Whatever B2B marketing strategy you may opt for, without content, you can’t achieve your desired result.
Content is King. No matter what. Either it’s traditional marketing or digital marketing, the need for context is inevitable.
Customers don’t buy from someone who is not reliable and trustworthy. Any business might be, without trust – there is no business. In this digital era, content is the crucial factor that will help you build trust.
But, what makes content marketing unique?
What impact can it create for the B2B SaaS industry?
Can I use it for my SaaS business?
This article will answer all your questions and help you create compelling content marketing strategies for your B2B SaaS business. By following the 10 steps, you can shift gears in business and rise from the ashes like a phoenix.
Keep reading!
Why Is Content Marketing Strategy Crucial For B2B Saas?
After the pandemic, competition in the SaaS industry is fierce.
It’s tremendous to watch the SaaS industry grow over the last few years. The companies that rely on the SaaS platforms are increasing day by day. So, does the competition too.
By the end of 2022, it is said that the SaaS industry is expected to generate nearly $220.21 billion.
Why should you use content marketing in your marketing strategy?
According to the Content Marketing Institution, 42% of the B2B marketers have produced good results from using Content Marketing.
Content marketing is all about – “Delivering the right content at the right time and at the right place.”
Commonly, it is said that nearly 48% of people read 3-5 blog posts before making a purchase online. When it comes to B2B buyers, they would be reading a lot of blogs. That’s why all businesses must focus on building a content marketing strategy and writing blogs.
Right now, Saas content marketing is competitive. But to stand out of the crowd, you have to deliver engaging, interesting, inspiring, and educating content related to your business.
Related: Content Marketing ROI Stats
10 Steps To Create A Game-changing B2b Content Marketing Strategy:
Content marketing is inevitably the beast. Compared to the other marketing types, it costs less and generates high leads.
Also, 93% of the B2B marketers prefer using Content marketing.
Below are the 10 steps that will help you create the best game-changing content marketing strategy.
1- Identify Your Audience
As a marketer, the first and foremost step any company must take is finding the right audience. Unlike traditional marketing, you can’t jump in and presume that everyone is your customer. You have to be spot on.
It will save you money, time, and effort for marketing. In some instances, you may have a restricted budget, by focusing only on those interested in your business and spending money will help you achieve your goal soon.
So, it’s ultimately essential to create a buyer’s persona. You have to collect and fill in details such as customers’ geographic, gender, age, salary, website they use, etc.
These are some of the information you must collect and fixate on the persona. You can create as many personas as you want. But, the problem is that it will sometimes be hectic with lots of personas and confusing which one to focus on. Limiting them to ease your process and save you some time to rectify your mistakes is advisable.
Related: Best B2B SaaS SEO Tools
2- Put On The Audience Shoe
Getting a picture of your audience will take you to the next important question, “what do they want?”.
It is ultimately crucial to know your audience’s needs and pain points. To know that, you have to think from their perspective. Those will be the topics you will be addressing through your content.
At this stage, you can think from the angle of each sales funnel. During each stage of the funnel, what sort of difficulties would you be facing as a customer?
Note down all your quests. Your mapping journey would be:
- Awareness stage
- Visits website
- Builds interest in your product or service
- Using a freemium model or free trial
- Paying for your premium service
- Started using your other products and service
- Using Customer service
- Renewing the subscription
At each step, what are the possible hindrances or what sort of problems you would face as a customer? Note it down. It will be helpful for you to get content ideas and create blogs or FAQs upfront.
Related: Native Advertising For B2B SaaS Businesses
3- Do Keyword Research
When focusing on a targeted audience, you also have to work on the keyphrases or keywords.
Those words will help people find you and your content on the search engine.
Plenty of tools are available to research keywords. You can use Google keyword planner, Ahref, Semrush, Alexa, and Moz to check keywords and choose keywords relevant to your business.
At each stage of the buyer’s journey, your audience will be looking for different pieces of information using different keywords at various stages.
Related: Keyword Research Guide
In the initial stage, people will use generic keywords, starting with “how to,” followed by their pain points.
Then later, once they have discovered your site, they might be looking for reviews before purchasing.
After purchasing, they might be looking for tips to use the unique feature of the software. Likewise, it goes on.
Put on the reader’s shoe and analyze the keyword that they will be using at each stage. While doing this, you will get more content ideas as most of the long-tail keywords will be the people’s pain points or doubts they have in mind regarding your business.
However, picking the right keyword will enhance your marketing effort and lead to higher customer satisfaction and retention.
4- Plan For Different Stages Of The Funnel
Different stages of your funnel require different content types.
The various stages of funnels are:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Desire
- Action
You can’t always rely on blogging. It would be best to embrace content types like – emails, landing pages, case studies, newsletters, white papers, and others to increase lead generation and revenue.
Creating content by analyzing which funnel your customer is in will help you assess the content type to use.
For the brand awareness stage, listicles, how-to, ultimate guides, and thought leaders content would work best.
For developing interest and desire, using product tour pages and demo videos content will work the best.
Whereas, for the final stage, case studies, comparison page, the alternative to type content will be efficient.
To retain customers, sending personalized emails to check how they feel remaining as your client and sending personalized offers will help them stay loyal to you.
Related: Best B2B SaaS Content Marketing Tools
5- Create An Editorial Calendar
Now you would have the list of your customer’s pain points and the topics they are searching online related to your business.
