Are you tired of following the same old SaaS content creation plan for your business? Do you feel like your content is getting lost in the sea of information out there?
As a SaaS entrepreneur, you know that standing out and establishing your expertise in a crowded market is crucial. But finding the time to create innovative content and measure its success can be overwhelming.
It’s time to break free from traditional methods and embrace a new approach. In this comprehensive guide, we will show you how to master SaaS content creation and take your content marketing to the next level.
Disclaimer: I’m not associated with any company I’m showing in this blog post. I just like them.
SaaS Content Creation Plan: What It Is & Why You Need It?
Content creation for SaaS companies involves developing and sharing valuable and relevant content to attract and retain customers. This can include blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, videos, infographics, and more. The goal is to provide helpful information, showcase expertise, and address the pain points of the target audience.
SaaS companies operate in a specific market – their potential customers have countless options, and that pool is expanding every day. This leads to a lot of noise, no matter the niche you’re operating in. To cut through it, you need content that:
- Educates your target audience: This positions your brand as a go-to source for advice on a specific topic. Think Ahrefs’ SEO expertise or ClickUp’s productivity tips.
- Demonstrates the value of your software: Product-led content helps you sell your product without actually selling it. Instead, you show how you’re solving specific problems or achieving desired outcomes with it.
- Turns attention into customers: Nurturing your audience with content increases their loyalty to your brand and – consecutively – their lifetime value (LTV)
Overall, content creation is a powerful tool for SaaS companies to connect with your audience, drive conversions, and ultimately grow your business. Now, let me show you how to achieve it all, step by step.
Understand Your Audience and Their Pain Points
To effectively create content that resonates with your audience, you need first to understand their pain points. You can do this in various ways, but the simplest one is… to ask 😲
I know, crazy… But how do you ask properly? There are plenty of options to choose from:
- Manual outreach: DM your customers on socials or write an email asking them about problems or goals they have. Most time-consuming – but usually most effective.
- Conducting surveys: Send out surveys to your customer base to gather feedback on their pain points and challenges. Use tools like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey to create and distribute surveys easily.
- Analyzing customer data: Look at customer support tickets, feedback, and reviews to identify common issues or areas where customers are struggling.
- Interviewing customers: Schedule one-on-one interviews with customers to learn more about their experiences and better understand their pain points.
If you just started out and have no customers, you can also turn to:
Industry research:
What do the stats say about your customers? Check sites like Statista or use an AI research tool like Consensus to identify data points you can use in your content.
Let’s take the audience for this text – SaaS Founders – as an example. I want to see how old my target audience might be. Let me ask AI to perform the research for me:
According to data, most entrepreneurs are in their mid-20s to early 30s. Knowing this, I can explore this target audience’s fears, frustrations, goals, and aspirations more deeply.
Competitor analysis
Why reinvent the wheel when you can just peek at what your competition is doing 👀
But seriously, tracking the steps of other companies in your niche can help you determine how to target your customers, too.
We’re more connected than ever, which means your audience exchanges vast amounts of potential insights about their problems and goals publicly every day.
So, where to find it? I’d start on Reddit, of course.
But, of course, I’d not scroll every thread to find anything useful about my audience. It’s 2024, and we all know there’s AI for everything nowadays.
For this purpose, I’ll use GummySearch, the best AI co-pilot for Reddit analysis IMO.
It scrapes Reddit’s data, analyzes it, and serves it back to you in a digestible format—and it does it in about five seconds.
By thoroughly understanding your audience and their pain points, you can create content that resonates with them and addresses their specific needs. This will not only attract potential customers but also help you retain and convert them into loyal users of your SaaS product.
Next, let’s move on to the next section and delve into the importance of building your content strategy.
Creating a Content Strategy That Works
While creating a successful content strategy for your SaaS company, there are key elements that you need to consider.
First, you need to set clear goals for your content. Each piece of content you create should have a specific goal. Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, or boosting conversions, your content strategy should align with your overall business objectives.
Next, you need to define your target audience. But you already know how to do this.
Once you have your goals and audience in place, it’s time to map out your content. This involves planning what types of content you will create, where and when you will publish it, and how you will promote it.
Developing a content calendar can help you stay organized and ensure that you are consistently producing and sharing content that is relevant and valuable to your audience.
From our experience, it’s best to plan several content pieces in advance before you go live. This will help you maintain consistency, even when you dread writing yet another blog post (I feel you!).
I’ll show you a couple of tools that can help you manage your content calendar in a second, so bear with me.
Lastly, you need to update your content strategy regularly. As the SaaS landscape evolves, so too should your content. Stay on top of industry trends, monitor the performance of your content, and make adjustments as needed to ensure that your strategy remains effective.
By following these steps and implementing a well-thought-out content strategy, you can attract, engage, and convert potential customers while building brand loyalty and driving growth for your SaaS company.
Leveraging the Right Tools for Content Creation and Management
Having the right tools in your arsenal can make content creation and management much easier and more efficient. Here are some essential tools to consider:
- Keyword research: Tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Google Keyword Planner help you identify high-volume, low-competition keywords to target in your content. This ensures that your content is optimized for search engines and reaches your target audience.
- Content management: A content management system (CMS) like WordPress or HubSpot can help you organize, schedule, and publish your content seamlessly. These platforms also offer analytics to track the performance of your content.
