A 1,200% increase in organic traffic. Quality leads in the pipeline. Increase in customer lifetime value (CLV). And a 50% increase in email subscribers.

GIF Source: Tenor

That’s the dream for every SaaS business, right? But despite your content marketing efforts, you’re still not seeing those kinds of results.

It’s frustrating because you know your product is solid—some of your customers have even told you. But it’s just not reflected in your numbers.

We feel you. 

Chances are, it’s because you don’t have a solid SaaS content marketing strategy in place. 

But that’s about to change.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through creating an effective content strategy for your SaaS business and share best practices to help you hit those big goals.

Let’s kick things off with the basics for those new to SaaS marketing.

What is SaaS content marketing?

Software as a service is a digital business model that allows people to use software over the internet without having to install it. 

Some examples of SaaS brands include Netflix, Ceros, and Shopify. And you can access software like this online by paying a subscription fee monthly, quarterly, or annually. 

And the SaaS content marketing bit?

It’s an approach in content marketing that involves consistently producing high-quality content to educate, attract, and convert users.

So, it’s similar to traditional content marketing but strictly for SaaS companies.

Here, the focus is on creating unique original content to attract the ideal target audience for the SaaS business, and then convert and retain them. 

But if they’re similar, why does it look like SaaS content marketing is its own thing?

The best way to answer that is to show you why this type of marketing is important.

What are the benefits of content marketing for SaaS companies?

💡Fun fact: Did you know that content marketing offers a higher return on investment than other forms of marketing like TV ads? 

Well, it does according to the Content Marketing Institute. 

So the first benefit of SaaS content marketing is that it gives you top value for your investment.

Here are other benefits it offers:

• Allows you to connect with your audiences over time – You see, other marketing strategies like Google Ads, pay-per-click, or TV ads send prospects your way only when the campaign is live. 

Content marketing, on the other hand, takes a more consistent approach. You begin by finding out the challenges people face and producing content that solves those problems. 

This way, you’re meeting the needs of people currently facing challenges and those who will face them later on, so you’ve got content that keeps attracting, engaging, and converting people long after it’s published.

• Attracts organic traffic – Content marketing involves creating high-quality content that addresses people’s pain points. Doing that consistently gets people to trust you as an authority in the industry. It in turn encourages them to recommend you to others, attracting organic traffic. 

Also, if your content is optimized with relevant keywords, your site ranks higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs), making it possible for users to find you organically.

• Generates leads with ease – If you share valuable content that solves people’s pain points consistently, here’s what happens:

They’ll want to come back to access more, which is the perfect opportunity to ask for their email in exchange for more premium content. 

You get leads from doing what you’ve been doing with additional cost or stress. Reports show that content marketing generates 3x as many leads as traditional advertising methods and costs 62% less. 

• Positions your SaaS product as the solution — Content marketing allows you to show how your product can solve the reader’s pain points or make a task easier. Take case studies, for instance – they highlight how relevant your product is to existing customers and the results they’ve gotten. This way, prospects can identify your product as a solution when they engage with the study.    

***

Okay, I need to create content that helps my audience. Can I just create any type of content?

It depends on what your audience prefers, but here are some popular options they might like outlined below:

What types of content are used in SaaS content marketing?

As you know, there are different formats to explore in content marketing. So here, we’ll walk you through some effective options to get the ball rolling. 

• In-depth blog posts – Blogs (like the one you’re reading right now) are one of the most popular content types to use for your business. In fact, 94% of B2B marketers say they create short-form articles and blog posts for their campaigns. 

Plus,  statistics show that companies that produce blogs get an average of 67% more leads than those that don’t. 

• Videos – Video content is a powerful tool for capturing attention and engaging audiences, which explains the explosive popularity of video-sharing platforms today. 

And guess what? 91% of marketers are already using video content as a marketing tool. 

• 90% of them say it helps them increase brand awareness. 
• 86% claim it’s boosted their website traffic. 
• 87% say it generated leads for them. 
• 87% of them also said it increased sales.

