When it comes to generating more product signups for SaaS businesses, there is no substitute for a SAAS content marketing strategy. Content does much more than just drive traffic to websites – it convinces, educates, empower, and retains paying customers.
SaaS is one of the purest forms of online B2B, and a large portion of the buyer journey will have already finished when a prospect makes initial contact.
Thus, content is the only factor prospective leads will consider throughout their buyer journey. It needs to strike the right chords every time they want to know something about the solutions available, required features, or how a SaaS solution can resolve their pain points.
But, how is content created for a SaaS product? The answer lies in creating a robust content marketing strategy that serves multiple purposes and aligns efforts towards a larger common goal: conversion.
How To Start Building A SaaS Content Marketing Strategy From Scratch?
Firstly, understanding how a target audience browses the internet to find a product is key. SaaS purchases are mostly online, so buyers will search for and find information about products through digital channels. Therefore, content should ultimately support product signup pages, called money pages.
Money pages often feature pages, pricing pages, integrations, APIs, or alternative pages. The best way to accelerate this is to create free trials or use other offers to convince people to pay for the software.
When developing content for SaaS products, the focus should be on problems and needs encountered in each stage of the buying cycle. The content should address these needs and draw attention to the specific pain points of each stage of the buying process.
For example, an A/B testing software company might attract customers to sign up for a free trial by pinpointing their focus towards individual aspects of the buying process.
They can also create video guides on how to use their SaaS tool for addressing concerns of middle-level employees and lower-level managers. To make the content more interesting and relevant, they should also focus on the concerns of each stage of the purchase cycle.
Related content: How to Do Inbound Marketing for SaaS
Let’s see how to kick start the process of creating a high converting SaaS content marketing strategy for a business:
#1 Define a SaaS Content Marketing Goals
For SaaS companies, defining content marketing goals and results is crucial to the success of the business. Getting the most from a marketing campaign can mean the difference between growth and failure.
For example, a company looking to acquire cumulative growth should focus on reaching prospects without any interest in the product or service.
A content marketing plan will help determine where time is best spent and will be more effective if a clear understanding of the types of customers and product targets are defined.
In order to create content that converts, first determine who the target audience is. Is it primarily potential customers, or is it primarily a particular segment of the customer base?
A target audience can be determined by creating customer avatars. Define the ideal customer profile and synchronize it with the ideal buyer’s persona.
Including a name, demographics, motivations, and pain points are critical to identifying an audience and determining how much time is needed to create content for specific audiences. This way, gauging how frequently a content production process should be performed and how often content can be produced becomes easier.
Related Content: Top SaaS Marketing Companies
#2 Develop SaaS User-Focused Content Ideas
Before creating content, know who to target and what aspects of the buying process prospects are targeting. Previous surveys and audience metrics can be used to understand the tentative needs of the target market. Looking at market research from other SaaS businesses in similar fields is also an option.
Focus on what the audience actually wants and what they’re afraid of. Then, pay attention to their pain points – problems that can be fix.
“The Mom Test” is the book that is recommended for both an MVP and a content strategy will become a byproduct of the process.
While creating content for a SaaS product, keep in mind of an audience’s goals, problems, and needs. Make sure the content is compelling, reflects their needs, and educates them about the benefits of your broad product category.
If the target audience is at a higher level (awareness phase) of the sales funnel, use user-generated content or client reviews to support the buyer’s journey. Analyzing how other people interact with a brand can speed up their journey and remove friction.
Before writing content for a SaaS business, have a clear idea of business goals. By having a clear idea of a target audience’s pain points, creating content that resonates with them will help the process come full circle.
Having clear objectives will also make it easier to measure results and make necessary changes.
#3 Create Topic Clusters For a SaaS Content Marketing Strategy
There are many benefits to creating topic clusters within ar SaaS content marketing strategy. These topics will give users easy navigation and will give your audience value-added content. Creating topic clusters can also increase brand awareness and improve SEO ranking.
As the algorithms for Google’s search engine continue to change, ensuring that content is keyword-optimized is crucial. It will also help improve the client experience.