- Performance tracking: Google Analytics is a powerful tool for monitoring the performance of your website and content. It provides insights into traffic sources, user behavior, and conversion rates, allowing you to make data-driven decisions to optimize your content strategy.
By leveraging these tools, you can create content that resonates with your audience, drives engagement, and ultimately contributes to the growth of your SaaS company.
Types of Content That Drive SaaS Engagement
Different types of content can be used strategically throughout the sales funnel to engage and convert potential customers. Here are some of the most effective types of content for SaaS companies:
- Blog posts: Regularly publishing informative and engaging blog posts can help establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry. Blog content can also drive organic traffic to your website and nurture leads through the funnel.
- Case studies: Case studies showcase the real-world results your SaaS product has delivered for customers. They provide social proof and can be powerful tools for convincing potential customers to choose your solution over competitors.
- Interactive tools: Interactive content like calculators, quizzes, and assessments can be highly engaging and provide value to potential customers. These tools can also help you capture leads and gain valuable insights into your target audience.
By creating a mix of these content types and using them strategically throughout the sales funnel, you can effectively engage and convert potential customers for your SaaS company.
Templates and Checklists: Making Content Creation Easier
Content creation can be time-consuming and overwhelming, especially if you’re starting from scratch. That’s where templates and checklists come in handy.
Content calendar template:
A content calendar template helps you plan and organize your content in advance. It should include the type of content, topic, target keywords, publication date, and promotion channels.
The easiest way to build a content calendar is to use Google Sheets, Excel, or Airtable:
For this blog’s purposes, I use a Clickup project where I monitor the keywords and publication dates. Each keyword cluster is a separate list:
Blog post template:
A blog post template provides a structure for your blog content, ensuring that all necessary elements are included. These could include an introduction, subheadings, images, a call to action, and a conclusion.
At StoryAngled, we’ve built multiple content templates for SaaS companies for formats like:
- Blog posts
- Email newsletters
- Product Hunt launch pages
And many others. You can download them all here:
Content quality checklist:
A content quality checklist ensures that your content meets specific standards before publication. This could include checking for grammar and spelling errors, verifying facts and statistics, and ensuring that the content aligns with your brand voice and message.
You can grab our ugly-drawn content quality checklist below:
By using templates and checklists, you can save time, maintain consistency, and ensure that your content is of high quality and meets your goals.
Examples of Successful SaaS Content Strategies
Looking at successful content strategies from other SaaS companies can provide valuable insights and inspiration for your own content creation efforts.
Here are a couple of examples:
Notion:
Notion has done exceptionally well at building a new way of thinking about productivity, building positive habits, and organizing your workflow. And they did it with content (among other strategies), co-created with niche influencers.
Their own content had a unique style, immediately recognizable regardless of the channel and format.
Here’s my deep dive into Notion’s marketing strategy:
Slack:
Content marketing is the secret sauce that fueled Slack’s meteoric rise. While other companies were pumping out generic blog posts and spammy emails, Slack was crafting content that people actually wanted to read. Let me tell you, they didn’t just slap together a few half-baked articles and call it a day. No, Slack went all-in on creating valuable, educational content that spoke directly to their target audience.
You see, Slack understood that superb content isn’t just about pushing your product. It’s about providing real value to your readers. That’s why they invested heavily in building out a killer content strategy across multiple platforms. From their blog to their email newsletters to their social media presence, every piece of content was carefully crafted to engage, educate, and delight.1
I recorded a whole video about Slack’s marketing strategy. Let me tell you, it’s pure genius:
SOON!
By analyzing these successful content strategies, you can identify elements that you can adapt and incorporate into your own content creation plan. Focus on providing value to your target audience, leveraging your unique expertise, and using content to showcase the benefits of your SaaS product.
Measuring Success: Content Analytics and Adjustments
Measuring the success of your content is crucial for understanding what’s working and what’s not. By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and analyzing data, you can make informed decisions to refine and improve your content strategy.
Here are some important KPIs to track:
- Traffic: Monitor the number of visits to your website and individual pieces of content. Look at metrics like unique pageviews, average time on page, and bounce rate to gauge the engagement of your content.
- Leads: Track the number of leads generated from your content, such as e-book downloads, newsletter signups, or contact form submissions. This helps you understand which types of content are most effective at converting visitors into leads.
- Conversion rate: Monitor the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as signing up for a free trial or making a purchase. This helps you understand the effectiveness of your content in driving conversions.
- Social shares: Track the number of times your content is shared on social media platforms. This can help you identify which types of content resonate with your audience and expand your reach.
By regularly analyzing these KPIs, you can identify areas for improvement and make data-driven adjustments to your content strategy. This could include updating underperforming content, doubling down on successful content types, or experimenting with new formats and promotion channels.
Conclusion: Continuous Improvement in Content Creation
Creating a successful content strategy for your SaaS company is an ongoing process that requires continuous learning and adaptation. By understanding your audience, setting clear goals, leveraging the right tools, and measuring your success, you can create content that attracts, engages, and converts potential customers.
Remember to regularly review your analytics, gather feedback from your audience, and stay on top of industry trends. By continuously refining and improving your content strategy, you can drive sustainable growth for your SaaS company and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
