Class101, a leading self-improvement platform, has officially entered the corporate training market in 2024. As it expands its B2C success into the B2B sector, how has it approached content marketing—specifically, content optimized for acquiring potential corporate clients?
We sat down with Choi Pil-jun, Director of Business at Class101, to hear his firsthand account of the six-month journey he embarked on in collaboration with Elephant Company—a team known as the “Friendly Content Marketing Supervisors”!
Q. Hello, Piljun. First, could you briefly introduce Class101 Business?
We are the Class101 Business Team, taking on new challenges in the corporate training market.
Class101 is Korea’s largest online class platform, with over 5.5 million members and more than 5,300 diverse classes. Our Class101 Business is a B2B solution that provides this proven content and expertise to corporate clients.
We offer subscription-based services that companies can utilize for employee training and benefits, aiming to provide solutions that go beyond simply delivering content to simultaneously boost corporate growth and employee satisfaction.
Q. Before working with Elephant,could you tell us what the B2B content marketing landscape was like at Class101 Business?
We lacked content that could convince corporate clients.
When we were exploring potential collaboration partners, Class101 had no established B2B pipeline. We only had a basic understanding that corporate clients couldn’t be persuaded using the same logic as B2C customers. While the Class101 B2B team had created some content, the upload channels were scattered, and the content itself was very superficial—the kind of informational material that could have been generated by AI. We determined that this content wouldn’t be effective in convincing corporate clients.
To effectively execute content marketing for businesses, we needed an agency with a deep understanding of our internal operations and products, but finding such an agency was difficult, and our team lacked the resources to handle it on our own.
Q. Oh, so what was the most important factor you considered when you decided to outsource your B2B content marketing to an external partner?
We wanted a team with a deep understanding of the industry. Elephant’s reputation for working like an in-house team was the deciding factor.
At first, I hadn’t planned on outsourcing this to an external partner. But I heard a lot of praise for Elephant Company—people said they worked just as well as an in-house team. The fact that I’d been hearing positive recommendations about Elephant Company from various sources for quite some time was the deciding factor. I decided that working with Elephant would allow us to get our content marketing off to a solid start right from the beginning.
Q. What did you find most satisfying about collaborating with Elephant Company?
The quality of the content, the SEO capabilities, and even the content dashboard were all impressive.
Class101 struck a good balance between content that would appeal to their target audience and content that directly explained and promoted our service. Content was thoughtfully arranged to align with each stage of the customer journey, starting from the content strategy. The SEO team also covered a wide range of specialties, including technical SEO and content SEO.
Above all , I really appreciated that they were able to build a dashboard for us. Being able to see our content performance at a glance made it much easier to make marketing decisions. It definitely felt different from the content marketing agencies we were familiar with. Rather than just focusing on general content creation, they systematically managed the entire process—from strategy to execution to analysis—which was a huge help.
Q. So, what was the biggest difference between your initial expectations and your experience during the six-month collaboration?
The Content Growth Dashboard and content quality exceeded my expectations!
To be honest, I signed the contract without fully understanding what Elephant Company’s dashboard would look like, but it turned out to be much better than I expected. Unlike Google Analytics, which has so much data that it’s hard to know what to focus on, this dashboard presents funneled metrics in a way that’s easy to grasp at a glance. Since the content performance was immediately visible, it was easy to understand.
The content you created was also much more polished than I expected, both in terms of length and writing style. Before I saw the content from Elephant, I thought it might be on par with the blog posts our existing team members had written, but after seeing the final product, my opinion completely changed. Haha.
Q. How do you measure the ROI of content marketing investments?
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork with our content, we plan to further amplify our impact by the end of the year.
I believe we’ve been in the phase of laying the groundwork for content marketing. Moving forward, we plan to take a more strategic approach based on this foundation. After all, not all content carries the same weight. There’s core content that directly influences customer conversion, and there’s informational content that provides background knowledge.
