Content Marketing For SaaS Startups - A Guide

So you’ve built a great product, raised the initial round of funding and the mandated mantra is ‘growth’. How can you achieve hockey stick growth? Well, you need marketing that scales, and how. And how is that achieved? Inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is different from traditional marketing in the sense that this method directs leads and prospects into your funnel of their own accord. There’s a high probability they are in the mood to buy. So obviously, great leads to have from a conversion point of view. And the best part about inbound marketing is that if done correctly, it can scale really, really well. So you’re looking at getting that market share of traffic that is actually interested in your product or is facing the pain point that your product solves, straight to your website. Life couldn’t get better!

And one of the best ways to execute inbound marketing is through, you guessed it, content marketing. Content marketing goes hand in hand with SEO - both supporting each other as they start to function, bringing in traffic. A good content marketing team has a strong background in editorial and a solid understanding of the fundamentals of SEO (both on page and off page SEO). They also have great taste and understand how to produce good content (design, videos). Hiring people with good editorial skills is easy, but bringing in someone with a good understanding of SEO is difficult. So agencies can be a great option as well. 

When you're working with a premium content writing agency, you can easily to move past the initial setbacks of not having a content marketing team in place, or not being an expert in inbound marketing. So once you’ve put the team together - what does the journey of content marketing for SaaS involve? 

Content marketing tactics for improved visibility

There are a variety of content formats that you can take advantage of to market your SaaS product. Let’s explore them closely:

Blog / Resources section:

This is by far the most powerful tactic out there. A blog can become a powerful engine generating leads for you on autopilot. Unbelievable! There are challenges - and it is a long term effort - but the wait is more than worth it. You will have to develop a content strategy, a list of titles for potential posts stretching out into the future, and mapped on to a calendar. About 15 posts a month is good to generate. And each post has to provide deep value to users, solve pain points and provide insight. Soon you will see other bloggers across the web linking out to your posts. This directs more link juice towards your website, meaning it can now rank better on search engine result pages. Relevant blogs and websites could also link out to you - which can bring direct traffic to your blog content. You can always use CTAs and brand your blog images with your logo. Use screenshots of your product in action at the relevant areas. The goal is to become an authority in both users’ as well as Google’s eyes. 

Remember those SEO skills we mentioned earlier? Well, they come into play here - with a large amount of publishing going on, on page optimization becomes important to implement carefully. Off page SEO also starts as soon as backlinks are generated by the blog. 

Case Studies:

Case studies are a great way to display what your product has achieved for your customers. This makes new customers feel a lot more comfortable buying from you, because they now have access to real data about how you helped your customer. Make sure your case study touches the following areas:

1. Problem statement of customer
2. Stats from before product implementation
3. Product implementation process
4. Product implementation experience
5. Post product implementation stats
6. Benefits
7. Most used features 

When creating case studies, you’ll be needing a lot of basic information and statistics from your customer. So the best time to reach out to your customer to participate as a case in the study would be right after you have implemented your product for them, and when they are seeing the results of implementing it. This is also the period when they are more open to giving you feedback. Remember, the more data you can present, the clearer your case study would be. If you can produce case studies for customers across different segments, or different markets or industries, you have the potential to net more customers across these areas. 

E-Books:

E-books are a great way to showcase survey results, reports and even pack in product updates. With a collection of e-books available for download on your website, you’ll be attracting those who are doing deeper research on your area of focus. Think CXOs, VPs, directors. All potential buyers. With a well executed e-book strategy, you can stand out as a thought leader in your industry. Collect the email addresses (business emails only!) of those who want to download your e-book and ask them if they would like to be notified of upcoming e-books and information. If your ebook is valuable enough, they will go for it. You are now steadily adding to your email list.

Newsletters:

So you’re creating a list of prospects through making e-books available for download - it’s time to start mailing them! One great idea to increase subscribers to your newsletters is to place a banner to subscribe to your newsletter on your blog. This can help you capture some of the oncoming traffic to your blog and allow you to message them over a period of time. Discounts and offers are a great way to lure people in to subscribing. Incentivization is known to produce great results. Keep subscribers updated about new product features, blog post round ups, new e-books available, offers, discounts and more. Measure your open rates and click through rates and keep a track of how people are responding to your messaging.

Videos:

You might be a bit surprised that I actually put videos under a content marketing format, but the truth is that at the core of a great video is essentially great content. Whether it’s the script, the punch line or the concept itself - it is content all the way. If you have a content team in-house, and a good video animation team on hire, you could create some really high converting explainer videos. These make good homepage material, especially because they convert visitors well. You can also create videos that showcase the different features of your product and upload them to YouTube. Then just embed the videos in the relevant sections on your website and you are good to go.

Each and every one of these formats has to be mastered to get the right results. Whether it’s your blog, or your newsletter, getting to a large number of users is a journey in itself, but can be done. Be patient and measure results consistently with analytics to help tweak your approach. You are sure to start gaining more traction over the web if you adopt content marketing and do well in it. The results may take time to achieve, but are well worth the journey undertaken to get them. Content marketing is truly one of the best ways a SaaS startup can market itself online.

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