November 02, 2023

As the SaaS industry flourishes, numerous competitors vie for a piece. The level of rivalry is increasing as a result. To be successful, you need a marketing strategy that helps you stand out from the competition.

One of the best way for SaaS companies to get new customers is to enter the content marketing world. Because of this, the content marketing world for SaaS has become an essential part of the plans of many marketers.

What is B2B SaaS content marketing?

When you run a SaaS company, you must invest in essential content marketing, like writing website copy, building landing pages, posting updates on social media, and writing blogs.

But you can't enter the content marketing world without a plan for creating content ideas, distributing content, and figuring out how well it's doing. Good advice would be to do thorough research, set clear goals, and base your final decisions on valid data.

Then, you can reach and connect with your target audience more effectively. This will increase brand awareness, integrity, and control, leading to better organic search engine rankings, qualified traffic, and customer engagement.

Content marketing world for SaaS is a little different from marketing in other fields because:

• You are promoting a technological product and a subscription service.
• Your marketing strategy must prioritize user retention and acquisition in equal measure.
• Your content should inform potential buyers and address buyer reluctance (considering your product is intangible)
• Most of your users' research on products and cloud services is done on Google, so SEO is an important part of your content marketing strategy.

Your ability to get users depends greatly on how valuable your content is, not just how good your product is.

What makes SaaS content marketing unique?

SaaS content marketing strategies are frequently complex due to the following:

• SaaS services require a certain level of commitment; therefore, establishing a solid reputation and trust is crucial.
• B2B transactions typically involve more people who influence your purchase decision and have a longer sales process.
• Digital platforms incorporate technology, which can be initially challenging to comprehend, mainly when the SaaS is creative or unprecedented.

For these and other reasons, you must view your SaaS content marketing strategy as a big race, not a sprint.

B2B SaaS Content Marketing Strategy Tips 

This section will explore valuable insights and tips to enhance your B2B SaaS content marketing strategy. Discover how to effectively engage your target audience, generate high-quality leads, and maximize the impact of your content in the competitive SaaS landscape.

Understand the buyer's journey

The first step in creating a successful B2B SaaS content marketing strategy is defining the stage of the buying cycle at which your target audience is currently. Are they searching for potential goods and services? Have they recently become aware of the issue? Or are they searching for a solution to an issue?

Understanding where your audience is in the purchasing cycle will enable you to create content that connects with them the most.

For example, a SaaS company that sells to Chief Information Officers could start by offering educational materials like infographics or webinars aimed at the "awareness" stage of the sales funnel. As users progress through the buying cycle, they desire to read content that addresses their pain points. At this point, you can give them detailed guides and case studies to turn them into leads.

Differentiate yourself from the competition with your USP

A blog post does not require a tedious list of your software's features. Prospects want to know what sets the company apart from its competitors when solving their problems. Display your unique selling proposition with content that demonstrates rather than describes.

Utilize case studies, customer success stories, and how-to articles to demonstrate why and how the product's features make it a better fit for the needs of your target audience. Especially if your business is primarily B2B, create graphs and infographics that tell the story in numbers.

Competitor analysis

The process of learning about your competitors and, in this case, how they market their content requires knowing the following:

• Who are your competitors?
• What is their target audience?
• The kinds of keywords they use for building their content
• What is the type and format of their content?
• What’s their publishing schedule?

Everything your competitors do that produces favorable outcomes is worthy of imitation. However, you must also note what does not work to avoid repeating the same errors.

Write comparison articles to stand out

A popular blog post style for SaaS businesses is the comparative analysis blog post.

To begin with, they can aid in the decision-making process for prospective clients.

Blog posts that compare and contrast two or more services are typically written to help readers decide which option is best for their needs.

Writing comparison blog posts might help you win over customers who are exploring their options in the market.

By comparing your product to your competitors, you may highlight its unique benefits over the competition.

Familiarize yourself with your product

Expertise is essential to creating effective, customer-focused content that strengthens audience faith and confidence.

Because of this, it is essential to know thoroughly about your industry and product.

Numerous SaaS companies target challenging industries that often necessitate content marketers working from scratch. Nevertheless, it is essential to comprehend your customers' daily objectives and obstacles.

