SaaS products can be complex and not all customers are equally tech savvy, which means that they may not immediately grasp the value and potential of your SaaS solutions.
In order to accelerate your sales cycle and bring your SaaS product closer to your potential customers, you need to leverage content.
This article will discuss six tactics that will help you create educational content that resonates with your audience and helps them understand what your product has to offer.
Create content that covers specific use cases
If you create content just for the sake of it, you will only do your business a disservice. While quantity does matter, you need to balance it with quality, especially when it comes to the bottom-of-the-funnel content.
At this stage, your prospects are on the brink of purchasing your product or service and are weighing their options, which means that very specific and detailed content that addresses their needs and pain points can nudge them toward clicking that “Buy Now” button.
For SaaS products, it’s very important to create niche content that will speak to that relatively small group of highly interested prospects who want to find out how your product or service can benefit them.
This means that instead of taking the frequently-asked-questions approach, it’s much better to verticalize your content. Go deep into exploring the unique challenges of your audience and use cases where your product can offer the solution. Using the right content planning tools for SaaS companies can be a crucial first step in this direction.
You can also start by identifying your high-value verticals and pinpointing individual users or companies to whom your product offers the greatest value, i.e., focus on product-market fit.
The next step is reaching out to your existing customers to learn what they love about your product the most and the different ways they use it. Make sure to note distinctive and unconventional use cases so that you can include these in your messaging for a hyper-personalized approach.
Combining this strategy with user personas and segmentation will allow you to produce highly granular content that resonates with your target audience on an almost personal level in a manner that acknowledges their day-to-day struggles. This sets the stage for introducing your product organically and presenting yourself as a go-to resource they can turn to whenever they need advice.
The DialMyCalls Guide to Emergency Text Alerts landing pages, for instance, provide a detailed overview of the topic and go to great lengths to explain real-life use cases and scenarios where their product makes all the difference. The brand also makes a point of splitting their target audience into different verticals under the “Who Uses Us?” tab and creating tailored content for each cohort.
Source: Dial My Calls
Create content that shows your product in action
There’s only so much words can do to illustrate the value and impact of your product. Demonstrating it, on the other hand, is a pretty powerful tactic. No wonder 82% of people say that watching a video of a brand’s product or service convinced them to make a purchase.
This particularly applies to the SaaS industry because that’s where the real value of a product can be demonstrated. A more hands-on approach will help customers fully grasp its functionality and benefits. Video is a great tool for simplifying complicated concepts, but it can also drive much higher engagement than blog posts and other text-based content.
Plus, visual content is also more memorable than its text-based counterparts. According to research, people retain 95% of a message when they watch a video compared to only 10% when reading it in a text.
Apart from serving as an effective product walkthrough, another upside of video is its convenience.
This format is easy to consume and digest, which means that people can watch or even simply listen to it while they’re doing something else. So, your potential customers can learn more about your product during their daily commute to work or while on a treadmill in their local gym.
Rosie’s homepage features an explainer video that simulates how this AI-answering service interacts with potential customers. This gives the brand’s target audience an opportunity to see and hear for themselves how Rosie, a hyper-realistic AI agent, sounds and behaves just like a human and that it’s capable of answering calls, making appointments, and taking messages, just like your regular assistant would.
Source: Rosie
Boost lifetime value by helping subscribers get the most out of your product
Since SaaS companies mainly rely on a subscription-based model, converting a customer is an ongoing process, especially if they opt for a monthly subscription. This means that you not only have to deliver on your promises but also help your customers get the most out of your product and continue to see its value over time.
Content plays an important role in this process. Having access to more resources makes it easier for customers to adopt your product as well as to use it extensively, thus reducing churn.
One way of doing this is diversifying your content so that it includes different types of educational resources and formats, such as:
- how-to videos
- step-by-step guides
- product tutorials
- help articles
- templates
- in-app walkthroughs
- webinars
- searchable knowledge bases
It’s crucial to accommodate various customer preferences by allowing them to learn and adopt your product at their own pace.
