How to Create the Best Content Marketing Strategy for a SaaS Business
Without a well-curated content-marketing strategy, how does a business really tell its potential clients what it is all about? And, say the business is somehow able to pull it off — now, how does it convince the people why they should not opt for other companies? When yours is a SaaS (Software As A Service) company, you have a lot in store that you’d want to offer to masses — be it information or the services that people could hire you for. That’s why marketing, irrespective of its form, has always played a key role in determining how successful a business will be. There was a time when word-of-mouth advertising was everything, but times have changed now. Slowly but surely, content marketing has become hip in the world that we all live in. Everyone wants to know what you have to offer them in terms of content, and that plays a great role in helping your audience decide whether they should hire your services or not. But, to be able to do that, you’ll need an adequate marketing strategy that can lead you to the right niche. Using the next few steps, you can ensure that your content is headed in the direction that you want it to.
Know Your Audience First
Although it sounds simple, defining buyer personas is the key to any business marketing strategy’s success. Not knowing who you are catering to could really be the undoing of your business. There are a handful of ways using which you could really know the demographic details of your client base. For example, you could leverage mailing lists to find out more about your audience. A great way to do that would be to send out personalized e-mailers. Additionally, you could share survey forms that’ll help you get a better idea about what your audience’s expectations are from you.
Understand What Your Goals Are
Now that we know about the different buyer personas that we might be dealing with, it’s time for us to plan out what exactly we are looking to achieve — this could be an additional 5,000 organic visits every month or converting 30% of your leads into clients.
But, in order to pull off any of that, each step has to be planned thoroughly. Once you have that piece of the puzzle figured out, you can focus on the following steps:
Know Your Competition
Being aware of where your competition stands when it comes to a certain aspect of the business that both of you are in can only do you good. For example, when it comes to formulating a good content-marketing strategy, you’d want to know the different areas that your competitors don’t cater to in terms of information. This knowledge gap could prove to be an opportunity for you to establish yourself as a domain expert in that area, thus helping you to tap into a possible client pool that is highly likely to come out of it.
Develop a Smart Keyword Strategy
Once you have figured out your competition’s stance and plotted the information gaps that you can capitalise on, it really comes down to how well you can use your keyword tools to lure in as many leads as possible straight to your website. When it comes to designing an effective keyword strategy, the rule of thumb is to go for the low-hanging fruits. And, what exactly do we mean by that? The answer’s pretty simple — there are certain keywords that your competitors might not rank for, and tools such as Ahrefs and SEMRush can help narrow down some of those for you. Once you put together a list of such keywords, you can start curating content that’ll help you rank high for those keywords. Yes, you could try and rank for the keywords that your competitors are already ranking for, but it’ll probably be as tough as moving a mountain with a spoon.
Decide the Kind of Content You Can Share
So, you have the first four steps taken care of, now what you really need to do is finalise on the different formats of content that you can share with your user base on a regular basis. Yes, regular and up-to-date content is what everyone loves, including Google and it’s search engine crawlers. For instance, you can choose from whitepapers, newsletters, e-mailers, e-books, blog posts, social media articles, and much more. But, keep in mind that keywords don’t really work in the case of e-mailers, whitepapers, newsletters, and e-books. However, these three are key when it comes to helping you convert some of your leads into users. If you continue giving out quality information in the form of e-mailers, newsletters, whitepapers, and e-books, it will turn a lot of your website’s visitors into subscribers, therefore helping you retain a significant chunk of your audience.
Define a Content Calendar
We spoke about the impact of being regular with your content, and with a proper content calendar/cycle doing the same will be quite bothersome, if not impossible.
Having an editorial calendar will help you keep track of certain actions, such as outlining articles, doing your research, curating your content, publishing and promoting it, analyzing its performance, monitoring the changes around your piece, and then updating it with more relevant information.
With that being said, that’s all there is to an effective ‘organic’ content marketing strategy. If you have a few extra bucks to spare, then you could also try paid promotion, marketing your content with the help of influencers, etc. But, remember — good content is and should always be the essence of a great marketing strategy. If your content isn’t up to the mark, then you can burn a ton of cash, interlink hundreds of pages, and it may still not serve you as you desire it to. So, don’t rush things; take your time to understand the market you are in, the kind of audience you’ll be catering to, their needs, the information gaps/opportunities that you can capitalize on, and in no time you should be able to see the results. Good luck!
I have been collecting great Ideas for SaaS content from this blog. Do check it out!!
