What's the secret to writing great SaaS content? Learn how to write content that speeds up your user acquistion process.
.png)
As an early-stage SaaS founder or marketing lead, you've tried your hand at content writing. But even though you write well, the content you're putting out there is consistently failing to reach its full potential.
Sure, you're getting lots of views. People are even engaging with your content. But there's no actual uptick in qualified leads. Your content isn't contributing to your SaaS product in any meaningful way at all.
B2B SaaS content is extremely goal-based. That means writing skills are not enough here, you have to be very strategic about it. The content you create needs to align with your business goals as well as the goals of your audience.
Don't be swayed by vanity metrics like traffic and engagement. If your articles are getting thousands of views but no leads and generic comments that don't add to the conversation in meaningful ways, there might be something wrong with your approach.
This guide isn't going to rehash writing advice. You already know how to write. What you need help with is SaaS content writing that drives user acquisition. So, I'll be sharing a comprehensive guide that helps you to think strategically about content production, with a strong framework for generating brand awareness and creating product demand.
It's all based on my personal experience as a B2B startup journalist and SaaS content writer for the last seven years: actionable advice that you can implement right away to start securing more leads. That sound good? Well then, keep reading!
SaaS writing is all about generating leads and nurturing them into conversion.
Unlike other forms of blog content, it's focused on using your writing not just to inform readers, but to generate demand within a specific audience, qualify them as potential customers, and encourage them to take action. Since it's a subscription-based business model, SaaS content strategy also needs to focus equally on user retention and customer loyalty.
As you move upmarket, things get even trickier. B2B SaaS typically involves a higher price tag than B2C SaaS, making the buyer journey longer and more complicated. When a SaaS company targets enterprises, it may even have to deal with multiple decision-makers across departments before landing a contract.
Understanding these basic principles is key to creating good content pieces for the SaaS industry. You need to have a thorough understanding of the marketing funnel, your customers, and your product if you want to drive results.
You've just wrapped up your initial funding rounds as a SaaS founder. Now, you're thinking about which channels to invest in. You know that content is a great way to market your SaaS product, but for some reason, your content simply isn't doing what you want it to do.
If you want to understand why, you have to ask yourself why you want to create content in the first place. The answer will determine whether content writing is even the right marketing channel for you and how you should go about producing content that hits your goals.
With that in mind, there are three reasons why you might want to create content. These are defined by the content marketing trifecta model:
Apart from figuring out your SaaS content marketing goals, you also need to understand how content ties into your business model.
There are two main components to a SaaS business: acquisition and retention. That means your content should serve two main purposes:
As a SaaS founder, you're quite familiar with how these concepts apply to product development. The trick is applying them to your content as well.
The first thing to realize is that a single content asset doesn't need to serve every goal. In fact, it's a terrible idea to use the same forms of content to attract leads and boost retention at the same time.
Instead, use different types of quality content for different marketing and business use cases. Each piece of content needs to have a primary goal and a specific type of customer it's trying to attract.
For example, Wistia's article "The First 3 Videos Your Small Business Should Make" is all about trying to introduce new startups to the realm of video marketing. It uses simple ideas and minimal jargon to convey why video marketing is a good investment. It's purpose-built for audiences at the top of the sales funnel, who usually take the longest to convert. However, it targets a search engine keyword with a high search volume, so it’s likely to attract more organic traffic than a typical bottom-of-the-funnel article.
But now, consider this article titled "How to Create an AI-Generated Video with ChatGPT, Synthesia, and Descript." The article is meant for a bottom-of-the-funnel audience and focuses on providing technical advice for using a specific video marketing stack. Its goal is to acquire paying customers by focusing on those search engine audiences who are most likely to convert.
The difference between the two pieces of content is pretty obvious. That's because they're meant for two completely different audiences, both of which fit the company's ideal customer profile for completely different reasons.
You understand why you need to create content. What you need now is to set up measurable goals to track the success of each piece of content and your overall content marketing strategy.
This is where SMART goals come in. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Essentially, it's a framework for setting up concrete goals that are easy to track and measure progress against over time.
For example, let's say you want your blog post to: Increase organic search traffic targeted at the bottom of the funnel by 10% over the next 3 months.
The goal is specific (increase organic search traffic), measurable (10%), achievable (within 3 months), relevant (bottom of the funnel), and time-bound (over the next 3 months).
