Content marketing is one of the most efficient ways to generate leads and revenue for your SaaS business, but it can be grueling to know where to start. According to recent studies, high-quality content marketing can translate to an ROI of 448% or more for SaaS brands, and 98% of top-performing SaaS companies have blogs. Long-form content should make up the majority of SaaS content marketing works—top-performing content is 12% longer.
However, 65% find it challenging to craft engaging content, and 62% say they need help to produce content consistently.
Fortunately, we’ve generated a 10-step guide to lucrative SaaS content marketing. This guide will take you from creating an effective strategy to measuring your success so that you can see an increase in leads and revenue from your content marketing campaigns.
How Does Content Marketing Differ for SaaS Companies?
Saas companies have a unique challenge when it comes to content marketing. Unlike product-based companies, they cannot rely on product demos or case studies to sell their products. Instead, they must create compelling content that speaks to the needs of their target customers. It can be a challenging endeavor but can be overcome with careful planning and execution.
Saas companies should focus on creating content that is educational and informative. This type of content will help potential customers understand the software’s benefits. Additionally, Saas companies should focus on creating content targeted at specific customer segments. By segmenting their audience, Saas companies can ensure that they are creating content relevant to their target customers’ needs.
By following these tips, Saas companies can create a content marketing strategy that will help them to reach their target customers and convert them into paying customers.
SaaS Content Marketing Made Simple: 10 Key Steps
Here are ten essential steps to create successful Saas content marketing campaigns:
1. Determine Whether Content Marketing Is Suitable for Your SaaS Business
As the Saas business model has become increasingly popular, effective content marketing strategies are required. After all, Saas companies are built on recurring revenue, and content marketing can be a powerful tool for driving that revenue. But before embarking on a content marketing strategy, it’s crucial to determine whether it’s a proper fit for your business.
Here are three key considerations:
Target Audience
First, take a look at your target audience. What type of content would they be interested in? Would they be more likely to respond to educational articles or more lighthearted blog posts? Once you understand your audience well, you can start developing content that resonates with them.
Marketing Goals
Next, consider your goals. What do you propose to achieve with your content marketing strategy? Are you looking to generate leads or increase brand awareness? Once you apprehend what you want to accomplish, you can create content designed to meet those goals.
Resources
Finally, take a look at your budget. Content marketing can be costly, so it’s vital to ensure you have the resources to execute a successful strategy. If you’re on a compact budget, there are still plenty of options available; be sure to choose cost-effective methods like guest blogging or social media marketing.
Ultimately, whether or not content marketing is right for your Saas business comes down to several factors. By assessing your audience, goals, and budget, you can decide whether this type of marketing is right for you.
2. Define Your Content Marketing Goals, Success Criteria, And KPIs
Any successful Saas content marketing strategy must build a foundation of clear and achievable goals. With a clear destination in mind, measuring progress and determining whether or not your content is genuinely effective will be easier.
Furthermore, your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Once you have defined your goals, you can establish success criteria and KPIs to help you track progress and identify areas for improvement. By taking the time to represent your content marketing goals from the outset properly, you will increase your chances of achieving lasting success.
3. Discover Your Audience Needs And Problems
Saas content marketing is about conveying the accurate message to the right audience at the right time. You must profoundly understand your audience’s needs and problems to do this effectively. Only then can you develop content that provides real value and solves their specific issues.
How to Get a Deeper Understanding of Your Audience?
There are a few methods you can go about this:
Talk to your customers directly.
This can be completed through surveys, interviews, or casual conversations. Try to understand not only what their needs are but also how they currently solve those needs (or how they try to solve them).
Take a look at your website data.
Find which pages get the most traffic and engagement and understand why. What needs or problems are those visitors trying to solve?
Look at your competition.
See how they’re addressing the needs of your shared audience, and try to find any gaps in their coverage.
By taking a moment to conclude the needs and problems of your audience, you’ll be in a better position to create content that truly resonates with them. As a result, you’ll see higher engagement rates and more conversions.
4. Build an Effective Marketing Content Funnel
A Saas content marketing strategy should be designed to funnel readers towards a conversion. The idea is that, as prospects move further down the funnel, they become more and more interested in your product or service. To make this happen, you must create content that appeals to readers at each funnel stage.
For example, at the top of the funnel, you might write blog posts that provide general information about your industry. As readers move further down the funnel, your content should become more specific, providing detailed information about your product or service and how it can benefit prospects.
Ultimately, your goal is to lead readers to a threshold where they are ready to make a purchase. Creating a well-designed content funnel can increase prospects’ likelihood of taking this final step.
DOWNLOAD OUR FREE E-BOOK ULTIMATE GUIDE TO EVERGREEN CONTENT MARKETING.
5. Target Long-Tail Keywords In Your Content Strategy
To be effective, your Saas Content Marketing Strategy must be aligned with your business goals. One way to ensure this alignment is to target long-tail keywords in your content. Long-tail keywords are specific, precise phrases that accurately describe what your potential customer is looking for. Furthermore, by creating content that targets these keywords, you can provide value to your potential customers and build trust and credibility with them.
How to Find Long-Tail Keywords for Your SaaS Content Marketing Strategy?
First, start with a seed list of keywords related to your product or service. To get started, you can utilize a tool like Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer. Once you have your seed list, it’s time to begin brainstorming variations and expansions of those keywords. For example, if your product is a CRM system, some long-tail keyword variations could be “CRM software for small businesses” or “CRM software for sales teams.”
