Content Marketing

In this article, we will give you SaaS marketers some actionable tips you can quickly implement into your SaaS content marketing strategy, improving its effectiveness in the shortest time possible. Let's begin. But First, Why Worry About Content? In the world of marketing, people decide to choose sides without reason. You shouldn't think like content marketing vs. paid ads, use both. But, we are talking about content, so here are some reasons to develop a SaaS content marketing strategy, if you haven't already: Content builds trust - by producing quality content on a consistent basis, you will gain the trust of your potential customers. That will show them that you are an expert in your field, willing to share knowledge. And if they happen to need your services in the future, you will be the first one that comes to their mind, as they already enjoy your content. Excellent ROI - ads are great, as they instantly start getting traffic to your site. However, once you stop paying for them, they are gone. Content is a different story. Take this blog post as an example—once it ranks on Google, it will start attracting traffic to our site, and it will continue doing so as long as it stays relevant. Content is flexible - a great benefit of content marketing is that it has flexible pricing. If you have a limited budget, start producing content yourself. Anyone can write one blog post per week. And when your budget gets better, you can begin hiring writers, editors, SEO experts, video producers, anything you want. But for starters, it doesn't have to cost you anything, which is a big plus. 5 Tips For Developing A Great SaaS Content Marketing Strategy Tip #1: Zero In On Your Audience While it's true that your content will be visible to random Internet users, you should still do your best focusing on the target audience. When producing content, have a particular buyer persona in mind. That person should be your buyer persona or ideal customer. Every piece of content you create should aim to help that person. For SaaS, it is essential to understand who you want to help. Does your time tracking app works best for freelancers, teams, or large organizations? Is it aimed for boosting personal productivity, or for monitoring the productivity of remote teams? Don't try to have a one size fits all approach, as it rarely works. Always thinking about buyer persona will help you stay on track. When producing content, it is easy to get carried away, forgetting to talk about what matters the most, and that is how your products help your customers. So whenever you want to start working on a new piece of marketing content, put it through the lens of your buyer persona. If it can help them solve something important, go for it. If not, think about re-framing your idea, or ditch it altogether if it's not applicable. Tip #2: Pick A Content Type After targeting audience, it is time to start producing the type of content they will want to see. While it is not impossible to produce various kinds of content, it is probably a better idea to pick one or two channels and make sure you retain quality. Because Google is still primarily text-based, having a live blog on your site is a good idea. Blogs will work for most SaaS and are a great way of attracting organic traffic. If your service is business-related, think about producing LinkedIn articles too. Those can be the same ones you have on your blog, or you can choose to create LinkedIn-only content. Because this network is rising in popularity, your articles will probably attract attention, as long as they are quality written. On the other hand, if you have a highly technical and sophisticated app, YouTube videos might be your best bet. You can record tutorials and how-to guides that will explain to potential customers how they can use your app in real-life situations. Those will also serve for SaaS customer onboarding purposes as they will get customers familiar with the functionality of the product even before they buy. Lastly, if your SaaS aims for a younger audience, Instagram is an excellent platform for you. Try releasing posts frequently, even daily if possible. While you can write short posts on Instagram too, it is best that you hire a designer and a copywriter, to help you produce highly effective and eye-catching content. Instagram feeds are flooded, but if you do this right, it can really gain attention. Tip #3: Set Goals While producing content itself will help your business, it is a good idea to set some goals. Content marketing is still just marketing, and its result should be driving more sales. Take an objective look at your SaaS marketing strategy and see how that aligns with your content marketing strategy. This will give you a great opportunity to hone in on sales and marketing alignment to ensure your branded messaging and positioning align with both your sales and marketing teams, which ensures your sales reps are having the right conversation, at the right time. While you shouldn't dwell on stats too much, some numbers do tell a lot about your strategy: Conversion rates are extremely important for content marketing, as they show how many visitors you turn into paying customers. People who are producing content just for the sake of it often suffer from low conversion rates. Doing something as simple as putting calls-to-action into your articles can do wonders for your conversions. Cost per acquisition is another useful stat as it tells you how much you spend on marketing to get a paying customer. Having CPA too high will mean you are not doing something right, so make sure you keep an eye on that. Click-Through Rate is another stat important for content marketing. It will tell you how engaging your content is. If people leave your page almost immediately after getting to it, something is not right. It probably means your content is low quality, unoptimized, or clickbait, and it sends a signal to Google, which will send it down the SERP. Tip #4: Stay Consistent Once you identify your audience, the type of content you want to produce and you set goals, consistency should become your focus. You should pick up a pace you can follow, and continue doing that forever. That's why it's important not to set the bar too high. One piece of content per week means 52 per year. That is 52 ideas, every single year. And if you up it to two times per week, that is more than a hundred. It's not easy to produce that type of volume while retaining quality, especially if you are doing it alone. However, it is also important not to strive for perfection. It is much better to learn along the way based on conversion rates, than not do anything before you get things completely right. Start working hard, and producing content regularly, giving your best effort. If it is not perfect at the moment, that's OK, it will get better in time, but only if you keep working on it. Tip #5: Boost Your Content The fact that you are working on your content doesn't mean you must neglect other forms of digital marketing, on the contrary. Instead of waiting for Google to rank your articles, you can boost their visibility through other activities. Leveraging HubSpot's SaaS marketing approach is also another effective approach Whenever you publish a video or release a post, notify people in your email list and post it on social media. If you write articles, you can publish them on Medium too, to get more eyes on them. Also, if you happen to get comments on social media, don't just like them, respond. Take the opportunity to recommend other pieces of content you previously released, if you genuinely feel that person would be interested. And don't hesitate to repost older pieces of content after a while. As long as your content stays relevant, people will enjoy consuming it. So if you wrote a great article last year on a topic that is still popular, go ahead and put it on social media again, and mention how it is still applicable. If you have old pieces of content that are no longer relevant, either update or remove them. You don't want them standing idle on your business blog. Conclusion As you can see from the article, content marketing is not that complicated. You can start implementing our five-step formula today, and see for yourself how your content will begin gaining attention. Speaking with a SaaS marketing agency about your content marketing efforts is your best bet to get SaaS specialists to see how effective you are at layering the appropriate content across your buyer's journey. Additionally, SaaS marketing agencies can also help you look at content marketing through the lens of conversion rate optimization to make sure all your content marketing efforts are actually effective and converting website visitors into SaaS customers. Content has some clear advantages and, in our opinion, every single SaaS business should start releasing quality content on a consistent basis. Just remember to set goals, create a buyer persona, keep track of things, and give your content a boost whenever possible. Before you know it, you will start noticing results, as more people will start seeing your brand. Tell us in the comments below if your approach to SaaS content marketing strategy differs from ours, we are anxious to hear your thoughts.

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5 Actionable SaaS Content Marketing Strategies