• eBooks & whitepapers – eBooks and whitepapers provide in-depth content that goes beyond traditional blog posts. eBooks serve to educate your audience about specific pain points or frequently asked questions (FAQs), effectively filling gaps in industry knowledge. These resources often feature engaging graphics, case studies, and actionable insights, making them appealing and informative. 

Many SaaS brands use eBooks as lead magnets, offering them in exchange for email addresses to build their contact lists.

Whitepapers, on the other hand, are research-driven documents that focus on detailed discussions of products, features, and industry challenges. They often include data, statistics, and expert insights, positioning the brand as a trustworthy authority. Whitepapers are particularly valuable for decision-makers looking for in-depth analyses and solutions to specific issues.

• Case studies – Marketers use case studies to show their audience  how they’ve solved problems for specific customers. 

Case studies talk about the problems the customer faced, the solution the product or service offered, and the outcome. Case studies can be a good way to convince clients that you’ve handled complex cases like theirs in the past and got great results. 

• How-to guides – Informative content like this provides a detailed step-by-step process for solving challenges. 
• Testimonials – Do you have customers who’ve reached out to share how helpful your service has been to them? If you do, encourage them to record a video of themselves talking about it or put it in writing. 

This type of content can be all the social proof needed to push a prospect in your direction. And the best part is that it’s not coming from you – it’s user-generated content, which helps to build trust between your brand and prospective customers.

According to a report by Wyzowl, nine out of ten people say they trust what other people have said about a brand more than what the business says.

• Podcasts & webinars – Creating podcasts and hosting webinars are other types of content for your audience. 

With audio content, you can have deep conversations with clients about their experience to warm up to prospects and get them to see the human side of your brand. 

You could also interview industry experts on podcasts or webinars about trends and best practices your audience can benefit from.

***

So, how do you create a SaaS content strategy?

We’ve shared 10 steps on how to do that below.

How to create an effective SaaS content marketing strategy in 10 steps

It’s time to bring out the brainstorming board and thinking caps. 

In this section, we’ll take you through each step needed to create a strategy that’ll take your campaign above and beyond. 

So grab a cup of coffee, ‘cause it’s going to be an interesting ride.

1. Define your SaaS content strategy goals

The questions you want to ask as you begin this journey are:

• What’s the point here?
• What dream are you trying to fulfill?

Without any goals, you’ll only be grasping at straws, never truly getting the results you want. 

So, how do you define strategy goals? 

First, define your objectives by evaluating where you are now and what you want to achieve. 

So let’s say your company’s revenue is low, your ultimate objective can be to increase your revenue. 

With that in mind, you can set goals to help you achieve the objective.

To do this, you want to get your team members involved and brainstorm activities to help you hit the objective. For the increased revenue objective, your goals could be getting more leads, improving customer satisfaction, or launching a referral program. 

Now, to add structure to your goal-setting process, we suggest you use the SMART framework. You’ve heard about it, right?

It means that your goals are:

• Specific - You’re clear on what the goal is and how it can be achieved. 
• Measurable - You can measure if you’ve achieved your goal or not. 
• Achievable - The goal is something you and the team can pull off. 
• Relevant - It’s in line with your objective and overall business goal. 
• Time-bound - You’ve put a timeline to reach your goal. 

So a SMART goal can be something like this:

Increase email leads by 30% within the next four months by organizing free webinars and posting growth tips video snippets bi-weekly on social media.

2. Build a buyer persona

A buyer persona is just a synonym for your ideal target audience. 

But in the SaaS industry, you don’t just have one persona. You typically have different people in various roles involved in the buying process; from stakeholders to accountants and users.  

That’s why Sproutsocial, a SaaS tool for social media management, has their blog categorized into different themes and teams like communications, customer care, influencers, etc. 

Image Source: Sproutsocial

This way their different audiences can find content they relate to.

As such, it’s important to know who these people are so you can craft content they can engage with at different phases of their journey.

But how do I identify them?

Here are different options you can try:

• Get involved in online communities within your niche. Here, you’ll find active people who could be interested in your service. Check communities on LinkedIn groups, Twitter, or even Reddit. 
• Sit down with your sales team, customer support staff, and others who frequently interact with customers. They can give you a description of the kind of customer persona they meet with every day. 
• Run surveys, interviews, or quizzes to understand your existing clients better. 
• Monitor your competitors by using social listening tools like Brand24. You’ll get notified when someone is talking about them and can find out who they are. Another option is to look at their social media profiles to note who’s following and engaging with their posts. 

