What is SaaS Content Marketing?
SaaS content marketing is a long-term marketing strategy that SaaS businesses implement to attract, convert, and retain a target audience by consistently creating and distributing value-packed, unique content.
If you run an internet business, you already have fundamental content marketing skills, like writing website copy, making landing pages, updating social media, and even blogging. But you won’t be able to compete in the b2b SaaS content marketing space until you adopt a strategic approach to content ideation, creation, distribution, and measurement – setting specific targets and basing your content investments on data.
And at that point, you’ll be better able to interact with and reach out to your target market, increasing brand recognition, trust, and authority, ultimately resulting in higher organic search rankings, targeted traffic, and lead creation.
Now, you may ask…
How Does Content Marketing Benefit SaaS Companies?
Businesses across various industries can profit from a properly conceived and implemented content strategy, and the tech and SaaS sector is no different.
A targeted and systematic strategy is required to increase lead generation and marketing ROI because the content is the engine that drives inbound marketing.
Although creating a content plan is time-consuming and complex, it is unquestionably a crucial aspect of your marketing. Some Saas businesses work with a to lead their content strategy, allowing you to concentrate on other essential areas of your business.
Among others, here are a few ways content marketing benefits SaaS companies:
1. Content marketing adds value without exposing trade secrets
It’s a misconception to believe that sharing helpful how-to tips and secrets will make your competitors steal your idea.
Do you know that providing valuable content establishes your site as a go-to centre?
Content marketing allows you to provide value through content, establishing you as the messiah in your niche.
2. Content marketing can help your brand increase conversions
Customers try to learn as much as possible about a product before purchasing.
According to a Content Marketing Institute, content marketing has six times the power of traditional marketing for converting people into leads and leads into customers.
3. Content can help product and brand discovery
Introducing a new concept your target audience won’t yet recognize as necessary is challenging. How can you spread this concept if your customers can’t locate it?
The most effective technique is helpful and pertinent content that adheres to an inbound marketing strategy and concentrates on prospects’ requirements and problems rather than the product itself.
4. Content gives your brand personality
Customers always prefer to deal with businesses or brands they can trust over those only interested in their money.
A content marketing strategy developed for robots may perplex your prospects and make them wonder what you’re talking about and how it applies to them. Adding humour to your brand increases trust, and trust increases sales.
You’ll be able to demonstrate to your customers who you are and why you’re significant in their life by working with a content marketing strategy that is more relatable and approachable. If you’re bold enough, you could even be able to add a little humour to your blogs or videos, which they’ll find to be quite amusing.
We are flying at a pace faster than that rockets.
I love it!
Let’s move further!
7 Tested and Trusted Ways to Create Effective Content Marketing for SaaS Brands
A working content marketing strategy for SaaS brands can be categorized into seven sections. They include:
# Know your target audience
# Identify your target audience’s pain points
# Identify the winning keywords
# Know your campaign goals and metrics
# Define your content creation procedures
# Know your content distribution channel
# Study your results and make changes
Let’s explain in detail!
1 Know Your Target Audience
According to Marketing Evolution, your target audience refers to the consumers most likely to want your product or service and, therefore, the people who should see your ad campaigns.
Defining your target is the foundation for creating a working content marketing strategy for your SaaS brand. However, the secret to unravelling this hack is creating a checklist of questions.
To ensure you have the best, I researched a detailed list of questions to ask to know your brand’s target audience:
What demographic are you targeting?
Where does your target audience live?
What industry does your target audience work in?
What hobbies does your target audience have?
How does your target market think?
How does your target audience communicate?
What challenges does your target audience experience?
Who makes the purchasing decision?
What motivates the decision-maker to make a purchase?
Were they buying from a competitor in the past?
What are your target audience’s fears?
What types of content do your target audience enjoy most online?
Now that you have these questions, what is the next step?
After identifying the details of your target audience, you can use the data collated to create a profile of your ideal buyer. Next, give the perfect buyer a name to help while brainstorming.
2. Identify Your Target Audience Pain Points
After defining your target audience, the next step is identifying their pain points.
I tag identifying your prospects’ pain points as a psychological walkway.
I need to explain it in detail.
To uncover your prospects’ pain points, you need to walk yourself through your market’s experience and the stages that take them from being interested in your product to making a purchase. You can achieve this work by mapping out the customer journey.
The customer journey refers to an individual’s interactions with your brand, product, or services. It also refers to the process your buyers go through, from prospects to customers.
Let’s identify this path one after the other:
#The stage of awareness of your brand’s products or services.
#A visit to your website or social media platforms.
#A surge of interest in your products/services leads to free trial registration.
#Active usage of your products/services.
#Expanded use of your products/services due to new features and offers.
#Increase in customer service issues.
#Renewal of subscription or let it lapse—transition into a long-term customer.
For b2b SaaS marketing, the central part of the buyer’s journey is the first contact with your brand/website/social media platforms.
Your marketers must be skilled in addressing their pain points at the initial stage to inspire them to seek your solution or your brand’s offers.
Before I move to the next point, you need to know that pain points differ per industry, audience, and more.
