The common denominator in the success of top SaaS brands is SaaS content marketing.
What, why, how!?
Flabbergasted? Well, that’s what happens when your common notions about content marketing get busted. Content marketing for SaaS is being used by 55% of SaaS companies as per an article by Gitnux with accumulated statistics on SaaS marketing.
This was just an example of how crucial SaaS content marketing is, next we are going to discuss why, and how you can build your own SaaS content strategy for different kinds of content including SEO content.
What is SaaS content marketing and how is it different?
Just like any other type of content marketing, SaaS content marketing is creating, publishing, and then marketing your content to educate, convert, and retain customers.
But the catch is that it is often difficult to do SaaS content marketing and that’s where the difference arises.
Why? Let’s discuss.
- It is not just about creating content but also marketing it, which is often combined with organic marketing aka search engine optimization.
- It requires patience especially in the phase of burning money because results are not instant.
- Through your content, you are not selling just a product but also a service of being there for customers and keeping your product up-to-date as per the advancements in tech.
- The sales cycle is often longer in B2B SaaS content marketing, since there are multiple decision makers and the ticket size is high as well.
In short, SaaS content marketing is tough but those who are in it for the long run can have a growth in leads up to 400%!
Why does SaaS content marketing and strategy even matter?
Deel, an online platform to ensure smooth onboarding and offboarding of employees for global brands, went from USD 1 Million ARR to 100 Million ARR in less than 2 years time!
The success was so huge that it made people wonder how, and that’s when everyone realized that their SaaS content marketing had a huge role to play along with SEO. Currently, they are ranking for 11.7 K keywords and more than 70% rankings are organic.
Ever since, they have just been growing. So if content marketing and SEO together can do this for Deel, then why cannot it do the same for your brand?
It is hard to notice since the progress is initially slow, but SaaS content marketing had immense benefits to offer since the beginning itself.
- It spreads brand awareness by helping your brand to show up in search results of Google.
- Before you can sell your product, you need to help users understand how it makes a difference, and SaaS content helps you in doing so by educating the probable customers.
- Content marketing helps SEO and SEO helps content marketing, the loop is never ending.
- In the long run, it is the most cost effective customer acquisition method.
- The SaaS sales cycle is long, and quality content from your brand might push your prospects further in your sales funnel.
Playbook to create SaaS content marketing strategy that really works
Motivated to get tips on how to build a top-tier SaaS content marketing strategy?
If you are then great, if not, I suggest you look at the Deel’s growth image once more. Either way brace yourself, because we are going to have a long discussion about how to build a content strategy for SaaS which is result oriented.
Set up a foundation for content strategy for SaaS
If you want your content strategy to work, then get the prerequisites right in the first place. Often brands rush to create and publish content and then end up stressed because the content did not perform.
Your content, under any circumstance, will not perform, if you are not getting your fundamentals right. So let’s look into all that you have to do before jumping to content creation.
Set your brand’s proposition straight
Your product might be able to do 100 things, but the proposition has to be only one. How are you going to brand your product to sell it and what is the ultimate dream that you are proposing to the user.
For instance, Buffer’s main page itself showcases that they help you increase your audience on social media. That is their value proposition and they are using the same for their content as well, thus ranking for keywords like – “best time to post on tik tok.”
In short, they are building content on subject matters related to their proposition. That is why it is crucial to find your product’s standing and then present that everywhere in your content.
Set crystal clear goals of what you want to achieve
Set your targets of what you want to achieve with your content marketing. These goals should be realistic and measurable. These goals will also decide the type of content you will be creating.
For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness then you would create a lot of top of the funnel content which is often educational and capable of garnering more traffic. If your goal is to get leads then your content strategy would be more focused on buying intent content.
Mentally prepare to have patience!
Lastly, SaaS content writing and marketing is going to be a long ride especially if you have a limited budget. However, the progression is always going to be there. Today it might be slow and steady, but a few months down the line, it might be 10X or even 100X better.