Another great way to find long-tail keywords is to look at the search results for your seed list keywords and see what people are searching for. For example, if you search for “CRM software,” you’ll see several related searches, including “free CRM software” and “CRM software for small businesses.” You could use these potential long-tail keywords in your Saas content marketing strategy.
Finally, remember to use negative keywords in your keyword research. Negative keywords are words or phrases that you don’t want your ads to show up for. For example, if you’re selling CRM software for small businesses, you wouldn’t like your ad to appear when someone searches for “free CRM software.” Adding negative keywords to your campaigns can help you avoid wasting money on unintentional clicks and improve your return on investment.
6. Strengthen Your Thought Leadership and Get Creative with Content Ideas
As a Saas company, one of your main goals should be establishing yourself as a thought leader in your industry. It can help you attract more customers and build trust with your existing ones. But how do you go about doing this?
One way is to create content that is both informative and evergreen. This could include blog posts, infographics, eBooks, white papers, etc. It’s crucial to ensure that your content is relevant to your target audience and provides value. Otherwise, people will tune it out.
Another way to establish yourself as a thought leader is to get creative with your content ideas. This could involve creating something new or putting a fresh spin on an existing idea. The goal is to be noteworthy from the crowd and get the audience talking about your brand.
Read more: Anatomy of an Effective Content Production Process
7. Build Authority With Earned Media
Saas content marketing is all about building authority. And one of the best tactics to build authority is through earned media. Earned media is any coverage you get from a third-party source, like press coverage in an industry publication or a positive review from a satisfied customer.
Because it’s coming from an external source, earned media can be compelling in building trust and credibility with your audience. And that’s essential for any Saas business that wants to succeed in the long term. So if you’re looking to build authority and create a Saas content marketing strategy to help you succeed, make sure to focus on earned media. It can make all the difference.
Read more: 5 Steps to Improve your Domain Authority.
8. Create Link-Worthy Content Assets On Your Site
To earn links from high-quality websites, you need to create link-worthy content assets on your site. Original research, Help articles, and landing pages receive the most backlinks on average.
There are a few different types of content that tend to perform well in this regard:
Evergreen content is the type of content that remains relevant and useful over time. It needs to be updated like news articles or seasonal guides. Instead, it provides timeless information that people can reference again and again. This makes it an excellent asset for link building because it has the potential to drive traffic and earn links for months or even years after it’s been published.
Long-form blog posts are another excellent option for link-building. In general, in-depth articles that offer readers a wealth of information on a given topic, the more valuable it is considered to be. So if you can write comprehensive blog posts that thoroughly cover a topic, you’re likely to earn high-quality links.
Original research and reports can be an effective way to showcase your company’s expertise and can also be quite link-worthy. If you have data or insights that are unique and original, other websites will want to link to them. This is especially true if credible sources back up your data.
Finally, case studies are an excellent way to demonstrate the results you have achieved for your clients and tend to be very persuasive and can help you earn links from websites looking for trustworthy information. If you can provide detailed, real-world examples of your product or service in action, you’re likely to acquire some quality links.
All these types of content can help you earn valuable inbound links, so be sure to include them in your Saas content marketing strategy.
9. Create Your Distribution Strategy and Tracking Metrics
As a Saas company, your content marketing strategy needs to be focused on creating and distributing content that your target audience will find valuable. But to ensure that your content reaches the right people, you need to have a clear distribution strategy in place. Without a plan for putting your content in front of your audience, it will be multifaceted to measure your success.
There are several different channels that you can utilize to distribute your content, and the best strategy will likely vary depending on your industry and target audience. But some of the most common methods for Saas companies include SEO, promotion with branded content, social media, and email marketing. Once you’ve identified the channels most likely to reach your target audience, you must begin thinking about how you will track your progress.
There are a number of metrics that you can harness to gauge the success of your Saas content marketing strategy. Some of the most fundamental include website traffic, leads generated, conversion rate, and social media engagement. By closely monitoring these metrics, you’ll be able to adjust your strategy as needed to ensure that you’re gaining the most out of your content marketing efforts.
10. Repurpose your content
If you’re like most people, you presumably have a lot of content sitting around accumulating dust. But fortunately, you can repurpose that content and use it to achieve your Saas marketing goals.
Look at your existing content and see if any pieces could be repurposed for a different audience or format. You can use a handful of methods to repurpose your content. One is to republish it on another platform. If you have an article that did well on your blog, consider posting it on Medium or LinkedIn Pulse. 94% of B2B SaaS brands utilize LinkedIn to distribute content.
You can also break up long-form content into smaller pieces, such as infographics, carousels, and reels then share them as social media updates. Top SaaS posts are shared on social media 246 times.
You could also take an outdated blog post and turn it into a video or podcast episode. 18% of SaaS companies have their own podcast. Or, you could take a white paper and create an e-book. The possibilities are endless – but the point is, don’t let your existing content go to waste. By repurposing your content in this way, you can reach new audiences, breathe new life into it and get more mileage out of your existing material.
Get Started
Content marketing is a compartmentalized process, but following these ten steps will assist you on the path to success. Once you have your foundation in place, it’s time to start crafting content that will attract and engage your audience. Keep in mind that quality trumps quantity.
If you need assistance with any step of the process, our team of experts is here to help. Contact us today to set up a demo.
We’re always happy to chat and answer any questions you have!
