As a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) brand, content marketing is so much more than just a way to promote your products and services. It’s an essential piece of your marketing puzzle — from creating awareness for your brand to generating more leads to nurturing long-term relationships with your customers. And in a crowded, highly competitive market like SaaS, you’ve got to be strategic in your content efforts — or else risk getting lost in the noise. Put simply, the odd blog post promoting your latest feature isn’t going to cut it anymore — at least, not on its own.
This blog will break down how your SaaS brand can use content marketing to stand out from the competition — and how to scale your content efforts sustainably.
What Is SaaS Content Marketing?
First things first: definitions. SaaS content marketing is a marketing tactic focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant content to attract, engage, and convert prospects of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) businesses into customers. In fact, 55% of SaaS companies use content marketing as their primary marketing strategy. You may already be familiar with traditional content marketing — but SaaS marketing has some key differences.
What Makes SaaS Content Marketing Different?
If you’re a SaaS company, you’re essentially selling an intangible product — and a technical, complex one at that. Because of this, content marketing plays an even more vital role in explaining how your solution works, as well as demonstrating its value to prospective customers.
Content marketing also plays an important role in engaging existing SaaS customers. Because SaaS companies rely so much on recurring revenue from subscriptions, they need to ensure they’re helping customers get as much value out of their solution as possible and keeping them engaged to reduce the likelihood of them churning.
What are some key challenges in SaaS Content Marketing?
Not only does SaaS content marketing serve a slightly different purpose compared to traditional content marketing, but it also presents its own set of unique hurdles. Here are a few of the biggest SaaS content marketing challenges:
Standing Out in a Crowded Market
Anyone in the market for a SaaS solution is likely being bombarded with content from all directions. To stand out from the competition, it’s worth investing in content that will catch them off guard — whether it’s via using a more engaging format, adding your own creative spin, or taking a unique position on a topic that’s especially relevant to your target audience. Let’s say you’re creating a white paper to educate your audience on a problem that your SaaS product can solve. Instead of sticking to just images and text, why not capture your audience’s attention with interactive content such as embedded videos — or a short quiz to get them engaged with your content?
Maintaining Brand Consistency Across The Board
Many SaaS companies have multiple teams and individuals contributing to their content marketing output— from marketers to designers to more technical product specialists. Having a bounty of diverse perspectives and specialized knowledge at your disposal can definitely give your content a competitive edge. But this also makes maintaining a consistent look, feel, and voice a real challenge. If a prospect is engaging with your content at multiple touchpoints throughout the buyer’s journey, you need to provide them with a consistent, on-brand experience to build the trust they need to make a purchase.
Scaling Content Without Losing Quality
Because content marketing needs to support every stage of the SaaS marketing funnel, SaaS businesses often need to create a high volume of content. From more top-of-funnel content like blog posts and case studies to middle and bottom-of-funnel content for prospects during the consideration and selection phases — there’s always a demand for content somewhere.
But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to churn out content without paying attention to quality. Your prospects expect to consume relevant, engaging content that speaks to their specific pain points — if it’s sloppy or generic, they’re probably going to scroll past it.
4 SaaS Content Marketing Best Practices
So, how do you make sure that you’re creating the right kind of content — and enough of it — to attract, engage, and nurture your audience without compromising on quality and consistency?
Here are a few SaaS content strategy best practices to help you get started:
1. Align Your SaaS Content Marketing With Your Business Goals
It might sound obvious, but SaaS content is most effective when it’s been strategically designed around a specific business goal — this doesn’t mean that every single content piece has to directly contribute to achieving that goal, but rather that each content piece should be created with the broader business strategy and objectives in mind. This can be of great help when deciding where to allocate content resources.
Let’s say that one of your business goals is to reduce your customer churn rate. In that case, you might focus your efforts on producing content that helps educate customers on features that could help them get more value out of the solution. Or, if you’re aiming to increase brand awareness, you might choose to focus on creating thought leadership content, like industry reports or blogs written by in-house subject matter experts.
Want tips for developing a killer content marketing strategy? Check out this blog.
2. Use Subject Matter Experts — But Help Them Stay Consistent
Why should content marketers be the only ones creating content? If you’re working in SaaS, your company is likely full of smart, knowledgeable experts who’d jump at the chance to create some high-impact white papers. So, use them to your advantage! It can be daunting to trust colleagues outside of the marketing department to create content. But, given the right tools and resources to keep them on brand, investing in content creators throughout the organization will take a whole lot of pressure off the marketing team.
