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Content Strategy for SaaS Companies: Your Guide to Customer Acquisition
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7 mins read
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December 4, 2023
The SaaS industry is tough. It’s cold. And only the strongest products become profitable.
However, having a great SaaS product is not enough to drive massive revenue. Tailored content marketing is the most sustainable way to do so.
But the hard truth is…
No SaaS company can succeed in content marketing without a solid content strategy.
A content strategy is what allows you to target your ideal audience. It guides how your content will be created and distributed to drive organic traffic and achieve your revenue goals.
So, how do you craft a winning content strategy for your SaaS company?
You’ll find out in this guide.
SaaS Content Strategy: What Does It Mean?
Content Strategy can mean different things, because “content” exists in several forms.
However, for the purpose of this guide, I’ll focus on written content. The type of content that gets you on page 1 of Google — and still gets you customers.
Like the GPS for your content – a content strategy guides where your content should go, how to get there, and ensures it doesn’t get lost in the jungle of other “content” out there.
You get the picture? 👀
Now that we’re clear on what a content strategy means, let’s get into all the details. How can you create a content strategy that brings you customers from the largest search engine in the world?
Content Strategy for SaaS Companies: A Step-By-Step Guide
Follow these simple steps to create a solid content strategy for your SaaS.
Step #1: Laying the Foundation — Know Your Audience
It may sound cliche, but it’s the truth.
Quick story here…
The other day, I was on an onboarding call with a client.
He’s creating a product to help students better understand what they’re taught at school, without getting a fancy home teacher or having to attend extra lessons. The product is hands on and practical, unlike the existing rigid educational system in his country.
I’m like…who’s your target audience? He goes…the students of course.
All too many times, many people think their target audience is inherently the person their product or service is for.
What do I mean?
If you sell flowers, your target audience isn’t automatically “women.” It’s men too. It’s event decorators, wedding planners, anyone who could possibly need flowers, and anyone who could possibly get flowers for those who need them.
You feel me?
You have to think as far as possible, because the farther you think, the easier it is to pull your entire target audience from Google. Because your content will be able to target/speak to each audience.
Step #2: Understand the Search Intent of Your Audience
Your audience will most likely fall into these 3 categories.
- Unaware Audience — doesn’t know you exist or you can help them.
- Semi-Aware Audience — knows you kinda exist, but isn’t convinced you’re the best.
- Aware Audience — knows you exist, knows there are other people, but believes you’re the best. This is the audience that’ll give you money. However, an Aware Audience can also be sub-categorized into problem-aware and solution-aware. (more on that later).
Now…
There are 4 reasons why your audience will search for your SaaS product or service, and it’ll show up on Google.
- Informational intent
- Commercial Intent
- Transactional Intent
- Navigational intent
Creating content around every one of these “intents” is directly proportional to how your audience finds you.
Step #3: Keyword Research
Wanna throw shots in the dark? Skip this part.
But if you’re like me, and you prefer to always go in prepared, read this section carefully.
Keywords fall into 2 major categories:
- Branded Keywords
- Non-Branded Keywords
Branded keywords are keywords with your “brand names” in them.
These keywords are often used by your aware audience – with navigational intent.
For example, typing “Binance” into the search engine will most likely bring up Binance’s website. These people know Binance exists, they just need help “navigating” to where / what they wanna check out on Binance.
On the flip side, non-branded keywords don’t have your “brand name” in it.
However, they’re keywords still used to find brands in your industry. For example, let’s use “non-branded” keywords like; “top cryptocurrency company” and “where to buy cryptocurrency” to find Binance.
You get the idea?
Now, to get a hold of these keywords, you need to do keyword research
You’ll need a keyword research tool like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, or Moz. These tools gather real-time information from search engines.
You can do keyword research with these tools — in two ways. I’ll be using SEMrush as my preferred tool.
Method 1: Domain Overview
The first way is to enter your domain URL and put it in the “domain overview” section of SEMrush.
When you do this, you’ll get a list of keywords people usually use to find your website.
Be prepared though, it’s often a long list. The keywords can be up to a million or more, or less, depending on your niche/industry.
However, this method is not the most accurate because people can also find your website without using keywords directly relating to your business.