After identifying them, you can create buyer personas based on your research. To do that, here are some questions you need to answer using the methods above:

• What type of content do they like?
• What platforms do they spend their time on?
• Which sites and profiles do they interact with most?
• What are their psychographics (e.g. interests and motivations, etc.) and demographics (e.g. age, gender, location, etc.)?
• What pain points are they trying to solve?
• What products do they use?
• Can my tool be integrated with those products?
• What’s their net budget like?
• Are they decision-makers, users, or stakeholders?

If you can answer that, you’ve built yourself a buyer persona. 

Don’t forget to create an avatar to humanize your audience and always remember they’re still people. 

3. Develop a customer journey map

Building a persona lets you know how to address your content marketing efforts, but a customer journey map puts you in a better position to help them. 

It’s a map showing the steps your prospects will take as they go through the sales funnel. More specifically, it highlights touch points that contribute to their overall experience, positive or negative. 

With a map like this, you’ll understand their pain points on your platform and can produce content to help them. You get to improve customer experience and boost customer retention too. 

So, how do you create a map like this?

Let’s show you how:

1. Set an objective for the map, like the one we set earlier to increase revenue. Having an objective will help you identify which touch points you should map. 

2. Conduct research and gather information. The point here is to find out why customers want to pick your solution. What are they looking for? How do they engage with your brand? How long do they spend when they visit?

User testing and customer surveys are good methods for this research. Other questions you want to ask include:

• How did they hear about your company?
• What first attracted them to the website?
• What goals do they want to achieve with your service? 
• What problems are they trying to solve?
• How long do they spend on the website?
• Have they bought a plan? What convinced them to subscribe or turn away?
• Have they ever engaged with the website to make a purchase but changed their mind? What happened?
• How easily can they navigate your website?
• How was customer support? On a scale of 1 to 100, how helpful was it?
• Can you support them and make their process easier?

3. List out every possible touchpoint. A touchpoint is any instance that gives clients an opinion of your brand. It’s anywhere prospects or clients come in contact with your brand. And it can be viewing an ad, online search, email newsletters, blog, or resource center. 

How do you identify this touchpoint? 

Using the research results from previous steps. Once you’ve defined this, put yourself in the customer’s shoes and think of different ways it can affect them. 

Is there a service system to handle issues across all those touchpoints? Can they reach you easily?

4. Define key stages of your customer experience. With the knowledge you’ve gathered, it’s time to outline every step of your potential buyer’s journey, from when they became aware of your solution to the consideration stage until purchase.

5. Create the map. One of the best ways to do this is to use a template and fill it with your research. Here’s a template from Mindtools you can use:

Image Source: Mindtools

You list different stages of your customer’s journey e.g. discovery, consideration, conversion, sales support, or loyalty stage, and put it against the touchpoint. Within each box is the information that prospects and clients have shared.

Then, you have the customer emotions part describing how they felt at different stages. 

Now, you don’t have to limit yourself to the options we provided, you can include questions clients have, their perceptions, etc. Basically, anything else that’ll help you become a better option for them. 

4. Focus on SEO and keyword research

Next, let’s talk SEO. Yes, it looks technical and somewhat confusing at first.

But look, it’s at the center of an effective content marketing strategy. You’ll need it to achieve the goals you’ve set.

Because your audience will use different keywords at different stages of their journey. 

You probably typed ‘content marketing for SaaS brands’ or ‘SaaS content marketing’ before you saw this guide. Your clients will do something similar.

So, you need to identify keywords they’re probably searching for at the different stages of their journey and create content that addresses their need. 

This way when they run a search, your site is among the first they see. 

How do you identify keywords then?

Using keyword research tools like Ahrefs, for instance. It’s a simple tool with features to help you find keywords. Once you sign in, click on the Keywords Explorer feature at the top menu. 

Type a term related to your service and it’ll find keywords that match it.