Going forward, I want to define the purpose and expected outcomes of this type of content more clearly, and invest more time and effort into content that is particularly critical to our business performance. I also plan to work closely with the Elephant team to exchange in-depth feedback on these pieces and improve their quality!
Q. How do you perceive the qualitative business results?
While it’s still too early to see tangible results, I feel reassured knowing that we’ve built a solid brand foundation.
Since our website redesign took a bit longer than expected, we haven’t been publishing content for very long. So, we actually feel it’s still too early to gauge the business impact. That said, we’re very pleased that we’ve managed to accumulate as many as 40 pieces of such high-quality content, even though we don’t have a dedicated content marketer within the Class101 business organization.
At my previous company, I worked on a team with a content marketer, but planning took a lot of time, and there were many bottlenecks when coordinating schedules with the designers. I remember it was a struggle just to publish one piece of content per week, so I was surprised at how smoothly the collaboration with Elephant went, without any of those bottlenecks.
Q. How effective was content marketing compared to other marketing channels?
Although it’s still too early to measure the exact impact, we believe the organic approach is the right fit for our business.
It seems it’s still too early to definitively measure the effectiveness of our content marketing. We are currently running search ads only for B2G-related keywords on a minimal basis and are primarily focusing on organic content and inbound marketing.
This is because, given the nature of B2B business, we believe that building trust through in-depth content is more important in the long run . While it’s difficult to quantify the immediate impact, we view this as an essential step in laying the groundwork.
Q. What kind of companies would you recommend Elephant’s content marketing to?
We recommend this to teams that are just starting their B2B business or lack internal processes!
We highly recommend Elephant to teams like ours that are just starting out in the B2B business! While it might clash with existing workflows for teams that already have established internal content processes, building the system together from the ground up allows for efficient collaboration without any confusion.
However, you’ll need a solution that has already demonstrated a certain level of product-market fit (PMF). We’ll need a clear understanding of your target audience to create content that helps you generate leads with Elephant.
Q. Does Class101 have any future marketing directions or plans?
We are focusing on rebuilding the B2B team and expanding our scope of work to achieve our year-end goals.
Our top priority is to achieve the performance targets we’ve set internally by the end of the year. We’re currently in the process of rebuilding our B2B team to take it to the next level, and we’re committed to expanding our efforts across all tasks to ensure we meet our goals by year-end. We’re preparing to leverage the content foundation we’ve built with Elephant to execute our marketing strategies more aggressively!
Q. If you had to summarize your experience collaborating with Elephant in one sentence, how would you put it?
Elephant is your mentor, a partner who helps you unlock your full potential, and a reliable marketing ally!
COO Philjun – I’d like to describe Elephant as a kind and caring content marketing supervisor. The way you brief us on the data every month and keep a close eye on our content reminds me of a meticulous supervisor.
Dear B2B Lead, – I consider myself a partner who helps unlock your full potential. In particular, Elephant Content has never had a single typo or spacing error. You always provide flawless content, which has made me feel that your internal systems are truly reliable. It may be a small detail, but it has built a great deal of trust.
Ho-jun, a B2B marketer – I’ve been with the company for just one month, but I feel like I’ve climbed aboard the “Elephant” in the B2B market. I’m really enjoying the content publishing process, and I look forward to continuing to follow along with you all!
While conducting an interview with the Class101 Business Team, the Elephant team was reminded once again just how crucial the start of B2B content marketing is. In particular, the comment that we “work just like an in-house team” is a frequent review for Elephant—it’s always a compliment that makes us feel great. Receiving a comment like “the friendly content marketing mentor” makes the six months we spent with Class101 feel even more meaningful. 😃
Expanding from B2C to B2B is never easy, but with a systematic content strategy, you can navigate this process with patience and perseverance. If you want to get your content marketing off to the right start, feel free to reach out to Elephant Company anytime!
Want to build a solid foundation for your B2B content marketing right from the start?
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