Content Marketing for Your SaaS Website

The Software as a Service (SaaS) industry is on track to generate nearly $141 billion in 2022. Compare this to the $116 billion annual estimate from just two years earlier, and it's clear the industry is ascending fast. According to Blissfully stats , the average amount of money businesses spent on SaaS apps has increased every year since 2010, revealing just how central software is to modern business operations.

In such a booming industry, having a digital marketing strategy is a no-brainer - especially for newer companies trying to carve out a market position for themselves. As enterprises of all sizes rely more on software than ever before, opportunities for SaaS companies will only continue to flourish -- as long as they keep their churn rate low and their marketing efforts effective.

Content marketing for SaaS companies is unique from companies in other industries that are just selling a product or service. Your website must be designed around the fact that customers want to know about your product and the quality of your tech support. In this way, SaaS companies need to multitask, selling their target audience on both the product's value and the seamless support system behind it. Groundbreaking software that solves customers' core problems along with great tech support is the winning combination.

So, where does content marketing come into play? SaaS companies with a simple, deployable strategy win in the following ways:

Research conducted by Horizon Peak Consulting showed that 90% of the top 300 SaaS companies have blogs, 44% of which were used to provide tutorials and help users get the most out of the product. Along with blog posts, 89% of the top companies had additional marketing content like webinars, case studies, press releases, and other educational materials. Let's look at some ways real brands are using content to increase organic traffic.

Ads and paid content can work wonders, but organic content can't be ignored. A Google study showed that 89% of B2B prospects use the internet to search for products -- 71% of whom begin with a simple Google keyword search. This means SaaS companies would be absurd to leave organic traffic generation out of their marketing strategy.

The following SaaS companies are thriving for a reason: Their hard work in mastering on-page SEO has led to higher conversion rates and more exposure to their target audience.

Chanty, an AI-powered business messenger platform, switched its marketing focus in two ways. Since traffic wasn't really their problem, they stopped aiming to increase organic traffic and instead went straight for organic conversions. They doubled down on keyword research and, using Google's Keyword Planner, found an option they hadn't considered.

While having Slack as a competitor doesn't seem like it would help with conversions, Chanty's industrious CMO used it to their advantage. They chose "Slack alternatives" as their target keyword. Searchers had high intent to make a purchase, and the keyword was being searched over 1,000 times per month. This put Chanty in the perfect position to find customers who were looking for a platform similar to Slack, but different.

They optimized a landing page and a blog post with the keyword to see which would perform better. Lastly, they published a few guest posts linking back to both pages.

They optimized a landing page and a blog post with the keyword to see which would perform better. Lastly, they published a few guest posts linking back to both pages.

The results? They leaped up the Google search results from page four to page one. "The blog article received three times more traffic than the landing page. Moreover, it started converting at almost 10%. It also showed good results in terms of time spent on the page. At the same time, the landing page converted at half the rate of the blog article," their CMO told SEMRush.

Another SaaS company made headlines when they increased organic traffic by 332.91%. After a ton of research, Digital Marketer Mihai Sterian concocted a strategy that was destined to succeed in today's age of everyone Google-searching for answers. The company created a library of user-generated content. By doing so, they started ranking high in search results for various pages while simultaneously showing the ins and outs of their product. Best of all, every piece of content came from an unbiased perspective -- not the company itself, but its users.

They followed in the footsteps of bigger companies like SlideShare, whose user-generated content helped it rank for an astounding 7 million keywords, and Trello, whose user-created public boards became magnets for SEO success. Sharing your Trello board became a social media trend with Trello 'inspiration' and how-to boards popping up everywhere. Before long, the platform became the primary organizational tool for professionals around the world.

Brands that skip organic content production and SEO strategies are simply leaving money on the table. In reality, professionals are searching for answers from Google, often multiple times a day. Even if your website has all those answers, people aren't checking it -- even if they vaguely know about your product. Organic content meets your audience where they are. It fosters connection, understanding, and trust with both current and prospective product users -- especially those who are on the hunt for solutions just as they find your blog post. This is why it's important to hone in on high intent search queries your target audience may be using.

To do this, put yourself in the shoes of a prospective user: What would they search to solve their problem? Make a list of their potential problems and what they might search to solve them. Then, start searching those terms in Google and look at the first page -- How competitive is it? Could you outrank at least a couple of these pages without years of effort? For highly saturated markets, long-tail keywords may be your best bet at ranking quickly.

While taking another look at your brand may seem redundant, there is usually more information to be gleaned. For one, healthy brands change and adapt to their industry and customer needs over time. Some brands encounter problems and find they need to pivot in unexpected ways, while others simply feel a need to refresh the look and feel of their content. In any case, a brand audit will help you clear up confusion and know what your digital marketing strategy needs next.

