Imagine your target audience in a room full of people.
You want to get their attention without being too pushy or disrupting the conversation. You want to share valuable information that helps them see you as an expert in your field.
Your SaaS content marketing strategy does exactly that. It's a way to reach out to your audience and build relationships by providing valuable, relevant information to move them through the customer journey and eventually towards conversion.
One of the most effective ways to do this is through blogging. A blog allows you to share your thoughts and expertise regularly, which can help you attract new website visitors, engage with current customers, and build trust and credibility over time.
How a blog boosts website traffic for your SaaS business
Here's how a blog can help drive traffic:
Establish thought leadership
Creating content that positions you as an expert in your industry is a great way to establish thought leadership. Addressing pain points, sharing best practices, and offering insights into trends can help you build trust and credibility with your audience.
When you become a trusted source of information, people are more likely to visit your website, sign up for your email list, and download your content. And when they're ready to buy, they're more likely to think of you first.
65% of businesses already include thought leadership in their SaaS content marketing strategy, and while it means different things to different companies, it can be beneficial for businesses of all sizes.
Neil Patel is a great example of using thought leadership to build a successful business.
He complements his marketing services with educational content like tools, templates, and guides that show your target market how to grow its online presence. This content establishes him as an expert in the field, which has helped him attract a loyal following and build a successful business.
Attract leads
Your SaaS content marketing efforts can contribute directly to your lead generation efforts. Create lead magnets such as a template, e-book, or white paper to encourage readers to sign up for your email list and keep them in the loop.
The key is to create content relevant to your target customers that speaks to their needs at each stage of the buyer's journey.
Respona's blog post "How to Find Bloggers to Promote Your Business [In 2022]" addresses a pain point for businesses looking to connect with bloggers
It includes a CTA to access the free link-building cheat sheet, which helps businesses generate leads by providing valuable information relevant to their needs. The blog also features screenshots of Respona's tool in action, providing an automatic link-building solution that helps businesses save time and effort.
Generate social media buzz
94% of surveyed marketers repurpose their content and you can also break down your blog posts into smaller pieces to share on social media.
Your blog posts provide the foundation for various content types, including tweets, infographics, images, and even videos. By sharing your content in multiple formats, you can reach a wider audience and generate more social media buzz.
Sam Szuchan shares snippets of his blog posts on LinkedIn with a link to the full article in the comments. Subtly adding the link in the comments ensures it's not overly promotional while saving Sam time and effort by not having to create separate social media content.
Drive organic search traffic
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). And while several factors contribute to your SEO, quality content is one of the most important.
Regular content creation allows SaaS companies to target long-tail keywords and attract a niche audience more likely to convert. Keyword research tools like SurferSEO can help you identify relevant keywords to target in your blog posts. Surfer's Content Planner feature allows you to identify keyword clusters to target, generate a list of related keywords, and check the difficulty of ranking for each keyword.
By targeting relevant keywords in your blog posts, you can attract organic traffic from people actively searching for your business information. You can filter results by search intent to further qualify your audience and ensure you're attracting the right leads with your content strategy.
Build relationships
Your SaaS content marketing strategy is an opportunity to build relationships with your audience. Your potential customer base is constantly growing, and your content can help you connect with new leads.
Your blog posts provide an opportunity to showcase your company's personality and build rapport with your audience. By humanizing your brand, you can create an emotional connection that encourages leads to do business with you.
Including a personal story in your blog post can help you build relationships with your target market.
Buffer uses this strategy in their blog post to feature a story about the author's experience with starting her own venture and her experience. This personal story helps Buffer add an emotional angle and connect with its readers.
How to build a cohesive SaaS content marketing strategy
Aligning your content strategy with your business goals is essential to success. By understanding your audience and what they want to achieve, you can create a content marketing strategy that supports your sales funnel and helps you close more deals.
Here are some steps to get started:
Define your target audience
Who are you trying to reach with your content? Creating buyer personas can help you understand your target audience and what they're looking for.
DigitalMarketer's Customer Avatar Worksheet helps you cover basics like demographics and pushes you think about deeper issues like their challenges and pain points, sources of information, goals and values, objections and roles. Avoiding a superficial understanding and creating a clearly-defined audience profile helps you identify their needs and create messaging that encourages them to take action.
Focus on your customer's journey
Your prospective customers move through different stages of their buyer's journey as they interact with your brand. Creating valuable content that supports each stage of their journey helps you guide them toward a purchase. Marketing research supplements like Digital Marketer’s Value Journey Canvas can help you understand each stage of your customer's journey.
For example, informational blog posts are great for the awareness stage, while product comparisons are ideal for the consideration stage. Mapping your content to the buyer's journey helps you create a cohesive strategy that guides leads through your SaaS marketing funnel.
Create a content calendar
A content calendar helps you plan and schedule your blog posts, social media updates, and other pieces of content. By having a clear idea of what you need to publish and when you can avoid last-minute scrambling to create content. Your distribution strategy is also more effective if you take the time to plan your content.
Buffer's Social Media Publishing Calendar, for example, supports your content marketing team by assigning tasks, setting deadlines, and managing the approval process. It helps keep your team accountable and ensures you publish your content on time.
Experiment with different content types
SaaS companies have many options for content marketing, including infographics, ebooks, white papers, webinars, and case studies. Exploring content ideas beyond the blog can help you break through the noise and reach a wider audience.
Developing different content formats also helps you appeal to different needs and interests within your target audience. Some prospects might prefer short, visual content, while others might want in-depth information to help them make a decision.
Get input from other departments
Your overall marketing strategy never exists in a vacuum. Make sure your content team considers the needs of other departments when developing your content strategy.
For example, if your sales team is having trouble closing deals, they might need more case studies or product comparisons. If your customer success team struggles to retain customers, they might need more how-to guides and troubleshooting articles.
Ensuring your strategy aligns with the needs of other departments helps you create a more holistic approach that converts leads and grows your SaaS company.
Test and measure your results
The only way to know if your strategy works is to track your results. Which pieces of content are getting the most traffic and engagement? Are leads moving through your sales funnel?
Create a data-driven strategy by monitoring Google Analytics and your website's conversion rate to understand how well your content performs. For instance, you can also use A/B testing to test your headlines to see which ones are more likely to get clicked.
Make sure you're testing and measuring your results so you can fine-tune your approach and continue to generate leads that convert.
Start planning your strategy
SaaS content marketers today have to go beyond superficial understandings of their target market to create a strategy that helps close deals. With AI content stronger than ever, successful SaaS content marketing focuses on strong opinions, personal experiences, and unique perspectives.
Developing a strong SaaS brand goes hand-in-hand with a solid content marketing strategy. Content marketing strategies that resonate with your target audience and drive conversions are essential to your company's success.