Then, choose matching terms at the left-hand side of the page to find keywords that match your service. 

You can take it a step further by using filters to streamline your search to find keywords for the customer’s journey. Here are some filter ideas for you: how-to, examples, guide, top, alternatives, and inspiration.

To include these terms, click the Include button to add them. 

You can then export the keyword list and start producing content for them.

Another tool you can use is Google Keyword Planner. It allows you to find related keywords, and check their popularity and commercial value. 

With these options, you’ll never run out of ideas for creating content. 

5. Establish key campaign metrics

When your campaign kicks off, how do you know if it’s performing as it should?

What’s the yardstick to determine if you’re on track to achieving your goals?

Can’t think of any? No problem. 

You just need to define key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect your goals and track them. 

Some general metrics everyone is encouraged to monitor in content marketing include:

• Web visitors: The number of unique visitors to your site. 
• Session duration: The amount of time they spend on your site per session. 
• Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who see a page and leave without checking other pages.
• Social media engagement: How many shares, likes, and comments you’ve gotten.

But, some are more specific to SaaS businesses. Here are some of them:

• Engagement metrics: This is the time visitors spend on a page, scroll depth, and shares. 
• Demo requests: Percentage of people who’ve requested a software demo. 
• Trial registration: Number of people who’ve decided to give your product a trial from different pages like your blog or features page.
• Lead to customer conversion rates: Percentage of leads who become customers. 
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): Percentage of cost spent on marketing compared to the number of customers you get. 
• Keyword ranking: Your organic ranking position in the search engine results page for a specific term. 
• Backlinks: Number of sites that’ve linked to your website. 

Right, but how do I know which metric to track, and how do I even monitor them?

Using the goals you set earlier, you’ll know which metrics to set.  For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, engagement will be the metric to track. 

As for tracking metrics, there are lots of tools to help you do that. Check out some of them below.

• Google Analytics: This is one of Google’s many brainchilds and if you set it to monitor user behavior on your site, it can track engagement. You can also use it to track demo requests and trial registrations if you set up event tracking. 
• Hotjar: Hotjar is an analytics tool that helps monitor user behavior on your site. It can show you touch points users visit on your site and how they interact with it. 
• HubSpot: This tool has an analytics feature for collecting and interpreting data. With HubSpot, you can track events and clicks on your site and calculate CAC. 
• Ahrefs: This tool helps you find keywords alright, but it can also monitor what keywords your site ranks for with its rank tracker tool. It tracks keyword position, how it changes over time, and even highlights keywords with the most traffic. 

6. Conduct a content audit

If you’ve already launched a content marketing campaign, doing a content audit is a crucial step you need to take. 

It’s how you’ll know which content is helping you achieve your business goals so you can produce more and identify the ones that aren’t doing great. 

By evaluating your existing content, you can discover:

• Topics or keywords you haven’t touched which means new content ideas. 
• Content that’s not aligned with your brand style so you can update them. 

So, how can you conduct an audit?

1. First, outline your goals. Yeah, yeah, here we are with the goals again. It could be increasing your organic traffic by 200%.
2. Use Semrush’s Site Audit tool to list all your content pages. You’ll just need to input your site’s URL, specify where your content is on the site (blog or resource page), and start the audit. It’ll list all the content on your site with their URLs.
3. Measure the content performance. Now you want to check each content’s URL to see which one has more organic traffic, is ranking high, and the number of backlinks they have. To do that, you can use Google Analytics to measure traffic, Semrush’s Position Tracking feature to get the ranking reports, and their Backlink Analytics for the number of backlinks reported.
4. Outline your research. Here, you want to transfer everything you’ve found to a spreadsheet. Create a column for the content and another for organic traffic, backlinks, and other performance indicators you want to check. 

Fill it with your findings so you can move on to the next step. 

1. Decide on what to do. You have a few options with your content audit data. You can either:
2. Keep a piece of content if it’s performing well. 
3. Update it if it’s not performing well. It could be that it has outdated information, isn’t aligned with your brand’s style, or doesn’t meet the search intent of the keyword. 
4. Redirect if you have duplicate content or consolidate the different content into one. This way, you’re not in competition with yourself for the same term (keyword cannibalisation)
5. Delete if the content has never gotten any traffic, has a keyword that’s unrelated to your business, or isn’t aligned with how you do things anymore.  

