In this article, you’ll learn:
SaaS companies apply different strategies and tactics to succeed in their business. The diversity of the strategies depends on business-specific needs. Almost every SaaS company implements content marketing strategies.
Keep in mind - there is no one-size-fits-all content marketing strategy. If you do content marketing for a SaaS company, you should choose a plan according to your specific goals.
There are still universal content marketing tips and tricks you can rely on in your SaaS content marketing strategy.
In this guide, you will get familiar with SaaS content marketing in detail.
Let's start!
SaaS Content Marketing Uniqueness
SaaS content marketing has the same principles as content marketing for non-SaaS companies. Nevertheless, four main nuances make it unique.
Let's review them one by one:
- It has a more complex approach. Any software can be updated with new features. New features help your audience to reveal more potential problems your software can solve. Therefore, SaaS content marketing covers more topics that both educate and sell your product.
- It guarantees the retention of your existing customers. You can always avoid churn rate by applying SaaS content marketing. Educational content helps your existing customers to benefit from the new product features.
- It works like a final nudge in the decision-making process. Your potential customers always like to compare products to decide which one to buy. SaaS content marketing helps understand why your product stands out of the crowd.
- It expands your product across other businesses. For example, any SEO service can help various companies with their SEO activities regardless of the business niche. Don't hesitate to use professional SEO services.
As you can see, SaaS content marketing has specific advantages. Despite this fact, you might still ask yourself - is it a "must" thing to apply in your overall SaaS marketing strategy?
If you want more people to know about your SaaS product, then - yes!
Six Steps to Shape an Actionable SaaS Content Marketing Strategy
The main priority of SaaS content marketing is to create product-led content. So, what does it mean?
A product-led content tends to help the target audience understand how to solve their problems by applying your product. Besides, SaaS content marketing makes the product sales process easier & seamless.
The next six tips are obligatory if you want to improve your content marketing for SaaS products.
Let’s review them.
Make sure you know your product perfectly
You won't be able to create product-led content if you don't know your product from A to Z. And many marketers do not dig deeper into the product they promote due to one reason - they are not customers by themselves.
For example, you have a marketing position at a design company. This company's product is related to logo design. If you have never tested the product (didn't use it to create a logo), you won't understand how to sell it to your target audience.
Therefore, new marketers should spend time cooperating with a support team for a few months. It will help them to know the product the best.
Understand your target market
Any SaaS product offers certain features to help customers solve their issues. Nevertheless, your goal is to embrace more audiences across different industries.
For instance, your SaaS product offers content design features. It allows helping lots of businesses and individual users who need to visualize content starting from educational niches (students, teachers) and ending with business corporations (creating reports, infographics, etc.)
Consequently, do your market research considering the wide range of audiences you might attract.
Explore topics with search traffic potential
When people want to find a solution to their problem, they go to Google. Hence, your purpose is to cover topics people try to explore on the web.
How to figure out such topics?
You can use SEO tools with a "keyword research" option. In this particular case, this tool is Keywords Explorer from Ahrefs.
Let's say you are in charge of marketing for a SaaS company that specializes in social media activity. To be more exact, your service helps buy Instagram followers.
You know a few product-related keywords your potential customers may use. One of these keywords is "buy Instagram followers." Now, analyze this keyword with the Keywords Explorer tool by reviewing the "matching terms" report:
As you can see, the results are pretty impressive - 1,2K+ of keywords to target. Your next step is to narrow down the list of suggestions.
How to do this?
Use filters like "Keyword Difficulty (KD)" and "Traffic Potential":
Your goal is to explore keywords that would not be so hard to rank for + these keywords must drive traffic.
The list of keywords has been narrowed down to 11 potential topics:
Skim through suggestions and pick ones that would work for your SaaS content marketing plan.
Add a business potential score to the topics
How to create product-led content that wouldn't just sell your service directly but increase brand awareness as well?
First of all, the topic should raise the problem your customers face. Secondly, the main idea is to suggest your product as the only solution to the problem. Finally, create a "business potential" score for each topic you come up with.
How does this "business potential" score look?
- “0” - your product can't solve the problem at all
- “1” - you can mention your product fluently
- “2” - the product can help slightly
- “3” - your product is the only solution
Use this "business potential" score and select topics to cover rationally.
Work on creating product-led content that ranks
There are three main conditions to create product-led content that drives traffic to your site:
Write with search intent in mind
Google pays attention to search intent. This intent shows the exact "why" behind what people explore anything online. And Google provides users with the most relevant results to their search requests.
How to find out the search intent for your topics?
Go to Google and type your target keyword. Afterwards, review the following three components of content:
- Type (video, blog post, product page, infographic, etc.)
- Format (review, "how-to" guide, listicles, etc.)
- Angle (for experts, beginners, etc.)
Write in-depth & detailed content to cover the topic completely
Google gives priority to detailed content. Hence, your goal is to cover subtopics and include additional materials.
For instance, the top pages for "how to create flowchart" requests are:
The first position belongs to the post from Visme. And the post suggests templates within the content.
So, how to cover the topic in detail?
a) Skim through the top-ranking pages and see what subtopics they include
b) Include more examples, visual elements, and additional materials
Mention your product naturally
Product-led content helps potential customers reveal their problems and suggest your product as the solution. Use your writing skills and mention your service/product whenever it will be appropriate.
Content promotion
Even the top-notch piece of content needs promotion. Otherwise, no one will know about it.
Here are four ways how to promote content:
- Ads (paid ads can promote your content in a blink of an eye driving traffic to your site)
- Link building (backlinks tend to be one of the ranking factors; thus, build backlinks and your content will rank higher across search engines)
- Content repurposing (breathe a new life into outdated blog posts by repurposing them into other forms of content - infographics, video, etc.)
- Share content on social channels (let your social media audience know about content updates on your blog)
Content promotion should be an integrated part of your SaaS content marketing strategy.
To Sum Up
SaaS content marketing is critical for running a SaaS business online. It helps you tell about your product using the words potential customers will hear and understand.
You have just got familiar with the general concept of SaaS content marketing. Plus, you are already aware of actionable tips that work.
If you think the post lacks more information, feel free to share your ideas in the comments.
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