Let's get right to it. Most of the time, when a SaaS company acquires a smaller player, the press release is all about "synergies" and "expanding product capabilities." And sure, that was part of the story when 6sense bought Slintel back in October 2021.
But that wasn't the real story. The real story is one of the slickest SEO and content plays I've seen in a long time. They didn't just buy a product; they bought a massive, pre-built library of content that they promptly turned into an organic traffic machine.
They Didn't Buy a Company, They Bought a Million Keywords
Before the acquisition, Slintel was a respected tool for technographic and firmographic data. One of its key assets was a huge database of company profile pages. After the deal closed, 6sense did something brilliant.
Instead of just absorbing the tech and killing the brand, they migrated over 700,000 of these high-value profile pages into a subfolder on the main 6sense domain. The result was a near-vertical spike in organic traffic and indexed pages.
.jpeg)
Overnight, 6sense started ranking for hundreds of thousands of branded keywords—think "Nike tech stack" or "Airbnb employee count." These pages gave prospects a taste of the data 6sense provides—company overviews, a peek at the tech stack, and gated employee profiles—all sprinkled with CTAs to sign up for their Revenue AI platform.
It's a classic freemium content model, but executed at a scale that's almost impossible to compete with from scratch. This single move gave them a massive SEO moat and a lead-gen engine that runs on its own.
You Can't Fake Authority. So They Put Their Execs on the Front Line.
But a traffic spike from an acquisition is a sugar rush. You have to sustain it. How do you convince all those new visitors that you're the authority in the ABM space?
You don't just write blog posts. You put the people with real-world experience and legitimate titles front and center.
6sense's thought leadership isn't driven by a faceless content team. It's spearheaded by their CMO, Latané Conant, and their Head of Research, Kerry Cunningham. They didn't just lend their names to ghostwritten articles; they built entire platforms around their expertise.
Latané literally wrote the book on their methodology, "No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls." The second edition came out in late 2022, keeping the content fresh and relevant. This isn't just a lead magnet; it's a physical book published by Wiley that codifies their entire philosophy.
They also did something incredibly smart: they trademarked the term "The Dark Funnel." This refers to all the buying signals happening on channels that marketers can't easily track. By owning the term for the problem their audience faces, they positioned themselves as the only ones who can solve it. Every time a competitor discusses the "dark funnel," they're reinforcing 6sense's brand.
.jpeg)
Then They Atomized That Expertise for LinkedIn and YouTube
Having a bestselling book and a trademarked concept is great, but you have to get that message in front of people where they actually hang out. 6sense's distribution strategy is surgical.
Similarweb data shows that LinkedIn accounts for over 90% of their social referral traffic. They know their audience of sellers and marketers lives there. Their feed isn't just fluff; it's a mix of:
- Tactical advice: Breaking down concepts like "multi-threading" with "Steal these strategies" CTAs.
- Case studies: Promoting customer wins, like how DealHub.io increased inbound attribution from 35% to 80% using their platform.
- Executive content: Repurposing insights from their leadership's books and talks.
On YouTube, they split their content to serve two different needs. The "MakingSense" series offers short, engaging, top-of-funnel explainers on topics like ABM and intent data. These videos rack up hundreds of thousands of views.
But the real gold is the "TalkingSense" series. Here, CMO Latané Conant hosts half-hour conversations with other high-profile execs from companies like Snowflake, G2, and SalesLoft. These videos don't get massive view counts, but they don't need to. They're built for the C-suite decision-makers 6sense is targeting. It's high-value, peer-to-peer content that builds immense credibility.
.jpeg)
The "Unfair Advantage"
Let’s be honest. Uncovering a multi-layered strategy like this is a ton of work. You’d have to manually track domain changes, monitor subfolders with Ahrefs, watch social channels, and connect the dots yourself. It's a full-time job.
This is where having a tool like Lensmor gives you an unfair advantage. Lensmor is designed to surface these kinds of strategic shifts automatically. Instead of spending a week digging, you'd get a clear alert: "Your competitor just executed a massive SEO content play." It helps you see the why behind the what, and act on it fast.
Your Monday Morning Plan
You don't need to go out and buy a company to replicate this success. The principles are what matter.
- Treat Acquisitions as Content Plays. If you're ever involved in M&A, don't just look at the product and revenue. Audit the content, the domain authority, and the keyword rankings. You might be sitting on an SEO goldmine that's more valuable than the tech.
- Make Your Leaders the Face of Your Content. Stop hiding your experienced executives. Get them on podcasts, help them publish a book, and build a content platform around their unique insights. Authentic authority can't be outsourced.
- Atomize Your Core Ideas. Take your single best idea—your "Dark Funnel"—and slice it into a dozen different formats. Turn a chapter from a book into a LinkedIn post, a YouTube short, and a webinar topic. Maximize the reach of your most valuable IP.
