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SEO no longer concerns the web only. The Instagram app has become a full-scale point of brand discovery, making Instagram SEO important for any business that aims to tap into its target audience. So next time you schedule Instagram posts, think "keywords" and "search...
Jan 9, 2025
SaaS content marketing authentically builds online brands, by boosting visibility and establishing a connection with very specific audiences. It also builds authority and carves out a niche where businesses can claim ownership of a specific approach. In turn, enhanced brand visibility reliably increases leads and conversions.
When you design content that serves your target audience, they learn that your brand is their go-to for answered questions, resolved pain points, and generally pertinent info. People get a clear view of the value you provide.
After all, trust is what ultimately converts and retains customers.
So, let’s get into how you can build a successful SaaS marketing strategy and how content marketing software can save you time and effort in the process.
SaaS content marketing refers to planning, developing, publishing, and promoting content that builds trust for companies offering software-as-a-service (SaaS). Its goal is to use relevant and informative content to attract, intrigue, and educate a specific target audience by engaging with its unique pain points and requirements.
As opposed to non-SaaS content marketing, this specific practice caters to a different target audience. Instead of talking only to individual consumers about one-time purchase decisions, you’re often talking to business entities and groups of decision-makers about making a commitment for a set period of time. Contracts and subscriptions expire, making customer onboarding and retention just as important as customer conversion.
Budgets and timelines are different, with some SaaS products seeing much longer buying cycles in the B2B space for example. Your choices of channels and formats will differ too (think ebooks and whitepapers over TikToks).
A strong content marketing strategy makes the difference between a brand that simply exists and one that thrives. SaaS companies need to nurture deeper, more developed relationships with customers, so this will influence how you approach content development. But the more you illuminate the intersection between what people need and your unique value proposition, the better ROI you’ll see for each individual piece of content.
Brand awareness keeps increasing as a great SaaS content marketing strategy unfurls over time. This works best if you plan and create with search engine optimization advantages in mind.
Optimized, high-quality content brings more traffic to your website by helping you rank higher in search results. Yes, look at backlinks and analytics and research how keywords have changed. But don’t go into it writing for robots. SaaS companies (and everyone else) should write for people first, then optimize as needed.
This approach ensures that people don’t just find you, but remember your brand and how it can help. Reviewing content over longer periods to keep it fresh and relevant also provides a steady brand awareness boost.
Consider doing a little “cringe edit” as well – look at a blog post, for example, and see if your writing has improved to the point that you no longer vibe with certain jokes or expressions you might have written in the past. This is likely true for your audience as well.
This blend of data-driven and people-driven creates solid brand awareness.
With this in mind, consider that every piece of long-form content you develop can reach a wider audience if it’s broken down into snackable parts. Repurpose it for social media platforms or newsletters, and it’s more likely to find your long-term followers wherever they are.
Trust and credibility for your brand are cultivated as people understand your unique angle on relevant subjects. Your SaaS content marketing should illustrate this angle in a way that’s also educational, informative, and helpful. As you build your image as a knowledgeable source, decision-makers are much more likely to entrust you with large-scale projects.
You consolidate brand authority on key topics by showcasing the expertise of your team, matched with a few well-chosen content pillars. For example, a SaaS company in the cybersecurity industry may find it beneficial to publish content on internet privacy, online security, and digital freedom. The more expertise they develop on these subjects, they more trust customers are likely to place in them and the SaaS products they offer.
Tap into the institutional knowledge that’s been accumulating and use content to explain how your unique processes make your value proposition undeniable. Even stuffier items like reports and documentation can become stellar pieces of content if you dig out the gems and put them in the right tone of voice.
You build a relationship with your target audience and your customers when your content library becomes a trusted resource they keep returning to.
The core part of your strategy should involve educating people on your specific SaaS product. But consider the outer layers: how to solve specific problems, how to think about the industry, how to distinguish between emerging trends that are worth something and passing fads.
Empowering people to make data-driven decisions will always put you in their good books. That’s why many successful SaaS content strategies include proprietary reports that provide original research findings and interesting data.
Good SaaS content encourages loyalty by repeatedly showing up and providing value in the exact places where buyers are more likely to research, like various online communities and review websites. Showing relevance at various touchpoints along the customer journey keeps you top-of-mind, lowers the customer acquisition cost, and nurtures solid relationships.
So, first you demonstrate empathy for people’s pain points. Then, you place their struggles in context, explain how common they are, and shed light on industry trends that play into them. Finally, you make a rock-solid case for why your SaaS product is the absolute best way to solve the issues being faced.
