Content as Category Creation: Inside Strata Identity’s Long-term SEO Strategy

How do you create demand for a product category that doesn’t exist yet? In a recent Category Visionaries episode, Eric Olden, CEO of Strata Identity, revealed their counterintuitive approach to content marketing: start with the problems nobody is searching for yet.

The Problem-First Approach

When Strata launched in 2019, “no one was going into Google and searching for identity orchestration,” Eric explains. Instead of trying to force a new term into the market, they focused on the problems their potential customers were actually searching for.

“What they were doing is they were searching for their problem,” Eric notes. This insight led to a content strategy focused on addressing specific challenges like “How to manage two identity providers” or “We use Okta and we use Microsoft. How do we make them work together?”

Building Authority Through Long-form Content

Rather than paying for visibility, Eric invested heavily in creating detailed technical content: “I wrote a huge amount of content blogs that were explanations of how to use both Okta and Azure active directory together.”

This investment has paid off. “Now when you do a search for identity orchestration, you’re going to find my company, Strata, at the top of the list. And we don’t pay Google for that,” Eric shares. “Our budget, there are next to nothing.”

The Long Game

The strategy requires patience. “One of the most popular pieces of content is something I wrote back in 2020,” Eric reveals. This long-term view shapes their entire approach to content creation.

But the payoff extends beyond SEO rankings. Quality content helps establish credibility with enterprise buyers and provides valuable product roadmap insights. Eric notes that their content has become “really great product roadmap prioritization in all of that data, and we have dozens of that downloaded from a lead gen standpoint now every week.”

Original Research as a Content Pillar

Strata supplements their how-to content with original research, particularly their “State of Multi-Cloud” report. The research began as customer development questions but evolved into a valuable content asset that serves multiple purposes:

1. Peer Comparison: “Our audience could compare what they were doing with what other people were doing.”
2. Trend Analysis: “What was last year not as important is now the most important and vice versa.”
3. Lead Generation: The report drives consistent downloads and leads.
4. Product Development: Research insights inform product roadmap decisions.

The ROI Validation Strategy

To strengthen their content’s credibility, Strata invested in third-party validation: “We use Forrester to do an arm’s length study… they interviewed all of our customers and they got all of their metrics and details from them directly. We had no involvement in the creation of the report.”

This investment, while significant, provides crucial validation for their category: “Typically for every hundred applications that you secure with orchestration, you’re going to save anywhere from seven point five to fifteen million dollars.”

2024 Content Evolution

As the category matures, Strata’s content strategy evolves. “The product expands, but our message contracts,” Eric explains. Their content now focuses on “very concrete, tangible set of value propositions, solving very tactical things.”

For B2B tech founders creating new categories, Strata’s content strategy offers several key lessons:

1. Start with customer problems, not category terms
2. Invest in detailed technical content
3. Play the long game with SEO
4. Validate claims through third-party research
5. Evolution messaging as the category matures

Most importantly, recognize that category creation through content is a marathon, not a sprint. As Eric’s experience shows, the most valuable content assets often take years to reach their full potential.