Content Marketing for Your SaaS: What You Need to Know to Position Your Brand Today

Today’s SaaS (Software as a Service) environment is increasingly competitive and crowded. Brands today cannot afford to get by on word of mouth or portfolios alone. 

The SaaS market is currently growing by nearly 20 percent each year. A new report from BMC estimates that by the end of 2022, 99% of all organizations in the U.S. will use one or more SaaS solutions; more than three-quarters of small businesses have already invested in an SaaS option. Although numbers vary widely, estimates from Statista suggest that there were about 15,000 SaaS companies in the United States in 2021, and they collectively served 14 billion clients globally.

This all points to exciting growth prospects for well-positioned SaaS companies in the U.S.. It also means that competition is fierce and will continue. Building a strong brand for your SaaS business is not optional in 2022.

What Is Content Marketing for SaaS?

Content marketing is the evolution of traditional marketing tactics. Instead of showcasing a particular product or service, content marketing is a method of positioning your brand or your company as a solutions provider. It shows you are truly relevant and useful, a partner who can help troubleshoot, anticipate, and solve problems.

Content marketing uses online content tied to your webpage and social media pages to showcase your talents and abilities. It can extend to email marketing, pay-per-click marketing, search engine optimization, and public relations to create a holistic, broad marketing strategy for your company to show what it does best.

Benefits of Content Marketing for Your SaaS

There are four key benefits to content marketing for your SaaS. These benefits can extend to any company, really. They include:

• Increased sales
• Cost savings
• Higher-quality, strongly loyal customers
• The ability to use content to make its own money

Content marketing is both the present and future of marketing. It is already being used by modern, forward-thinking brands to show in practical ways how you will do more for the customer than your competition will.

Where Does Content Marketing Take Place?

Most simple content marketing strategies for SaaS start and end with website content. Even so, website content is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SaaS marketing. Today, a wide variety of platforms engage in SaaS content marketing. This means you have many areas with which you need to be familiar and learn to optimize.  It also presents innumerable opportunities for taking advantage of content marketing initiatives.

In content marketing for SaaS, you can put great content on:

• All of your social media pages
• Successful public relations strategies
• PPC (pay per click) advertising campaigns
• Inbound marketing that drives traffic and leads
• On-page SEO in the form of optimized website content, organic keywords, and enhanced content such as blogs

Where to Start Content Marketing for Your SaaS

Every brand has three main elements that form the foundation of its business plan:

• Product: The thing you sell that is unique to you
• Audience: The people who find your product valuable enough that they will spend their hard-earned money on it
• Market: The unique characters of the environment in which you operate and how it is affected by outside forces and trends

Understanding each of these three pillars of marketing positions you to comprehend the interplay between your product, the people who already are or who might someday be interested in it, and factors that could affect how inclined people are to learn about your SaaS company and sign up for it as a customer.

The Heart of Content Marketing: Get to Know Your Audience

Although your product is key to your operations and marketing conditions will dictate whether or not people are really in the mood to buy from you, your audience is the real wild card in content marketing. They are the ones who will receive a message and make a buy decision based on that message. To get started, it would be a smart idea to set up interviews with three types of customers:

• Current customers
• Prospective customers
• Your employees who work with both of the above customer types

Each of these personas will have a different perspective of your brand and your product or service that will help you build your voice. Talk to each of these stakeholders to gain insight on how you can create value for them and be someone they turn to time and time again. Listen to the essence of what they have to say, collect what you learn, and use it to create a brand message that will eventually become part of the marketing collateral that will tell your story.

SaaS Marketing Basics: Create Your Brand Narrative and Tell Your SaaS Company’s Story

Your SaaS company’s story – “narrative” in the current parlance – is the reason why you exist, the way you make your customers’ lives better, and your avenue for creating value and putting money in your pocket. Doing this is key – companies that do not develop their narrative are falling behind in the world of SaaS brand marketing.

Here are the components of your story:

• Why now: What is going on in the world that makes your company the right choice for the customer?
• Insight: What makes you different from the others, whether that is your product or the way you deliver it?
• Vision and mission: How are you going to make the world a better place with your SaaS?
• Audience: Who are you selling to – How many of them are there? What are the job titles of the people who will buy from you? What specific industry are you playing in?
• And finally, the message: How do you talk about yourself and what you provide?; How are you positioned against the competition?; What does your audience learn about you from your marketing collateral?; What sort of personnel or voice do you have?

When All Else Fails, Seek Professional Help

Yes, content marketing is critical for your SaaS company, but no, in no way is it easy to get all of this right. This is where a Chicago content marketing agency can help out. Experts like those at Digital Authority Partners can help you understand your market, how to talk to your audience, and how to differentiate yourself in a crowded market. To find out more and learn what a Chicago digital marketing agency can do for you, get in touch with Digital Authority Partners today.