Nowadays, when we talk about marketing, we usually refer to digital marketing. Search engine optimization, email marketing, and social media have become crucial tools for brands worldwide. Interestingly enough, all these approaches hinge on a single thing: quality content.
“The best way to increase brand awareness is through engaging content.”
In this ultimate guide, we’ll talk about the importance of content marketing. We’ll also share tips for creating an efficient strategy, hiring the right SaaS marketing agency, and will provide other key takeaways.
How Does Content Affect Your SaaS Marketing?
Simply put,
“Content is the backbone of every marketing activity.”
Whether we’re talking about videos, podcasts, or articles, you need to find a way to connect with your target audience. When you drive traffic to a new site, these initial visitors usually don’t care about the company, its message, or its products. For them, you’re nothing more than a no-name brand in a sea of similar organizations.
With B2B content marketing, you give them a reason to care. Creating educational and entertaining posts can increase the company’s value to them. And step by step,
“Great content will build trust between a brand and users.”
Generally speaking, content is a wide term that encompasses different processes. We mainly use the phrase to refer to content writing, but it also describes video, image, and audio creation.
It’s an integral part of every promotional activity. Whether you’re creating brochures, videos, or podcasts, you’ll have to rely on some sort of content. Even if you have just a few short exerts on your homepage, you have to hire a content creator to make them.
We’ll explain this further in the next two sections, so stick with us!
Content Marketing vs. Paid Ads
Before we go any further, we have to explain a few misconceptions.
There’s a clear separation between paid advertising and content marketing promotions in the marketing world. Paid advertising mainly refers to search engine marketing and social media ads. On the other hand, we use the phrase content marketing for organic website content, SMM posts, YouTube videos, and Spotify podcasts, generally produced in-house.
“Although paid ads guide visitors to the website’s landing pages, we don’t classify this type of promotion as content marketing.”
You still need basic SEO optimization and excellent content when using paid ads. Although your result appears at the top of Google, you need intriguing meta tags and titles to attract clicks. In other words, no matter what you do in marketing, you always need someone to write your slogans and posts or create visual solutions.
Anyway, for this article, we’ll separate the two terms.
What Are the Main Types of Content Services?
If we generalize, content could pertain to every written word on our site, social media profile, emails, guest posts, and other publications. It can also refer to various visual solutions, videos, and audio files. Here are some of the most common services/products you can buy online:
- Blog content (How-To guides, educational pieces, and so on)
- Landing page creation
- Guest posts
- eBooks
- White papers
- Infographics
- YouTube scripts
- Social media posting
- Image creation
- Surveys and studies
- Video creation and editing
Depending on the size of the project, a B2B SaaS company might prefer hiring a freelancer or going with an agency.
“Marketing companies are generally better for larger projects that involve numerous procedures.”
They can also provide comprehensive SEO, SMM, visual content creation, and email outreach services. On the other hand, freelancers are a better solution when you need several blog posts, guest posts, or infographics.
An average SaaS content agency usually packages content writing with other marketing services. For example, when you pay for SEO services, you get a website audit, keyword research, blog post creation, and link building. Of course, you can also pay for content writing services separately.
Pros and Cons of Content Marketing
In 2023, 69% of companies want to increase their content marketing budgets. The article, podcast, and video creation are crucial for SaaS brands but also all other organizations working online.
In this section, we’ll consider all the benefits of implementing a long-term strategy. We’ll also make a few comparisons with paid advertising.
Pros
Some people think their SaaS brand can thrive by having a dominant product. Unfortunately, if your potential customers aren’t aware of your existence, it will take a lot of time for the word to get out.
In fact,
“A SaaS business with a fantastic marketing strategy can eclipse SaaS brands with better platforms but poor marketing.”
Anyway, here are the main reasons why you should hire a content marketing agency:
● Increase the Number of Website Visitors
No matter what promotional channel you use, focusing on content marketing can significantly increase the number of website visitors. Each post you create should drive qualified traffic for specific software category keywords and topics. This pertains to your blog posts but also social media posts and podcasts.
If you master this concept, not only can you increase the number of site users, but you’ll also drive highly converting traffic. As such, it’s the ideal approach for targeting B2B and B2C sales prospects.
