Now more than ever, B2B buyers are relying on content marketing to inform their decision making. And according to Demand Gen Report’s 2020 Content Preferences Study, 67% of respondents said they relied even more on content in 2020 than they did last year to research and inform purchase decisions. Finally, the secret’s out: content marketing can be immensely valuable for SaaS companies, but only if there’s a solid strategy and sound execution to back it up.
With these elements in place, you can increase brand awareness, establish your company as a thought leader, and generate leads. Not sure how to go about getting started? Let’s review what content marketing for SaaS companies involves, the advantages of SaaS content marketing, and go over how you can get started creating and executing your ideal SaaS content marketing strategy.
Why is Content Marketing Different for SaaS Companies?
SaaS content marketing differs from marketing in other industries in a few ways. But most importantly, you’re selling both a technology product and a service. Your software is the product, so what’s the service? Support. When searching for SaaS providers, one important factor for customers is the quality of customer support. Unlike other industries where companies either sell a product or a service, SaaS providers bear the burden of selling and educating customers on both.
Why is Content Marketing Beneficial for SaaS Companies?
For SaaS companies, content marketing is key to helping prospects and customers fully understand your products. To get people interested in what you have to offer, you need to educate them and provide insight into how your products and services can meet their needs or solve an existing problem. Content marketing is a great way to accomplish both of these objectives.
Types of Content to Develop for Your SaaS Content Marketing Plan:
The type of content you develop as part of your SaaS content marketing plan should vary depending upon your audience’s pain points and the stage of the buyer’s journey they’re in. There are many different types of content that may be a fit for your audience, such as:
- Blog posts
- Tip Sheets
- Checklists
- Case studies
- eBooks
- Whitepapers
- Videos
- Infographics
- Webinars
Planning Your SaaS Content Marketing Strategy:
Identify Your Audience’s Pain Points
To truly motivate potential buyers, your SaaS B2B content marketing strategy must focus on your audience’s pain points. This will naturally ensure that your content marketing strategy is tailored to their needs, increasing your chance of success.
If you’ve created buyer personas, you probably already have some insight into the pain points that trouble your audience, so use those! If you haven’t created buyer personas, there are a few other ways you can identify pain points, such as talking to your sales team, using social media, or surveying your audience.
The pain points you identify will naturally vary depending on your industry and your audience. However you choose to identify them, make sure you touch on them in all of your SaaS content marketing.
Content Planning for Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey
Ultimately, the goal of your content marketing strategy is to provide valuable resources throughout the entire buyer’s journey. Content marketing isn’t just about the awareness stage and increasing traffic to your website. It can and should be used throughout the duration of the buyer’s journey. Here are examples of some of the types of content you can create for each buyer’s journey stage:
Awareness
In the awareness stage, you’ll want to develop engaging, educational content that attracts people to your website and helps them understand who you are and what you offer. This content could be in the form of blog posts, articles, introductory videos, and others.
Consideration
At this stage, prospects are aware of your software and know how it could help them. Now, you want to build trust by offering high-value content like eBooks, whitepapers, tip sheets, checklists, and in-depth videos. You can generate leads by gating content like eBooks and whitepapers and nurture them with drip email campaigns.
Decision
In the decision stage, you want to continue nurturing leads and turn them into customers. This is where demos, free trials, case studies, comparisons, and testimonial videos come in.
Keyword Research
Different stages of the buyer’s journey mean that your prospects will use different keywords to find the information or solutions they’re looking for. A keyword research tool will enable you to identify keywords that are relevant for your SaaS at each stage of the buyer’s journey. You can then use these keywords to develop content that is tailored to address the needs of your prospects at every stage.
There are plenty of keyword research tools available that you can use. But partnering with an integrated marketing agency that knows how to effectively use these tools will ultimately ensure that you achieve the best possible results.
Determine Your Goals and KPIs
At the end of the day, every SaaS company has one main goal—to increase revenue. And there are a variety of ways you can achieve this goal with your SaaS content marketing plan. The main goals you choose are going to impact your overall marketing strategy—especially content. This will impact the types of content you produce, how much you produce, and how often.
Typical content marketing goals and KPIs may include:
- Goal: Increase Brand Awareness
- KPIs: Impressions, Social Media Engagement, Number of Website Visitors
- Goal: Generate Leads
- KPIs: Blog Conversion Rate, Content Downloads, CTA Engagement
- Goal: Improve User Engagement
- KPIs: Churn Rate, Average Session Duration, Number of Active Users
Create an Ideal SaaS Content Marketing Strategy
Developing your ideal SaaS content marketing strategy might seem like an intimidating task, but with this helpful guide to get you started, you can jump right into it and start generating leads in no time. Once you know your audience and have a clear understanding of their pain points, creating content that resonates with them is simple.
Need help with executing your content marketing strategy to deliver quality results? Sagefrog’s skilled team of strategists, digital marketers, and content crafters is ready to dive right in. Let’s talk!
