SaaS Content Marketing
How To Nail Content Marketing For SaaS Businesses
From product awareness to increasing conversions, learn how a perfect content marketing strategy helps your SaaS business
By Ojas Mhatre, Co-founder, Not Your Idea
The fact that you’re reading this blog means your content isn’t reaching your target audience enough and well… ours is. Need a similar hack for your SaaS business? Enhancing your content marketing strategies should be the first step you take toward decoding it. Content marketing has proven to be a sure-shot way of creating brand awareness and it won’t be wise to miss out on such a crucial aspect of it.
The SaaS ecosystem is expanding at a breathtaking pace and to make sure you stay an integral member of it, you need to be on top of your game. We’ll help you put a kickass content marketing strategy in place for your SaaS business that’ll assist you to achieve your short and long-term goals. Follow the steps below and drive sales, sign-ups, demo requests, or maybe, the long-awaited mental satisfaction.
Know Your Target Audience
In the case of SaaS businesses, there are two major target audiences that come into play. The first are readers who need to be introduced to your software through various means like email, newsletters, etc. You’ll need to build a content strategy right from scratch and introduce them to each and every aspect of the software you’re providing. This requires a bit of groundwork and is a relatively wider audience to tap into.
The other people you need to target are those at the conversion stage. In simple terms, those who already have an interest in your software and just need a final push to convert into customers. For example, a user has downloaded a case study or any information module about your product or service offerings. You’ll need to optimize the user journey by leading them seamlessly to the product purchase or signup page. You can also guide them to a live chat pop-up or a call with a sales representative or product specialist who can take the conversation forward. The goal is to not let the potential customer out of your sight!
To get the best understanding of your target audience, you can inculcate the following as part of your content marketing strategy:
- Surveys — These are probably your best friends in this regard. Sending out surveys will help you get to know what people think of your software. How interested they are in it and what demographic is more inclined toward buying the software? You wouldn’t want to waste resources on selling your software to an audience that is not interested in using it, to begin with.
- Interviews — This might stand on a similar footing as surveys, but it has a little more depth to it. Carrying out interviews with customers who have already engaged in your services helps you get an idea of how well your product is doing. It also aids in narrowing down a niche audience, which is beneficial in the long run.
Scan The Issues
There are various steps before a reader is converted into a customer. These steps involve creating brand awareness which will turn into leads, followed by potential customers signing up for trial versions. If the stars align, they might turn to paid customers. See? Multiple stages until you land a paid customer! This means there’s a high possibility of them losing interest midway. To make sure that isn’t the case, you need to figure out the pain points or bugs that are preventing them from taking the next step.
Given the scope and size of the SaaS industry, there are numerous pain points that could be listed. So, for better understanding, we’ve classified them into broad categories:
- Commercials: You’ve built a solid product that competes well when it comes to effectiveness and results. However, if the pricing of your product is exorbitant and with no trial version, the chances of the customer choosing the more budget-friendly option are high. Similar issues like hidden costs, no clear mention of add-ons costs, etc. can prove detrimental and in turn affect your content marketing strategy.
- Productivity: The whole idea behind a SaaS product is to mitigate the customer’s involvement in general. If you’re offering a productivity tool, but the guide or the interface to it is vague and difficult to understand, the customer would end up doing more work than they were supposed to! Identifying this particular concern and correcting it could go a long way in determining your product sales.
- Processes: Imagine you’re at a light & sound show and it’s been going well for the most part. You’re in the zone and the flow is quite good too. Suddenly, the lights go out and it’s not part of the show; there’s a power cut! Kind of a buzzkill, no? Something similar happens to the customers when an error or issue from the maker’s end mars their experience while using the product. To ensure the process is smooth and easy-flowing, you need to get rid of these discrepancies as soon as possible.
There are a lot many of these depending on the type of SaaS business, but the approach remains the same. Identify and rectify!
Research About Your Competition
Let’s roll back the years and give you a bit of nostalgia. How often was it the case that the select few students in your grade were always performing well every semester? And how often did you try to emulate their studying strategies or patterns just to score good marks or even one-up them?
Cut to the present, the situation remains the same. Once you’ve figured out what the pain points are (question paper), all you need to do is find the best way to correct them (answers) and land customers (full grades). For that to happen, you need to study the approaches taken by your competitors to make sure you’re doing what works best in your field. Constantly working on it and pouncing on the opportunities your competitors are missing out on will provide great results.
A few pointers in this regard are:
- Platform target: In order to make the most out of your content marketing strategy, you need to get on all the platforms your competitors are targeting and thriving on. And if you think you can one-up them by targeting specific platforms that the competitors are missing out on, then all the better!
