Gone are the days when companies questioned the effectiveness of content marketing. In 2023, most tech companies understand that SaaS content writing has a tremendous impact on their lead generation strategy. It’s a no-brainer. Quality, reader-focused content optimized for search engines can skyrocket the number of leads and customers.
In fact, according to statistics, investing in organic search can generate an ROI as high as 748%. In comparison, a paid channel's ROI hardly reaches an ROI of 36%. If you are looking forward to harnessing the power of SaaS content, let’s dive into how to start crushing it right now.
What Is SaaS: Definition
The term SaaS refers to a cloud service and is an abbreviation for the phrase “software as a service”.
According to HubSpot, SaaS businesses create, develop, host, and update the product themselves. SaaS products are widely used for both personal and business matters.
B2C (business-to-consumers) SaaS companies cater to the needs of those looking for products for personal use. Examples include entertainment, photo editing, individual tasks, etc. B2B (business-to-business) SaaS companies, on the other hand, provide cloud-based software to businesses for different tasks, such as accounting, workflow automation, etc.
What Is SaaS Content Writing?
SaaS content writing is the content development process that is designed to create an outstanding customer journey for your SaaS customers and educate them on your product. The key to success is to produce content that aligns with users' needs at every step of the funnel and provides ultimate value.
One thing to remember is that your brand voice and message need to be consistent throughout every piece that is published or sent.
Since there are many types of SaaS content, the goals of each piece are different and can be one of the goals listed below:
Showcase your SaaS product and explain how it solves the user’s problem
Update your current customers about new features and how to benefit from them
Educate your users on industry updates and help them do their tasks more efficiently
Build authority and create trust among your audience
Convert prospects into leads
Convert leads into paid customers
Support the relationship with your customers and increase retention.
So now, let’s unwrap what steps you need to take before deep diving into content writing for SaaS.
6 Steps to Nailing Your SaaS Content Writing
Step 1: Identify your buyer persona
By selling to everyone, you are selling to no one. Hence, it’s crucial that you have a clear picture of who your buyer persona is. Defining the ideal customer profile (ICP) is the first step to understanding the needs and pains you will address. Your buyer persona profile should include the following information about your ideal customer:
Age
Geography
Interests and lifestyle
Preferred methods of communication
Biggest challenges
Occupation
Personal qualities
How they gain information
Goals
Tools they need to do their tasks/job
It’s best to visualize your buyer persona. You can even give them a name. Most of the time, you should be able to find a real-life example from your surroundings that represents a specific ICP. Remember, we are targeting real people, not some ephemeral creatures.
Step 2: Create your customer journey map
A customer journey map is a visual representation of your funnel and how your customers interact with your brand. Essentially, it has certain milestones that represent the “events” your customer experiences, what their needs are at each step, and which actions you want them to take. These events include visiting your website for the first time, starting a free trial, onboarding, becoming a paid customer, etc.
A well-thought-out customer journey map will not only paint you a story of interaction with your brand but also provide you with invaluable insights about your ideal customers. Here’s one example of a customer journey roadmap:
Step 3: Create a content strategy
Now that you have a clear picture of your customer journey, it’s time to identify ideas of how you are going to surround your customers with valuable content and fulfill your business goals.
Content strategy development might seem like a tough row to hoe. However, essentially it simply boils down to tackling each stage of the customer journey with the RIGHT content.
Also, it should cover the goals you pursue and specific metrics you are going to track.
Step 4: Audit your current content
Once you’ve figured out how you will continue with the content strategy-wise, it’s a good idea to go through the existing content. Answer the following questions:
Does the current content correspond to your strategy?
Is it fresh enough?
Can you improve it?
What needs to be done to make it more efficient?
One of the best examples of a content audit is blog article historical optimization which often helps to increase ranking immensely.
Step 5: Develop a content calendar
As we discussed above, content writing for SaaS needs to be consistent. Writing several random articles won’t get you too far. The last step, therefore, is to create a content calendar.
A content calendar is a comprehensive schedule of when and where you plan to publish content. It will help you to:
Make sure everything you create gets published as planned
Keep track of the daily/weekly content tasks
Distribute the responsibilities between team members
Streamline your content production workflow.
Here’s an extract from a content calendar example:
9 Types of SaaS Content for Each Step of the Funnel
Depending on the stage of your customer's journey, there are 9 essential types of content you should consider producing for your SaaS product.
ToFu Content for Awareness Stage
Top-of-funnel (ToFu) content has the ultimate goal of creating awareness about your product and making your brand name recognizable. In some cases, when the reader discovers this type of content they might not even know about your software niche’s existence yet. And, your blog, for instance, can be a perfect place to help them with the aha moment. Let’s take a look at some good examples of ToFu content.
Industry-related blog articles
Blogs are the most common type of content that many businesses use to bring more organic traffic to their website and create awareness about their product. According to Optinmoster, companies who blog get 97% more links to their websites. If done properly, blogs can become a stable source of good-quality leads.
To start with blogging, prepare a list of industry-related topics that your audience might want to discover. Think of your users’ daily challenges and problems they want to solve.
