Due to the nature of their business models and the fact that their audience can often be easily reached online, content marketing is a great fit for SaaS businesses. 

What emerging SaaS companies may struggle with is the long-term nature of this approach. It can take 6+ months of consistent work before you start seeing measurable results. For those that are ready to go all-in, your actions should be rooted in a sound and sustainable content marketing strategy.

I can’t give you the secret sauce for success. There is no single strategy that works for everyone. However, I can give you the list of must-have ingredients that will set you on a path to success.

Step #1: Get intimate with your target audience

A content marketing strategy that doesn’t understand its target audience is doomed to fail.

You might be able to attract traffic to your website by producing and sharing large volumes of content. However, without understanding the pain points of your potential clients, you will struggle to convert them into leads, let alone paying customers.

To build a working funnel, you must be able to answer the following questions:

• What are the values and responsibilities of my target audience? This will help put other questions on the list in more context.
• Which challenges and pain points do they need help solving? Concentrate on those you can help them solve directly (with your product) and indirectly (with your content).
• What are their potential objections to sale? So you can address those concerns in your lead nurturing phases and improve overall conversion rates.
• Which channels are they using to learn about the product type you are selling? This will help you decide where you should spend your marketing dollars.

It takes time to properly research and analyse your target audience. Excluding ridiculously expensive market research companies, your best bet is to:

• run a survey/interview existing clients
• explore niche-relevant Facebook/Linkedin groups, as well as “forums” like Quora or Reddit
• check what industry-leading blogs and magazines in your niche talk about
• investigate what your top competitors are doing.

Step #2: Dig into your competitors

One of the advantages you have as a start-up is the ability to learn from your competitors. 

Identify which content marketing tactics are bringing the most results. Focus on those you can replicate with the same level of quality or better. Hopefully, you’ll be able to put your own spin on it.   

For reference, our standard competition research for SaaS clients consists of three reports::

1. SEO report: Includes a basic overview of the domain authority and traffic, followed by an overview of 20 to 40 best-performing pages in terms of links they attracted and the traffic they generated. 
2. Content report: Includes data about publishing frequencies, used content types, content quality, on-page optimisation, tone of voice, and overall impressions. 
3. Social media report: Overview of all social media channels your competition is active on. For each channel, we calculate the engagement and look at the number of subscribers, publishing frequency, and post types, concluding with overall impressions and recommendations.  

We usually look at 3-6 competitors, focusing on those that are heavily investing in content marketing (and seeing results). You will need access to tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and SpyFu to do this properly. 

All of this data will be useful for defining your own content marketing strategy.

Step #3: Select the channels you want to focus on

There’s a big difference between SaaS startups that are bootstrapping their operation and those that just closed a second investment round. 

How many channels you will focus on and how much content you can produce will be limited by your marketing budget. Regardless, the most important thing is to get started.

If you did your due diligence in previous steps, you should have a good idea of where your audience is and what they want to know.  

B2B SaaS solutions will often lean into creating blog content in an effort to build trust and set the foundation for future lead gen efforts. The B2C market leaves more room for experimenting on social media.

Before making the final decision, consider where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Gather your entire team and perform a SWOT analysis focused on your company’s ability to produce and distribute content.

Step #4: Find your brand voice and style 

One of the hallmarks of a great content marketing strategy is consistency — not only in terms of quality and frequency but in the look and feel of the content as well. 

Think of brands like HubSpot and Ahrefs. What is the first that pops up in your mind? 

I bet it’s their respective orange/blue brand colours. That is because they stick to a visual guide that is consistent across their website, newsletter, videos, social media, and the actual software product.

Whenever you come across their content, you can quickly recognise which brand is behind it.

The only way to achieve this level of consistency is to define a brand style guide as Slack did. You can include everything from brand colours, iconography, and typography to values and tone of voice. Make sure the document is easily accessible.

Here are more SaaS branding guidelines for inspiration.

On top of that, for those churning out content like there’s no tomorrow, create detailed blog guidelines that cover:

• content quality guidelines 
• formatting instructions
• design guidelines for featured images and custom graphics
• SEO guidelines.

We have worked with several SaaS companies that spent thousands of dollars revising blog content and lead magnets to fit their newly defined style guidelines. Learn from their mistakes and do it early in your brand journey.

Step #5: Document your CM strategy

Research from Content Marketing Institute shows that 73% of B2B marketers have a content marketing strategy. But only 40% of them have it documented. 

In other words, only 40% of businesses have a CM strategy — as this is not something that can just sit in your head. Furthermore, without it, there is no accountability, and it implies this is not a priority.

It doesn’t have to be a 30-page document outlining every single action you plan to take. Write down your starting position, goals, and responsibilities. 

With that, you will be able to track your progress and correct your actions if the results show that your initial approach didn’t actually result in the winning content marketing strategy.

Do what you can, outsource what you can’t

Paid advertising, on-page optimisation, content creation, link building, social media management — these are all areas that require specialised skillsets and tools.

Many SaaS businesses will outsource those tasks to a digital marketing agency. Still, someone on your team should know the basics so they can efficiently work with and supervise the work you’re outsourcing.

If you go down this route, take your time to find a reliable partner. Content marketing is a long-term game and you don’t want to be switching team members every quarter.