- Keyword strategy: Your arch-rival (for the lack of a better word) in your SaaS ecosystem is doing better than you and you’re left wondering why. Look for the keywords they are targeting and the kind of engagement they are getting out of it. This will not only help your website rank better but also increase the quality of your content.
- Optimization tools: See a good feature or layout that your competitor has? Get your research goggles and get to the root of it. Figure out a way to inculcate those tools, if not better, then something similar in your product. Because if it is working well for them and the audience is engaging well, might as well tap into that success yourself!
Curate Relevant Content
Imagine going to a grocery store looking for electronics or visiting a pharmacy for a hot dog. Not an ideal picture, is it? The same is the case when you create content that is not remotely relevant to your product. For your SaaS business to stay in the game, your content should be your star performer and it can win you games only if it has a sizeable audience watching it.
The unspoken rule of the SaaS industry is “Inspire and educate your audience”. Your content should be not only relevant to the industry but also informative at the same time. Just stating what the software is won’t do the trick. There is a hoard of information you need to provide to the customers for them to fully understand it and some extra tips to make the most of it. So, make sure your content caters to all the problems your customers are facing.
If your software is an email service, then your content should revolve around the benefits of using this mail service. How it can help them grow their business, curating guides and how-to blogs are other examples of helpful and relevant content. This helps build authority in the given industry and faith in the minds of the customers. The best example you can get in this regard is the popular mail service called MailChimp.
Build An SEO Strategy
Keywords are key for your blogs to reach your target audience. For your website to rank higher on Google, you need to use the most searched keywords effectively in your blogs, but remember, too many cooks spoil the broth. So, you need to find the perfect balance between the two. Use online tools like Google Keyword Planner and Semrush to get an idea of which relevant keywords are being searched the most and plan your content accordingly.
SEO is not just about including the right keywords in your content. You could have the right amount of keywords and still be ranked low by search engines if it is just a wall of text without any structure. Adding proper headings and subheadings, and providing defined shape and structure to your content is essential from both a reader’s and search engine’s perspective.
Apart from that, you also need to give life to any images you add to your blog or website. What we mean by that is adding an alt-text to your image so that search engines can better rank your website. Alt-text is basically a short copy that you’ll see in lieu of an image if it fails to load. This is absolutely important if your blog/website is image heavy.
Last but not the least, interlinking your blogs and creating a robust backlink will help build a solid website domain authority. This ensures that you are providing all the information the reader needs with respect to that particular topic and more. Naturally, the dwell time on your website also increases because why would one leave if all the information is right in front of them?
Create A Content Cycle
Now that the heavy lifting is done, you need to maintain the shape, and that is only possible if a strict diet is set in place. Decide all the platforms you’re going to publish your content on and stick to it. Create a content calendar, schedule a fixed time for your posts, keep researching new avenues, and make adjustments accordingly.
Making sure there is new content every time an update is rolled out on your product is also important. Analyzing the performance of the content and figuring out potential opportunities will also help in the product’s growth. Remember, a good content marketing strategy will yield good results only if you stay consistent.
Now, it doesn’t end there. Another very important aspect that comes into play is monitoring the results. If we take the school example again, once the results are out, you track your progress and evaluate everything that has gone wrong. The same concept applies here too. Periodically monitor your progress, the kind of response your product is getting, and whether it is reaching your monthly targets or not.
Other few aspects that need evaluation are the number of sign-ups your product is getting, analyzing the consumption trends and updating the software accordingly, and removing the redundancies that might be affecting the user experience.
Why Is Content Marketing Important For SaaS Businesses?
- Brand Awareness: For your product to actually earn you profits, you’ll need it to be in the public eye. If there is no buzz about your product anywhere on the Internet, it is less likely that you’ll be able to sell your product to anyone, let alone the target audience. Content marketing will help bridge that gap and bring that much-needed public attention, be it to buyers or sellers.
- Builds Credibility: If you’re regularly churning out relevant and quality content with the right SEO strategies, it is bound to gain traction. This also invites a lot of backlinks from credible sources like big players in the SaaS industry, and websites that talk about products and software similar to yours. This creates a sense of trust among the customers about your services and products.
- Positions You As A Thought Leader: Once you’ve gained people’s trust, they are bound to come back to your website for any other queries related to the product or the SaaS business in general. This helps in building up the already created trust among the customers and puts you right on top with the big players of the SaaS industry.
Summing Up
Now that you’ve learned how to nail content marketing for your SaaS business, the only thing left for you to do is get your team in action and take hold of the competitive market. It’s a rapidly evolving industry, and a robust content strategy is what will carry you to the other side and create a strong relationship with your customers.
