120 Articles Planned Before a Single Line of Product Code.

Most founders build first and figure out the market later. I did the opposite. Before writing a single line of product code, I ran six rounds of content research covering both consumer and professional market segments.

120+ blog article outlines targeting specific long-tail keywords in the estate planning and probate space. Competitive intelligence on every existing player in North Carolina. A prospect list of 164 board-certified estate planning specialists, CPAs, and fee-only financial advisors sourced from the NC State Bar directory, firm websites, LinkedIn, and financial planner databases.

The content strategy splits into two segments: consumer-facing articles that answer the questions people actually search when someone dies (practical, emotional, procedural) and professional-facing content that positions Afterpath as a workflow tool for attorneys and CPAs who handle probate regularly.

Each article outline includes target keywords, search intent classification, internal linking targets, and a content brief detailed enough to hand to a writer. The goal is to own the informational search landscape in NC estate planning before the product even launches, so that when the SaaS goes live, the audience already exists.

The product itself builds on Next.js 16 with a B2B2C model: consumers find us through content, professionals adopt us as a workflow tool, and the two audiences reinforce each other.