There are several components that make up your brand. Score.org recommends separating internal from external branding:

Examine these three areas and consider how these elements are or aren't being included in your content marketing.

By the end of a brand audit, you should be able to answer the following questions:

• What are the company's vision, goals, and values?
• What about our customer experience needs improvement right away?
• What is our brand's current reputation among users and potential users?
• What problem do we solve and for whom?

Many professionals assume that when it comes to social media presence, the more platforms you are on, the better. However, this is only true if you have a strategy that is succeeding on all of those channels. Furthermore, it's only true if your audience inhabits those channels and you have the time and resources to create good content on a regular basis. For this reason, brands that don't already have a strong social media presence should choose just two platforms to focus on. Once your content strategy is growing your business and getting results, you can consider expanding your presence to other platforms.

• Where is my audience most likely to spend time? (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.)
• How does my audience respond to email newsletters? Webinars? Informative blog posts?
• What content mediums are generating the most engagement and positive feedback?
• How can we go above and beyond the ways competitors are meaningfully engaging with their audience?

If you haven't already, this is the perfect time to create user personas. If a company notices that their software is being used by small to mid-sized enterprises, full-time freelancers, and occasionally nonprofits, these three types of leads must be nurtured differently. Spend time listening to people in those positions, gleaning insight into how they work and what would make their professional lives easier. Once you have a firm grasp on this, you can naturally build relevant messaging into your content and integrate your unique value proposition(UVP) successfully

Brands falsely assume that creating great content is the full job. But simply putting a staff member in charge of the weekly blog or scheduling third-party content on social media doesn't always pay off. While great content will bring you a larger audience, it won't necessarily bring you more users. Your audience must clearly understand the connection between their problems and your UVP. So first, get crystal clear on your UVP messaging.

One example of UVP done well is software company, Unbounce's proposition, "Build, publish, and A/B test landing pages without I.T." This is a straightforward UVP that leaves no questions asked. It also addresses their target audience precisely: marketers that need to perform these tasks without the help of an I.T. staff (who are either too busy or not even on the team yet).

Now let's look at the renowned software company Slack's UVP, "Be more productive at work with less effort." This is a more generalized yet still effective proposition. As Slack's software is more multi-faceted than Unbounce's, their UVP encompasses a broader perspective of the value they offer.

If you're struggling to find the right words, New Frontiers recommends the following formula for crafting your UVP:

Instant Clarity Headline = End Result Customer Wants (+ Special Period of Time + Address the Objections)

Once you have your UVP down to a science, make sure it is abundantly obvious on your homepage. As you funnel more traffic to your website, visitors will immediately know what you offer and how it applies to them.

As you develop your cross-channel content strategy, don't forget about your UVP. This general idea of what you provide and how to applies to your audience should always be at the forefront, woven through blogs, videos, emails, and any other valuable content you put out. This doesn't mean you have to constantly repeat your UVP statement. Instead, consider ways to show it. This makes great content that compels your audience to act.

Once your customer personas are clear, your UVP is solid, and you've selected your primary content channels, it's time to actually create content. This is where many companies get overwhelmed. While trying to save money and do content in-house can be great for new startups with small budgets, it can also become their Achilles heel. Holding back on creating targeted, share-worthy content is an all-too-common mistake that profoundly weakens companies in the long run. Here's what to do instead.

As discussed above, many technology companies are funneling their marketing efforts toward creating hubs of evergreen content. Whether through a staff-run blog, user-generated content, or support libraries on their websites, these webs of related content not only improve SEO rankings but foster community and knowledge within your user base. Writing these knowledge-rich pieces of content establishes your brand as an expert in its industry. As time passes, making updates on any outdated sections and re-sharing posts is much easier than generating new content from scratch.

The real question is: Where does your brand shine? If that question is hard to answer, choose the most promising medium and dedicate yourself to it. For example, one SaaS company may have plenty of brilliant information for case studies. They just haven't gotten around to it yet. Another might have a few employees who can make quick explainer videos that perform well on YouTube. Meanwhile, another may want to focus on thought leadership, sharing timely pieces that give a unique opinion on popular industry topics. No matter what you choose, always have your customer personas in mind.

Before you launch your new content strategy and start creating, answer the following questions:

• What are the core topics we will talk about? Choose 2-3 priority topics.
• What is our content output schedule? Create a content calendar and choose a deployment tool (e.g., Hootsuite).
• Are there any themes we can implement easily and capitalize on? (e.g., spotlighting a new client each week).
• How will we measure content effectiveness ? Choose a primary method or tool.
• Who will handle content creation, scheduling, and performance reviews?

Most SaaS employees are stretched thin with projects, meetings, and keeping up with the primary tasks of their role at the company. Content, although critical, all too often falls to the wayside. For this reason, Scripted provides vetted writers who learn about your brand and write targeted content so you can put your marketing strategy on autopilot. Browse writers who specialize in technology writing.