The next step is thorough keyword research. It is an absolute must to check if the search intent of the keyword is actually the same as you imagined. To do this, use SEO tools like Ahrefs and see the top rankings results for the keywords you are considering.
Create blog articles with expert tips and guides regularly and you will most probably see an influx of quality, organic traffic.
Whitepapers/e-books/downloadables
Most readers love checklists, guides, and templates for performing their job. Make your customers’ tasks easier and you will be rewarded big time. For starters, your audience will appreciate your efforts invested in creating professional, downloadable items.
You can also easily use those in several ways. You can, for example:
Offer them throughout the website and allow users to download materials after they share their email address with you
Share and promote them on social media
Use them as educational material in your nurturing email drip campaigns.
Data-driven content
To be a professional in your domain, you have to be on the ball and know your industry inside out. Do this and your readership will be excited to see fresh research you conducted or exclusive survey results.
Keep in mind that the data you share needs to be accurate, credible, and also unique. You might want to collaborate with other industry players to ease your job and also make your findings more trustworthy.
Thought-leadership content
Building authority in your niche is another brick to building your brand. However, cementing your company as an expert obviously is not a walk in the park. It will require an essential time investment to say the least. These are some examples of thought-leadership content that you can use:
Interviews with industry experts
Product reviews and listicles
Podcasts
Opinion columns.
Whichever format you use, the rule of thumb is to create deeply rooted content in your unique perspective.
MoFu Content for the Consideration Stage
Once your user is well aware of your product's existence, why not give them more evidence of how your product is the one they should consider? This is where MoFu (middle-of-funnel) content steps into the picture.
Email drip campaigns
Email is not long-form content like those we discussed above. Nevertheless, this type of content should definitely have a place in the SaaS content writing guide.
Email is far from dead. In fact, 81% of B2B marketers indicate that their most used form of content marketing is email newsletters.
So, once you have your prospect’s email, it’s a good idea to start a conversation. Create a sequence of emails that will offer your subscribers more helpful content and educate them about your product.
Product-related content
While it’s best to focus on the more general topics at the top of the funnel, when the user is in the middle of it, it’s time to help them shape their knowledge about your product's benefits.
Without being too pushy and tacky, you need to share:
How your product compares with your competitors
How to choose a software solution in your niche
Several types of software in your industry with yours listed among them
Why your customers may need your software specifically and how it is better.
Newsletter
This is another type of content that you can offer after users share their contact data, their email address to be exact. In other words, they will need to subscribe to your newsletter to be included on the list to receive it.
Usually, this is an email that is designed to keep your audience updated about the industry and your product updates. Often, it also includes a collection of newly posted blog posts.
BoFu Content for the Decision Stage
If your ideal customer is about to make a decision on their purchase and is aware of your product, the chances are they will become a paid user. To make it happen, you’ve got to do some convincing using BoFu (bottom-of-funnel) content.
Product-led content
Now it’s time for your product to shine. This content is usually created by content managers in liaison with product managers and/or product marketing managers. It is vital to show all precise technical aspects and how exactly they are helping your buyer persona with their “jobs to be done”.
Some examples of product-led content include feature updates and product reviews.
Case studies
Truth be told, the most convincing evidence to buy something is the proven result of its work. One of the ways to avoid being tedious is to offer some case studies.
Apart from written content, at this stage, it’s essential also to offer a demo of the product and make sure your prospects see enough visuals and video materials about your SaaS.
5 Tips to Get the Best of Your SaaS Content Writing
There are some common principles that help SaaS content writers not only create valuable content but also convert visitors into buyers. Here are some of the best tips for SaaS copywriting:
1. Always have a call to action (but not too many of them)
Some marketers get carried away with the content flow and forget to add a crucial component — a call-to-action prompt. What do you want users to do after or while reading a piece of content? No matter if it’s an email or a blog post, make sure you give the reader an idea of what they can do next. Make sure you also share a link or a button that will take them to the destination.
2. Don’t miss the opportunity to showcase your product in a suitable way
Explaining a product's essence and its core benefits can make or break your conversion rate. Show how your product is different from competitors and why choosing your brand is their best bet.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. This is especially true when talking about your software. So, use images, animations, and videos to show features in action.
3. Be specific and to the point
We all have a lot on our plates these days. So, why not think of saving your users some time and avoid beating around the bush? Be specific and cut out the unnecessary words in your copy. Then, go through it again and leave only essential information that will benefit the user at least in one way.
4. Structure your content to make it easy to read
No one likes to read a long, boring piece of content with no structure.
If you are writing an article, do some research first and develop a structure. This way, you won’t miss any important topic that you need to cover.
Also, use bulleted lists and break your text into paragraphs of 3-5 sentences. Keep your sentences short and meaningful. When writing content for SaaS, less is often more.
5. Create your content with the audience in mind
Always put yourself in the reader’s shoes. Think about where they are in their journey at the moment and provide them with the answers and insights they need at that very moment.
For example, someone who has never heard about your product might not be interested in its new features. On the other hand, your current customers probably don’t expect to see an offer to sign up when they receive an email from you.