● Increase Brand Awareness
You increase overall brand awareness with each visitor that lands on your pages. The process has a cumulative impact, allowing you to progressively increase your online presence across different platforms.
Depending on the quality of your content marketing process,
“People might perceive your brand as an authoritative source of information.”
In time, this will create new sales and partnership opportunities and significantly impact business scaling. So as long you’re the one making the message, you can control the online discourse. As a result, smart companies use it as a reputation management tool.
● Multi-Platform Posting
A fantastic thing about any piece of content is that you can repurpose most of it for different platforms. For example, after publishing a blog post on your site, you can share it on social media. Most videos you create are suitable for YouTube, Instagram, and websites. People can easily share images and infographics.
“Certain types of SaaS content allow a high degree of diversification.”
If a potential customer doesn’t use Facebook, they might still notice your high-quality content on some other platform. As you start reaching out to different B2B audiences and gathering more data, you might also learn about the optimal buyer persona.
● Efficient Marketing Spending
According to a Statista estimate, brands will spend 626 billion dollars for digital advertising in 2023. The general notion is that a company can never spend enough on marketing and that every dollar invested can return several-fold in revenues.
“Interesting thing about content is that it can indirectly help reduce overall marketing costs while increasing efficiency.”
You can repurpose most types of posts to increase the number of users across different platforms. Although spending money on B2B SaaS content might hit hard, it can improve the performance of your inbound marketing strategy and conversion.
● Fantastic Scaling
The thing that separates content marketing strategies from paid ads is the scaling. Social media and Google Ads work under a pay-per-click premise, where you must cover every lead’s cost. Although you can make money from this approach, it isn’t anything to write home about.
On the other hand, SEO, SMM, podcasts, and email outreach are excellent for scaling. While they are initially slow, these promotional methods eventually overtake paid ads in terms of performance.
Cons
Saying that content production has drawbacks isn’t fair. Whether you like it or not, your SaaS company has to create posts to attract attention. A blank website or social media profile won’t do much for you. So, whether you like it or not, you’ll need an efficient content marketing strategy.
In that regard, perhaps it would be better to call these factors challenges:
● Need Time to Develop
Marketing channels that rely on content take time to develop. This is especially noticeable with SaaS SEO and social media marketing.
“Even if you can produce high-quality content, you still need time to optimize your channels and build a followership.”
As a result, many brands go with paid ads for their B2B SaaS marketing. Although generally a more expensive approach, it produces much quicker results.
● Variable Results
The results can vary depending on the proficiency of a SaaS content marketing agency. It isn’t uncommon for companies to spend ludicrous amounts of money only to discover it was for naught.
So, the success of your marketing campaign usually depends on your recruiting. Finding the right SaaS marketing agency should be your priority, as it will affect all future processes.
You should especially be careful when building an in-house team. Although this marketing strategy gives you more control and reduces costs in the long run, it takes time to implement. You’ll still need to spend good money on a marketing expert to train all the rookies.
● Multi-Platform Challenges
As previously mentioned, the great thing about content is that you can share it on different platforms. Although this can provide some massive benefits, it also requires multitasking. Ideally,
“You should try to optimize your content marketing effort.”
Focus on platforms that provide the biggest benefits and avoid anything else. Sometimes, people get caught up in all these vanity metrics thinking that 100 followers on Pinterest will move the needle for their brand. As it turns out, there are much better ways to spend your time.
According to Statista, Facebook is the most popular platform for SMM. A whopping 94% of companies use it for their marketing campaigns. Instagram is second with 76% popularity.
● Finding Inspiration
When a B2B SaaS marketing agency starts a new project, they prioritize keyword research. They use tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Consult, SEMRush, and AhRefs to assess the state of the blog.
“The keyword research provides ideas for content creation and insights about user behavior and interests.”
Unfortunately, things get much more complicated once you go through the initial list of suggestions. Finding new topic ideas for your blog and social media can be exhausting. After some time, it feels like you’ve used up all your bullets, and there’s nothing more to write about.
An even worse situation is when SaaS companies start creating content for content’s sake. Even if these posts attract some attention, they won’t provide the high conversion you need.
● Lack of Creativity
Performing extensive keyword research isn’t enough for an efficient SaaS content marketing strategy. You also need to create high-quality, consistent content.
