), so more marketing driven startups are less likely to go this route.
Here are some ideas:
- Free Micro-Tools & Calculators. Single-purpose web apps that solve one immediate pain point (e.g., a spec converter, an ROI calculator, or a mock-data generator).
- Open-Source Software. Publishing developer components or niche scripts where release notes and GitHub repositories serve as the primary audience touchpoints.
- Browser Extensions & Plugins. Lightweight tools that sit directly in your target audience's daily workflow and keep your brand top-of-mind.
For all of these ideas, make sure to either host them as a dedicated page on your marketing domain, or link back to your website for your full/premium offering with a natural call to action.
Of course, there's a tradeoff. Maintenance. Both executable content and traditional content marketing require consistency to keep leads coming in.
So would you rather regularly post a new blog or newsletter, or regularly update dependencies, manage infrastructure, and fix bugs?
I know which one I'd rather do.