Each of these steps corresponds not just to marketing funnel stages, but also to content formats and best practices. As you populate your content calendar, an always-helpful output keeps people coming back. In turn, this generates demand more consistently and cost-effectively over the long term than classic lead generation tactics.
Instead of putting a lot of effort (and money) into cold outreach, reroute those resources toward crafting valuable content. People prefer to buy from those they know, like, and trust. Your brand fits the bill when it demonstrates a thorough but empathetic understanding of what’s happening in your SaaS niche, all wrapped up in content with crisp writing, compelling visuals, and great structure.
If you don’t know where to start, start here. I’ll take you through the 10 stages of mapping out a strategy that truly serves your audience, your brand, and your company as a whole. As you blend this guide with the specifics of your niche, a vision will emerge for what kind of content library you want to build and how you’re going to do it.
Your content marketing strategy begins with goals. You work from the outside in: business objectives first, then specific marketing goals that can help you reach them. Finally, you zero in on content marketing goals that are specifically tied to each format and measured with KPIs (objective achievement over time).
The way you build your content strategy around goals also depends on whether your brand is B2B or B2C. B2C SaaS companies like Canva or Mailchimp might focus on more snackable content that encourages fast actions, repeatedly. On the other hand, publishing for B2B brands focuses on building authority over time and encouraging trust. This might include fewer, high-quality long-form pieces.
B2C SaaS content marketers also focus more on visual appeal and entertainment value. Since the end goal is encouraging smaller purchases from individual consumers, they work a lot with attention and emotion. Think about how Netflix tries to capture attention and generate FOMO when a new series is launched.
B2B purchasing decisions, on the other hand, involve way more moving parts. More than one person is involved, especially since buyers need to justify decisions to higher-ups. Longer sale cycles involve a different approach to nurturing leads. So although trust is always of the essence, a deeper level is needed when greenlighting large purchases that impact years of operations.
The fact that the market is competitive is a cliché at this point. Lots of brands appear to be doing similar things, and lots of products offer the exact same features. Understanding how your brand and product fit within the market is crucial for SaaS content marketing, especially when your differentiators are technical, abstract, and more difficult to explain in layman’s terms.
Your starting point should always be knowing the SaaS product inside out. This helps with identifying relevant content opportunities that put it in the best possible light but also dictate smaller interactions like community management or how you reply to everything from blog post comments to business inquiries.
One of the best tools for making sure everyone is fueled by the same vision: a brand manual. Some call it a brand guide or brand bible (this one’s a bit grandiose if you ask me). You develop one with the help of an art director and a copywriter, both specialized in branding.
Here’s what you might find inside a thorough brand manual:
The level of granularity is up to you, and you can definitely update this document in time. But here’s my hot tip: strike a balance between elements of voice and visual identity.
So, so many brand guides out there come with dozens of logo usage rules but virtually no copywriting examples or writing style guidance. Your SaaS content marketing efforts can be much more focused if you create a balanced brand manual as a foundational document that shapes how you communicate the intricacies of your product.
If you had time to only do one thing other than actually making the content (not recommended!), this would be it. Unless you know exactly who you’re writing for, you’re likely to waste precious resources and spend more time vying for the same results. Saas content marketing success in any measure is inseparable from putting your target audience at the center of everything you do.
Start with the classics: demographics (age, gender, job title), psychographics (ambitions, challenges, attitudes), and behaviors (how they use tech and digital platforms, how they relate to the industry). People are still people, and the more granularity you add, the more you can tailor your content authentically.
Then, get a feel for how their day goes, for their style of leadership, for how they fit into the company culture. This is when you consider the institutional layer and place the people you’ve gotten to know in their organizational context. It’ll be easier to understand them as decision-making groups instead of just individuals but also to get a feel for how influence affects buying decisions.
It’s best to develop an SEO workflow not just when creating new strategies but as a constantly used tool for optimizing existing content. SEO keyword research shapes and guides a SaaS content marketing strategy, since organic search relies on how well you meet people’s needs.
Search intent refers to what people expect to find when using specific keywords. Search engines send organic traffic to your website. The better you respond to intent, the higher your content ranks.
Here’s how different types of keywords match stages of the sales funnel and different kinds of search intent:
A more mature content strategy ideally covers all types, so people can travel along the funnel at a sustained pace. But to start with, pick your keyword research tools and focus on BOFU content. More on this at #7.