Content marketing is often considered dynamic, there is also an apprehension if it will work or not. But I assure you, that it always works! You just need to be consistent and have experts by your side to execute it.
So, stay put, and prepare yourself beforehand that it is going to be a bumpy ride because the trail to a peak is never straight.
Do a deep dive of what your audience really wants
Firstly, let’s be clear that building a content strategy for SaaS business is not a task that will get completed in a day or two. It is often an ongoing process for which the bedrock of the strategy has to be strong; rest you can keep upgrading later on as well.
To have a strong foundation, you need to know about the needs and wants of your customers because the content is being built for them only!
Connect with your audience 1:1, interview your prospects and customers about what kind of content pushes them to make a purchase.
Surf through social media channels, find out the problems being faced by people that your product can solve and utilize that information both in your content and strategy.
Stay active on platforms like Reddit and Quora, where people are often coming up with problems. Interact with them on those platforms and ask what kind of content they prefer consuming while making a buying decision.
Checkout the post from a Reddit user below 👇who is struggling to find a good sales tool that would help him and he is tired of reading long listicles. Pen this insight down, and next time you curate a listicle remember that your users do not want a long list they need the ‘best’ list.
Connect with the thought leaders in your industry, discuss with them what are the issues they have encountered and what kind of content have helped them the most.
Most importantly, connect with your sales team and customers. Your sales team alway has the best insights since they are the ones connecting with customers the most. Survey your customers for their insights on your content.
Collate all your findings, and now you have your bedrock with you. Use these insights to build a fresh content strategy. Also, while creating content strategy for SaaS, please know that there is no ‘ideal customer’ per say.
The traditional method of building ideal customer profiles is no longer valid, anyway who can put your product to use is your ideal customer. For instance, WordPress must seem like the platform for businesses and developers, but it is also being used by freelancers and one person businesses.
So stop looking for ideal customers because there aren’t any!
Audit your existing content along with competitor analysis
One thing that most brands forgot to do before getting started with content marketing for SaaS is that they forgot to analyze and audit their existing content. If you have been publishing content for a while now but not getting desired results then go find out why it is happening.
Go to Ahrefs or any other SEO and content audit tool and see what is working for your content and what are the problems with it. In Ahrefs you can check out the keywords your website is ranking for, find out which are in the top 10 or 20 rankings and figure out how you can improve them.
Do a website Audit for your content and find out what are the issues in it, Ahrefs will give you a detailed report which might look something like this 👇.
Fix and update your existing content because poor content is not only just sitting there uselessly but it is also affecting your website SEO.
Once done, then move on to your competitor’s content analysis. If you have not published any content yet and are just starting out then this is the step you start from too.
Pick up 3 of your competitors that are nailing in your market. Audit them and find out the keywords they are ranking for. Through these keywords you not just get a gist of your competitors content but also new SEO content ideas.
For instance, I did the audit of the SaaS brand Asana which is killing it in the content department. You can now see all the top keywords that are bringing them traffic and of course leads.
Filter out the branded queries, take inspiration from the non branded keywords, fit them in your content strategy appropriately, and finally try to surpass them for these keywords.
Blend SEO and SaaS content strategy
Everytime you google something, a piece of content shows up. Be it a landing page, a blog, a whitepaper, or a case study, at the end of the day it is a content piece. Now, the question is why only those particular pieces of content are ranking.
There are 10K+ content pieces on the same topic, yet only a few are on top. The reason is SEO. Content works best with SEO and vice-versa. Your content cannot perform without SEO especially for highly competitive keywords and in highly competitive industry like SaaS.
So, it is a blend of SEO and content marketing in SaaS that can take your business further. Let’s look into how you can implement it and leverage the benefits of SEO.
Set up website for success with technical SEO
If your site structure is poor Google is going to face difficulty in reading and crawling your content which might result in your content not ranking or not getting indexed.
