If you are a SaaS marketer, then you know the importance of content marketing in your overall marketing strategy much too well. So it should come as no surprise to you that SaaS organizations that drive their marketing efforts through content marketing report higher customer retention and about 30% higher growth than the ones that don’t.
In 2020, marketing became more digitally driven than ever, increasing the importance of content marketing significantly. This trend is set to affect the marketing strategies of SaaS companies in 2023, and beyond. So if you are an eCommerce SaaS marketer that wants to target growth through content, here are a few types of content pieces that you may want to consider.
1. Podcasts
If you have been in content marketing for a long time, chances are that you have already heard this a lot — podcasts are in. They are the new-age way for brands to communicate information and knowledge to their customers and, considered to be a mainstream content offering. Currently, there are more than 850,000 active podcasts, and roughly 30 million active episodes available for people to explore.
Podcasts could be ideal content pieces for SaaS companies because:
- They are easy to produce and create
- Aside from the initial setup costs, they do not cost much
- People listen to podcasts even while performing other activities translating to increased engagement time than many other formats
If executed well, podcasts can help brands in gaining more credibility, engaging customers, and building a loyal customer base in people who tune in regularly to listen to your podcast.
2. Short/Long Videos
With the advent of video marketing, most brands across the globe started dabbling in video creation and driving marketing strategies through them.
SaaS companies have the option of creating SaaS videos including product explainer videos, company videos, social proof videos, and personalized sales videos. In fact, did you know that more than 87% of online marketers today use videos in their content strategy?
Videos can be great content tools for eCommerce SaaS companies because:
- They can showcase products and explain them with visual elements
- It is a highly engaging and impactful format
- Better representation of complex information and data
Videos are so popular among SaaS startups due to their ability to attract and target a large audience easily. Moreover, many eCommerce companies are able to achieve higher reach as a result of video SEO, translating into more traffic as well as revenue.
For instance, if you have a BigCommerce website, you can reap several SEO benefits by opting to upload short and long product videos. You can refer to online SEO guides that can help you optimize your videos to be more SEO-friendly.
3. Infographics
As a SaaS company, you should be able to communicate complex messages in an easy-to-understand manner through your content, with the help of data visualization. And infographics are at the forefront of data visualization and representation. As of 2020, 40% of marketers stated that creating original graphics such as infographics helped them reach their marketing goals.
SaaS startups are encouraged to use infographics because:
- They are cost-effective and do not require too many resources
- They are SEO-friendly as they are easily sharable across platforms
- They are visually appealing and tend to generate a higher engagement rate
SaaS companies can leverage different kinds of infographics for social sharing as well as to facilitate information that can be shared and downloaded easily. Plus, the availability of online infographic makers has made it easy for companies to easily create high-performing infographics.
4. Blog Articles
Sure, we have all heard it — “Blogging is outdated now”, “Noone has the time to read a blog anymore”. While it is partially true and indeed, the attention spans of people across the globe are shrinking, your blog is still a very powerful marketing tool.
Blog articles are important for driving your SEO efforts, especially if you are a SaaS company. Blog articles can be the perfect tools to present important information and can be used with a combination of different elements such as graphics, images, and video. As of 2021, out of the 1.7 billion websites on the Internet, 500 million are blogs.
All these blogs still garner millions of views and are a great way for individuals as well as businesses to boost their online visibility and authority. So if your niche is in professional courier services, curating a blog around the subject will customers know that you are an industry expert.
Blog articles can be a great tool for SaaS companies because:
- They can increase web traffic and potential leads
- They can help you gain more exposure
- They are great for knowledge sharing and nurturing customer relationships
Blogs can include all kinds of content including ones that are user-generated to boost credibility and website performance. For blogs to be truly effective, ensure that they are shared across platforms, especially social media so that they can attain the desired reach.
5. Case Studies
SaaS products can often get difficult to sell, especially to customers who are not familiar with the kind of value that your product might add to their business. Case studies should be targeted at your ideal customers and should include real numbers and statistics that make the case stronger. They should be easy to read and understand so that your customers immediately relate to them.
Case studies can be a good way to boost your content strategy because:
- They can highlight the value of your product/software
- They improve the credibility and image of your brand/product
- They are highly reusable, relatable and can positively impact client conversion processes
Case studies do not have to follow a typical structure and can be experimental in terms of structure. You can easily boost the online visibility of your case study by integrating SEO elements and enhance the reading experience by including videos and infographics.
Useful Resource
Top 10 Great Software Explainer Videos
6. How-to/Ultimate Guides
In most cases, SaaS companies lose out on customers by not being able to communicate the expertise and knowledge they have, to their customers. If you are already publishing blogs regularly as a way of knowledge sharing to solve this challenge, one of the assured ways to take it a notch higher is creating a how-to/ultimate guide and giving it a home on your website.
Similar to blogs, how-to guides need to be well-curated, extremely researched, and likely to add a lot of value for the reader. It should target a potential problem that the customer might be facing, and guide them through the process of resolving it in a highly detailed manner.
The benefits of having how-to/ultimate guides in your content strategy are:
- They can establish your authority over the subject matter
- By including the right set of keywords and SEO elements, they can generate a lot of website traffic and potentially drive your website performance
- They can increase the likelihood of organic backlinks, and drive conversions
SaaS companies should target high-performing keywords in their domain, and build topics around them for their how-to/ultimate guides so that they can rank higher on Google SERPs and become that master content piece that you want it to be.
Wrapping up
Content marketing is a valuable marketing tool for SaaS startups, so it comes as no surprise that the industry is evolving to include new forms of content pieces that companies can use. In the highly competitive market environment today, it is important for you to constantly innovate, and experiment with new forms of content. By using some of the content pieces that have been discussed in this post, you can potentially amplify your content marketing efforts, and grow your performance through it.
