Content Marketing for SaaS Guide (10 Steps That Helped Me)

This Blog is an in-depth guide on content marketing strategies for SaaS companies to promote their products online and get more clients with organic growth.

I have been working as a Product Marketing lead in a SaaS company for the past 2 years. And honestly, running a Saas campaigns isn’t an easy feat.  It can be difficult for Saas companies to market products because they are not tangible products, and also, making your product stand out in thousands of other similar content isn’t easy. 

Content marketing is more cost-effective and can increase sales for small- to medium-sized SaaS businesses than conventional marketing tactics. Compared to other marketing tactics, Content marketing costs 62% less and generates three times as many leads.

That’s why they need to create an image of what the product does, how it works, and who the target audience is.

Why is Content Marketing for Saas Companies Different?

Content marketing for Saas companies is a difficult task because not only are you trying to sell the software to the customer, but you are also marketing the support quality of the service provider.

A few of the reasons why content marketing for Saas companies is different are listed below:

• You market both services and technologies
• Marketing should be focused on optimizing the search engine
• You must educate different prospects through your marketing
• Reviews play an integral part in your sales
• You have to address clients’ risk
• Promoting repeat business must be a goal of your marketing plan
• Establishing a reputation is essential for Saas services

As we have listed and seen, the marketing goals and objectives can significantly vary for Saas companies and other companies. Hence, while trying to map out your marketing strategy, you must keep these goals in mind. Or otherwise, you would have a marketing disaster on your hands.

10 Steps for Effective Content Marketing for SaaS Companies

Throughout this process, You should target to create a Sales Funnel that consistently yields leads and conversions for your product. Keep in mind that the whole process should be focusing on funnel building based on your goals.

1. Setting Strategic Objectives for Content Marketing

First and foremost, you have to work on optimizing your content by setting yourself a list of strategic goals. 

These goals should help define the role of content marketing in the process and structure of your business. Thus, they will help in building a clearer outline for you. 

For example, a few of the strategic goals for marketing Saas content could be:

• To build brand recognition
• Building a relationship with the audience
• Encouraging customer loyalty
• Developing a contact list
• Establish a cumulative monthly lead flow for your sales team.
  

Another list of strategic goals should include the content marketing funnel, which is discussed in detail below.

Content marketing is an important factor for Saas companies. It can help them increase their product awareness and grow their customer base.

Marketing content is also a great way to get leads and sales because it helps them to generate interest in their products. The goal of content marketing should be to engage users, provide value, and drive conversions.

Based on your list of phone, email, and mailing contacts will expand each month as a result of content marketing based on good list-building techniques; you’ll be able to reach a wider audience each month. The number of contacts will decline only as slowly as the unsubscribe rate if list-building operations are stopped.

Therefore, it’s crucial to take into account the cumulative nature of content marketing when you create your strategic goals.

2. Establish Your Objectives

It’s time to identify the performance measures once you fully understand the strategic goals. These metrics should be taken into account when creating content for SaaS.

• Increased monthly visits for every dollar invested – This metric can provide you with a great deal of data regarding how much your access to leads grows with each dollar invested.
  
• Initial-contact analytics include the first contact’s source, its content, the interval between it and the sale, the route taken, and related data.
  
• The average value of every individual visitor – This measure can provide intriguing information regarding the effectiveness of keyword selection, list building, sales funnel design, and client retention. Additionally, it can highlight a failure to make an effort to find out whether the current customers were past visitors.
  
• Percentage of new and repeat visitors – these measures can provide insight into the history of your growth because a high percentage of repeated visitors indicates customer loyalty.
  
• The increase in contacts or subscribers with every dollar invested – if this metric is low, it will be crucial for you to look for the cause behind it. Such as low traffic, low conversions, high subscriber churn, a lack of emphasis placed on lead magnets and other list-building strategies, or if it is some other issue.
  
• The number of sign-ups per visit – measuring the sign-ups for Saas or free trials can be strategically informative. If in case the number is low, it could indicate an issue with the Saas instead of the content marketing; thus, it could reflect on the loss of opportunities to boost client loyalty with SaaS content marketing.

It is important to establish these metrics because they will offer insight into marketing Saas content and help you improve in certain weak areas, which can ensure success in the future.

3. Research Your Audience

Knowing your audience will always work in your favor. It enables you to comprehend your reader’s objectives, difficulties, uncertainties, and queries. 

SaaS purchases typically entail several processes and various parties, including influencers, users, and decision-makers. As a result, you must know who will engage with your content and when and how to design an efficient conversion strategy.

What do you need to do?

Create an ideal buyer’s Persona.

There are a few methods you can employ to comprehend your audience better. For instance:

1. Interview a variety of customers, from decision-makers to users. Get information from them regarding the steps they took to access the content and make the purchase.
2. Participate actively in online communities related to your field. On platforms such as LinkedIn groups
3. Work together with your customer-facing teams from Sales, Customer Success, and other departments. Make every effort to include them in your content marketing strategy as a whole.
4. Develop connections with thought leaders and specialists in your field. You will be able to access new audiences and have a better grasp of the market as a result.

4. Know your Product – USPs

Thoroughly knowing the product you are selling, and the field you are working in is essential. To keep up with the industry, you could do multiple things such as taking part in research and sales process for the customers, checking weekly digests of the biggest publications and newsletters, or learning from the internal subject matter experts to build a relationship.

As for my company’s products, I clearly defined our software’s USPs in our ads and content and clearly explained our strong holds. Use SWOT analysis to gather insights into your product and compare it to the rest of the options available in the market.