Often what happens is that without taking SEO into consideration, websites are taken live and then when they do not perform, you end up being frustrated. Your website should be easy to scroll through and must give good user experience.
For instance, the loading speed should be good and other core web vitals that Google focuses upon should be taken care of as well.
You can find core web vitals in your Google Search Console, and they would look something like this 👇.
Along with that, get an SEO team that can sort things out for you since the beginning itself, or resolve the errors later. Doesn’t matter how high quality content you are publishing, if your pages are not getting indexed, then those efforts are not going to give you any results.
Indexing errors vary from page to page and they are often cryptic like this 👇thus, expert assistance becomes a necessity at that point.
Sort out keyword research
The most common mistake that I have seen SaaS businesses make is that they first decide the content they want to build and then do the keyword research for it. At ZeroAdo, we do the opposite.
We first do the keyword research and based on that we decide what kind of content should be created with which keyword. Why? Because keywords are directly the queries your users are searching for.
So will you base your content on those queries or find out queries based on your content?
This is tricky to understand, putting in simple words. You cannot instruct the audience to use specific queries so your SaaS content can rank. But you can create content based on the intent of the keywords your customers’ queries.
So, sort out your keywords first!
Figure out the type of content you want to create
Once you are done figuring out the keywords you want to target, then decide what types of SEO content would be relevant based on the keywords.
For instance, “what is video editing” is a query with educational intent, so most of the ranking content is from blogs.
While “video editor” is a buy intent query where the user is ready to try out a software, thus most of the landing pages and apps are ranking.
So, you leverage your keywords to figure out what kind of content has to be created for each of them.
Also, since resources are always limited, while creating your SaaS content strategy, also decide what kind of content needs to be prioritized first based on your business goals. For example, if your goal is to get more traffic, then educational content would be fit for it.
At ZeroAdo, we follow the Pyramid Content™ strategy to curate the kind of content we need based on our client’s goals. This pyramid is highly flexible and can be inverted as well as and when needed by our clients.
You can utilize our strategy too for your SaaS content marketing strategy.
Set up content calendars & create a healthy content pipeline
Lastly, SEO is all about consistency. You need to publish content on a regular basis for both your content and SEO to work. It won’t work if you are publishing 50 content pieces in one month but none the next. Instead, spread your content over the months based on your resources and capacity.
Create a healthy content pipeline by setting up calendars and if you are struggling to do that, then contact ZeroAdo, because we can do it for you!
We have set up customized content pipelines for our clients which are working fantastically for them so we can do the same for you as well!
Leverage all forms of content
[Source – Ahrefs]
Checkout the above snapshot, this is showcasing the traffic from Deel’s glossary, the brand whose success with SaaS content marketing we discussed in the beginning. You can see that the glossary is getting 40K+ traffic and is ranking for 46K+ keywords as of now.
Checkout the above video of Wrike, a project management tool, ranking in the video section for a highly buy intent keyword.
Finally, checkout this image section with most of the images ranking from Notta which is an AI meeting note taker and audio transcribing tool.
Through these instances, what I am trying to convey is that leverage multiple kinds of content for your content marketing for SaaS.
A lot of credit for Deel’s successful content marketing strategy goes to its glossary which was a risky move keeping in mind the competitiveness of the market. Similarly, Wrike is doing good for itself, by ranking in the video section through YouTube SEO, for high intent keywords related to its industry.
Similarly, Notta is optimizing its images to rank too and thus dominating both the “All” and “Images” section in Google search results.
These are some top-tier SaaS content marketing examples because they found gaps in the strategies of their competitors and then leveraged them for their brand. As per a report by Sales Lion, video content on your landing page can increase the sale by up to 80%.
Similarly, articles and content with images get 94% more views than those who do not use visual content as per the statistics from Venngage.
SaaS content marketing does not have to be all about text based content, rather it should have more than one element to keep it interesting and of course for top-tier user experience. Here are a few more types of content that SaaS brands can leverage.
