When it comes to generating more leads for your SaaS business, you must include content marketing in your overall strategy. In fact, SaaS companies that use content marketing experience a 30% increase in growth rates and a 5-10% increase in retention rates. Further, the customer acquisition cost (CAC) of SaaS companies from content marketing is about 15% lower than that of paid ads.
However, not every business leveraging content marketing knows how to do it properly, which can mean that they are losing potential customers and numerous other benefits.
So, if you’re looking to include content marketing in your marketing campaign, make sure to follow the rules.
In this blog post, we’ll discover five basic yet effective rules every SaaS content marketer should follow to create an incredible content strategy for their brand.
A SaaS product can appeal to different buyers with different goals and needs. Therefore, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work because of the lack of pinpoint focus. To increase conversions — both trial and paid — it’s crucial to identify your target audience.
Defining your target audience lays the foundation of a successful SaaS content marketing strategy. It’s a good starting point to know what your potential customers are looking for and what type of content to create to drive traffic and sales. If you try to attract “everyone”, you won’t reach “anyone”.
Here’s what you can do to understand your target customers:
First, understand why a customer would be interested in your product, the benefits they will get from it, and the problems you’re solving for your customers. Further, identify what it is you do that separates you from your competitors. If you do this, they’ll love you. If you can’t, they’ll find another brand that can.
If you have an existing customer base, an email list, or a Facebook page or group with a decent following, analyze their current records.
Try to answer these questions by talking to your customers — to know whether or not you’re on the right track. However, if you can’t speak to them directly, analyze your Google analytics, Facebook page insights, Twitter analytics, and CRM data to get an idea of who’s following you and what they’re interested in. You can also check out old survey data or customer metrics of previous campaigns to see valuable insights about customers you’ve already reached.
Once all the information is collected, create a buyer persona — a fictional representation of your real potential customers.
This helps you define which topics your audience is most interested in and what tone of voice you should use. In short, you can ensure everything you’re doing fits who you want to be targeting.
However, make sure your ideal buyer profile is updated as your business evolves over time.
In addition, keep a close eye on brands selling similar products — check out their social media pages, the type of people that follow them and like their posts, and what kind of content gets the most engagement.
You can also distribute surveys to potential and existing customers via email or tools like SurveyMonkey and Google Forms. The answers will help assemble audience data and identify key personas.
There are numerous ways to frame your content marketing strategy — one of which is keeping an eye on your competitors, the people they’re targeting, and the content they’re producing.
Understanding how your competitors use content to engage with their audience and drive interest in their SaaS products can help you stay on top of your content marketing strategy. Not only can you find new strategies to draw your audience’s interest to your content but also fill out gaps in their approach.
For effective competitor analysis, answer these questions:
Here are a few steps you can follow:
You might have created excellent content, but how do you determine its success and failure? This is where SaaS content marketing metrics can help.
Metrics are the numbers and statistics crucial to your success as a SaaS content marketer. Without tracking them, it’s nearly impossible to know the performance of your content marketing strategies.
So, once you understand your target audience and analyze your competitors, define different performance metrics that should be considered in SaaS content marketing. Since not all content marketers know how to measure content performance, it’s recommended to start from basic metrics.
Some of these include:
Every SaaS solution has associated keywords that you must know while crafting your content marketing strategy. People may use these keywords throughout their customer journey to search for the information they need. For example,
Remember: Customers don’t use the words while looking exactly for your business or brand name. Instead, they try to find a solution to their problems that a product or service like yours can provide.
By identifying keywords used at each stage of the customer’s journey, you can develop relevant content to address their needs at each point. Not only can this result in effective marketing and sales strategy but also a boost in customer satisfaction and retention.
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and think of the keywords they would use to look for the information to address their pain points. For example, the target audience for a project management tool might search for ways to manage team projects effectively. You can also spend some time on platforms to understand your potential customers’ needs. Research for words or phrases they’re using to search for the answers.
Furthermore, consider using the following tools to develop an effective keyword strategy for your content.
Creating great content is just half the battle. The real challenge lies in making sure your audience knows that it exists.
Content distribution is a crucial part of a SaaS content marketing effort. It is a strategy that helps an organization promote its content — whether your latest blog post or a new video.
Without distribution, your content won’t reach your potential customers; they won’t know about your product or service and how it can address their pain points. In other words, you won’t find enough leads to sell your SaaS product.
Hence, to generate consistent sales from your content, you need a solid content distribution strategy.
A distribution strategy guides where and how frequently you will post and promote your content — both on-site or off-site. It defines whether your content will be publicly available or gates for premium users only. Further, it suggests what third-party sites you will use to distribute your content via guest blogging and your social media profiles for content promotion.
In a nutshell, the content distribution strategy aims to promote products effectively by making them accessible to the right audience at the right time and convincing them to take the desired action — reading the blog post, downloading an ebook, signing up for a newsletter, and more.
Here are a few tactics to create a powerful distribution strategy for your content.
Content is becoming a significant factor that influences a user’s purchasing decisions. So, if you haven’t hopped on the content marketing bandwagon yet, NOW is the time to do so. Follow these rules and optimize your SaaS content marketing efforts to boost your lead acquisition, sales, conversion rates, and revenue. And become one of the best software companies in your industry.
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