As a SaaS business owner, I’m sure you want to know exactly how to make content marketing work for you.
After all, content marketing is the rave of the moment, and most SaaS business owners use it to grow their brand, generate more leads, and increase their MRR and ARR.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, about 91% of B2B marketers say that they use content marketing to reach their customers.
Percentage of B2B businesses that use content marketing. Image via Content Marketing Institute.
That’s huge right? Well, that’s not all…
Is Content Marketing Good For Lead Generation?
Twitter, one of the world’s most used social media platforms shows exactly how great content can have a huge impact on businesses.
By using Twitter alone, companies are gaining more exposure and attracting more leads.
In a recent survey, it found out that about 66% of people found a new business on Twitter.
Not only that…
Just because of a tweet, 69% of people bought something on the social media platform.
Amazing, isn’t it?
Similarly, 94% of people plan to make a purchase from a business they follow on Twitter.
So, what does this mean?
Without a Content Marketing Plan, You’re Leaving So Much On The Table
If you run a SaaS business owner you must create a content marketing strategy for your business. Else, you’ll miss out on a lot of opportunities and leave so much on the table.
Research from Statista shows that there are about 1.92 billion digital buyers in the world currently.
With content marketing alone, you can make them trust and buy from you. So, if you want to reach out to more people and increase your bottom-line revenue as SaaS brand, you must learn how to make content marketing work for you.
How to Make Content Marketing Work For Your SaaS Brand Using This Step-by-Step Guide
It’s true that your SaaS brand will benefit immensely from content marketing if you use it.
However, if you fail to do it the right way, you will lose so much money, and not get high ROIs from it.
I want to show you the exact steps you need to take to ensure that content marketing work for your SaaS brand.
With these five sure-fire strategies and tips, your content marketing efforts will benefit your online business immensely.
Step #1. Invest In Traffic Generation
In digital marketing, traffic generation is important. If your SaaS business blog doesn’t generate enough traffic, you might as well forget about content marketing entirely.
This is because, the more traffic you generate, the more people you’re able to reach.
So, you need to invest heavily in generating high levels of traffic.
When you do, you’ll be able to reach more people and stand the chance of getting awesome results for your content marketing efforts.
How To Generate Traffic To Your SaaS Business Blog
Traffic generation is the most difficult aspect of content marketing. This is because a lot of businesses are also doing it, so it’s difficult to outrank them.
One of the best ways to attract new followers to your business blog is to take the hard route.
So, Instead of publishing generic short posts on your blog that adds no value to your readers and won’t generate traffic for your business, you should do the following:
1. Publish long-form useful pieces of content
It might take you a while to create long-form content, but it always delivers great results.
According to SEMrush, publishing long-form content above 3000 words has a huge impact on traffic, shares, and backlinks.
If you can’t do this on your own, you can employ the services of a content marketing agency.
Some of the long-form content techniques you can use include the Skyscraper Technique by Brian Dean, and the Pillar page technique by Hubspot.
By creating long-form content through these techniques, more people will visit your blog since the content are sure to be more in-depth, actionable, and valuable.
Fun Fact: Active Campaign grew their organic traffic from 8,765 to 119,037 visitors witthin two years using this strategy alone.
Aside from creating long-form content, another traffic generation strategy is.
2. Collaborate with influencers
When you collaborate with influencers, you’ll be able to reach more people since they have a large audience base. With this, you’ll witness a dramatic surge in traffic to your SaaS business blog.
However, getting the attention of influencers is difficult. Especially, if you’re relatively new to the industry. So, you can create an expert round-up post on your blog, where you can feature these influencers.
Once done, you can notify them about it.
When you do, they’ll be happy to mention your SaaS brand and help you reach more people.
If you can’t get the attention of influencers in your niche, don’t worry.
3. Guest posting on authority blogs and top publications
If you’re able to get a feature or by-line on say Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes, Business Insider, and Inc., what do you think will happen to your online business?
Definitely, your traffic will skyrocket.
This is because these are websites that have an engaged audience who’ve been following them for long. When you post on them, it’ll surely have a positive and lasting impact on your business.
Recently, I wrote a guest post for Jeff Bullas, and it helped my business greatly.
However, if you’re not on a budget, you can ditch all the strategies above, and opt for.
4. Use paid adverts to generate traffic to your business blog
You can use different advertisement models such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads for your online business.
If done correctly, they’ll help you get the needed attention, hence aiding your traffic generation tremendously.
After generating the needed traffic to your business blog, you have to…
Step #2. Build a Community Of Loyal Followers
Generating traffic to your blog isn’t enough. You must start using it immediately. Else, you’d have wasted time and resources building it.
That’s why you need to build a community of loyal followers. These are the people that’ll identify with your SaaS brand, buy from you, and promote what you do. Hence, you must pay attention to this part of your business, as it’s strategic to make it grow.
How to Use Content Marketing to Build a Community For Your SaaS Brand
Here is a step-by-step guide showing you exactly how you can build a community for your SaaS brand.
1. Figure out what is in it for your audience
When building a community, the first thing you must do is figure out what you want to give your audience. This is known in email marketing as an ethical bribe.
The reason is simple. Most people won’t join a community if there’s nothing valuable they’ll gain from it.
Hence, you need to understand who your target audience is, and the types of content that’ll work for them. Depending on the stage your audience is in the content marketing funnel, you can decide to give out a free eBook, create a crash course, a free webinar, and so on.
After doing this, the next step is to.
2. Identify the kind of community you want to build
There are different types of communities out there. The one you’ll most likely go for depends on your target audience, what they enjoy most, where they hang out, and so on.
If your audience is majorly business people, you might consider
- Having an email list
With an email list, you’ll be able to reach and communicate better with them.