Using topic clusters in a content strategy will help create relevant content based on the topics, i.e., content covering problems-features-benefits of the product. It will also help websites to be indexed faster by Google.
Next, create pillar pages focusing on the topics covered the content. Basically, a pillar page is a broad overview of the overarching topic. A pillar page serves as a customer success dashboard that shows how a customer can leverage the SaaS product.
While this approach makes sense, it has the potential to eliminate duplicate points and generate placeholders for internal links. This is a good way to generate tons of organic traffic and optimize the sales funnel at the same time.
#4 Identify The Search Demand For a SaaS Product’s Core Keywords
Identify the Search Demand for a Core Keyword Market to discover the best niches for content. The internet is a vast place, and trends come and go.
Using the latest tools and technology is an excellent way to track and measure the amount of traffic and competition for a given keyword phrase.
Here are three basic tools to use to measure the demand for your core keywords:
First, use SEMRush or Ahrefs, software tools that address multiple aspects of digital marketing, including competitor and keyword research.
Their keyword tool shows search volume for up to the last 12 months. These results are updated monthly, and these companies’ algorithms are based on analysis of petabytes of data.
Identifying the demand for core keywords will help find the best keywords to focus on a piece of content.
For example, a wedding photography business will want to use words related to the theme of their photography. Lastly, SEMRush provides an overview of the competition for a keyword. Using SEMRush, can analyze the demand for a keyword from different countries.
#5 Create Content For the Buyers Journey For a SaaS Content Marketing Strategy
To begin with, content must educate the buyer, not sell them something. Consider the buying journey of a buyer, and map out content accordingly.
As a SaaS content marketer, make sure content is tailored to the target audience. It should provide value to potential clients and help them make informed decisions about the product.
Think about the target audience and identify pain points at each phase of their buyer journey. This can be accomplished with buyer personas or other methods. While pain points differ from one audience to another, there are universally common challenges faced by the target audience.
The content created should address these pain points. This way, an audience will be able to be targeted effectively and increase conversions.
For instance, if aiming to attract new customers is the goal, create content that will make the business stand out from the competition.
Depending on the product, a video, user-generated content, or blog articles can be used to educate potential customers as their understanding of your product evolves. This way, building trust and loyalty for a target audience can be done without publishing lengthy copies for a product.
Remember, when creating a customer journey map, their pain points will influence how they engage with content, i.e., topic hierarchy and correlations. Start with the pain point that has motivated the customer to take action.
Once you understand this, it will be easier to develop content that addresses the pain point and gets them to buy a SaaS product. Once its determined what customers are asking for, simply answer their questions and push them to the next phase of their buying journey.
#6 Plan How The SaaS Content Topics Will Support Money Pages
The next step is to plan how a piece of SaaS content will support money pages. The right content is vital to a successful sale. It should be a combination of articles and videos, which are distributed to the right audience. For a SaaS product, money pages are the pages that convert the visitors into buyers.
Each money page should be a mirror reflection of the topic pages, which are in turn supported by cluster pages. Of course, money pages are meant for conversion, and they have a minimal copy, but they should reflect the focus keyword of the topic page.
Thus, each topic page should support at least one money page.
Here are three tips for creating great content for money pages: research competitors’ backlinks and learn about their semantics.
Brainstorm the reader journey on each page, and identify gaps in money page content and potential pain points for the audience. This way, the page can be tailor with marketing efforts to address those needs. Once the content for the money pages are created it cane be moved to the monetization phase.
Wrap Up
For SaaS product owners, a content strategy should be aimed at educating the target audience about their software, along with projecting themselves as thought leaders in the industry.
Lastly, a SaaS content strategy must be optimized for the target audience in a granular fashion. If it’s targeting Shopify stores, create content that explains the product’s benefits with respect to Shopify’s limitations and eCommerce opportunities missed by the prospect.
The idea is to create loyal readers before converting them into loyal customers.
Creating loyal readers will help shorten this time period and keep a company at the forefront of users’ minds. They’ll be the ones who will buy the companies product, and thus a companies content plays a crucial role throughout the purchase process.