3. Pay Attention To Your Content Creation Process
Establishing a smooth, collaborative content creation process is essential if you’re a SaaS brand looking to ramp up your content marketing. But with so many moving parts, it’s easier said than done. Start by looking critically at your current process: Which parts of the process are taking the most time and effort from the team? Are there aspects of the process that could be automated, for example? And if there’s friction, what’s causing it? Developing a SaaS content creation process that allows your team to deliver the best content possible, as fast as possible, and with minimal resources will lay the groundwork for successful content marketing.
4. Measure Your Content’s Performance — And Act On It
SaaS content marketing takes time and effort — so of course, you want to know whether your audience is actually engaging with your content. Pay attention to b2b marketing metrics like pageviews, time on page, and social shares to get an idea of which content pieces are resonating.
For lead generation, focus on conversion rate, form fills, and clicks. SEO metrics, like organic traffic and keyword ranking, show your long-term visibility, while retention metrics such as returning users and customer feedback tell you whether your content is impacting customer loyalty or driving ROI. And of course, metrics aren’t just nice to look at — be sure to act on your insights and adjust your content based on your findings.
SaaS Content Marketing In Action: A Case Study
Betty Blocks’ case study provides a great example of how to do effective SaaS content marketing by streamlining content creation and improving content based on data. Previously, the team had struggled with a sluggish content creation process, where writers and designers were working separately, and they had no insights into how their content was performing.
With the help of Foleon’s intuitive content creation platform, Betty Blocks were able to democratize the content creation process, empowering non-designers to produce on-brand, interactive pieces. This approach allowed the team to produce content 4x faster, aligning with their lead generation goals. Real-time insights on user engagement allowed them to make data-driven adjustments, contributing to a 20% increase in lead volume.
Curious how they managed it? Check out the full case study.
3 SaaS Content Marketing Examples to Inspire You
Some SaaS brands have been investing in creating engaging, impactful content relevant to their audiences — and it shows! Here are a few of our favorite examples:
Mailchimp Experiments With Content Types
The folks at Mailchimp aren’t afraid to stray from the more traditional SaaS content formats. Since 2019, they’ve been wowing their target audience of small business owners with beautifully crafted series, short films, and podcasts that speak to their daily struggles. They’ve even created a dedicated “business entertainment platform,” known as Mailchimp Presents, packed with engaging and emotional short-form video content centered on themes around entrepreneurship. The idea, says Sarita Alami, production lead of Mailchimp presents, is to “create content that is immersive and captivating enough to stand on its own,” with the end goal of creating brand awareness and attracting new people to Mailchimp.
Duolingo Gets Quirky On TikTok
Duolingo’s TikTok strategy is a masterclass in content marketing, combining humor, platform-native content, and a relatable mascot to build brand personality and engage audiences. Embracing the playful, “unhinged” humor that TikTok has become known for while poking fun at the brand itself—especially Duolingo’s reputation for persistent reminders— their videos feature their green owl mascot, Duo, who has a quirky, exaggerated personality that feels authentic and memorable.
By embracing social listening and humanizing their brand with self-deprecating humor, the Duolingo team has found a way to entertain rather than sell. And it’s working. This approach has increased brand awareness among younger audiences, with users even citing TikTok as the reason they downloaded the app.
Buffer Blogs Provide Actionable Insights
SaaS brand Buffer takes an educational approach to blogging, positioning itself as a knowledgeable resource on social media strategy. This not only attracts readers but also builds trust and credibility with Buffer’s target audience of social media marketers. By focusing on guest posts by experts for brand awareness, curating existing content into helpful resource hubs, and repurposing content across channels, Buffer was able to grow its user base to over 4 million users without a heavy ad budget. Buffer’s success shows how authentic, value-driven content aligned with audience needs can fuel substantial SaaS growth.
Final SaaS content marketing thoughts
Creating an effective SaaS content strategy in the overcrowded software market is about more than just publishing blog posts. So it’s worth investing in a scalable approach that aligns with business objectives. Empower everyone in the company to create high-quality content — not just marketing. And invest in solutions to help you measure your content’s performance and maintain consistency across the board.
Foleon is the all-in-one platform that will keep you organized, on-brand, and efficient throughout your SaaS content marketing journey.
If you’re ready to take our SaaS content marketing to the next level, book a demo with Foleon and see how we can help.
