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SaaS Content Marketing Strategy: 5 Steps for Success

Learn the foundations of a winning SaaS content marketing strategy. It won’t be easy but it will be clear. Keep reading to get your bearings and get to work.

Levon Khachatryan

6 minute read

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Short answer

How to build a SaaS content marketing strategy?

Identify your target audience and their problems
Organize your content into stages of the user journey
Produce ONLY the right content
Focus on the most effective content distribution channel
Find the tools you need to succeed - fast

The unique challenge of SaaS content marketing

Content marketing strategy poses a unique challenge for SaaS businesses. Unlike tangible products, SaaS solutions are intangible and complex and require a deep understanding by potential customers.

For this reason, in today's article, we will discuss the main steps for planning a successful content marketing strategy. From keyword research and KPIs to content production and distribution, we will cover it all.

So, let’s get started!

Why no-strategy is bad-strategy for SaaS content marketing

Without a well-thought-out strategic approach you might find yourself struggling with inconsistent messaging, wasting precious resources, and missing out on valuable opportunities to generate leads and attract customers.

Without a roadmap and clear objectives, it's challenging to measure the success of your content marketing efforts and make informed improvements.

Simply put, having no strategy for SaaS content marketing can seriously hold back your growth and competitiveness in the market.

5 steps for creating a successful SaaS content marketing strategy

1. Identify your target audience and their problems

The first crucial step is coming up with content ideas that resonate with your audience and address their specific pain points.

To begin, conduct thorough market research to gain insights into your target demographic, including their demographics, interests, and behaviors.

For example, if your target audience is interested in sustainability, you might want to explore trends and consumer preferences in the palm oil market to inform your content strategy.

Next, delve deeper into their problems and challenges. This involves actively listening to your audience through various channels such as social media, forums, customer feedback surveys, and one on one interviews.

Lastly, organize brainstorming meetings with your team to understand new ways of addressing customer needs and problems.

2. Organize your content into stages of the user journey

After identifying your target audience for a SaaS content marketing strategy, it’s time to categorize keyword groups into several types to effectively address their needs and interests.

Here is an outline of the main types of keyword group

How to organize content marketing throughout the user journey
Content type	Description	Funnel stage	Awareness level
What-Is and Educational Content	Produce content that explains industry-specific terms, concepts, and best practices related to your SaaS solution.	Awareness	Problem aware
Examples and Use Cases	Develop content that showcases real-life examples and use cases of how your audience can solve their problems (at least in part) using your solution.	Interest	Solution aware
How-To's and Tutorials	Create content that provides step-by-step guides, tutorials, and how-to articles that demonstrate how to solve your audience’s problems (at least in part) using your solution	Interest	Solution aware
Software Listicles	Compile lists of top or recommended software solutions within your SaaS niche including yours.	Consideration	Solution aware
[Competitor] Alternatives	Create content around keywords that compare major players in your niche with your SaaS solution (and make yourself look reasonably better).	Consideration	Solution aware
Product Reviews and Comparisons	Write in-depth reviews of your own SaaS solution and/ or compare your product with other relevant products in the market (and make yourself look reasonably better).	Consideration	Brand aware

3. Produce ONLY the right content

Find out and produce the type of content that your audience is consuming. You can even use social media reports to gather information about what interests your followers and start there.

You can make long-form articles, videos, presentations, social media posts, infographics, podcasts, and online tools. Any mix will do, but don’t waste time creating content your audience cares little about.

It does not make sense to make videos for TikTok if your audience is 55-year-old executives. But it makes perfect sense if they’re 16-year-old school girls.

In much the same way, it doesn’t make sense to produce expensive 1-hour podcasts for teenage Gen-Alphas with the attention span of a goldfish. But it makes perfect sense for tech professionals who prefer and trust this type of content.

4. Focus on the most effective content distribution channel

In a SaaS content marketing strategy, content distribution is equally as important as content production. Once you have created valuable and engaging content, it is crucial to ensure that it reaches your target audience effectively.

Only write long-form content if you can make it uncopyable

Long-form content is the way most companies go about doing content marketing. Based on Hubspot’s model and their well-known success companies assume they can do the same.

