In the digital realm, content is a crucial component to success. If you’re looking to organically expand your SaaS venture, crafting compelling content is essential. If you’re ready to fully embrace content marketing as a means to drive your SaaS forward, this piece is here to provide guidance. Let’s map out a formidable content strategy for your SaaS company.
Before proceeding, It’s important to first gain a better understanding of both Content Marketing and SAAS by breaking them down.
What is Content Marketing?
Content is the king of any business. We know it, you know it and now your potential buyers also know it. This marketing approach focuses on distributing and creating valuable content.
What exactly is SaaS?
SaaS stands for “Software-as-a-Service”. SaaS is like having a personal valet that caters to all your software needs. Instead of worrying about the installations, hosting, and maintaining software of your own, you can simply subscribe to a service that can do all that for you. Imagine having all the latest and amazing software tools, without even doing anything. That’s the magic of SaaS. SaaS products can be primarily marketed to B2B, B2C, or both.
Now that we know SaaS and Content Marketing, It’s time to see how they work together.
When we look at content marketing from a SaaS business’s point of view, its goal becomes very clear. The content should educate and inform potential customers about the company’s products or services, and ultimately drive more leads for the business.
A question might arise, what distinguishes SaaS Content Marketing from conventional Content Marketing? Below are the mentioned key points we need to keep in mind for SaaS content marketing:
- You are promoting technology and service.
- You need to put more emphasis on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
- SaaS Content Marketing should educate your target audience.
- Your marketing strategy should always aim to promote repeat business.
- Your credibility depends on your reviews.
Let’s see what goes into an effective SaaS Content Marketing strategy!
Identify your target audience
For a focused content marketing campaign, it is important to identify your target audience. To simplify this process, you can begin by listing a few questions.
- What industry is my company targeting?
- What is their income level?
- What other Saas brands do they collaborate with?
- What pain points are they looking to solve?
- What are their content format preferences?
- What are their age, gender, location, goals, interests, etc.
- Is your ideal buyer, a business or a consumer?
- What questions are they most curious about on search and social media?
Customize this checklist according to your products and services. To analyze the characteristics of your audience, you can drill down to analytic tools to review your social media following.
Once you have identified the characteristics of your target consumer, you can use this piece of information to create a profile of your ideal buyer and now you can brainstorm on it.
You might see your target audience in more than one market, don’t target every niche. Try to limit your buyer profiles so your marketing efforts do not go in vain. SaaS content marketing is not about attracting a bunch of people without even considering their level of relevance to your business. Your content should not be for everybody!
Aim to point out pain points
Once you have identified your target audience, It is important to ask a few questions before formulating any solution for them. This will help you to actually address the problem of your audience.
If you want to understand your customer’s plight, the best way to come up with a solution is to walk yourself through the marketplace and identify what can lead them from an interest in your product to making a purchase of your product. It’s like creating a customer journey map.
The following journey outlines the phases your potential buyers go through as they progress through your SaaS sales funnel, starting with being a prospect to ending with a customer. The path of your customer’s journey can look like this:
- They can familiarize themselves with your brand.
- Visiting your website.
- Developing interest in your product results in signing up for a free trial or requesting a demo.
- Actively adopting your product.
- Escalation of customer problems.
- The decision to renew a subscription.
Establishing credibility for your SaaS solution is crucial in order to convert leads into sales. The most critical part of a customer journey is how your brand came across to them for the first time.
The ideation of content
It has been observed that many SaaS companies don’t segment their keywords when working on their content strategy. Companies have relevant keywords but they don’t know what resonates with their buyer journey. Conversion keywords are your money keywords and it is important to create unique content around them.
Researching the right subjects, ones that your target audience will actively search for is the most crucial factor in determining whether your content will drive traffic and engagement.
Let’s dive into content ideation:
Develop a keyword strategy
For a successful content marketing strategy, it’s essential to prioritize quality over quantity. Developing a solid keyword strategy is the first step in this direction. Keywords are the terms that prospects use in search engines to find relevant content.
Before conducting keyword research, it’s important to ask yourself: what are the common questions my target audience has? and how can my company educate them on these topics? When creating content, focus on addressing the pain points of your audience rather than solely focusing on search volume.
To identify potential keywords for your marketing strategy, consider the following: surveying existing customers, monitoring customer queries, participating in online communities where your target audience hangs out, analyzing data from your Google Ads and social media Ads, and studying the keywords used by your competitors.