Your content strategy needs to stick to a clear schedule so that everyone on your team knows what needs to be produced, by when, plus when it’s going live. A predictable content workflow allows people to hone their craft and consistently create high-quality pieces but also prevents bottlenecks and last-minute glitches.
The best way to achieve this is to manage content creation through a marketing calendar. A good one supports both long-form content and social media, lets you filter and label items, and is generally built for collaboration.
Content calendar view in Planable
It’s also essential to build a review and approval process that keeps content flowing smoothly between teams. The best content planning tools out there also double as approval software. For example, Planable lets you set custom approval workflows: none, optional, mandatory, or multi-level.
Multi-level approval workflow in Planable
All content marketing processes need to be clearly described and easily accessible in a single place, so every new member of your content team has a clear roadmap and a common vision to tap into.
A solid but creative content distribution strategy needs to be in place before you start ideating and producing a single blog post. Knowing how and where you’ll publish content once it’s ready shapes how you create it, how you tailor it to the specifics of different platforms, and even what platform-specific inside jokes you’re likely to include.
This comes back to knowing where your audience likes to discover and consume content. But go deeper — let the actual behavior of real people dictate how you structure everything down to specific blog posts. Test different channels, measure results, and optimize over time.
Scheduling a Facebook post in Planable
Resist the urge to create content in a way that spreads things too thin, especially in the beginning. Really focus those content marketing budgets. Prioritize fewer channels on your list, choose them in a way that favors BOFU content, and aim your efforts at producing high-quality, evergreen pieces that generate organic traffic but can also be easily repurposed.
When starting or rethinking content development, begin with BOFU content and only with it well in place, work your way up the marketing funnel.
Since it’s designed for the decision stage, each piece in this category needs to make a case for how nobody solves these specific problems as well as your SaaS brand. Case studies and how-to guides work very well here (for example, “how to schedule reels with Planable”).
But guess what? There are even more reasons to set up this content marketing category first:
Once your BOFU content is chugging along nicely, your content pillars come into view. Position your brand as uniquely knowledgeable on a few core topics you want to be associated with long-term.
Really visualize an enhanced customer journey. Then, work your way up through the consideration and awareness stage, creating content via formats specific to each.
Here’s how Userlist does it. This email marketing automation tool for SaaS companies built the MOFU/TOFU slice of its strategy around a podcast called Better Done Than Perfect. They say it’s “The show for SaaS marketers and product people” and they deliver.
Episode themes reverberate into their entire social media strategy and it’s easy to notice how they stick to LinkedIn and Twitter. Not everywhere, just the right places.
Footer section of the Userlist website
Measuring SaaS content performance is essential for any strategy. The KPIs you chose will tell you to what extent goals are being achieved and how, for example, specific blog posts contribute. Software with reporting features or standalone tools like Google Analytics also spotlight areas for improvement and avenues for optimizing your marketing content library.
Linkedin analytics view in Planable
As you implement, keeping an eye on metrics informs the tweaks you make. Segments of your target audience might be underserved, or perhaps the mix of channels you chose should be slightly rearranged. Is there a content format that generates particularly good engagement? All these insights are unique to every SaaS business and a solid foundation for justifying the tactics you choose going forward.
As a SaaS company, you’ve got the added advantage of data that flows in through your product. Create content by looking at it through various lenses and let it guide your choice of subjects, formats, and channels.
As you become confident that the basics are covered, design a plan for scaling your content production engine. A diverse team of freelance writers is a great bet for a SaaS business. Make sure you have the right content collaboration tools and documentation in place, cultivate a supportive environment, and the pillars in your content strategy framework can steadily expand to more well-developed topic clusters.
To take an already great content marketing strategy and execute it well, here’s what I’d include in a guide for freelancers:
This is also a stage where you’ll want to enhance the distribution funnel and recalibrate your goals. A project management tool can help a growing team stay on track through shifting strategies.
SaaS content marketing meets people where they are and offers value at every step. Each of its parts supports wider marketing and business goals in a way that’s easier to measure than ever. You can build a solid marketing strategy by starting with content marketing first – plenty of processes are transferable.
While you’re at it, check out Planable and see what it can do for your content team. It brings all your content formats and collaborators to one place, so planning and creating become an absolute breeze. And when you add automated workflows, simple approvals, plus a friendly UI built for collaboration, you get a tool that frees up your time for what’s truly important.
Irina is a freelance senior copywriter & content writer with an advertising agency background. If she’s not rummaging for good synonyms, she’s probably watching a sitcom or listening to radio dramas with plucky amateur detectives. She loves collage, doing crosswords on paper and shazamming the birds outside her window.
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