When you’re crafting a digital marketing strategy for your SaaS business, content marketing may not be the first thing you focus on in your marketing plan. However, for the majority of CMOs, brand awareness is the metric they care about the most. While it can feel overwhelming to develop a content marketing strategy for a SaaS business, finding the right way to harness content and paid media will help you achieve your goals faster.
In this blog, we’ll delve into how to create a content marketing strategy that works for SaaS businesses. In addition, we’ll provide you tactic ideas unique to your goals.
How to develop a SaaS content marketing strategy
SaaS content is about explaining in a convincing way how you’ll improve company processes or alleviate pain points. To effectively do this, your content strategy should serve as the true north. Use it to guide your direction and deliverables.
Developing your SaaS content marketing strategy is going to require time and research. Ensure you’ve dedicated the time and resources, utilizing team members and tools, to help you complete the project. After all, without proper research, you could end up like the 23% of SaaS blogs which receive fewer than 500 organic visits per month.
Audit your website
You can’t know where you’re going without knowing where you are, and where you’ve been. You’ll want to start with an internal website audit. The audit should include an examination of existing resources and marketing materials. You’ll also want to reach out to team members and gather information. Some team members may have unique insight into the company that would be highly beneficial to the audit. Now it’s time to dig into the data. How have your company’s marketing efforts performed in the past? What was the ROI? You can do this by checking in Google Analytics, Search Console, and social media insights.
With whom is your content resonating? Demographic information from Google and social media platforms will provide you with the answers you need. When you have all the information on your website’s performance, resources, and platforms in place, it’s time to make some assessments.
In order to develop your content plan you should create a matrix that evaluates:
- What’s working?
- What’s not working?
- What could be added or expanded upon?
Use the answers to these questions to establish a solid base on which to create your ongoing digital strategy.
However, before you get started, you’ll want to check on your competition.
How SaaS companies can do competitive research
Do you know who your top three competitors are? If not, now’s the time to find out. You’ll want to do a deep dive into their content and distribution channels. Sign up for their email newsletters, read their blogs, check out their following on social media. Throughout this process, keep in mind your competitor’s weaknesses and differentiators. You can either highlight these by showing how you stack up or know to avoid overemphasizing areas where they may outperform you. Using a tool to help you aggregate your data will speed things up, and help you identify new competitors. We suggest using a machine learning tool like Sprout Social in addition to manual data collection to cover more ground efficiently.
From this data, you’ll put together a one-sheet that explains how you’re going to use those differentiators to create space between you and them in the market. When people choose between software tools, they’re doing so because of the features and their impression of your brand. It’s your job on the content marketing side to create and capitalize on spaces in the marketplace to show your company is the clear choice compared to your competition.
Who is your SaaS company targeting?
Finally, we get into the fun stuff. Who is your target audience? Who are the personas that live within that audience? What do you know about them? Building persona profiles that give you the ins and outs of their pain points, interests, consumer personality insights, and more will help you better formulate content that captures their attention. To ensure accurate data and get the depth you’re looking for, you may want to employ artificial intelligence tools. Acoustic, formerly IBM Watson, is a great option to get additional persona insights and build profiles in conjunction with your qualitative research.
You’ll also want to determine the whereabouts of your audience—what social platforms are they using? This can help you perfect a channel strategy that reflects where they’re already spending their time. For instance, if your service line is around healthcare tech, spending time building a Pinterest audience isn’t going to be as effective as LinkedIn might be.
Implementing your content marketing strategy
Once you have personas, competition, and your audit complete, it’s time to build your ongoing digital strategy. Using the information you have around your audience location and interests, you can build out topic ideas and ways of sharing the information.
On-Page Content
Blog content and website updates can be made to help with KPIs like time on page and pages per session. If you’re not already leveraging content, now’s the time. Only 15% of SaaS companies haven’t started blogging. They can also help you illustrate and clarify your SaaS tool in a more effective way for your audience. Building out sections on your website aimed at different personas personalizes and improves your potential organic search visibility. Don’t be afraid to use longtail keywords that address your audience’s pain points or provide answers to FAQs. Longtail keywords will maximize your reach and increase organic traffic. In addition, ensure you’re using CTAs to drive your potential customers either deeper into your website to check out features, or to share the post. Currently, only 67% of SaaS businesses use CTAs.
Design
Reaching people isn’t just about the words you use. It’s about the way the business looks, from your website to images on blog posts to design assets. However, many SaaS companies aren’t utilizing visuals in ways that showcase their brand, products, and services. Creating downloadables, telling a story with your data, and video marketing campaigns are all great ways to appeal to audiences as well as increase organic search traffic.
Whether it’s a newsletter, drip campaign, or nurture flow, offering beneficial content to your email list is a great way to nurture leads. The content will help build trust, as you are sharing your expertise. You’ll also ensure they get the information they need to help them make their purchasing decision.
Thought Leadership
Thought leadership pieces are integral to success for most SaaS businesses, whether it’s through client case studies or posts from well-known or impactful members of your organization. This could be through LinkedIn, webinars, or PR and bylines—the options are endless.
Social Media
LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook are all great places to showcase your SaaS company’s capabilities. Whether it’s through content produced for that channel, or simply promoted through paid media to reach your target audience, your options for engaging are endless.
Want to host a Twitter chat? How about building quizzes that inspire your audience to share? You know best what your personas will respond to, so while you may use best practices, don’t be afraid to stay true to your customer.
The important part of developing your strategy is thinking about how your content will explain how your client’s business will grow due to the reduction of pain points. Curious about how to begin? Check out our case study on how we used content marketing for SaaS to drive an over 1000% increase in sessions for Sapho, an employee experience portal designed for the digital workplace.
Need some help building a SaaS content strategy? Reach out to us here at Mad Fish Digital to see if we’d be a good fit for your needs.