You can become acquainted with your industry through the following methods:

• Participate in interviews, demo calls, and customer support request analysis to better understand customer needs.
• Subscribe to the newsletters of the leading publications in your niche and review their daily or weekly digests. 
• Listen to podcasts and watch YouTube videos for your niche to investigate the current trends.
• Develop relationships with your internal subject-matter experts, learn from them, and incorporate them into the content-creation process. These individuals could range from product managers and owners to C-level executives.
• Communicate with industry thought leaders and experts. These individuals are significant sources of ideas and content for SaaS content marketers.
• Create Google Alerts for the most critical topics in your industry.

Next, you need to make sure that you and your content team know everything there is to know about the products your company sells.  The complexity of SaaS solutions necessitates ongoing training and monitoring of new features.

This will also assist you in creating product-focused content and combining your tools into powerful content. It also allows you to correspond with other teams, such as product marketing, brand community, and growth.

Consider incorporating the following into your routine:

• Frequently investigate your product: Ensure you comprehend how the software operates and its features.
• Participate in customer calls held by product owners; It could provide insight into how customers use your product.
• Follow all product updates and releases of new features: ensure you comprehend the value they add

Leave behind the problem-solution mentality and think big

Problem-solving thinking focuses solely on the problems your SaaS product solves.

This shows a lack of foresight since your readers and potential customers have a lot of different needs that are all connected. Creating content that appeals to a wider audience makes it possible to reach 100 times as many people.

SaaS desires to discuss the product, the product, and the product. But your ideal customers don't buy widgets; they're trying to reach challenging goals like finishing internal and external projects, getting a CXO position, being seen as a leader in their field, and teaching others.

With an educational approach to the content marketing world, you can help your users in more ways than just by solving a basic problem.

For instance, you can prepare them for promotions and move them closer to becoming industry leaders in their own right.

If you try to help your readers instead of selling them something, they will remember you in the long run.

Do some general research

If you have time, searching Google for the topic or keywords you're trying to rank for is one of the best qualitative research methods. Spend some time reading the top ten articles on the site.

In general, there is a great deal of non-valuable content on the first page of search engine results pages.

Ask yourself what you like and don't like about each article as you read through it. Write down the advantages and disadvantages of each article and determine how you can improve them.

Consider what your competitors' articles are doing that you can improve upon while still satisfying the user's search intent. Consider how you can make the article sparkle.

When briefing a freelance writer, emphasize the top articles and the reasons why you like or dislike them. This research should result in a more informed piece that not only matches the user's intent but also has a strong competitive edge to help it outrank the current Google leaders.

Conduct keyword research

The majority of businesses fall short when it comes to keyword research. They do not align their keywords with their target audience's pain points, goals, and intent.

Most of the time, traffic from keywords that do not match the user's wants will be useless.

To get the right kind of traffic, you need to make sure that your keyword research is based on what you know about your audience.

And you need to know that there are two main types of keywords when doing keyword research:

• Short-tail keyword phrases: These terms, also known as "head terms," consist of one or two words. In most cases, ranking them is difficult due to the competition.
• Long-tail search terms: These phrases contain more than two words. Long-tail keywords are not only easier to rank for but also easier to match with user intent.

You should choose keywords based on who you want to reach, what your brand stands for, and how well they fit with your content marketing goals.

Specify your KPIs

It's easy to get confused by the many metrics that don't matter for business growth.

Based on your SMART objectives, you should only track the key content metrics that help you measure the success of your marketing efforts, replicate what works, and avoid wasting too much time.

Use the following SaaS content marketing metrics to define your broad KPIs:

• Monthly visits: How many visitors to your SaaS website are generated by organic search, social media, referrals, etc.?
• Search engine rankings are closely tied to your brand's organic visibility. How do your SaaS website's overall and page-level Google rankings improve over time?
• Backlinks: Inbound links are the lifeblood of search engine optimization. Track the quantity and quality of backlinks that your content generates.
• The conversion rate of prospects: Per site visit, how many conversions (free trial sign-ups, demo requests, email opt-ins, etc.) do you receive?
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): What are your content marketing expenses for each new paying customer?

Last thoughts

Entering the content marketing world is one of the most effective ways for your team to attract, educate, and convert customers. Although it may take some time to see the benefits of a content strategy, this does not mean it is ineffective; patience is crucial in this case.

Search engine optimization and gaining market share through content marketing and thought leadership require long-term, consistent work to get a good position. Do not give up at the beginning. As long as you keep publishing high-quality SEO content that speaks to your target audience and follows your strategy, you will surely see results.