Creating an editorial calendar filled with the topic ideas, keywords to be used, distribution strategy, where the content will be posted, and the person responsible for the task will help you track the progress.
Here is where you will be fixing the type of content to be used – either how to post, listicle, ebooks, or other formats. Mixing all of them and working in the same direction will get you good results.
Depending on the importance of the topics and search volume of the keywords, prioritizing the content will attract more attention.
However, the best thing about using an editorial calendar is assessing the status of each content and easy to follow up when you’re hiring a freelancer to write content.
Related: Proven SaaS Link Building Strategies
6- Choose And Maintain Brand Voice
As a brand, your brand voice will play a significant role. Saas marketplace is crowded, and you have to find your unique point and inject your distinctive character in whatever areas you can.
Your brand voice will represent your brand’s personality. It is essential to have a specific brand’s voice, tone, and personality built from scratch. It is imperative to use it throughout your website and other content as well. So, while writing, your writers must use the same voice, style, and personality.
Everyone in the company must be following the same.
You can find the voice and tone of your brand effortlessly by answering the below questions:
- How will you describe your brand as a person?
- What emoji will you give to your brand?
- If your audience reads your content or visits your website, how do you want them to feel?
7- Create Content
Finally, after creating the editorial calendar, the next step is diving right into the process. Creating content!
Sure, you would have a lot of writing requirements. To meet it, you can hire a writer or opt for a freelancer.
While creating content, it has to add value to the customer. It has to address the customer’s pain point and provide a solution to it. The content needs to be educating, interesting, engaging, or entertaining. That’s the only way to grab the attention of the audience.
Moreover, mixing plenty of concepts in one blog post or content will be useless, and the reader won’t be interested. While creating content, it’s best to concentrate on one topic and give in-depth detail.
Explain the concept from a new perspective, resonating with your goal. Add CTA’s at the end of the content to push your audience to take action.
Related: What is Content Writing?
8- Distribute Your Content To Various Platforms
What is the purpose of writing blogs, ebooks, emails, posts if no one reads?
It’s like walking dead. All your time, energy, and effort you have put in is a waste. You have created the content for your targeted audience, and you can’t wait for them to come to you. The only way to reach your audience is to distribute your content across various platforms for feedback.
Most probably, it would be best if you plan your distribution strategy along while preparing your editorial calendar.
Here are few ways you can distribute your content:
- SEO:
Optimizing your content for the search engines will make people find you from search. For optimization, keyword research is vital. Based on the content relevancy and quality, the search engine will rank your content.
Related: What is SEO? Complete Guide
- Social Media:
Another best way to drive traffic to your blog or website is through the social media platform. By regularly interacting with your audience, you can know their pain points, the satisfaction of using your product and find a way to enhance your product.
Related: Tips To Build And Grow Your Social Media Presence
By sharing your content on the social media platform, you can drive traffic and grab people’s attention. Moreover, it will make people share your blogs if they find them interesting, useful, exciting, or engaging. If you have a limited reach on social media, you can leverage influencers or key opinion leaders with big follower communities. They can put your B2B brand in front of more people than you can ever manage on your own.
- Paid:
Targeting your audience and running a paid campaign is always helpful for the B2B SaaS. However, the Saas industry gets a good result by using the organic search result. But, for the initial stage, the paid strategies will get you much-reputed traffic to your site.
Related: PPC Tips For Beginners
- Email Marketing:
Sending emails is always the best way to stay connected with your audience. Sending personalized emails – leaving the link of your blog or article that addresses one of their pain points will urge them to check it out.
Even while the sales team is sending offers to retain a customer or follow-up email, they too can send links along with that email to the customer.
Related: Best Email Marketing Examples
9- Pay Attention To The Font Style And Theme
Even Though you have created perfect content, sometimes you can miss out on your traffic because of the theme and the format.
It can be overwhelming to use different themes and formants for different pages. It will affect the user experience and also the brand reputation.
Related: Fundamentals of UX Design
9 out of 10 times, the font style of the content and the color contrast are the reasons people bounce to other sites. If you have used some stylistic fonts for beauty concerns, people will not like it.
So, choose a font style and an appealing theme for your blog to engage with your audience.
10- Measure And Adjust
Does your marketing effort all go to waste?
Do your blogs get fewer views?
Is your traffic and conversion rate dropping? Then, it’s time to make some tweaks.
Document every strategy you use or every move you make as a marketer. It will be easy to trace where it has gone wrong if it is a document.
There is no evidence that a strategy that has worked for others would do the same to your business. Marketing is all about experimentation. You have to keep kicking yourself to measure and adapt to new changes.
Always work for what your audience wants. Front your audience needs – you will get your desired result. When making a change in your strategy, make sure you convey it to your teams because everyone should work on the same line.
Conclusion
This guide has given 10 tips that will help you create the best content marketing strategy for your B2B SaaS industry.
Don’t ever complicate your strategy. Keep it simple, track results and refine your plan if it is necessary.
The stats show us that all the B2B SaaS companies using content marketing have got 30% higher growth and 10% retention.
The B2B market is at its peak. If you can develop the right strategy and reach the right people, you can achieve your desired result quickly.
Create and plan for different stages of the funnel. Add values to your customer. Educate your customer – how your product can solve their problem. Build trust and thrive in the industry.
