Many SaaS companies struggle to identify effective strategies to engage customers and drive product adoption.
The customer signs up for a free trial but struggles to understand the key value behind the product.
And when no one answers their concerns – they leave the app forever.
Product-led content helps to prevent those cases. It guides your user through the product and gets them to the “aha!” moment faster.
In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look at product-led content and explore its benefits for SaaS companies.
We’ll also show you real-life examples of successful product-led content implementations and help you implement the same tactics within your SaaS business.
What is Product-Led Content, and Why Does it Matter?
Product-led content is a content marketing approach that presents your product as a solution to specific problems your user experiences.
Unlike traditional SaaS content, it doesn’t include unrelated product pitches in a piece of content.
Instead, it uses the context of your customer’s problems and aligns specific features and benefits to create a piece of advice.
This reframed, customer-centric approach has many benefits, such as:
1. Improved Product Adoption
Product-led content helps your users get crystal clear about your product value. It puts your product in specific user scenarios, which makes it easier for the customer to understand why your product is (or isn’t) for them.
Usually, this is done by using formats like:
- In-depth tutorials
- Interactive demos
- Informative blog articles
- Comprehensive ebook guides
Take a look at HRnest’s Academy — an interactive guide throughout the product. It creates an opportunity for the trial users not only to understand the specific features of the product but also the value behind them:
By providing such walkthroughs, businesses can empower users to make the most of the product in the trial stage, resulting in higher adoption rates.
2. Increased User Engagement
Engaging customers is a crucial aspect of establishing strong relationships and driving conversions.
Traditional content, such as blog posts focused on generic customer problems, can be effective to some extent.
But product-led content takes it to a whole new level.
SaaS companies can create highly personalized content tailored to their target audience’s needs and interests with product-led content.
One of the masters at this is Headspace — a mindfulness meditation app.
Their in-app content library is packed with highly specific, useful guides on different aspects of meditation and mental well-being.
This makes a vast range of users feel included and taken care of. They feel more invested in the app because someone took the time to address the exact problems they’re experiencing.
By providing valuable content directly within the product, companies can effectively capture users’ attention and keep them engaged for longer periods.
This not only increases the likelihood of conversion but also fosters customers’ trust in your brand.
3. Informed Buying Journey
Product-led content can guide customers through their buying journey by providing them with everything they need to make an informed decision about choosing your product over the alternatives.
Zapier is doing it very well in their comparison blog posts:
They pinpoint the exact differences between their solution and the competition. They identified what’s unique about them and show how the user can leverage this uniqueness.
By offering customers the information they need at each stage of their journey, businesses can help them move through the buying process with greater ease and efficiency.
This can ultimately lead to a more satisfactory experience for the customer and a higher likelihood of conversion for the business.
4. Higher Customer Satisfaction
Incorporating helpful information directly into a product can make it easier for users to access the information they need without having to leave the product.
This saves time and creates a more engaging and satisfying user experience.
For instance, Trumpet does it by including automated chat messages prompted when the user lands in a specific part of their app:
In the message, Trumpet includes tutorials, tips, and best practices within the tool itself. This helps users learn how to navigate the software and understand the value behind each feature.
This reduces the learning curve and increases user confidence and overall satisfaction.
5. Easier Customer Retention
Implementing product-led content can greatly reduce churn and encourage long-term subscriptions by providing helpful content at various stages of the user journey.
For example, Ahrefs takes care of both short- and long-term users with its massive knowledge base:
Instead of writing generic and boring help articles, they opted for more thorough, user-centric content that focuses on helping the user achieve a desired SEO result with Ahrefs.
This not only solves users’ immediate issues but also builds trust and loyalty towards your brand.
Moreover, by regularly providing valuable content, you can keep your customers engaged and informed about your product’s latest updates, features, and best practices.
This ongoing support and value-add can significantly impact customer retention rates.
How to Implement Product-Led Content in Your SaaS
Building an effective product-led content strategy may look intimidating at first. So, here’s the workflow StoryAngled uses to help our clients create product-led content for their SaaS:
Step 1: Identify Your Content Mission Statement
Before thinking of how to include your product inside your content, you need to understand:
- Your Target Audience: Who you’ll be talking to with your content? What are their problems and goals?
- Your Content Topics: What should you discuss in your content?
- Your Customer’s Wins: What will your product help them achieve? How are they going to “win” with your product?
You can apply those three areas to a simple Venn diagram:
The first circle is your audience, aka who you’re going to help with your content. And no, the answer can’t be “everyone”.
You need to be very precise here.
The more specific you can get with your target audience, the easier it’ll be for someone to assess if your content is for them.
Next, you need to decide what your content will be about.
Think about what portion of your audience’s problems, goals, aspirations, and frustrations you want to discuss in your content.
This will help you stay clear on what to mention and NOT mention in your content — and let me tell you, after creating content for a while, you’ll notice how important that clarity is.
Lastly, you need to know what your content will help your audience achieve. In other words, how their lives will improve after reading your content. This can be as simple as:
They’ll know how to earn more money from using my tool
Or something fancy like:
They’ll feel more confident and empowered to advance in their career.
Can it be both? Yes.
But right now, pick only one, primary goal you want to pursue with your content.
Now, look at the center of this diagram. This is where we’ll put your content mission statement — one sentence that defines your niche.
Let’s use the content mission statement for a fitness app.
The target audience for it will be 25-35-year-old stay-at-home mums. (Target audience).
They look for ways to incorporate more activity into their day without a big time commitment (Their problem).