“Unless you can differentiate your posts through creativity, you can never attract enough visitors and inbound links.”
Copying other people’s ideas isn’t enough to reach top spots in Google. We can say something similar for social media posts, podcasts, and other forms of content. So, if you wish to invest in this type of marketing, you should first find a way to differentiate yourself from the competition.
How to Create SaaS Content Marketing Strategy?
If you wish to get the most from your posting, you need an efficient content strategy.
Although there will be some variations to the approach, depending on your preferred marketing channel, it usually comes down to the same thing. Your main task is identifying potential customers, driving them to your site, and directing them to marketing funnel content. Here’s what the process looks like in practice:
1. Analyze the Target Audience
Most SaaS companies already know who their potential clients are. However, they should still refine their approach by analyzing demographic data. Brands can use various tools to analyze their competition and see what kind of traffic they’re driving to their sites.
Here are the main things you need to consider when analyzing leads:
- The industry they work in
- Age and gender
- Income level
- Position in a company
- Partners and suppliers
- Current SaaS tools they’re using
“Most importantly, you should determine how the target audience could benefit from your software.”
According to Simple Tiger agency, finding pain points is crucial for the success of your entire campaign. Ultimately, there’s no reason to target customers who can’t justify the cost of subscribing to your software.
Audience analysis can also help you create a better SaaS marketing mix. You can tweak prices, modify product features, and perform other last-minute alterations to your offer. Among others, you can use this data to fine-tune your marketing message.
2. Perform Keyword Analysis
Most people think that keyword research is only important for search engine optimization. However, the process also has an impact on other digital marketing channels. In particular, it shows us the audiences’ main interests and what they look for when browsing for SaaS-related content.
You can easily analyze the organic search with keyword research tools. When doing the analysis, you have to focus on four things:
- Volume
- Difficulty
- CPC (Cost-Per-Click)
- Demographics
Volume
Search volume, or the number of monthly visits, shows us the level of interest. The general rule of SEO is to pursue the types of keywords that can drive the most users to our site. However, we won’t have a full picture until we compare volume with difficulty.
Difficulty
Difficulty shows us how hard it is to optimize a phrase. It can also serve as an indicator of profitability. Sometimes, terms that have extremely low difficulty and high volume have low commercial potential. So, that’s another thing we should consider when driving traffic to the pages.
CPC
Cost-Per-Click is another indication of commercial intent. In most cases, expensive phrases are better at delivering convertible leads. You should check Google’s article on CPC to gain more information.
Demographics
Lastly, we should also consider demographics. Country of origin and income are vital as they show whether a client can afford an expensive SaaS plan. Although this isn’t always the rule, targeting countries and individuals with better financial means is usually better.
3. Find Optimal Content
If we presume your website is correctly set up, it’s time to find the best content type for our brand. In fact, we can say that proper content ideation is crucial for your content marketing plans. During this stage, you should also think about distribution channels.
“In a perfect world, you would use several channels concurrently.”
This would provide maximum benefits through content repurposing. Unfortunately, sharing your blog posts on social media usually won’t do. You also need a manager to grow followership so prospective customers can see your messages. So, when considering content distribution, you should focus on posts targeting a specific online community.
Here are the best types of content for SaaS brands:
Blog posts
Blog posts are the focal point of every site. We use them in conjunction with SEO to drive organic traffic from Google and other search engines.
“No matter what type of promotion you’re using, you need articles on your website.”
We use them as the landing destination for your PPC, SMM, and emails. Although you can use the homepage and product pages for this purpose, they usually don’t convert that well.
Guest posts
Guest blogging is the most popular method of acquiring mentions and hyperlinks from other sites. SaaS marketing agencies usually offer these posts as a part of their packages during outreach campaigns.
However, if you wish to cut costs, you can hire a freelancer to create articles while you seek out guest blogging opportunities. You can use them to optimize your homepage, blog posts, and other landing pages.
Videos and scripts
Although different, these two content types are a part of the same SaaS marketing effort.
We use scripts as talking points for our videos. Then, a video editor/creator will make overlying visuals. Most SaaS brands use videos for their YouTube. However, you can also repurpose them for other platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.
