SAAS COMPANIES & B2B CONTENT MARKETING: 4 STEPS TO SUCCEED

SaaS companies meet serious challenges once they start choosing an optimal content marketing strategy. Even though keeping back customers remain critical across all industries, SaaS relies on the repeated revenues from active users. For this very reason, the customer’s journey somewhat differs from others, and a bigger emphasis is placed on active users’ conversion into passionate advocates of the brand. B2B content marketing plays an important role here as well.

In this blog post, I’m going to cover the four steps tips you need to take to create marketing content for SaaS brands and explain how to boost the value of the content you generate to the maximum:

1. Set Up Accurate Buyer Personas

When it comes to SaaS companies, holding fast to active users turns out even more significant than winning new customers. After buyer signs on, companies need to display the utility of their software all the time – not only in regards to the use case that helped them access the consumer but with the sort of worth it has in the course of time. B2B content marketing simply cannot be ignored.

Grasping the pain points during various stages of the consumer’s journey from paying attention to advocacy is the initial stage of the process of marketing content creation. It is also something each company which aims at reaping profits should know:

• The problems that cause someone to begin exploring technology before anything else.
• What issues will arise once they begin to assess various vendors?
• The future: Will your tech add enough value to pull through the reassessment phase a year following the sign-on?

Your company’s content strategy has to respond to these set challenges and yield it to pertinent audiences at the proper time, using the relevant channels. This leads us to the second step:

2. Generate Content for Every Stage of the Consumer’s Journey

Ranging from simple bloggers’ posts and infographics to comprehensive case studies and eBooks, take care to produce content that supports the consumer’s journey throughout all phases. In order to make your business hike up, B2B content marketing is a must. Take, for instance, information security. This industry serves a perfect example to see how content ideas and keyword research work:

Source: Organizational Goals

Building Up Awareness

Potential customers during the phase of awareness phase are just beginning their research. Would-be buyers are likely to look for answers to the following rather broad questions:

• Why does cybersecurity matter?
• What benefits are associated with an infosec vendor?
• We need to know what are the risks result from not having an info sec vendor?
• What level of security do I need?

It is in this phase that your blog content works the best along with high-quality infographics. B2B content marketing allows addressing concerns of more general nature. They also enable you to take on challenges related to your product suite while being not too sales-y. Besides, they protect you from losing control because of too much detail. You can learn Agile Marketing from here to be knowledgeable more.

Important Keyword Tools

Capitalize on keyword tools. For instance, Keyword Planner and SEMRush can help you locate queries linked to your particular industry. As an option, you can simply take a look at what you get in Google search results. Be sure that the sections “People also ask” as well as “Searches related to…” produce nice topic ideas reaching those who are about to set off on their journey. Do you want success? B2B content marketing is the best way.

As to the users who are more knowledgeable about the industry and vendors in the phase of awareness, they will benefit from case studies. Use these to demonstrate how your suggested product generates revenues, leads to greater efficiency, and more. B2B content marketing is really a great way.

Plus, actionable gated content matters a lot at this point of the customer’s journey. Assets of greater value, such as eBooks or specially designed webinars, will enable you to begin the lead-nurturing process. This process is what can ideally lead you to selling your product. In this way, you should consider creating various industry-specific guides (for example, how to select a good infosec vendor if your industry is healthcare). Likewise, consider hosting a webinar with an effective leader within the industry.

Decision-Making

In this phase, potential customers transition from the more general activity of collecting information to working the details: comparing vendors, evaluating product data sheets, and clarifying pricing information.

What features make your technology catch the eye among the competitors? What particular value props do you have? This information should not be wholly gated, hence check that there’s enough visibility into how consumers navigate through your website so that sales representatives could then follow up properly with the information that is far more peculiar. In order to catch your success, B2B content marketing may be the way out of this.

Retaining/Advocacy

When it comes to SaaS companies, retaining consumers becomes critical. What are the ways for you to prove your product’s value in the course of time following the initial sign-up? Even though some tend to center their strategies on producing the content that attracts new customers or concentrates on supporting the sale process, keep your existing clients in focus. Besides this, why don’t we pay attention to B2B content marketing?

Think about a unique section within your resources section targeting existing customers. One nice example of such a section can be seen in Moz, where a “help” section allows the user to troubleshoot typical issues, locate certain characteristics, as well as carry out invoicing or other operations of managing account details. Produce content encouraging your clients to evolve as masters and turn into real advocates for your offer. Don’t you think B2B content marketing will be the best way to be succeeded?

Some real suggestions

• Conduct interviews with your long-standing clients and convert this into a blog series or a comprehensive case study on how to boost the value of the product you offer to the maximum in the long run.
• Record every software update & documentation, focusing on benefits as well as on new features that have appeared over time.
• Provide a training section where the users of your site will advance their knowledge of the features offered by your technology.
• Think about a reward program for the customers who refer your product to other firms.

Content distribution is another component of this phase focused on retaining and advocacy. No need to depend on search engines to deliver the relevant content to prospective customers – you already know how to reach them. And B2B content marketing is ignorable.

Consider sending out a monthly newsletter to provide the latest software updates, pass on content exploring how to utilize your technology in various new ways, and stir up reciprocal communication between your company and its clients. It is likely that your existing customers have enough feedback as well as ideas about the ways of improving the technology – benefit from this!

3. Content Repurposing Across Various Channels

Spending time interviewing a leader in the industry or an expert in the matter can result in more than just writing a blog post. You, for example, can turn this information into an eBook later. This, indeed, can seriously boost the value. As you know, quality content is critical for your company’s success, and your team might be investing a lot of effort into the process of content creation. Here comes the B2B content marketing. Benefit from the variety of distribution channels and types of content you have:

• Prepare email newsletters to dish out the latest content published in your blog; provide a transcription for those who like to listen more than read and can do it on the go
• Convert your in-depth publication into an eBook and prepare a slide share on its ground
• Make a transcription of a webinar and then post it on your blog
• Post content on social media tagging those influencers who may find it interesting to repost

4. Revisiting and Optimizing Already Existing Content

It is imperative that SaaS companies be agile. Indeed, technology is evolving all the time. It is also constantly improving. Yet, this actually unlocks the potential for your content to grow outdated, rather quickly. With every company, it’s wise to go over legacy content to decide if any material requires removing or refreshing on the ground of new features and capabilities – yet for SaaS it’s particularly true.

This process exploits the potential of organic visibility improvement. It also helps maintain your brand messaging steady and true-to-life. In this recent blog post, I highlight what steps you need to take to effectively review and refresh your content. Please allow B2B content marketing for the one reason for your success.

In brief, you should review the performance of your content first, identifying all those things that clearly underperform. It will help you determine if the content you have is still worthy or not. If, for example, the blog post is meaty but focuses on an outdated version of your technology, you should revisit it. You can add in all new features and describe the present functionality. Besides, remember to update the date of your publication.

Final Thoughts

Devising a bountiful SaaS content marketing strategy take time but it pays off in the long run. If you take the four steps described above, you will ensure your marketing strategy is consistent. B2B content marketing is the best option in order to get success. I strongly advise you to begin with setting up accurate buyer’s personas and then move to generate content for every stage of the consumer’s journey. Once you’re done, consider repurposing your content across a variety of channels and revisiting already existing content to optimize it. And what are your tips for devising a rewarding SaaS content marketing strategy? I’d love to learn from your throughts!

The article has been initially published at contentpersona.com