My USP was User Experience at a much cheaper price, I used this to my advantage in multiple campaigns. I created campaigns that showcased how effective and reliable the UI/UX of our software is and how it can benefit the end user.

SaaS systems are often more complex, demanding ongoing training and monitoring of feature changes. And familiarizing yourself with the industry and the product will allow you to cooperate with your organization’s growth, brand, and product marketing teams. 

5. Understand Your Competition

In this industry, content marketing has a wide range of competitive aspects that must be taken into account. For example, the businesses you will compete with in the SaaS market will be completely different from those you will face in the content market.

To find out where your direct competitors have been mentioned, conduct a detailed examination of their backlinks. Look over their content to see what keywords, subjects, and platforms they are aiming for. Utilize all of this information along with intuitive browsing to understand their content marketing approach.

Further looking at their marketing strategies will help you identify their weakness, which means you can make sure to learn from their mistakes and avoid repeating those mistakes. 

Identifying your audience and competition will set the foundation for you to build your content on, so make sure you are thorough with this research and information. 

6. Create a Broader Appeal

Instead of just offering the solution to your customer’s problems, you should adopt an educational approach to how users can use the Saas content to solve some of their practical workplace issues.

Rather than advertising your product, focus on inspiring your audience. This will help them remember you in the future.

Other than that, develop an effective keyword strategy because it can help in guiding you on what people are looking for. In short, your keywords will be closely associated with your goals, So if you want to increase your subscriber base, try to concentrate on keywords that point to readers’ interest in an ebook or case study rather than just a blog post.

Otherwise, if you want to increase your subscriber base, attempt to concentrate on keywords that point to readers’ interest in an ebook, whitepaper, or case study rather than just a blog post. And if list development is your primary goal, select keywords that organically lead to your lead magnet at the end of your blog post or another piece of content. 

Your writing should effectively direct readers to the following stages. And keep in mind to avoid overloading your text with synonyms of the same phrase, limit your keyword usage per thought to one or two words.

7. Build a Content Marketing Funnel

To gain a customer, you must win over a lot of decision-makers. Because of this, it is crucial to produce content that caters to client needs at all points throughout the customer journey.

• Recognition – customers are aware of their problems, so they are looking for solutions to them. So your aim should be to generate traffic and create brand awareness. 

Tactics you can adopt: Social media, Blogs, Email marketing, and events

• Consideration – This is the part where you generate leads. The potential customer is aware of possible solutions but is unsure which brand to go for. 

Tactics you can adopt: Webinars, newsletters, guides, and case studies

• Conversion – This is when potential customers turn into customers by looking to subscribe to your deals and pricing. So make sure to try and nurture your audience and “customers with valuable content.

Tactics you can adopt are Demos, trials, price sheets, and comparison guides.

• Retention – To retain customers means to create brand loyalty amongst your customers. Make them your advocates and persuade them to buy more of your products.

Tactics you can adopt are Product updates, advocacy programs, client workshops, and consultancy services for clients.

8. Strategize your Outreach

You can strategize your outreach through publications and promotions. Through publications, you will be required to publish your content to grab attention for your site, and with the help of promotion, you will draw attention to the publication which will lead people to your site.

To do this, you will have to affiliate certain influencers and publications with your product and make sure to address certain issues that some of them may have had with your content. 

Each piece of content should have its outreach strategy. An effective outreach campaign, nevertheless, also heavily relies on relationships.

9. Generate Quality Content

Quality content generates the most organic customers. Which gives it an important role to play in attracting an audience. So, high-quality content will always be preferred.  But what can you do to generate high-quality content? Here is a list of things you can keep in mind:

• It ought to be innovative, beneficial, and practical while also being pertinent to the audience’s objectives.
• It must be genuine. Always prefer content that is based on your experience over content that is not. 
• Content should be entirely thorough. Make sure you address all likely inquiries and subtopics associated with the article’s core theme.
• An excellent user experience should be provided via content, too. For instance, written information should be targeted to the audience’s level of comprehension and should include graphics, short, simple sentences, and headings to make it easier for readers to scan.

10. Define the Cycle of Content

Lastly, it is imperative to keep developing your content and perfecting it with time. You can do that by analyzing each piece of your content. You can do this by identifying your audience, target words, affiliated lead magnets, and a list of targeted platforms. 

Then you can work on the content outline, research, producing, publishing, promoting, performance analysis, honing, and following it up with more content. 

You could also define different steps for different types of content and assign clear roles for each content marketing team. You could also follow up on the content and identify potential opportunities.

Also, review the way your information is organized frequently. This can aid in your decision-making on issues such as how leads should be anticipated to use the site or how effectively your brand is presented, among other things. And you can also set aside regular time to discuss potential new platforms, SaaS, and audiences.

FAQs

How does Content Marketing Benefits Saas Companies?

Every business requires content marketing to flourish organically, and SaaS-focused firms are no exception.

The SaaS and IT industries are distinct in this regard. Their target audiences are always trying to advance their education and careers.

In some cases, SaaS companies’ content acts as consumers’ primary source of knowledge and information.

Building a devoted community, positioning your brand as an industry thought leader, and creating a stable revenue stream depend on your content production efforts to help your consumers improve their skills.

Bottom Line:

If you go step by step and ensure that you are doing each thing with the best of your interest and hard work, you should be able to churn out unique Saas content and draw more attention to your content. Which is the ultimate aim. 

But do keep in mind Rome wasn’t built in a day, so don’t get hasty. Let time run its course, trust your method and process, and in case of doubt, analyze every step of your technique without bias to identify an issue, and you will be good to go!