- Podcasts
- Webinars
- E-books
- Case studies
- Guides
- Social media posts
Train your content team to know product inside out
That magnitude of content that needs to be pushed for your SaaS content strategy to work is huge and thus, you are going to need a content team. So before your team starts creating content, make it a point to give them product training just like a customer.
Tell them about your tool inside out because they can write about it, only when they know how it works and what are the unique features about it as well.
Here I am sharing some SaaS content marketing examples on how well your product can be promoted when the content team knows the product thoroughly.
[Source – Privy]
Treat content strategy as sales funnel & create content accordingly
A sales funnel has multiple stages to nurture a lead. From awareness to taking action the entire funnel is concentrated on nurturing the lead. The same should be the case with your SaaS content strategy.
There should be content for all stages of the sales funnel. For instance, for queries like “what is customer service” there should be educational content within which you can promote your product to spread awareness about it.
Checkout how Zendesk has done the same.
After that, queries like “customer service tools” is when the prospect is considering opting for customer service and there is a possibility that he must act on getting the tool as well. For that stage as well you should have content, which Zendesk does as well, where they have kept their own tool as a number one just like they should.
Conclusion – There are multiple probable customers out there, who are at different stages of the sales funnel, and having content for each of those individual stages can help you increase sales.
Offer output through content not “product benefits”
If your content is about the benefits of your product then I assure you that it is utter BS and no probable customer cares about it. What they really care about is the bottom line.
They care about how your product is going to help their team’s productivity.
They care about how your product will help them save money.
They care about how your product is going to give them the ROI.
They care about how your product will save them time and manual effort.
And they care about how your product will make their lives easier.
That is what your SaaS content should be addressing, be it of any kind. The snapshot given below from a brand work USD 7 Billion plus, is an example of how to make it happen.
This page from Razorpay is raining for a high buying intent query “payment gateway.” Clearly Razorpay understood the assignment and thus, the page’s SEO copywriting has been done accordingly.
They are answering all the questions a business owner can have regarding a payment gateway and among all the things, that is also one of the reasons this page is ranking.
It says that global payment can be accepted, all payment modes can be accepted, you can get detailed reports, and your security is taken care of as well.
Ditch AI create quality content with expertise and experience
No matter how many times Google might say that we accept AI content, do not believe you. They might say we are okay with it, but they are not, which is fair but misleading.
The ZeroAdo Crew have done multiple experiments with AI content and most of the time the content does not even get indexed let alone rank. Your content strategy for SaaS can only thrive on the back of quality content.
So make it a point to write your content yourself, add a ton of examples (that’s something AI cannot do), ,add your personal experience as well in the field to make it more credible and avoid duplicate content. Give something new, something authentic, and something spicy to your readers 🌶️.
Build topical authority
If you have a content writing tool, then it becomes a necessity for you to have content around the same.
Why?
Because you need to establish topical authority aka tell Google that you are specialized and have experience in the niche for which you are selling a product.
For instance, InVideo, and AI based video editing and generator software have 400+ content pieces that are talking about everything related to videos. This has helped them earn topical authority which eventually helps you in ranking better and getting more leads.
Embrace founder-led content trend
Having a SaaS content strategy means taking into account all the platforms and possibilities that can garner your brand traffic. Be it different types of SEO or creating relatable social media content.
Keeping that in mind, the new trend of founder-led content, is the content wave we all needed.
It is a fresh breath of air because it is raw, pure emotions, and also coming straight from the one who is building a SaaS brand.
As a founder you can create all kinds of content but make it a point to promote your product within them. For instance, Noah Kagan, founder of AppSumo, which is a SaaS platform that helps you find the best deals on other SaaS tools, has his own Youtube channel where he posts content of all kinds.
Educational, witty, conversations with other founders and business professionals, and sometimes even motivational, but he makes it a point to always promote his brand.
Here is an instance of the same.