However, when building an email list, you must be strategic with the kind of content you share with your audience.
Chances are, that if your emails become too boring they’ll stop reading them, or unsubscribe from your list entirely.
However, if they’re valuable, they’ll be on the lookout for your next email always.
Aside from an email list, you can.
- Create a Facebook group
A Facebook group offers you the opportunity to share interesting insights with your audience, know their pain points, and help them grow.
But, it’s difficult to build and maintain a Facebook group for long. If you want to do this effectively, you should learn how to build and manage a Facebook community.
Apart from a Facebook group, you can consider
- Start a YouTube channel and Podcast
Having a dedicated YouTube channel and Podcast will go a long way when engaging with your community. For millennials and Gen Z, a YouTube channel will be your sure bet.
However, if you have an audience of busy professionals, having a Podcast will serve them better.
As a rule of thumb, you must share valuable and interesting insight with your audience. That way, you can succeed with this strategy.
If you have a boring video or an uninspiring podcast, you’ll most likely not attract the right audience for your business.
This video shows you exactly how to start a Youtube channel from scratch and grow it too.
Aside from YouTube videos, conversational marketing and push notification also help greatly in building a community of loyal followers
Step #3. Solve Your Audience’s Pain Points
Managing an online business isn’t easy. So, what keeps you going most times is when you witness a high ROI. After all, you’re in business to make money.
Without this, you won’t be able to maintain and keep your business online, foot your bill, and so much more.
And besides, if you have huge traffic on your blog, and a raving community, it won’t count if your SaaS business isn’t generating any income.
That’s why you need to create products and offer services in your business.
With this, your traffic and audience will translate into something meaningful, else you’ll blame yourself for starting an online business in the first place.
Before Creating Your Products: What You Should Do
You don’t just jumpstart the process and start creating products out of the moon. If you do, you’re most likely not going to generate any income from it.
The first step is to create buyer personas. That way, you can find out exactly what your target audience wants. If you’re able to do this well, you’ll get huge results.
The best way to go about this is to ask your audience what they’re interested in at the moment.
Chances are, that they’ll respond and give you a clue of what you should spend your time creating for them.
You can do this through Google forms, Survey monkey, and so on.
After Creating Your Products: What Next?
You must understand that a product doesn’t generate income on its own. Creating a product is great, but if you don’t sell, it won’t be useful to your business.
So, the next thing you must do immediately after creating your products is to promote them.
In fact, you should spend more time promoting your SaaS products than you did in creating them. This is where your audience and the traffic which you generated previously will come in handy.
In fact, you should implement these strategies that help you get more sales from content marketing.
Step #4. Have a Well-Planned Content Marketing Strategy
When it comes to selling products and services online, the most difficult aspect is closing sales. Most times, your audience will indicate interest in your product, sign up for a free trial, but in the long run, they won’t take any action.
This is due to a lot of factors. To some, it might be that they were unable to pay after check-out. For others, it could be a faulty internet connection.
This is why you need a content marketing strategy as a SaaS business owner. If you’re not careful, you’ll be spending a lot of time and resources to promote your products and services, without closing any sales.
To close more sales for your SaaS business, you should:
Use a Sales Funnel
A sales funnel is what most online business owners use to close sales. It usually starts with a hook, then a follow-up, and ends with a sale.
Take Neil Patel for instance.
He uses this strategy to offer his services to high-end clients. His sales funnel involves prompting readers who stumble on his blog to enter their website URL, to get a comprehensive report on how to outrank their competitors.
This redirects them to his software, UberSuggest (Which Neil Patel is actively promoting at the moment)
In a nutshell, they communicate with the potential client on the back end, until it leads to a sale.
Similarly, Jon Morrow does this awesomely too with his products. His sales funnel starts from his insanely useful blog posts that’ll get you hooked till the end.
While reading the blog posts, you’ll receive push notifications that prompts you to download his free eBook. To do this, you must submit your email address.
As soon as you receive the eBook, you’ll begin to get emails from him whenever a new post is published on the blog. Afterwards, he conducts free webinars related to his upcoming courses.
If you participate in the webinar, you’re a potential student. So, he’ll follow up with a series of emails until you buy the course.
There are more examples out there. What you’ll observe is that a lead flow funnel is a process. When you follow the process, you’ll most likely land more sales.
Step #5. Make Every Content Count
Quality content creation is a big deal for any SaaS business that wants to implement a content marketing plan.
Before you hit the send or publish button for any of your content, you must ensure that it aligns with your content marketing strategy.
You must treat every blog post as the means to an end. Such that, your online business will become popular through it.
And, a way of telling people about what your business’ products and services is all about.
To do this, you must talk about your SaaS business in your content. Be proud of it. Be willing to tell your audience about it. Always promote it and never stop repeating the process.
When you do this on a consistent basis, your online business will gain more followers, generate more traffic, and make more money.
You Too Can Make Content Marketing Work For your SaaS Brand
No business can survive online without consistent and result-oriented content marketing efforts. If you fail to implement content marketing in your online business, chances are that you’ll lose traction sooner or later.
As interesting as this seems, if you don’t do what works, you’ll get little or no results.
In this post, I’ve shown you sure-fire strategies that’ll ensure that your content marketing efforts are not in vain.
First, you need to generate lots of traffic to your business blog.
After that, you’ll build a community of loyal followers who are interested in what you do.
Thirdly, you need to monetize your business through the creation of in-demand products and offer quality services.
If you’re able to do this well, the next thing is to have a well-defined strategy to close sales.
Finally, you must make sure that every content which you publish on your blog and other platforms count.
With these, your online business will skyrocket, and your content marketing efforts will pay off.
Need help with content marketing for your SaaS brand? Contact our lead content strategist today, and we’ll schedule a strategy call with you.