Content Marketing for SaaS Companies: Importance and Use Cases

Intro

Can you imagine that some SaaS companies spend up to 79 percent of their revenue on marketing? We bet they are wondering how to balance their advertising budgets as well as increase ROI. If you are curious also, let us introduce to you an effective way to market your product and acquire loyal customers.

Meet His Majesty Content Marketing.

Reasons to do content marketing

As we said before, one of the main reasons why companies turn to make content a part of their marketing strategy is the desire to optimize their marketing budgets. According to Neil Patel’s blog, content helps to decrease the costs spent on traditional marketing by 62 percent.

Quality content, accompanied by some SEO efforts and an email marketing strategy can bring you even more benefits with Check out the best (glendale SEO company) today!.

• Communicate your values, and thus build brand awareness
• Grow the list of leads you share with the Sales Team
• Bring targeted traffic to your website
• Encourage customer loyalty and build trust with your customers

Let’s figure out the types of content SaaS software developers can benefit from.

Types of content to create for SaaS companies

Content marketing is all about communicating with your audience. Here you are the one to choose the tone, decide on the topics, and find the ways to convey your message.

Today, product software companies communicate with their customers in a number of ways, and content no longer refers to boring longreads and endless email sequences only.

Content production for SaaS includes:

• Creating product landing pages
• Writing expertise-based blog posts and case studies
• Communicating product updates and sending newsletters
• Creating product guides and presentations
• Preparing webinars and product demos
• Recording videos and podcasts

To decide on the types of content that would be useful to your audiences, marketing professionals recommend sticking to the conversion funnel. Understanding the goals you’d like to achieve at different stages will help you target the right people at the right time.

During the first two stages, your goal is to create awareness about your product and generate leads. Use blog posts and case studies to introduce the product to digital audiences. To help your potential customers understand which of their pain points your product is capable of addressing and explain the way to do that, run webinars and produce product guides. Build a presence on social media and wrap it up with some traditional email marketing.

If you are doing right, and your leads are warm enough, your next goal is to explain why choosing your product is a win. At this stage, you’ll be targeting those who consider making a purchase with you. If pitching and haunting are not on your agenda, consider highlighting your strong points with product demos. Clearly communicate the price and help your leads compare the options. Offer free trial options to showcase loyalty.

At some point, when the users stay with you for a while, you define the growth options that would be mutually beneficial. Offer to consult, communicate product updates in a personalized way, introduce training, and distribute special offers. This way you can turn customers into your brand advocates, improve the retention rate, and upsell.

SaaS content marketing best practices

So, how can you produce quality content of different formats and types and what makes a good marketing plan for SaaS?

Make the most of the company blog

A study by Business 2 Community revealed that 98 percent of SaaS companies do blogging. On one hand, this fact underlines the importance of including a blog in your marketing plan for SaaS, while on the other, creates the demand for high-quality content to post on your blog.

For SaaS companies, quality content possesses the following characteristics:

1. Meets the interests of the target audience (for example, if the product is a scheduling tool for project managers, explain why Scrum still rocks and give advice on time management)
2. Introduces the product and its features (for example, if your product offers integration with a tool for online team communication, make sure you explain any bottlenecks and provide ways to handle them)
3. Serves a single source of universal truth (for example, if you overview any recent updates a popular PM tool has just received, express your frank opinion and provide use cases)
4. Showcases expertise (define your strong points, share the results you are proud of, ask for client testimonials)
5. Contains a CTA (add interactive UI elements that reach users in the right places and encourage them to perform target actions)

Make sure your blog is a clear reflection of your product and the values your product brings to the world.

Invest in SEO

The key element of a SaaS content strategy is building and preserving your high position in organic search results. Here are the things you can do to improve your SEO rank:

1. Generate meaningful content. Google’s latest updates put the reader first. This means you should be selective in choosing the topics you want to highlight and pay even more attention to the way you speak to your audience. Focus on one topic at a time, add facts from your own experience, and be helpful.
2. Develop a keyword strategy. Build your SEO strategy around clusters of keywords that reflect your expertise. Find long tail keywords to optimize landing pages. Make deep research to find semantic keywords, and think of ways to adjust your strategy if you are losing your organic search positions. Use SEO tools and marketing SaaS solutions to make these processes easier.