For example, we did an audit for a Saas brand a while back, and their domain name is a synonym for chicken.
And no, they don’t sell chicken. They sell software for recruiting, training, and hiring top talent. We discovered that a large percentage of their organic traffic was from people looking to buy chicken, not talent training software.
However, you can still use this method — only if you sift the keywords in sync with your SaaS — from the ones that aren’t.
Method 2: Keyword Overview
The second way is to input the main keyword of your product or service into the “keyword overview” section of the SEMrush tool.
Now, let’s assume we’re doing keyword research for an HR tool. In this case, one of our main keywords is “employee wellness.”
Step #4: Categorize Your Keywords
Now that you’ve discovered these keywords, let’s get cooking.
You have to categorize the keywords you’ve discovered (from your keyword tool) according to the audience you’re trying to target, and their intent as well.
These keywords will guide your next step because you’ll categorize them for your content pillars (more on that later). You also want to prioritize the keywords with high volume and low keyword difficulty.
Step #5: Create Your Content Pillar
For instance, let’s say you have a SaaS AI tool.
During your keyword research, you discovered that the keyword; “AI-powered SaaS tools” is a trending keyword with high volume. You can create a content pillar that’ll include several article topics to target that keyword AI-powered SaaS tools.
You feel me? 👀
If you’ve gotten to this step, your content strategy is 99% done.
That’s because your content pillars are the core strategy. Once you have all your content pillars, you’ll use them to create the content calendar or timetable — for how you want your articles to roll out.
Step #6: Put Together Your Content Strategy
This is the point where you tie everything together. Use all the information you’ve gathered from Steps 1 to 5 to create a content strategy for your SaaS.
Keep in mind that your content strategy will include:
- The type of content that will be created
- When the content will be published
Once you have your content strategy mapped out, expand it into a detailed content calendar.
And you may be asking: What’s a content calendar?
Well, it’s just a regular calendar listing the days of the month and the corresponding content to be published on each day.
Step #7: Define Your Content Distribution and Promotion Channels
You don’t want to spend time creating great content that no one will see, do you?
You want as many eyes as possible to engage with your content. This is the most important piece of the puzzle when creating a SaaS content strategy.
Some effective content distribution and promotion channels include:
- The blog section of your company’s website
- Social media pages
- Webinars and virtual events
- Online groups, communities, and forums (like Reddit)
- Email list (good for newsletters and sales campaigns)
Though your aim is to get Google and other search engines to crawl the content on your website, it is helpful to also promote the content on social media, public groups, and so on. This can help accelerate the process because popular content gets indexed quickly and ranked higher by search engines.
How To Measure the Success of a SaaS Content Strategy
While there’s no one-formula-fits-all, some key metrics can help you understand if your content strategy is working or not.
Here are some of them:
1. Reach
Use Google Analytics to track how far your content has traveled. Check how many people have seen your content and if it’s reaching the right people.
2. Conversions
Check if you are getting more clicks, downloads, sign-ups, and purchases.
3. Engagement
Check how long people spend on your content, how many comments it gets, and how many times it’s shared. Use tools like Buzzsumo, Apester, and Google Analytics to dig out these records.
4. Impact
Measure your content’s impact by tracking social media mentions, shares, and external links earned. Tools like Brandwatch, Talkwalker, and Google Trends can be handy for tracking these metrics.
Tracking all the above metrics will give you a clear picture of how your content strategy is performing.
If the results are positive, then you know your efforts are paying off. And if otherwise, then it means your content strategy needs improvement.
Final Thoughts on Content Strategy for SaaS Companies
Well, well, well…
If you’ve gotten here, let’s make a toast to you. You’re now in the 1% of people that know how to create a content strategy that drives customers from Google.
With SaaS companies becoming increasingly similar in terms of features, content marketing is now a must-do for any brand looking to stand out.
I hope you make good use of this free guide.
We follow these same steps to create a winning content strategy for our clients — and we’ve driven over $10,727,000 in revenue for these clients.
If you’d like to have access to our Content Profit System that helps you drive new customers from Google, book a call with us.
Adepeju Toromade
Written by Adepeju Toromade
Bio
Co-Founder at Inscribe | Helping brands and businesses drive organic traffic and customers from Google.