Most importantly, SaaS brands can also embed videos into their blogs to increase their usefulness and increase user engagement. Aside from ranking on YouTube, this type of content might appear in organic Google video searches.
Images
Many businesses don’t create personalized images for their posts. Instead, they borrow content from third-party providers.
“Not using custom-made images is a major missed opportunity.”
Although these graphic solutions cost money, they are perfect for separating an organization from the pack. SaaS companies, in particular, can benefit from images as they allow them to show data and other information in a visually-appealing way.
Images are the best way to turn regular blogs into high-quality articles. You can also use them for social media posting to quickly build intrigue among users.
Studies, White Papers, and Leadership Content
The SaaS industry is ideal for studies and wallpapers. Given that most of these tools rely on data, you can easily quantify their performance. A company can conduct various studies involving their solution and other software on the market. Creating advanced content, such as checklist content, can also help out.
4. Create Marketing Funnels
In the last few years, companies have used interlinking and marketing funnels to boost their articles. Nowadays, Google puts lots of emphasis on pillar pages and content clusters, so this practice is excellent for optimization and user experience.
“We can also use content clusters to qualify leads and introduce them to the company’s offer.”
As a person moves down the conversion funnel, they start learning about more complex topics. As the last stage of their customer journey, they’re led to a software trial page where they turn into a qualified lead.
We can categorize every post as follows:
- Top the funnel content
- Middle of funnel content
- Bottom of funnel content
SaaS marketers commonly use this terminology for blog posts, but, in theory, you can also use it for video content. Top-of-the-funnel posts are the simplest and most comprehensive ones. As you move down the funnels, you’re introduced to complex topics.
“Another benefit of funnels is that it allows you to group several minor publications into a greater whole.”
The browsing doesn’t stop after the first post. Instead, users can continue reading about the topic by following the links. Although every article is relatively small, the topic is spread across several pages in a logical order. Even better, a SaaS brand can explore numerous funnel keyword opportunities.
Unfortunately, creating solid funnel pieces is much more complicated than some people think. Besides having great content ideas and an impeccable SEO strategy, you must also perform conversion rate optimization. When we also consider these content pieces should be aligned with your business goals, it becomes obvious why this process is so hard to implement.
5. Give Your Writers Content Briefs
Once you decide how the article will look, it’s time to give your writers content briefs. These are project outlines that will keep your marketing team on the right track. In other words,
“Content briefs tell writers what to include in the article.”
This outline covers all sorts of details, including:
- Article title
- Word count
- Target audience
- Article objectives
- Writing style
- Keywords
- Internal and external links
- CTA
- Deadline
Once a writer receives the outline, they can start the research process. In most cases, content experts scour the existing content on Google and draw information from these articles.
Ideally, writers should have experience with a particular niche or industry. This would help them add unique information and make their conclusions about the subject matter. Here’s how the Algocentric Digital team executes the writing process:
- We start by determining the ideal audience and the intent behind the article
- After that, we go through the main questions that the article should answer
- The most important part of content creation is finding a title that will intrigue users while including the necessary keyword
- The writer also needs to find subheadings that would properly break down the topic
- Each subtopic should be carefully planned to answer users’ questions
- As the last step of the process, the writer should add internal and external links
After that, we polish the piece by using AI tools.
6. Use AI Tools
Nowadays, you can no longer rely on excellent writing to generate winning articles. Instead, you need to use powerful optimization tools that would allow you to add the right phrases and subheadings.
“AI has become a necessity for content planning and executing.”
In particular, this software allows us to:
- Analyze existing articles
- Find opportunities
- Create content based on data
- Target specific audience
AI tools are crucial for creating sales and marketing funnels. They help us find keyword clusters and organize articles into top, middle, and bottom-of-the-funnel pieces. This is crucial for creating a customized buyer’s journey, where a person is guided from one topic to another.
Besides improving user experience, these programs are crucial for search engines. They allow us to create articles that Google will love, exponentially increasing our chances of ranking. Unlike the traditional approach to content,
“Algocentric Digital always focuses on conversion as the main determinant of content efficiency.”
