If you are a newly-launched SaaS company, you are probably looking for actionable tips to create your blog marketing strategy. And if you are reading this post, you are already one step closer in the right direction. The fact that you are considering blogging in your marketing campaign is already a point in your favor.
Right now, especially because of the impact of the global pandemic, more people are using the online platform to search for products. This is especially true when you are looking for a SaaS application. According to SaaS trends and statistics, global SaaS workload is expected to reach 380 million by 2021 with an 18% annual growth rate of SaaS marketing and it continues to grow.
Have you ever bought a product without researching it first? If you are like millions of other people, you probably would search about it first on the internet. And one effective way of making other people understand your product is by blogging about it.
Why blog marketing?
You should not miss blog marketing, especially if you are a Startup SaaS.
DemandMetric reveals that blogs can generate 67% more leads than businesses that do not have one.
According to Hubspot, business blogging ranks is one of the most popular content marketing strategies. It comes third after videos and eBooks. This is not surprising since companies who engage in business blogging rake in 13 times more ROI than others that did not in 2019.
Blog marketing is now a leading strategy for SaaS brands since it significantly increases conversion rates and brand recognition and retention. Consistent and quality blog content can also create more loyal users.
Blogs thus play a pivotal role in maintaining and changing audience perspective.
What is blog marketing?
Blog marketing is a type of content marketing strategy.
Marketers use this method to improve a company’s online visibility. Like email marketing and social media marketing, blog marketing can sustain or propel the growth of SaaS businesses. It employs the power of viral marketing to draw the interest of a company’s specific target audience. An engaging blog content allows reader interaction through comments and information sharing.
What you can do
If you want to capture the interest of your ideal customer profile, you have to start developing your blog marketing strategy for SaaS. Here is how you do it:
1. Understand Your Audience
Do you know who your target audience is? To better know where your marketing campaigns are directed, it is crucial to understand your buyer persona.
A buyer persona is a thorough depiction of a hypothetical individual who represents your target market. Yes, this is a hypothetical person and not an actual customer. But this fictional representative must exemplify the attributes of your greatest prospective clients. This consumer persona will be given a name, demographic information, interests, and behavioral characteristics. In simple terms, your buyer persona is your ideal customer and you are trying to draw that individual to your website.
You can develop this buyer persona through audience research. You can check the data about your existing customers and create this fictional individual. Or, if you are still on the pre-launch stage, you can conduct surveys in social media groups that share an interest in your SaaS product.
Once you have determined your ideal customer persona, you can better create your blog marketing strategy because you now know who your blog topics are for. Otherwise, you will be like casting precious pearls before swine.
2. Know Your Budget
Let’s face it. When it comes to a competitive niche such as the SaaS industry, you SHOULD allocate a part of your budget to marketing. As a rule of thumb, you should apportion 30% of your digital marketing budget to content marketing alone. This budget should cover the costs for writing blog posts, article promotions, and content outreach.
If you cannot do the articles yourself, you should invest in an in-house writer or outsource it to someone. You can also use the budget to spend on subscriptions that can help you create better content.
The bottom line is, work on what you have. Otherwise, be smart enough to search for free tools that you can use to streamline your blog marketing strategy.
3. Coordinate Your Blogging Efforts With Your SEO Campaign
Want to hit two birds with one stone? Coordinate your blog marketing strategy with your SEO efforts. This is one of the most powerful things you can do to move your business forward.
If you have already done your keyword research as part of your SEO, you can use these search terms as topics for your blog content.
If you have not come up with a list of keywords yet, SEO tools like the Google Keyword Planner, Keyword Tool, and Ahrefs can help you in your research and provide insights and data so that you can choose the right keywords for your campaigns.
4. Prepare a Content Calendar
How can you ensure that my future and present consumers receive fascinating, engaging, and relevant blog posts on a regular basis?
The answer is creating a content calendar. You do not just create a SaaS blog and then post randomly. Having a content calendar and a publishing schedule will make a difference between keeping your readers or repelling them.
A blog content calendar is a schedule that contains the titles of your up and coming posts when you will publish them, and where you will post them. The most effective content calendar also includes a way to publish your posts automatically. Blog websites in general, offer this kind of function.
Automating your publishing schedule will ensure that you do not have to miss a day. This is a good strategy to make sure that your blog consistently brings out content on the dot. Consistent blog posts are a must especially if you have loyal and regular readers.
A content calendar (also known as an “editorial calendar”) is a written schedule of when and where you plan to publish upcoming content. Content calendars typically include upcoming pieces, status updates, planned promotional activity, partnerships, and updates to existing content.
If you are a startup, try posting content thrice a week. You can publish more once you have grown your audience.
5. Start Writing
Now, it’s time to write. Remember your buyer persona when creating your content. Emphasize how your product or service can benefit your target audience. You must address the persistent and recurring problems in your product or niche.
Write in a way that your target audience can relate to your content. For example, instead of saying “Our product can help you manage your time efficiently,” say “This is how you can efficiently save 30 minutes of your time every day.”
Besides writing for your target buyer persona, make sure you are optimizing your page for search engines too. Use your keywords and incorporate them in your page title, H1 tags, meta description, URL, and article body.
6. Check Your Data
Gather insights about your blog posts by checking your data and website analytics. Measuring the performance of your blog post is crucial so that you can adjust your strategies and fix failed ones, check if your post is getting leads or producing conversions, and improve your content. By looking at data, you can also determine what your target audience wants, when your readers are most active, and which platform is giving you the most traffic. To do this, you can try using Alexa, SEMRush, Similar Web, or Search Metrics.
An attractive blog nurtures relationships and builds loyalty. Blogging can be used to explore more subjects and themes compared to other parts of a SaaS brand website. Blogs can be utilized to provide entertaining and helpful content to prospects and customers. This can help your brand earn the attention and loyalty of customers and drive up retention rates.
Your Turn…
A well-designed blog fosters relationships and increases loyalty. When compared to other elements of a SaaS business website, blogging allows you to explore more subjects and themes.
Blogs may be used to give prospects and consumers amusing and useful information. It will also make your company get client attention and loyalty, as well as increase retention rates.
So if you want to get the best out of your business blog, start tweaking your blog marketing strategy today.
