For Starters, What is SaaS?

Short for software-as-a-service, SaaS is essentially a service model wherein applications and software are delivered over the internet as service. The user doesn’t have to install or maintain the software. Instead, they can access it over the web. Because of the web-based accessibility, the user is freed from the complex hardware and software management work. 

The most popular example of a SaaS based model is – Netflix.

Here are few other examples:

• Dropbox
• Cisco WebEx  
• GoToMeeting
• SAP Concur
• Salesforce
• Google Workspace

How Content Marketing Differs with SaaS Companies

SaaS marketing is a bit tricky and different from other forms of marketing. You’re not marketing a physical product like a phone or a machine. Rather, you’re marketing an intangible product. What’s more, with regular updates the product is always changing; which can make previous marketing efforts irrelevant. 

On top of that, you’re asking customers for recurring payments every month rather than for a one-time payment.

All of these factors make content marketing for SaaS a little tricky.

Content Marketing Strategy:

Set Goals that Support the Business

You must have your business goals clearly outlined. A goal is not a metric. Rather, it’s meant to give your content marketing a direction in which to move.

Here are a bunch of examples of what a strategic goal will look like for your content marketing:

• Gather useful contacts with information that will help to figure out the most important ones that are more likely to transition into a customer from lead.
• Improve brand recognition and better awareness among leads that were higher up in the funnel.
• Strengthen relationships and develop a better dialogue with audiences to encourage networking effects that will solidify your brand image.
• Grow a stream of cumulative monthly leads for sales staff
• Encourage customer loyalty and brand advocacy
• Increase the number of leads per month for your sales team

Define Your Metrics

After you have established a set of clearly defined goals, you should now have a few performance metrics in place. Below are a few examples of metrics that you can consider for SaaS content marketing:

• Increase the number of monthly visits against every invested dollar. The nature of traffic is that it increases cumulatively. This metric will tell how the total traffic and leads increase with each dollar spent.
• Metrics such as the content of the first contact, time taken to move from the first contact until the sale, path that forms from initial contact till sale, etc. Many other similar metrics are highly important for the sales process.
• The lifetime value of every unique visitor – This metric tells you on average, how much value every unique visitor finally spends on your brand. You can gain incredible insight into the sales funnel, list building, customer longevity, keyword choice quality, etc. 
• Percentage of new and returning visitors. If your analytics show a higher percentage of fresh visitors, it generally corresponds to an influx of traffic. And, a high number of returning visitors is indicative of loyalty. You must weigh these metrics against previous growth numbers to gain better insight. 
• Rise in contacts/subscribers for every dollar spent. 
• Sign-ups per visitor. This metric tells you the number of signs up for a free trial and paid version.

Map Your Funnel

Your main goal behind funnel mapping is to figure out the journey of a lead until it becomes a sale. 

Below are a few examples of specific sales funnel that you can personalize for your content marketing strategy:

• The lead stumbles upon a blog that talks about a solution to a certain problem
• The post was unique enough to hold user’s attention
• The lead was satisfied with the solution 
• The post redirected the user towards some other resource that assisted them further with their problem
• The blog post is trusted by many and aptly addresses the problem. Therefore, the blog post is a resource important enough that a lead was willing to join the email list to take further steps
• The lead received emails that addressed the problem and other related issues
• The list of satisfactory solutions that the email contained further helps to build and strengthen the trust
• The lead became aware of your SaaS having solved their problem and thus felt more interested in it
• The lead came on to one of your site’s pages that get visited often right before a purchase is made
• This act triggers a marketing automation event which sends special deal to the lead
• The lead signs up for SaaS trial
• The lead is sent regularly helpful information about how the software can solve many of their problems
• The lead is using the SaaS product every day to solve many other problems and now relies on the product

You must build similar conceptual funnel models, calculate assumptions, and keep measuring them to improve their efficacy.

Define a Content Cycle

You must define a content cycle. The content cycle has an immense role in the honing and development of your content. 

Below are a bunch of recommendations on how you can create steps for different pieces of content as part of the content cycle:

Identify your target audience and the main issue they are facing:

• Recognize lead magnet
• Identify target platforms
• Create an outline
• Put some research
• Produce the content
• Publish it and promote it
• Conduct performance analysis
• Improve upon your content based on analytics data and keywords
• Create content to follow-up

Next, you need to identify various kinds of content types that meet different goals.  After that, you will have to develop different steps for each content type.

Develop a Sound Keyword Strategy

By conducting keyword research, you get to know exactly what your ideal customers are looking for. To help you come up with a sound keyword strategy, you can implement the following tips:

• Use Google Keyword Planner. It’s an excellent tool that almost every webmaster uses. It will show you how frequently a particular phrase or query appears in Google searches. However, you must only use it as a guide. It’s bad to rely only on this tool. Often the tool will give you limited suggestions particularly for non-commercial queries. Remember, this tool can show significant visits for poorly performing phrases.
• KeywordTool.io is another tool that offers a huge pool of questions along with variations for a specific keyword.
• Use SEMrush for all your competitive research purposes.
• Devote some time on platforms that are devoted to understanding your audience. Remember, research is crucial. You must pay close attention to certain search phrases that keyword tools give you.

Develop an Outreach Strategy

If you want your outreach strategy to be powerful, you must not rely on just one platform or just one method of promotion. For instance, guest posts are one of the most dependable methods of content distribution. However, it’s not a very sound practice to rely only on guest editorials.

Below are some of the best tactics you can follow to create a winning content outreach strategy:

• Reach out to influencers during your content creation phase. They will often ask for a fee. For a small fee, you can cite them as the expert behind the post. 
• Mention other influences within your niche in the content. Reach out to them to leave comments on the post once the content is live.
• Work on any issues that influencers may have had. Reach out to them after the content goes live.
• Work with influencers who are most likely to share the type of posts that you create and publish.
• Create a newsletter and include your content in it. Ask influencers to include your content in their email campaigns.
• Contact a publication and become a columnist for their blog
• Reach out to websites that publish similar content as yours.

Bottom Line

Content marketing strategy for SaaS-based products requires a different approach. You must also implement a unique set of strategies. To simplify things for you, we highlighted the best strategies. Hopefully, you will find them useful and interesting.

Author Bio. :- Mike is a senior SEO strategist at Nine Peaks Media, a B2B SEO agency that helps SaaS, software, IT and technology companies rank on the first page of Google with effective content marketing strategies. Nine Peaks offers performance-based inbound marketing, conversion rate optimization and search engine marketing services.