Let’s identify a few:
Financial pain points – inability to purchase a SaaS product or service due to high expenses or low revenue.
Technical pain points – inability to optimize a SaaS solution with the necessary application.
Labour pain points – straining effort required to use a SaaS product.
Learn this…
You can build a content cluster around your buyer’s pain points and market your brand’s solution.
Let’s move further!
3. Identify the Winning Keywords
At each stage of your buyer’s journey, they implement keywords necessary to get the best of your products/services.
Often, the keywords are always “how-to.”
For example, at the initial stage of conversing with your brand, your prospects research how to solve the problems related to their pain points. Also, after purchasing your product/service, they may require information as regards your app set-up or how to use specific features on your app.
It’s expedient that you create content optimizing these keywords. This strategy will foster effective marketing and promote customer satisfaction and retention.
For effectiveness, I recommend the use of keyword research tools. Let’s take a rundown on a few tools:
Google Keyword Planner
You may find keywords for your search campaigns. Using this free tool, you may discover new keywords associated with your company, get an idea of the number of searches they receive, and find out the price to target them.
Ahrefs
Find out which keywords currently rank for you and your rivals on Google. In the Ahref site explorer, enter your site (or any other domain you wish to analyze) and select the Organic Keywords report option from the left menu.
Semrush
Semrush is an SEO tool that performs keyword research, monitors, audits your blog’s SEO, searches for backlinking opportunities, and does much more.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a FREE and effective SEO tool that displays data on term competitiveness, CPC, and monthly search traffic.
4. Know Your Campaign Goals and Metrics
Create measurable objectives for your content campaigns before optimizing your keywords to create content. This will enable you to evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns and match them up with your marketing objectives.
Key performance indicators (KPIs), including the number of unique visitors, session length, and bounce rate, are necessary for content marketing across all industries. The SaaS sector can also benefit from these KPIs. But for SaaS, a few marketing KPIs are particularly crucial. These consist of the following:
– Free trial registration
– Demo requests
– Customer acquisition cost (CAC) – According to Intercom, it is the best approximation of the cost of acquiring a new customer. It should generally include things like: advertising costs, the salary of your marketers, the costs of your salespeople, etc., divided by the number of customers acquired.
– Lead conversion rate – the percentage of visitors who come to your website and are captured as leads. It indicates your ability to attract the right target audience and the efficiency with which your website turns them into leads.
5. Define Your Content Creation Procedures
After you know the keywords you need to target and the quantifiable objectives you want to attain, you may start creating keyword-focused content to accomplish your goals.
It would help if you had a step-by-step content creation process and procedures to assist in content creation.
However, you need to create solution-focused content that tally with the search engine requirements and your users.
These two points fall back on creating valuable SaaS content. Please take note of the words in bold.
Valuable SaaS content entails all your readers are searching for and is focused on solving their pain points. Often, this content is characterized as SEO-friendly long-form content.
Do you need help creating long-form content that glues your readers to their screens? Read my post on how I write long-form articles that win the heart of my readers.
Alternatively, you can hire an expert like me to take the burden off your shoulder. I help tech and SaaS brands create SaaS content that is not only engaging but persuasive. Videowise, Keyword.com, and Hackernoon are a few brands that have shown immense trust in me.
Let’s move further!
It would help if you created posts around the following:
– How your app can solve your prospects’ pain points
– The unique features of your app, and
– How users can use your app with ease
After creating your content, you need to…
6. Know Your Content Distribution Channels
Distribution channels are platforms you will consistently publish and promote your content. Your distribution channel will vary based on your content and audience.
FlippingBook blog groups the media channels into three segments. Namely:
Owned Media Channels
Website/blog
Email newsletters
Ebooks
Infographics
Video
Earned Media Channels
Guest blogging
Press releases
Social media groups
QA platforms
Online platforms
Podcasts
Paid Distribution Channels
Pay-per-click advertising
Paid influencer marketing
Sponsored content
Paid social ads
7. Study Your Result and Make Changes
It’s crucial to keep track of the effectiveness of your campaigns if you want to be sure that your marketing expenditure is producing the desired outcomes. You can achieve this by establishing a reporting system that monitors the key performance metrics you determine while setting the campaign’s objectives.
For instance, include that KPI in your campaign outcomes tracking if you aim to boost registrations for free software trials.
Use a dashboard-equipped analytics software package to design customized displays and reports that track your preferred KPIs. Establish a routine evaluation process to evaluate the campaign’s results.
Focus your marketing budget on promoting the content items that produce the best outcomes after identifying them. Utilize them as models to repeat your success with different types of content. Take the chance to make adjustments if you discover that your results aren’t helping you achieve your objectives.
By doing split tests to see how performance is affected by modifications, you may simultaneously enhance the performance of underperforming components. You might discover that a minor adjustment produces more significant results, such as a new headline, angle, or image.
Let’s move to the last lap of this race.
11 Unique Ways to Get Content Ideas Your SaaS Readers Can’t Resist
Do you need help generating content ideas for your SaaS brands?