Write different types of content
It is important to position your content in such a way that simplifies the lives of your audience. Your company should always experiment with the content that your audience likes. By different types of content, we mean:
- Blog posts
- E-books
- Newsletters
- Infographics
- White papers
- Guides
Curate exceptional content not satisfactory content
Your audience will always expect nothing less than “quality content” from you. But what does quality content mean to a SaaS company? The combination of the following factors makes your content quality go from good to best:
- Relevant and recent: Google tends to show recent content higher than older content on SERP. So, always use the latest research and data in your content to keep your audience up to date. Additionally, don’t leave your old content untouched, keep updating them periodically.
- Long-form content: In the era of decreasing attention span, short-form content tends to perform well. However, in the context of your business blogging, long-form content is for the win.
- Personal: Give your content a personal touch. The best content connects with your audience personally. Always try to have a conversation with your audience. This builds authority and trust in your brand.
Become an expert in your field
To craft effective and customer-focused content that establishes your brand as an authority, possessing expertise is imperative. Familiarizing yourself with your product and industry is vital to achieve this.
A few ways to do this include: subscribing to top niche publications, tuning in to industry podcasts and videos, networking with industry leaders, staying current on trending topics through research tools, collaborating with internal experts, and participating in customer calls with product owners. It’s crucial that you and your content team have a thorough understanding of your company’s offerings.
Build an effective content marketing funnel
When we take B2B scenarios into account, SaaS products are in a high consideration group. In other words, before you win a customer, you need to make a lot of decisions around the customer journey.
You need to start making content for each funnel stage. Write for each stage of the funnel. A funnel takes the form of an inverted pyramid and has stages of Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, and Referral.
Acquisition
The acquisition is basically asking yourself, how can you get more users to sign up for your product? In order to acquire your target audience, you need to bring out products that align with their needs.
A potential customer is aware of the problem they have, but they are not sure what solutions are available in the market. Make your solution visible to your audience. Go all in for brand awareness!
Activation
Once you have attracted your potential customers, you need to give them that ‘aha’ moment of value. Creating interest in your audience so that they actively consider your solution to their problem and ask more questions about your brand is crucial for activating customers.
Once they become curious, feed them with the right products and strategy!
Retention
Your target audience has become aware of your brand and the solution it provides. But how do you retain them?
Retaining customers is a significant challenge for most businesses, but if your marketing strategy is effective and you serve quality, customers are likely to return. Rather than trying to aggressively acquire your customers, focus on providing value and they will come back for more.
Revenue
Once you have retained your customer, the next big thing that comes is how to expand your revenue.
If you want to expand your revenue, you need to experiment with your business time and again. Don’t let your business have stagnant growth!
Referral
Always aim to build a brand that your customers want to vouch for. Word-of-mouth advertising can be incredibly effective, in addition to digital marketing efforts.
Work on your distribution strategy
Creating content is half the battle, effectively promoting that content can take it to another level. Building a strong content distribution network is as important as creating content. Before the content creation process takes place, you need to consider how your content will be positioned and promoted.
Content can be distributed in three primary methods:
Owned Channels
The channels that belong to your business, for example, podcast, blog, social media, mailing list, etc. are known as owned channels. You decide what is being posted on which platform at what time. Here you can put your energy to boost your organic search as well.
Shared Channels
Shared Channels are not owned by you, they are owned by third parties, such as forums, friendly blogs, newsletters, and even review sites. Your content won’t belong to you in such channels.
Paid Channels
Paid Channels are a way where influencers or platforms will promote your product for a discussed fee. It is always better to join hands with people who have your target audience.
If you get your content right, it will get a lot of impressions, get it wrong, and it will go unnoticed.
Monitor your results
Just like Google’s algorithm keeps evolving, so does your target audience. You need to put emphasis on your strategy and its execution to stay relevant and in tune with your audience’s engagement.
You might think, what should you monitor?
- Brand Awareness
- Engagement
- Lead Generation
- Sales
- Customer retention
Customers are the best source of information on how your product is performing. To gather this information, you should ask questions to your customers and check for reviews and ratings of your product.
It is essential to regularly review your company’s performance and products by returning back to the basics. If necessary, adapt your content to remain relevant in the industry. There are various analytics tools available online that can help in measuring all the metrics listed above.
In parting words, content marketing for SaaS companies requires focusing on your customer and their needs. The biggest challenges faced in your industry should be reflected in your content strategy if you want to win the market. Always remember to put your customers first, your problem second and your solution third, and not the other way around.