Creating posts just so we could say we’ve done our job is out of the question. Instead, we focus on your bottom line and how our service would impact your company. Here’s how we execute the content creation process:
- We create a strategy that will cater to your specific business needs
- Then, we implement the latest SEO methodology, which includes the use of powerful AI tools
- Our marketing team uses natural language processes to find the best sources of information
- Through user intent analysis, AI keyword optimization, and information sourcing, we generate content that will maximize every website visitors’ potential
If you wish to learn more about the process, we suggest you download our AI-Powered Content Marketing Playbook.
7. Use KPIs
SaaS businesses use all sorts of indicators to assess their content performance. Aside from website metrics, which are crucial for any type of company, they also utilize various industry-specific stats such as:
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
- Lead Conversion Rate (LCR)
- Customer Churn and Customer Retention
- Revenue Churn
- Customer Engagement
- Leads Lifecycle
- Recurring Revenue
“Every indicator provides certain insights about the website, software, and company performance.”
They work in a vacuum but can also provide additional knowledge when you use them together. Although we use them to assess overall marketing efficiency, some of them are content-specific. This is especially true if we’re focusing on content marketing as the primary approach.
By tracking key SaaS marketing metrics, we can compare different campaigns, channels, and content marketing ROI. We can use them to make various alterations and tweak our methodology. They also help us determine whether or not we managed to reach specific content marketing goals.
How to Find the Best B2B SaaS Content Marketing Agency?
In theory, you don’t have to create a strategy by yourself. Instead, you can hire an agency or content marketing manager to help you with the process.
Unfortunately, finding writers who can provide excellent results has become extremely hard. Among others, this is because articles require the implementation of best SEO practices and then some more.
“Even if you can write fantastic copies, you probably won’t reach top spots in Google without content optimization.”
Anyway, here are some things you should pay attention to during hiring:
● Reputation and Authority
Reputation and authority are the best ways to score large contracts. As a result, B2B marketers use testimonials, reviews, and other social proofs to quickly demonstrate their worth.
Reading online reviews is the best way to check what people think of a content team. If you’re unsure about something, you can always contact testimonials showcased on their site. They can also provide some valuable insights about their track record.
● Quality of Work
Together with reputation and authority, the ability to create valuable content is the biggest determinant of why SaaS brands hire content marketers. However, you don’t need third-party users to tell you whether a content marketing agency is good. You can simply check the posts published on their site.
“If you don’t like their articles, there’s no reason to hire them for your project.”
Being able to tell a story and having originality is something that can sway you in one direction to another. Stay away from brands that use repetitive, template-type writing. Rankings can also tell you more about their ability to optimize content for search engines.
● Emphasis on Conversion
One of the common issues with marketing agencies is there’s too much emphasis on word counts, links, and things of that nature. Although it’s in your contract that you need to deliver a certain number of articles each month, that doesn’t mean you should neglect conversion.
“The organic traffic is the main reason why people hire marketing agencies.”
If your posts continuously fail to deliver results, it doesn’t matter how well you write. Performance should be assessed based on the value you bring to the company, not by whether you can do the bare minimum.
● SEO Process
If you’re serious about your content assets, you should implement the best SEO practices. Aside from using proper formatting, links, keyword selection, and various other elements, you should also use content tools.
As previously mentioned, people judge a company’s performance based on their ability to rank in Google. So, the success of your content creation process will be heavily affected by the quality of SEO content.
● Communication and Reliability
One of the big issues in the content marketing field is the lack of professionalism and poor communication. This is especially noticeable with some freelancers.
“Most SaaS clients want to have the option to contact their providers at any time during the day.”
In fact, low responsiveness and not adhering to deadliness are the main reasons why SaaS brands stop working with a content marketing team. Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell whether a company is good or not at meeting its deadliness. Once again, the only way to acquire information is by contacting previous clients.
FAQ
What is SaaS content marketing?
SaaS content marketing refers to content creation and distribution for SaaS brands. During content creation, a provider creates blog pieces and other marketing materials posted on clients’ websites and social media.
Why is content marketing important for SaaS?
Content marketing helps SaaS businesses increase their reach and drive more traffic. It’s a fantastic method for promoting a brand and also bringing in more leads.
How do I create a SaaS content strategy?
If you wish to create a content strategy from scratch, you should first get acquainted with your industry and ideal buyer persona. After that, you need to perform keyword research, introduce a content schedule, and start creating various promotional pieces.