Similarly, Guillaume Moubeche, founder of Lemlist – a cold outreach tool, leverages his social media to promote his product while doing all the other things like educating and helping his audience.
Checkout how he takes the opportunity to dismiss popular notions while also promoting his own product and other softwares as well.
Guillaume Moubeche got more than 1,100 reactions on this post and over 30 reposts. Now even if this post reached 10 more people through every reaction made on the post, that means it got seen by 11K + people.
This is how founder-led content can make your business talk of the town by spreading awareness. All it takes is one viral post!
Optimize content distribution
Post content creation and publishing, now comes the part of content distribution where you need to spread a word about your content for it to be read and seen.
SEO is one of those channels that automatically distributes your content through search engines. But there are other channels as well to distribute your content.
Social media
Share your case studies, blogs, YouTube videos, and other content pieces on social media to get direct traffic.
ClickUp, a project management tool is doing so by sharing their new features’ page on their social media platforms.
[Source – X]
Through newsletters
Leverage newsletters to update your audience about the new content that has been published in the previous days which could be of help to them. CoSchedule is doing the same!
Influencer marketing
Every industry has some leaders and influencers that are followed by millions and their followers also look up to and closely follow the things they post about.
Leverage those influencers to promote your content as well, get good traffic, and if your content is value adding, then some of those viewers will become regular readers and followers of your content as well.
Build a community around your SaaS
Fear of missing out is one of the best marketing tactics that worked brilliantly centuries ago and works just as amazingly well today as well. That is the principle on which communities around SaaS are based too.
Slack, an online communication and collaboration platform, leveraged this for their brand. They build a community and then also made it *exclusive*. Along with that, they attached a very enticing offer too.
[Source – LinkedIn]
You can do the same for your SaaS content marketing too and then can use the community to promote both your product as well as content.
Leverage community and groups
Your SaaS content marketing is always going to need new ideas and more and more people to read and view your content. To make that happen, you can join communities and groups in your niche.
These communities and groups are full of thought leaders and industry experts, you need your content to be seen by them too and take inspiration as well.
By joining those groups you will get tons of new ideas to implement and also a place to share your content!
Measure your growth consistently & update strategy accordingly
“How to measure SaaS content marketing?”
This is a very common question that most SaaS founders have. After you have published tons of content of various kinds and on various channels, how do you measure it all?
The answer is simple, track it through the number of leads you are getting and your MRR.
Track which channel is bringing you the most leads. For instance, if you are getting more leads from social media then channel more of your resources there.
Similarly, if your SEO is the one getting you the most leads then keep track of the keywords you are ranking for and make sure those rankings do not fall while also curating new content.
Along with that track which kind of content is getting most traction and then where does it stand in the sales funnel. For instance, how-to guides type of content is often educational and if that is getting you the most traffic then analyze how it aligns with your set goals and expectations.
Keeping it all in mind, finally, keep updating your content strategy every now and then. You do not have to wait 3 months to see if a content strategy worked. Most of the time you will get early signs of whether it is working or not. Then, at the right time, update your old content and boost your SEO traffic and leads.
Hire experts to do it all!
Exhausted reading it all? Overwhelmed with how to do it all?
Understandable, SaaS content marketing is definitely not an easy task but the good part about it is that you do not have to do it all by yourself. Actually, you do not have to do any of it yourself. You can simply hire a team of experts from ZeroAdo, one of the best SEO companies in India, and put your SaaS content strategy on autopilot mode.
You will never have to worry about if the strategy will work or not, because every strategy we create is highly personalized, researched, and from our experience. Thus, we assure you that we will make it work for your brand too!
Capture the market with SaaS content marketing
Content has always been around us be it in any form. But now, everything in the world is content and content marketing is a must to succeed. Honestly, I am not complaining, rather I am glad that through SaaS content marketing even a budding brand can now become huge.
Earlier the opportunities of growth were limited but not anymore, your local brand can become global and your SaaS business can reach places with the help of content marketing.
The earlier you start, the better!