That’s a crash course on how to do a site audit… you’re welcome. 😉

7. Choose the right content formats

Another thing you want to do is choose the content formats for your campaign. 

You’re a unique SaaS brand so you need to find something that works for you. 

To know which content format is right for you, go through the buyer persona you built earlier and check the kind of content they like interacting with.  

We’ve highlighted types of content SaaS brands can use earlier, but our advice is to use interactive content. 

It’s fast becoming one of the cool kids of content formats. 79% of content marketers say it can attract and hold people’s attention. Others use it to drive engagement on their platforms. 

It’s the kind of content that makes people (even those top, classy decision-makers) get involved with your content and make them feel you’re the right brand for them. 

Here’s an example of what interactive content looks like:

GIF Source: Ceros

It caught your attention, didn’t it? Think you’d like to produce one?

You can use a platform like Ceros. It’s a no-code tool for building interactive content from scratch. 

Here’s the good part: If you’re not sure if stakeholders will buy the idea, you can get them to see a live preview of the interactive content before it gets published. Plus, you can ask for their feedback without leaving Ceros.

8. Decide on content distribution

After producing content, you need to think of how to get it across to your target audience. 

What’s the point of all that effort if people don't see it?

Here are some different marketing channels for your distribution strategy.

• Brand-owned channels. You can post content on your blog, repurpose it for social media, or prep it for your email list. But as much as possible, avoid publishing to just one platform. For example, you can produce a podcast and publish it on Spotify, take some snippets and share it on your X (formerly Twitter) page, or include quotes from your podcast interviews in your upcoming blogs.
• Guest posting and appearances. Look out for opportunities to write for high-authority blogs in your niche. This can attract more people to your site and give you more backlinks. Getting invited to talk on podcasts is another opportunity to distribute your content too. 
• Paid channels. You can collaborate with popular bloggers in your industry to promote your content for money. You could also run Google display ads, boost your content on social media, or buy clicks. 
• Online communities. Another way to distribute your content is to post it on Reddit communities or Facebook groups within your niche. But you don’t want to post it as is. You could pick a question from the content to ask in the group or respond to someone’s question with snippets from your content. 

9. Design your content calendar

You’re almost good to go with your strategy. But if you’re going to get the results you want, you’ll need to be consistent. 

To do that, you need a calendar to help structure the entire process. 

With a content calendar, you decide when to do which task and who’s responsible for it. It ensures all your strategizing goes as planned and everyone is more productive. 

How do you create a content calendar?

You can use CoSchedule, an AI marketing calendar to get it done. Here’s how to do that:

• List all the platforms you’ll create content for. You can have one for your blog and another for social media.
• Create a project for a platform’s content production, such as blog content.
• Add project details including the title, description, due dates, and assignees.
• Create a workflow by adding tasks like keyword research, content audit, or creating content briefs. Then, add details for each task.

Alternatively, you can collaborate with your team and come up with a custom calendar on Google Calendar. 

10. Monitor performance and track results

Finally, you need to monitor the performance of your campaign. 

It’s how you know if your investment has paid off. 

We explained how you can track your campaign and what to monitor earlier on. 

But here are some extra questions for you to answer…

• What content types and topics are performing well?
• What keywords have also done well?
• Touchpoints people love visiting?

You can then create a template with best-performing content and duplicate the success. 

***

If you followed this through, you’ve just created a SaaS content marketing strategy. 

Congratulations! 

Now, let’s spice things up by giving you tips on making your marketing efforts smoother.

B2B SaaS content marketing best practices

As you’ve probably seen, lots of moving parts are involved in content marketing — research, brainstorming with teammates, and creating structures.  It’s a lot, and while it’s worth it, sometimes you can feel like nothing makes sense.  

In moments like that, remember these practices we’re about to show you. They’ll be your light through the temporary digital darkness. 

Emphasize social proof and case studies

Did you know that 95% of customers say that reviews influence their purchasing decisions, both positive and negative?

