What you’ll learn about SaaS content marketing:

• SaaS brands need a strong content marketing strategy to stand out from their competitors
• For SaaS brands, content marketing is vital for educating their prospects — especially if they’re solving a complex issue
• The five pillars of a SaaS content marketing strategy include: 
  • Educational content
  • SEO strategy
  • Case studies
  • A comprehensive content calendar

Businesses across industries are increasingly embracing digital tools that improve and enhance how they do things. Whether it’s collaboration tools like Google and Slack or CRM systems like Salesforce and HubSpot, SaaS technologies are helping businesses save time and money so that they can focus on the work they do best. In fact, according to Blissfully, 2019 saw a 50% year-over-year jump in SaaS spending.

As companies spend more on these technologies, how do you make sure they choose your SaaS brand? Beyond building a sound and useful product or service, you need to make sure you’re marketing it effectively. That’s where a SaaS content marketing strategy comes in. 

In a recent post, we talked about the value of building a content marketing strategy and how it can help further your business goals. Today, we’re taking a look at what this looks like in practice for B2B SaaS brands looking to attract and retain customers. 

How Is B2B SaaS Content Marketing Different?

Whereas a consumer-facing brand, such as a retailer, will be focused on capturing the attention of individuals by appealing to their personal wants and needs, SaaS brands are often solving issues that address a broader business use case. As such, while you may be targeting specific individuals and decision makers with your content, it should be focused on the needs of the business (or at least a specific department) and how your product can meet them. 

This may sound like your content should be more transactional or promotional in nature, but that’s not necessarily the case. Many SaaS technologies were designed to solve complex issues, and that means they have a responsibility to prove they understand their audience’s pain points and educate their audience around how they can help. In addition, SaaS products often require a significant investment, so decision makers will want to have the full picture before they decide to spend their budget on a solution. 

If you’re a SaaS brand, you want to ensure that buyers have all the information they need — when they need it — as they progress through the path to purchase. A robust content marketing strategy that focuses on building brand awareness, educating customers, building credibility, and generating valuable leads can help you do just that. 

The Pillars of a Strong SaaS Content Marketing Strategy

As you build your SaaS content marketing strategy, it’s important to be intentional in the topics you choose, the quality of the writing, and the formats you publish. According to Demand Gen Report’s 2020 Content Preferences Study, 67% of buyers have indicated that they rely on content more than they ever have to make purchasing decisions. Not only that, they’re also demanding richer content experiences as they engage with a brand. 

Here are four content marketing pillars that can help you meet those demands. 

Educational Content

As a B2B SaaS brand, making sure your audience is educated about your product and the problems it solves should be a priority. The key to writing compelling and educational content is to have a clear understanding of your ideal customer’s pain points and concerns. This way, you’re answering their questions before they even fully formulate them, and they are more likely to trust your brand as they make their decision. 

This is true for all stages of the funnel. While you’ll be building awareness and sharing your insights about the space you operate in at the top (you may not even mention your product in some of these pieces), the bottom of the funnel requires educational content that’s more tactical in nature (e.g. an implementation guide so that the buyer can visualize the lift required for their team to adopt your product). 

A Strong SEO Strategy

When a business leader is looking to solve a problem within their organization, the first thing they often do is search online — and you want to make sure that your content pops up when they do. With a comprehensive SEO strategy, one that prioritizes keywords based on relevance, competition, and number of searches, you can increase your chances of ranking for queries that fall within your area of expertise. This will help increase your brand awareness and familiarity with this prospect, getting them in the door early as they evaluate their choices. 

Writing high-quality and shareable content that answers your prospects’ questions will also help your content rank — so don’t feel like you can phone it in when it comes to writing SEO-focused articles. Repeating the keyword X amount of times will only get you so far; and in fact, it might actually hurt your content. That’s why it’s so critical to always prioritize high-quality editorial content, even when executing a more tactical SEO-driven strategy.

Practical Case Studies

Case studies are the perfect way to showcase your product in action. When executed properly — preferably in a consistent format — they can help take your SaaS offering from a nebulous concept to a tangible solution. This way, prospects can better identify whether your product or service makes sense for their business, especially if you’re featuring a customer that operates in their industry. 

Case studies also give you an opportunity to spell out the benefits that your product offers in a more concrete way. For instance, if your product is an email marketing solution, you can talk about the time the company saved in implementing your solution, as well as any growth in reach or engagement. These are all metrics that buyers will want to know about. 

Lastly, they act as social proof for the success of your product. Case studies show that a different company has trusted you, and they incorporate testimonials from senior leaders and decision makers, giving them the chance to use their own words as they describe the benefits of using your product or service.

The key to a successful case study collection is variety. If you’re solving problems for companies of different sizes, operating in different sectors, this should be reflected in your customer stories. 

The added bonus: Writing a case study about a customer gives you an opportunity to continue the conversation with them and put their brand in the spotlight, making it more likely that they will continue choosing your product.

A Comprehensive Content Calendar

As we said earlier, every part of your SaaS content marketing strategy should be intentional. A seasonal or yearly content calendar — one that’s planned out in advance but is also relatively flexible — helps establish that intentionality for your content.  

To do what it’s supposed to, a content calendar should account for the following: 

• A variety of asset types (e.g. whitepapers, infographics, blog posts, video, case studies)
• In a variety of formats (e.g. step-by-step guides, expert Q&As, op-eds, interactive quizzes)
• Alignment with your SEO strategy 
• Coverage of the whole marketing funnel, from awareness and consideration to decision and conversion
• Existing gaps in knowledge around your industry
• Use of original research or data that’s captured through your SaaS platform
• Customer feedback

Any decisions you make around your content calendar should be based on actionable data, whether that’s performance data on your existing content, search insights on your space, or inputs coming directly from your customers or your sales team. To get the most out of this information, you can work with a content marketing partner that’s experienced in identifying high-performing content ideas for your marketing team.

Stand Out in the Crowd

Today’s B2B SaaS companies are constantly competing with new kids on the block that are tackling the same problem in a new and innovative way. It’s why companies are churning through over 30% of their SaaS products every year. To ensure that your audience chooses (and continues to choose) you, it’s vital to keep them engaged with content that demonstrates the value of your approach — and we’d love to help you do that. 

If you’re interested in learning how our team can support you in building a comprehensive SaaS content marketing strategy, get in touch.

Photos by Shirly Niv Marton and Ian Hutchinson.