Calm your nerves. You are not alone.
Let’s be true to ourselves; is it hard to generate content ideas consistently?
It is friends – but only when you don’t know the strategies for generating new ideas.
You are curious about the systems to generate content ideas for your SaaS brand consistently.
Before I move to the details, you need to understand something.
I call it…
Paying Attention to the Pain Points/Search Demands of Your Audience
Company updates and product launches have a role in business blogging, but they shouldn’t account for more than 10% of your total content.
Most of your content should be devoted to addressing the demands and preferences of your target market and connecting them to the benefits of your products.
Note: All your brand’s content must revolve around the following:
#The problems of your audience
#Solutions and benefits your audience gets from your product.
#Strategies to strengthen the relationship between your brand and your customers.
With these tips, you can soar like an eagle.
Let’s proceed!
Here are ways to generate content ideas that resonate with your audience’s needs:
1. Ride on the Wings of Your Competitors
It’s unwise to struggle for things someone else has unravelled.
A crucial way to find content ideas is by analyzing your competitor’s best-performing content.
For example, if you are looking for content ideas around your conversion rate optimization tools, you can start by optimizing Google.
Go to Google search and type your topic – conversion rate optimization.
Google will give you a list of results.
Next, open the first ten search results in different tabs.
Don’t forget that your goal is to explore the blog page of each company. Open their blog page and tweak their content ideas with high traffic and engagement.
Alternatively, you can use tools like Ubersuggest, SEMRush, BuzzSumo, and more to explore your competitors’ popular content.
2. Create Content Ideas around the Basics of Your Niche
Make sure you’ve addressed all the fundamental topics that attract your audience before you start looking into original content angles and shareable concepts.
It would be best if you covered the “what,” “why,” “how-to,” and “who” in your niche.
For effectiveness, you can optimize Google Search to get content ideas.
Input your topic (for example, conversion rate optimization) into the Google search and check the “People Also Ask” section for a list of content ideas.
You can also use tools to generate content ideas your audience is looking for.
3. The Benefits of Your Product Are a Hedge way
In a perfect world, you would solely share information about your brand and its advantages.
No one is looking for your product, which is an issue.
However, thousands (or perhaps millions) of individuals may seek your product’s advantages.
Focus on the needs and advantages of your items if you want to increase traffic and interaction with your content.
To generate content ideas around the benefits of your products, you need to answer the following questions:
– Why do customers buy your product?
– What benefits does your product bring to their company? What change are they hoping to achieve by using your product?
– What can you do to support their business expansion?
– What does success mean to them specifically?
4. The Fears of Your Audience Are Content Ideas
It is a good idea to handle fear because it is a powerful motivator.
- What is the audience afraid of?
- What situation do they never wish to encounter?
- What motivates them to keep going when they lack the energy to go on?
Because people are naturally intrigued about what makes them afraid, content that addresses their worries frequently performs well.
5. Show How Your Product Wins the Game
This perspective is similar to the needs of your target market and the primary advantages. Further, demonstrate to your audience how to use your product to accomplish particular objectives (benefits/desires).
This strategy serves two purposes:
#Assists in generating traffic from keywords with a benefits focus.
#Ties your product to the advantages and aids in lead generation.
6. Share Some Case Studies and Success Stories
Case studies and success stories are good power points for SaaS brands.
Create content around how your product achieved certain feats for some users. Content in these formats generates credibility and builds your brand’s authority.
7. Share Some Industry Insights
Do you need help generating fresh ideas? Why not foresee the future and advise your audience on preparing for it?
Customers enjoy reading about predictions for the future, hoping to seize an opportunity.
In addition, people love content that gives an insight into the future.
You can do this at the beginning of each year. In addition, you can follow a noteworthy occurrence that happened internationally or in your sector, such as the COVID-19 epidemic.
Similarly, you can write blogs about your sector’s performance quarterly or biannually.
8. Create Content around Seasonal Events
Although seasonal articles have a limited shelf life, they can bring thousands of visits to your website when published at the correct periods.
If your site is geared toward conversions, some visitors can become leads and customers.
Ensure that your product and the seasonal event you’re promoting are standard.
9. Share the Best Practices in Your Niche
This content is known as “how-to” content.
People want to know how to do things, how to resolve a problem, how to achieve a new feat, people want to learn new things, and a lot more.
You can also share some practices your users should neglect.
10. Round-ups and Interviews are Good Content Ideas
Everyone wants to learn from experts.
Articles that cover the opinions of multiple experts drive a lot of traffic and backlinks.
11. Statistics Will Go a Long way
Statistical content tends to have a lot of backlinks and engagements.
You can conduct an original study or search the web for the most pertinent statistics on your subject, then compile them in a statistical round-up post.
Unravelling the Secret Hacks to B2B SaaS Content Marketing
It’s a journey that appears endless, but here we are…
If you love this article, you will probably love my SEO and content marketing services – I help tech and SaaS brands build their online visibility and authority by creating and optimizing relevant content that brings prospects to their knees.
Reach out to me, and let’s discuss your brand’s content project in detail.