That said building a highly converting blog or similar resource is very hard and time-consuming. The competition is now harder than ever and due to get worse because of the rise of AI writing tools.

Unless your SaaS content writing is truly authoritative and uniquely uncopyable, this is not the way to go in this day and age. Especially not if you’re expecting an immediate or short-term return on investment. However, average conversion rates for SaaS companies can rise significantly if you can correctly convey their value proposition in long-form content and add a great CTA. And in the end, you’ll want to have some form of content marketing strategy to boost your SEO.

Do email marketing - the golden standard of content distribution

Email marketing has long-time reigned supreme as the most effective content marketing channel with the highest conversion rates of any other channel.

Distributing your content directly to your audience's inbox means you get your audience’s fullest attention (almost).

Building an email subscriber list allows you to nurture relationships, provide exclusive content, and drive traffic back to your website.

In addition, you can also gather emails and do outreaches to verified email adresses. In this case, you should consider using an email verifier to contact the right people, as well as a BIMI to brand your outreach and increase credibility.

Do Social media if you’re a B2C SaaS

Social media requires fast and constant content bites but provides slow and limited returns for most companies.

For B2C SaaS companies social media can grow your user base fast and bring significant income.

But for B2B companies social media is a slow and tedious process. It involves building a following and levering long-term relationships. These allow you to be in the right place at the right time when a buyer is ready to pay for what you offer.

Get traction through influencer marketing

Collaborating with influencers and industry experts is another powerful distribution strategy. By partnering with influential individuals who have a strong following in your industry, you can tap into their network and reach a wider audience.

Get close up close and personal with SMS marketing

SMS marketing is a high-risk high-reward SaaS content marketing strategy. Most people see SMS marketing as intrusive. Make sure you only use this with strict user permission.

And pending you get the privilege of engaging with your audience in the privacy of their phone message box, make sure to make each message provide true value.

Also, experiment with text messaging (SMS) versus multimedia messaging (MMS). Maybe they prefer richer messages. You should get to know the difference between SMS and MMS to pick the best option.

5. Find the tools you need to succeed - fast

Having the right tools is essential to enable you to effectively execute your strategy. The right toolbox depends on your specific strategy, which makes it impossible for me to give you practical advice.

That said, there are basic tools that 99% of SaaS companies rely on for some part of their content marketing execution.

Essential SaaS content marketing tools:

Buffer: Buffer is a social media management platform that allows SaaS businesses to schedule and publish content across multiple social media channels.

It helps streamline content distribution, maintain a consistent social media presence, and track engagement metrics.

SEMrush: As an all-in-one digital marketing tool offering multiple features, you can use SEMrush for keyword research, competitor analysis, and SEO optimization.

It enables SaaS businesses to identify relevant keywords for their content, track keyword rankings, analyze competitors' strategies, and optimize their content for search engines.

MailChimp: MailChimp is a marketing automation platform and email-marketing service that helps you manage and talk to your clients, customers, and other interested parties.

BuzzSumo: BuzzSumo is a content research tool that helps SaaS businesses discover popular and trending content in their industry.

It allows users to analyze content performance, identify influencers, and gain insights into the types of content that resonate with their target audience.

Hotjar: Hotjar is a user behavior analytics tool that provides insights into how visitors interact with a website through heatmaps, recordings, and surveys.

It helps SaaS businesses understand user behavior, identify usability issues, and optimize their website's user experience, ultimately improving content engagement and conversion rates.

Stroydoc: Stroydoc is a B2B content creation tool for content marketing. It lets you quickly make well-designed and interactive content of any type. Like long-form reports, interactive case studies, sales one-pagers, and e-books.

Storydoc content vs legacy SaaS content like PDFs:

Try Storydoc

Static PDF or PPT

Interactive Storydoc

Levon Khachatryan

Levon is an SEO Content Writer at SayNine. He is a hard-working and highly motivated person with a big-time desire to create content on branding, digital marketing, and advertising. He enjoys both the writing and research process. Apart from his job, he is a great cinema lover and student for life.

Table of contents

Unique challenge of SaaS content marketing Why no-strategy is bad-strategy 5 steps for creating a successful content strategy Tools you need to succeed - fast

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