Want to get more leads without burning through your finances? Invest in content marketing.

According to Demand Metric, content marketing generates 3x more leads than traditional marketing but it is 62% cheaper. For a SaaS startup that needs to make each dollar count, this plays an important role in moving the business forward.

What is Content Marketing

Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing content to gain and keep a target audience and eventually convert customer action to possible revenue. Through this strategic marketing approach, a SaaS company can answer its generated leads, audience’s queries, build trust, engage with its users, and even improve connections and conversations.

What makes content marketing for SaaS different?

Traditional companies usually use content marketing to drive sales. SaaS companies, however, use this to make their target audience understand their brand or product. Additionally, it can also be used to draw monthly subscriptions or sign-ups.

Positioning your SaaS startup through relevant and regular content is important in an industry where competitor products are similar to yours.

What makes you different? What is in your product that can make a user stay? How does your customer service differ from other companies? You have to address pain points and concerns and your audience must know that you are making the effort to do that. Content marketing helps you do this. From posting how-to blog posts, creating videos that explain your product, or offering useful eBooks for your audience – all of these things are carefully considered when you make your content marketing strategy.

Let’s say you’ve already done the important basics, like identifying your audience, studying your competitor, and researching for your proper keywords. What are the other actionable steps that you need to do to move forward with the content marketing strategy of your SaaS company?

So, if you want to go beyond the basics when you come up with a content marketing strategy, here are some important things that you need to do:

1. Create an outreach strategy.

If you are creating an outreach strategy, you must consider these two methods: publication or promotion.

What we mean by publication is looking for high-traffic platforms where you can publish engaging content and direct traffic from that site to your SaaS website. An example of this is guest posting. On the other hand, what we mean by promotion is reaching out to your target audience or their influencers and leading them to a published content on one of your websites. An example of this is e-mail marketing or sending targeted emails to your subscribers.

An effective outreach strategy must be a combination of quality content plus building strong connections with influencers and publishing platforms. You create a mix and match of the following activities to build your winning outreach strategy:

• Involving influencers in the content creation process is a good relationship-building activity that can greatly benefit you in the long run. You can take their expert opinion and directly quote them. You can also inform them about the status of your submitted content where they are cited as a resource person.
• If an influencer has issues with your content, make sure to address it properly and inform them of the changes implemented.
• Prepare a list of influencers that you can reach out to who publish content related to your SaaS service. Connect with these influencers by making an e-mail pitch.
• If you can, try to submit regular content to a trusted website. Always comply with the requirements of the editor to get into his or her good graces.
• Find out which websites are linking to the same type of content and reach out to those sites.
• Prepare to give more if you want to ask for more.
• Make that e-mail pitch perfect, buddy!

2. Build a content resource as early as possible.

Having a content resource is like having backup fuel to let the car travel extra miles. You use a content resource to attract users to sign up. It is an effective lead magnet if you are a SaaS startup.

Content resources are also used for list-building. List-building is an important aspect of content marketing strategy. When we say list-building, we mean collecting e-mails from prospective clients. Besides attracting sign-ups, these content types can also be used to retain those users and eventually make loyal ones.

Examples of content resources are eBooks, webinars, videos, case studies, surveys, white papers, or training courses.

4. Know when to publish stuff.

Are you not publishing enough? Or are you annoying your subscribers and users with overwhelming content? As a SaaS company, you need to strike the balance between too few and too much.

If you already have quality and relevant content resources that are aching to get posted online, here is an example of a publishing schedule depending on where you are as a company:

• If you are just starting up, you need to publish at least one article a week and one eBook per quarter;
• If you are already getting traction, you need to publish at least two articles a week and two eBooks per quarter;
• If your company is scaling, you need to publish at least three articles a week and one eBook per month.

Remember, quality over quantity. Do not push for a lot of content if you are just regurgitating articles from the web. There is no use to publish articles that no one would want to read.

5. Make use of applications to automate your content marketing.

You are a SaaS company. Does it make sense that you must also make use of applications and services that can automate your content marketing? Of course. If you want to start everything manually because of budget constraints, we understand. But eventually, you can transition to automating part or all of your content marketing process.

Here are some tools you might want to use early on:

• For SEO: Moz, SEM Rush, AHREFS, Raven Tools, or SerpStat
• For Marketing Automation: Hubspot, Route, Marketo, Eloqua, Act-on, or Pardot
• For Blogging: WordPress, Tumblr, Drupal, Livejournal, Percussion, or Contentful
• For E-mail Marketing: Sales Panda, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, GetResponse, Drip, or MailChimp
• For Content Making: Quora, Answer the Public, Grammarly, Copyscape, Buzzsumo, Quillbot, Canva, or Pixlr
• For Sales Enablement: Savo, Seismic, Highspot, Oktopost, Qvidian, or SalesFusion
• For Social Media Management: Hootsuite, Buffer, Tweetdeck, Sprout Social, or Keyhole

Feel free to research each one of these and study if any of these tools can fit your need as a company. Once you decide to use any of these tools, master using them.

6. Measure your performance.

When your writing becomes revenue, how can you prove your success? You show them the receipts of your hard work. And by receipts, we mean your reports. Reporting completes the content marketing strategy of your SaaS company.

How did your content turn to conversions? You measure the traffic. You count the number of sign-ups per campaign. You check the status of your keyword ranking on search engine results pages. All of these things are part of the crucial data you need to determine if your content marketing strategy delivered what needs to be delivered when it comes to getting conversions. If you want a run-down of the important metrics you need to watch out for, here they are:

1. Keyword rankings. Content marketing strategy is especially needed when it comes to ranking your keywords. It plays an important role in search engine optimization. Any competent digital marketer will say that nowadays content marketing and SEO are inseparable. When your article finally makes it to the top spot in a Google SERP, the traffic comes in. When your keyword rankings are improving, that means your content marketing strategy is on point.
2. Monthly traffic growth. When your content marketing strategy is well-implemented, you should see a monthly increase in your site traffic since the start of your campaign. You can start with a 5% month-by-month increase and tailor-fit new campaigns to your needs if you want more traction when it comes to traffic.
3. The number of sign-ups. For a SaaS company, an e-mail list can become a reliable lifeline. You can generate leads through research but the most effective way you can get e-mails is if you attract users who are willing to sign-up.
4. The number of subscriptions. Your content marketing strategy is successful if you also generate subscribers for your SaaS service or application. You should see a steady monthly increase in subscribers after launching a content marketing campaign.

Your turn…

When it comes to SaaS marketing, you must invest in reliable, regular, and timely content for your target audience. Your strategy should also include these five things if you want results. The results may take time, but if you hit the sweet spot of your users after a rigorous content marketing campaign, you can easily implement a tested content marketing process in your future promotion endeavours.