Nine out of ten say they trust what fellow customers say about a brand more than what a brand says. 

What are we driving at here?

Ensure your content has social proof that tells the audience your service is great for them. 

Also, create case studies. Lots of them. It’s a way for prospects to see how you handled complex situations like theirs and got great results. 

SaaS company, HubSpot has a dedicated page for case studies where they share reports of companies succeeding with their platform.

Image Source: HubSpot

They even added stats from their findings to capture people’s attention. So, think of creating one with clients you’ve worked with. 

Long-form in-depth quality content

Bottom-of-the-funnel clients in the SaaS industry always look for brands with a deep understanding of their niche. 

They want to confirm you’re an expert in the space before doing business with you.

One way to show them that is by creating long-form content that reflects your skill and proficiency. 

Great content like this positions you as a thought leader who’s not just out to make a quick buck but wants to help them. 

With long-form content, you can go in-depth into the problems they’re dealing with, why it’s happening to them, and how to solve them. 

You can create long-form blog posts, ebooks, and guides.

Scaling content production

Once you start seeing the great results content marketing offers, you’ll start thinking of more.

How do I put out more content? I want to reach more people.  

That’s why big SaaS brands like Zapier or MailChimp are always releasing content. 

But to do that, you’ll need a marketing team that understands your brand and can produce content consistently.

You can hire professionals to join your in-house team or work with a marketing agency. 

If you’re a startup with a tight budget, Editor in Ceros lets you scale content production without needing a big design or writing team. It makes it easy for non-designers to create and update premium content, allowing everyone on your team to get involved in the creative process. 

Segmentation and personalization

Marketing in SaaS can be tricky because it takes a village to make a purchasing decision. While some look at how easily the tool can be integrated into their current workflow, others are focused on whether it’s a good investment. 

If they find a brand that speaks to them on a personal level, they’re good. 

But how do you do that?

Segment your audience and personalize the message. 

Here’s what we mean: 

Think of all the companies and potential customers that’ll use your product and create content for them. 

You can use the audience research methods we shared earlier to identify those brands. More specifically, you want to look at competitor’s reviews to see possible brands that may use your service. 

***

Alright, people, we’re nearing the end of the line.

And now for the final lap of this guide, let’s quickly touch on a few tools commonly used in SaaS content marketing.

What tools are used in content marketing for SaaS companies?

Now, we have another guide that lists different content marketing platforms and tools to streamline your workflow.  

But here, we’ll just go over a few of them and what you can use them to do. 

• Ceros – Ceros is a powerful no-code platform that empowers everyone—from designers to non-designers—to create dynamic, interactive content. While you can use templates for efficiency, Ceros also gives you the freedom to build unique content from scratch in Studio. No technical skills are needed, so you can easily design, edit, and publish engaging digital experiences without relying on a developer.
• Google Analytics – Google Analytics is a tool for measuring and tracking data from your website and apps. It can track audience demographics, organic search traffic, bounce rates, engagements, and lead generation entries.  
• HubSpot – HubSpot is a growth platform that helps you consolidate your different workflows to meet those marketing goals.  It also lets you collect user information on your site and track events like the number of visitors who signed up on your landing page.
• Ahrefs – You remember what Ahref does, right? Its job is to help you research keywords, explore content ideas, audit your site, and monitor your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) performance.
• Mailchimp – If you’re thinking of launching an email marketing outreach campaign, Mailchimp is a tool for doing just that. It can help you design landing pages to gather qualified leads, send them automated emails when they join, and even share content on social media.

Want to see more tools like this? Check out our guide on the top content marketing tools of 2024.

Over to you!

As you embark on this journey to launching a campaign, you’ll need all the help you can get.

Maybe a tool to help you do your work faster…

Enter: Ceros!

We’ve given you a peek into what it can do. But that’s just the tip. 🏔️

Ceros can also help you: 

• Produce content that aligns with your brand. 
• Brainstorm ideas and strategies.
• Create images. 
• Collaborate with your team in real time. 
• Track content’s performance. 

Too good to be true, right? 

Schedule a free demo with Ceros today to see what it can do.