In your product-led content, you could show them how to achieve this goal by using your app’s library of convenient, no-equipment workout programs tried by 1000+ other mums. (Their wins)
Pretty easy, right?
Let’s move on to the second step:
Step 2: Find the right channels
Time to decide where you should publish your product-led content.
To do so, you need to find out the formats and channels your target audience prefers.
You can check it by spending time on the platforms and see if there are strong communities built around the topics of your content and how many influencers from your niche are there.
For example, while building the strategy for VeryCreatives, we knew LinkedIn would be the best idea because of the strong, supportive community of startup builders and entrepreneurs there.
Thinking about your content channel in this way will make showing up every day easier, as you’ll always feel welcome there.
The other factor you need to consider is your preferences.
While working with clients, I always ask them: “Can you imagine yourself creating this one format every day for the next 3 years?”
If the answer is “yes”, you found a perfect format.
The choice of the format may also determine the final choice of the channel.
While almost all social media platforms let you post short-form videos nowadays, they might not feel as integral or native to the platform as written content, for example.
So, they won’t generate as much attention, leaving you with the impression that something’s wrong with your content.
“But Kuba, aren’t we supposed to do original things?”
Yes — and no. While you should never forget the quality of your insights, forcing yourself to be 100% original might work against you, not for you.
People are used to seeing specific content formats while scrolling their social media feeds. We expect short-form videos on TikTok and text-based posts on Twitter.
This is known as familiarity bias. It’s a cognitive bias in which people tend to prefer ideas, concepts, and people that they are already familiar with.
So, instead of fighting against your audience’s habits using a completely new format, try to come up with ways to stand out within a certain content format.
Use things like:
- original hooks for written posts on Twitter
- unique aesthetics of your Instagram photos and reels (show that TikTok girl that do creepy stuff)
- or outstanding storytelling in your videos
The quality of the format is what attracts your audience’s eyes. So, don’t try to be original, but always try to create something of outstanding quality.
Step 3: Build a strong online presence on this channel
Having a strong online presence is crucial to putting your content in front of millions of eyes online.
The best way to think about it is by imagining building your expertise as moving to a huge neighborhood.
When you just moved into your new place, nobody really knows you and trusts you.
But if you consistently offer help, engage with your neighbors in interesting conversations, or even put a smile on their faces with a few kind words, they’ll start to recognize you on the streets and reciprocate with the same positive energy.
Exactly the same applies to your online presence. When you show up daily on the platform, engage with other people’s content, support them, and offer help with no expectations of returning the favor — people start to like you.
And when they like you, they’re more likely to hit that like button under your post. Or maybe even reshare it with their audience.
Keep in mind, though, that this all won’t happen overnight. The most important thing to keep in mind is consistency.
And hey, the longer you do it, the less uncomfortable you’ll feel.
BONUS: 5 Tips and Reminders for Product-Led Content
To make sure you nail your product-led content strategy, I gathered a few additional, less popular tips for you. Keep them in mind while working on your content and see how they improve your results:
- Focus on user needs, not features. Explain how your product solves real problems or makes life easier, don’t just list specs. Users care about outcomes, not inputs.
- Include calls to action. Give people a clear next step, like “sign up for a free trial” or “watch a demo video.” Make it easy for interested users to engage further.
- Mix up your formats. Blog posts, videos, infographics and more keep people engaged. Different mediums appeal to varying learning styles.
- Promote community and education. User-generated content and expert guides develop trust and establish your authority. People feel good supporting a brand that also supports others.
- Test and optimize continuously. See what content and messaging resonates most using analytics. Refine your approach based on hard data about what really drives results. Keep perfecting your system through continuous learning.
The goal of product-led content is making users successful with your solution. Focus outwardly on that goal, rather than inwardly on technical aspects, and your content will help more people while strengthening your business.
Final Thoughts
Product-led content can give your SaaS a massive advantage in the market.
It engages your customers, drives product adoption, and builds brand loyalty by putting your product into the context of your customers.
In case you need help implementing your product-led content strategy, StoryAngled’s here to help!
Book a free 30-minute call with Kuba, our product-led content marketing expert, to learn how to incorporate product-led content as a part of your SaaS growth strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is product-led content?
Product-led content is a content marketing approach that presents a product as a solution to specific problems customers experience, rather than just promoting product features. It uses the context of customers’ problems to align features and benefits and create advice.
What are the benefits of product-led content?
The main benefits are improved product adoption, increased user engagement, an informed buying journey, higher customer satisfaction, and easier customer retention. By providing guidance directly in the product experience, it helps users understand value faster.
How do I implement product-led content?
There is a 3 step process: 1) Identify your content mission statement by defining your audience, topics, and what wins customers will achieve. 2) Choose channels like blogs, videos, etc where your audience spends time. 3) Build a strong online presence by consistently engaging on that channel to build trust.
What types of product-led content are effective?
Interactive tutorials, demos, blog articles, ebooks and guides are common examples that walk users through scenarios and solutions. Integrating tips, best practices or comparison charts directly into a product is also impactful.
What should I focus on in my product-led content?
Explain how your product solves real problems or makes life easier for users, rather than just listing features. Include clear calls to action. Mix up content formats and promote community/education to establish authority and trust. Continuously test and optimize based on analytics.
How do I stand out with my product-led content?
Focus outwardly on user outcomes rather than technical aspects. Come up with original hooks, aesthetics or storytelling within your chosen content formats instead of trying entirely new formats. Quality is more important than being 100% original.
