We’re sure you’ll agree with us on this:
As a Saas business, publishing content is easy.
Getting results from it, however, not so much.
But did you know that it’s not because you focus on the wrong topics or create poor content?
It’s working to a content plan that serves no purpose whatsoever that causes your strategy to flop. The Saas content marketing strategy is what differentiates those getting results from those struggling.
And luckily for you, we’re going to help you change that today.
In this post, we'll show you how to create a SaaS content plan guaranteed to deliver the results you want and make your content marketing efforts worth the investment.
Intrigued? Let’s take it from the top then.
What Specific Results Could You Expect from a Content Plan?
Ask any content marketer about results they seek from content, and you’ll get many answers.
Some marketers will admit to focusing solely on raising brand awareness about their SaaS.
Others aim to achieve more tangible results, like leads and new signups.
Personally, we believe that content can deliver the following four real and measurable results:
- Traffic: Content can help you attract targeted audience to your site, and position your SaaS product as a potential solution.
- Leads: You could also use it to generate leads by offering content upgrades or eBooks, and relevant calls to action to convert visitors.
- Trial Users: Creating bottom of the funnel content could help position your product in front of an audience that’s already actively seeking that type of solution.
- Links: Finally, good content should also attract backlinks, increasing your domain’s authority and search rankings.
But to achieve any of those, you need to create a content plan that focuses only on delivering your goals. That plan must consider every possible option to increase the likelihood of success (including the understanding and use of keyword research, search intent, and search engine optimization as a whole).
Here’s how.
How Can You Ensure that Your SaaS Content Plan Will Deliver Specific Results?
1. Create Personas That Match the Target Audience That Could Help You Achieve Your Goals
The easiest way to increase traffic, generate leads, signups, and links is to have direct conversations with the very people who can become your customers.
So, if you haven’t done this already, create content personas that represent the target audience that could help you achieve your goals – your potential users.
The good news is, you don’t have to spend much time on this. In fact, to get started, you just need a list of personas your product team is building the app for.
After all, they’ve already done the research into who needs your solution, and why. And you could use it to kick-start your targeted content plan.
2. Research Your Current Customers’ Problems to Make the Content More Useful to Your Audience
Note that the above headline says “current,” not future users.
This is a crucial mindset shift we believe you need to make if you want your content plan to succeed.
There are two main reasons for targeting current customers first:
- You have direct access to these people. You can quickly reach out to them to ask what problems they’d like your content to help them solve.
- They represent your ideal customers. And you can safely assume that if your current customers seek certain advice, the chances are that your potential users wonder about the same things too.
And so, answering your current customers’ questions will help you attract potential users who match the same customer profile.
3. Plan Promotion Before You Even Create the Content
We're sure you know this already:
If you want to increase the traffic, and generate leads, you need to find ways to quickly reach your target audience with every piece of content you create.
But did you know that to do that, you need to plan the promotion before you create the content?
Here, let us explain.
Most marketers work to what we consider a flawed content production process.
They create the content first, and only then wonder how to promote it.
As a result, they end up struggling to find ways to reach out their target audience.
To avoid this mistake, first plan how you’re going to drive traffic to the content, and then create the content with the promotion in mind.
In other words, to reach a wider audience, you need to embed some promotional strategy in the content itself.
Personally, we use those four strategies to ensure our content is easier to promote:
- We select and include the right influencers
- Reference other tools
- Use other companies as examples
- Create custom graphics for statistics and data.
4. Implement Lead Generation Strategies That Can Convert Your Visitors
There are countless ways to convert blog visitors:
Direct to Signup Calls to Action like the curiosity navigation link, floating sidebar banner or a HelloBar ribbon can help generate trial signups.
(example of a curiosity link)
Popups and Slide-ins offer a chance to ensure your audience doesn’t miss your lead magnets or important content.
(example of a popup on a SaaS website)
And Lead to Signup Calls to Action like content upgrade in-content links, sidebar forms, or exit popups can convert casual visitors into leads.
(example content upgrade signup box)
(example of an exit popup)
However, not all of them can deliver the specific results you want.
So, implement only those calls to action that can help you achieve your goals.
If you’re looking to generate leads and grow an email list, focus on offering lead magnets via content banners, popups, slide-ins, or in-content links.
But if you aim to convert visitors directly into trial users, then use buttons and links that would entice them to visit your product page.
5. Make the Content More Shareable to Generate Viral Buzz
Finally, if your goal for launching the content plan is to generate brand awareness, and introduce your product to the audience, then focus on creating content your readers want to share.
At the basic level, your content strategy must be focused on targeting specific topics your visitors will want to share with their network.
But there are also certain hacks that help Saas companies with their content creation process to ensure people will want to share any and every blog post they produce.
Here are some of them:
1. Include emotional words in headlines. Readers prefer to share content that resonates with them. And so, as a first step, write a headline that connects with your audience on an emotional level.
As the Advanced Marketing Institute points out:
“Communication is the key of effective marketing. And the key to communication is being able to reach the client at an emotional level. Involving them in your copy, and invoking their deeper thoughts.”
To make this task easier, AMI has developed a tool that helps you measure your headline’s emotional marketing value.
Simply paste your headline into the tool, and it will tell you how emotional (on a scale of 0% to 100%) it is.
Similarly, CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer also analyses the emotional words you’ve included in the headline.
Finally, if you’re stuck with what words to use, check out this checklist of Power Words to use for writing emotional headlines (via Pinterest).
2. Create unique social updates for different social networks. I’m sure you already know that Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest audiences engage with content in their own, unique way.
And so, to increase your content’s engagement, target each network with updates that match what its audience expects.
Social plugins like Social Warfare allow you to specify custom updates your readers will share with their network after clicking the sharing button. Use this functionality to ensure that they always share relevant updates that can engage the network’s audience.
3. Use visual content. Finally, enhance your content’s engagement with visuals your audience could share with their audience.
Conclusion
Publishing content is easy. But if you want to achieve specific and tangible results, you need to go beyond just posting regularly to your blog. You need to create a content plan that guarantees to achieve your goals. Saas marketing is essential for your success, and we are here to help you through the whole customer journey and achieve success for your Saas company.
