In the digital-first world, online content has become one of the most powerful instruments for a brand to engage with its target audience. Content comes in many forms, from a 280-character tweet to a webinar or ebook, and it can hit your brand goals at every step of the buyer journey.
In this article, we’ll examine the role content plays in a SaaS product growth strategy. By taking a look at examples of successful content marketing programs, we’ll explain how B2B and B2C brands can leverage content to facilitate growth.
Read on to get an insight into some working tips for a successful brand content strategy SaaS marketers can capitalize on.
Content marketing can become a robust source of growth for your SaaS product.
Why should SaaS companies heavily rely on content marketing?
You would probably agree that the end goal of any SaaS company’s marketing efforts is to acquire and retain paying users. Brand content marketing can become a robust source of growth for your SaaS product. The clue to understanding how content marketing works for SaaS brands lies in embracing your user’s needs.
In its essence, a SaaS product is a tool. When faced with a particular problem, your prospects are searching for the most efficient way and tools to solve it.
Before making any purchasing decision, people sift through multiple information sources available online. Here’s when content marketing comes into play.
By putting out assets that address the issues your prospects are dealing with, SaaS marketers can attract an audience with high purchase intent.
At the same time, people who are already paying for your product, require advice on how to properly use it. For instance, they might be willing to discover all setup variables to customize the tool to their needs.
In this case, you might want to refer to your refined Help Center page, yet who loves reading user manuals? Consuming an explanatory video or a blog post can be way more engaging. So while it’s important to build compelling technical guides to help users get onboarded with your tool, nurturing them with other formats of content is essential.
Building a robust SaaS content strategy
As defined above, there are two major audience groups — those who are looking for a solution and those who are already using your software. With this in mind, a SaaS brand content strategy should be based on two thematic pillars:
How your prospects can solve their needs and pain points (with the help of your product).
How your existing customers can maximize the usage of your service.
Answering these two user requests in your content strategy will allow you to hit two crucial brand goals:
Attract and convert new customers.
Retain existing customers and stimulate product usage.
Addressing the critical needs of your customer groups defines the two principal focus areas of a brand content strategy.
Practicing this customer-centric approach to your brand content strategy will help you earn the loyalty of your users. Walk in their shoes and produce user-oriented content that would help them find an effective solution to their needs.
SaaS content strategy best practices
Let’s explore how some of the most successful SaaS companies put these content marketing principles into practice. We’ve selected several B2B and B2C brands to showcase how content marketing helps them grow.
Traditionally, a company blog remains the main form of content marketing, however many brands are turning to other formats of content, such as case studies, infographics, whitepapers, etc. Video content is also gaining ground, with brands engaging their audience through live webinars or pre-recorded explanatory videos.
Content Marketing Examples from B2C SaaS Companies
Canva
This famous graphic design platform is loved by millions for the ease of use it offers for visual asset creation. Canva nurtures its users with educational and inspirational content by offering all sorts of helpful materials for DIY branding and design.
On Canva’s blog, you will find articles on marketing trends, productivity tips, selections of top design artworks, and practical guides. Canva also has a virtual academy with free courses on branding and graphic design basics. This Australia-based SaaS giant encourages others to master content creation by nailing its own content strategy.
Hack Chinese
Our client Hack Chinese, a web-based platform for Chinese character memorization, ramped up its user acquisition by implementing a content marketing program with the help of Mischka’s team. Hack Chinese is designed for avid Mandarin language learners so we focused on creating blog content with learning tips and hacks.
For Hack Chinese, Mischka agency worked out a brand content strategy that led to consistent organic traffic increase. In four months we managed to achieve the following results:
1333% increase in organic search visibility
600% increase in the number of keywords brand’s website ranks for in Google search
64% increase in organic traffic
We are excited to see how much more growth we can achieve with Hack Chinese.
Content Marketing examples from B2B SaaS Companies
Trello
Atlassian’s Trello is a project management tool that enables teams of different scales to collaborate effectively. According to Ahrefs data, Trello’s company blog sees about 150 thousand visits from organic search alone. Top-performing articles that generate the most traffic on Trello’s blog cover productivity advice as well as tips on how to use Trello’s functionality for your project’s success.
Use cases and customer stories also play an important part in Trello’s content ecosystem. Stories shared by real people show how Trello empowers them to achieve more and to change the world for the better. These real-life stories resonate with the reader and vividly demonstrate how different people can adjust the tool to their needs.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking is a SaaS company that develops tools for search engine optimization. With the help of SE Ranking, search marketing pros can do keyword research, keep track of their organic search competitors, and manage their website’s optimization.
As an SEO tool, SE Ranking recognizes the power of content marketing like no other brand. On its blog, SE Ranking team shares SEO insights as well as exclusive interviews with guest experts.
The brand also goes heavy on video content, populating webinars on its YouTube channel. This one, for instance, was proudly hosted by Mischka’s strategic advisor Yuliya Gorenko:
Key components of a successful SaaS content marketing strategy
As attractive as content marketing might seem, it implies a well-thought approach and adequate resources. Here are the underlying elements of a content strategy for a SaaS brand to keep in mind.
Do your research. Identifying what your customers are looking for helps craft pieces of content that will bring real value to your audience.
Make your content searchable. Having a solid SEO strategy in place is crucial to getting your blog visible.
Post consistently. Content marketing is often compared with working out in a gym as it requires persistence. Your efforts accrue gradually and result in accumulative organic growth.
We go through these action points in more detail in this article on Mischka blog. Check it out to learn more about how to make your content work.
Takeaways
Content marketing is an essential tactic for a SaaS brand’s success. It can help generate leads, close new deals, and retain existing users.
In order to build a brand content marketing program that works, always put your user first. This will help you produce content that caters to the real needs of your users.
Make sure the content you create is backed by a strong SEO strategy.
Have a reliable team of specialists in place — effective content marketing operation requires consistent implementation based on a strong strategy. Read this blog post to discover what functions and roles are necessary to run your content marketing program effectively.
