Without a Content Marketing strategy, how will your SaaS business survive? This might seem like an over-exaggeration, but there’s a hint of truth in this. The digital landscape for SaaS is super noisy at the moment. Every product is trying to get their voice out on the internet for their customers. Without a proper Content Marketing strategy, you’re not lagging, you’re not even in the race. If you don’t have a coherent strategy to showcase your voice, your chances of growing are minimal.. Por returns, little to no conversions, zero organic traffic, I could go on and on. But content marketing, when done right, can give out serious returns for your business. It’s as if Bill Gates’ 1995 quote, “Content Is King” has an alarm next to it. The moment some tries to discredit content, it rings to remind everyone that it still is the kingmaker. Let’s look at some facts:

• 89% of content marketers used blog posts in their content creation strategy in 2020.
• 78% of companies have a team of one to three content specialists.
• 70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing.
• Marketers today create content for multiple audience segments — marketing to three audience segments is most common.

I think I’ve established why content marketing is important for B2B SaaS companies, so let’s move on to the next section.

SaaS Content marketing: Setting Goals

Of course, whenever you start planning on creating a B2B SaaS marketing strategy, you need to set goals. It’s a wasted effort if you don’t know what you want to achieve with the content. Educating customers, building credibility, brand awareness, and lead generation should be your four primary goals with your content.

Educating customers:

This one is pretty obvious. As a B2B SaaS company, your product is probably one that involves a learning curve, no matter how easy you’ve developed it to be. There are tons of ways you can educate customers on your product:

• Knowledge base articles,
• How-to tutorials,
• Infographics on how to set up a product, and
• Videos.

And more… You shouldn’t just restrict yourself to a single medium like writing. Of course, budgetary concerns might just restrict you to one or two of these, but all of these are powerhouses when utilized in creative ways. They also work in tandem with one another. Think about it. How can a social media creative design work without copywritten taglines? Similarly, creating a video tutorial with no commentary just won’t work if you’re looking to take your product to the next level. You don’t have to look beyond Shopify’s YouTube channel to see where I’m coming from. Besides having a whole channel dedicated to eCommerce and Shopify users, their one YouTube video: “HOW TO START A DROPSHIPPING BUSINESS” has over 1.3m views and 19k likes. For individuals looking to start a dropshipping business with Shopify, this video proves to be a good starting point. Even their written content is authoritative and well-detailed, giving users authoritative information on getting started with eCommerce.

Building credibility:

Of course, being consistent within the way we discussed can give out serious dividends in the long run. One of them is credibility. You see, everyone is posting content, but only a few of them are credible. With credible, well-researched content, you can take your B2B marketing to the next level. With time, you could even become an industry thought leader.

Brand awareness:

Anybody can make a website with a cool brand name, but only a few people are remembered by the audience. Of course, the ones who are credible will generate more awareness in the eyes of the consumer.

Lead generation:

The bottom line. Everything we discussed above is like sugar, spice, and everything nice, only without chemical X. When you combine good credible content by a company that the user is aware of, you instantly gain a spike in the number of leads that land on your store. More leads, of course, leads to better, and more business for the brand.

Building a B2B SaaS content strategy

Your goals are now set, and now you need to implement them. How will you do that? The ideal path to take in this scenario is to look at your users. How will the content you post serve them and make their day better in some way? But that’s a very narrow point of view when you’re looking at B2B content marketing. Besides these types of content pieces, you should also focus on releasing research reports, industry-related news, and other content that can generate external users’ interests. When you tap into multiple interest points, of course, you’re going to organize them in some way. A content calendar works best in this case since it can keep all your content ideas and content pieces in one single location. Whatever the strategy you use, make sure it provides some benefit to the end user’s experience.

Aligning the marketing team

You could create a content calendar, fill it with ideas, and whatnot, but it won’t matter unless your Content Marketing team is aligned with what you want to achieve. Managing the team, and making sure that they’re all on the same page is vital if you want to gain success in your B2B marketing efforts. From training programs to weekly or daily meetings, you need to keep them aware of the end goal. If you don’t do any of what we’ve mentioned, then you’re going to be at square one every single time. Assigning responsibilities and holding the people accountable can help you. This keeps the ball rolling as reporting becomes optimized from the team itself to the upper echelons of the company.

Engaging Content Ideas for SaaS blog and Where to Find Them?

To generate the right content ideas, you need to identify who your audience is and then create your content around them. You could go on and create regular content, but that won’t be as actionable of a content piece as the targeted ones. Remember your goals. You need to create content that engages leads to click on your SaaS products and services. Let’s dive a bit deeper into questions. Asking questions related to your content creation can prove very helpful in the long run.

• What are the pain points your clients face? How will your content help to solve them?
• What gaps exist in your industry and how can you solve them?
• What future trends might appear in your industry?
• How do your customers benefit from your products and services?
• In what ways do your customers use your solution?

And more. These questions should form the basis for your content creation. At the end of the day, you should add value to the customer journey and prompt them to become a prospect, if not a lead. Content critics exist because more often than not, they see content that serves no purpose for the customer. Instead, it’s just written for SEO value. When done right, however, content can take you to a good position.

How to Create engaging content for your SaaS audience?

There are lots of things you can do within your content to ensure your B2B SaaS content converts. This applies to all forms of content from whitepapers, eBooks, blog articles, infographics, and more. Here’s what you need to do:

• Focus On the Customer: to reiterate, you need to look at how your content benefits them and engages them to convert.
• Focus On SEO: yes, you need to add proper keywords to your content as well. While user intent is important, it won’t matter if your content is not showing up for particular keywords in search results.
• Add Images: images play a vital role in improving the overall SEO value of the content. Plus, if the images aren’t just stock images taken from the internet but rather custom-designed, then they can keep the user engaged. How you use the images depends on the content.
• CTAs: Most important of all, you need to have CTAs in the right position to ensure that if a customer is engaged and has read the content to a certain point, they’ll be prompted to look at your products or services.

Content marketing helps you grow

Whether you’re creating a content strategy for SaaS or any other industry, Content Marketing is going to help you a lot if you do it right. Attracting customers in the modern digital world is not easy and you need to bring your a-game forwards to ensure that you’re making the sale. Of course, content marketing is an organic game, but when it starts to give out dividends, it gives them out in droves. Be patient and keep on improving your services to ensure that you receive adequate returns on your efforts.

Conclusion:

Content is king, and with all that I’ve discussed here, rightfully so. It’s a long-term process but well worth it in the end. So, take the steps I’ve discussed one at a time and hopefully you’ll be able to develop a stellar content strategy for your B2B SaaS company. Thank you!