3. Measure performance. With the amounts of data produced and rolled out in the digital space, you need to keep an eye on your performance indicators. To automate this process, consider trying dedicated SaaS content marketing services. Regularly check if you are getting targeted traffic on your web pages and think of ways to improve your SERP results.
4. Don’t forget about backlinks. Quality backlinks are a vital part of your inbound marketing. Exchange links with subject-matter experts and do create content types that others would want to quote. Most often such content includes helpful articles, technical research, and informative landing pages. Check the backlinks of your competitors and monitor if yours are still in place to help you preserve a high rank in the SERP.

Diversify your content

The worst thing you can do is talk about an amazing product in a boring way. To make your content engaging, it needs to be useful and appeal to audiences with different perception types, as well as correspond to their lifestyles.

To create meaningful case studies, e-books, and white papers use explanatory images and infographics. Where possible, apply storytelling and add client testimonials, as those communicate information in a natural and humanized way.

Video content is also a good way to introduce your product and explain its use. According to the Wyzowl Video Marketing Statistics report, 73 percent of potential buyers prefer watching a short product video to learn about its features and benefits.

To provide potential users with more insights on product usage and reply to their questions, prepare presentations and invite them to the webinars. Once the live stream is over, upload the recording to your YouTube channel or place it on the website.

Also, as of 2022, only 18 percent of SaaS companies have launched their podcast. So, there is definitely room for yours. Invite subject-matter experts and discuss topics that are within your customers’ interests.

Content marketing for SaaS: use cases

SaaS products are many, but those who succeed with content marketing are few. Let’s overview some examples of SaaS products that managed to implement and preserve an outstanding content marketing strategy.

Shopify

A well-known e-commerce platform for retail stores and marketplaces managed to turn its website into an all-in-one knowledge base for its customers. Their blog contains valuable insights on platform usage, sales, and marketing.

Striving to satisfy the needs of their target audiences and diversify content production, Shopify launched two podcast series for entrepreneurs and about entrepreneurs.

All the information on Shopify’s website is clearly categorized and presented in a user-friendly way. Their unique approach to content creation and strong marketing expertise helped them build a marketing image that’s easy to recognize and difficult to overlook.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a SaaS platform for customer support and communication that’s used by 40.000 businesses worldwide. In their content, the software provider makes a strong focus on guidance, provides insights into customers' behavior, and explains how to provide the ultimate customer experience (CX).

Mailchimp

This marketing automation platform has acquired a loyal audience using the power of storytelling. On their blog, Mailchimp extensively uses their clients’ success stories, distributes marketing materials, and provides educational resources for marketers.

Their approach to content creation is way too far from being called ordinary. Apart from a number of podcast series, the brand has an in-house production studio for film creation.

Canva

Canva, a popular design tool, puts a lot of effort into marking its blog educational for all user categories, from beginners to professionals. Their Design School resembles a real classroom, where students can evaluate the potential of the platform and learn a million of thighs it’s capable of.

This approach allows customers to save time and assess the value they can get from the product in full before buying it.

Final thoughts

Content is king. In the early stages of a company’s development, content marketing helps to clearly state the brand values and build trust with the audiences. Used in combination with SEO best practices, content is the one to create awareness and make your SaaS stand out from the competitors. It’s content that often helps potential customers make their purchase decisions, and it’s again content that’s embedded in the company's retention and growth strategy. You could always use fresno SEO agency for your seo jobs.

SaaS giants like Shopify and Mailchimp use non-trivial content types like podcasts and videos that appeal to their loyal customers and help to acquire some new brand followers. You may start from basic things like improving your organic search results, crafting refined email sequences, and writing comprehensive product guides. Who knows, maybe soon your SaaS will be the one others are talking about as a success story.