By setting up SMART goals for each piece of content, you can easily track progress and fine-tune your content strategy over time. This helps you tweak your approach to focus on what works and eliminate what doesn't.
When it comes to SaaS content marketing, there's only one formula you need to learn to create high-converting copy that drives results. That's product-led content marketing .
The idea is to provide practical advice, tips, and tutorials that show readers how they can use your product better. This helps increase both acquisition and retention as readers discover new use cases for the product and become more comfortable with using it.
But product-led content isn't just how-to guide blog posts. It's about writing content that seamlessly integrates your product into the specific pain points the audience is trying to address. That may come in all sorts of formats, from tutorials to case studies to interviews with leading experts in the industry.
Still confused? Here are a few tips on how to create great product-led content for your SaaS blog:
Once you understand the basics of high-quality product-led content writing for SaaS businesses, you need to make sure that you're producing a consistent volume of content to address all personas at every stage of the funnel.
Here are a few types of content you can optimize for different funnel stages at SaaS companies:
Want to know how leading SaaS businesses tackle long form content creation? Take a look at these specific content writing examples from the market’s best software-as-a-service startups (links included):
If you’ve been following content marketers for any length of time, you’ve probably come across terms like “brand journalism” and “thought leadership” more than a few times. Product-led content marketing is great for developing a library of SEO content that converts, but for SaaS teams working with B2B clients with a high value per deal, there are a few other tactics you need to apply if you want to position your brand as a leader in the industry.
Thought leadership is all about positioning. You want to show those high-value client accounts that not only do you have a great product, but your brand is also a pioneering voice shaping the industry’s future.
Unfortunately, a lot of SaaS companies delegate their B2B thought leadership activities entirely to their content team, which is mostly made up of marketing and creative professionals who do not have the insider knowledge required to come up with insightful ideas about your industry.
That’s where content journalism comes in. By encouraging your content team to take an investigative journalist’s approach to researching and uncovering insights, you can craft a library of thought leadership material that helps you build trust with your target audience. One of the easiest ways to do this is to have your content writers interview SMEs, your resource of in-house and external subject matter experts who can enrich your content with original thoughts and ideas.
A lot of SaaS brands are worried about investing in brand journalism because they think it’ll be expensive. In reality, however, B2B brand journalism doesn’t cost any more or less than your typical content marketing campaign. However, it does take a different approach to how you allocate budget for content.
Let’s say, for example, that you’re currently investing $8,000 USD on publishing 16 pieces of SEO content each month. The average cost of producing each content piece with the help of an outsourced freelance writer comes down to about $500 USD. This is not inclusive of your content strategy or outreach efforts, which you’re probably handling in-house.
Now, imagine if we were to shake things up a bit. Instead of investing $8K on 16 pieces of generic content, you spend $6K to produce 3 pieces of quality journalism every month. Still have some extra funds left over? Great! Use the remaining $2K to develop a media outreach effort so that you can get the necessary backlinks to improve your SEO.
It may sound counterintuitive at first because you’re producing a lower volume of content. But this is actually a much better allocation of your resources because your content now has much better chance of ranking in positions #1 to #3 for your target keyword in Google SERPs. So, you end up getting more leads and closing more sales with just 3 pieces of high quality content than you ever would have with 16 articles that just regurgitate existing information.
To produce high quality content that converts for B2B SaaS is no easy feat! You need to find SaaS writers who understand the nuances of product-led storytelling. A good SaaS writer will know how to combine research data, customer stories, and clever copywriting to entice your target audience.
Here are a few tips to consider when hiring great SaaS content writers:
Of course, if you’re going to work with freelancers, you can just outsource the task of building out your content team in its entirety by hiring a specialized marketing agency instead. SaaS content writing firms often have an established pool of writers, strategists, and designers who can get new content up and running much faster.
Struggling to build out your content journalism motion, but wary of hiring a typical marketing agency?
Hi, I'm Ritoban. I'm a tech journalist turned content marketer specializing in product-led investigative storytelling for SaaS brands. I've spent the last decade driving bottom-line impact for SaaS companies like Glide, Kubera, Sendbird, Superhuman, and 7pace. Now, I specialize in providing end-to-end content marketing services for in-house marketing teams spanning strategy, production, design, and promotion.
The tech economy is wildly unstable right now. You need a dedicated inbound marketing expert who has the experience you can bank on. Want to learn more about how I can help your SaaS startup not just survive, but thrive? Fill up this quick form to schedule a 1-on-1 strategy call!