Airtable is a great example of what this approach should look like. The brand dedicated an entire section of their website to resources and organized them by topic, by team, and by type for better accessibility. They go beyond your basic tutorials with its Airtable Universe, an entire base packed with pre-built templates and complex workflows created by existing users. This gives new users a detailed insight into how others use the platform and provides an almost white-glove level of service.
Source: Airtable
Establish the kind of expertise and authority necessary to appeal to B2B customers
There are 30,000+ SaaS companies in the world today, all vying for the attention of millions of users. With all this noise and clamoring in this over-saturated marketplace, it’s crucial to make yourself heard and seen.
One way of achieving this is through content infused with strong thought leadership content for SaaS.
By positioning yourself (and your SaaS business) as an industry authority, you will get potential customers to notice you and instill trust in your expertise. This is important because when your target audience sees you know what you’re talking about, they’ll start perceiving you as a credible source of information.
This, in turn, increases the likelihood that they will choose your product over your competitors’ solutions.
Here are a couple of ways to establish yourself as an expert and improve conversions:
- Deep dive into the topics you discuss and provide well-researched and detailed insights. Your audience can already find entry-level information, so scratch below the surface and give them something they can’t find elsewhere.
- Make your content actionable. Don’t simply identify and explain concepts or challenges. Instead, offer actionable tips and tricks and show your audience how to implement them.
- Add value for your readers. Create all kinds of free resources and useful tools your potential customers can leverage to solve their problems. This tactic will not only show your genuine desire to help your audience but will also give them a chance to see what they can expect to get if they become your paying customers.
Close’s website is chock-full of educational resources. The brand generously shares sales guides, ebooks, and free tools that give their audience a solid starting point and serve as a risk-free way of experiencing the platform before making a purchase. Many of those resources have been authored by the brand’s co-founder and CEO, Steli Efti, who emerged as one of the most prominent figures in the SaaS scene thanks to his valuable advice and contributions.
Source: Close
Make a big deal about product updates and announcements
Generating a buzz around your product can do wonders for your lead generation and customer retention. That’s why you should never let a product update, new feature announcement, or news about a strategic partnership slide under the radar.
It’s important to keep your audience posted about all this because that way, you show you’re invested in improving your product. This, in turn, implies that customer experience and success matters to you.
Similarly, publicizing product updates and new features attracts new users who are looking for a solution that keeps evolving and following industry trends. So, make sure to include product update blog posts, videos, press releases, and emails.
It’s also a good idea to run marketing campaigns on platforms like Product Hunt to draw the attention of potential customers or partners. Many SaaS companies promote their product updates, new versions, and added features on such platforms to grab more eyeballs.
Slack’s What’s New web page features the latest additions to the platform, together with a list of updates and blog posts presenting individual releases. Plus, if you check out the brand on Product Hunt, you can see their launch history in chronological order and gain inspiration from their strategy.
Source: Slack
Engage your audience with interactive content
Static content like blog posts, ebooks, or case studies can only go so far in capturing the attention of your target audience.
To shake things up a bit and give your potential customers a more active role, add interactive content to your marketing strategy.
This way, you’ll encourage participation and educate your audience while entertaining them and creating a long-lasting impression. Plus, these quizzes, polls, calculators, and all kinds of tools allow for two-way communication between you and your customers and provide you with valuable feedback you can later use to tailor your messaging or even improve your product.
The stats also corroborate the effectiveness of this approach: interactive content gets two times more engagement than its static counterpart. That’s why it’s a great tactic for boosting your conversion rates.
Dropbox’s interactive demo is a great example of super useful content that provides immediate value. It allows the target audience to play around with different features, click through various interactive elements, and see how the product works firsthand. This guided tour allows potential users to experiment with the platform’s main functionalities at their own pace. Unlike a traditional demo, this type of content offers a personalized approach and gives users an opportunity to take control and explore the product to see how it fits their needs.
Source: Dropbox
Final Thoughts
Having an awesome SaaS product no longer cuts it on its own. If you want to transform your brand into a household name, you need to pay special attention to your content strategy. Having superb content can help you educate your target audience, demonstrate the value of your product, and ultimately boost your conversion rates. Follow these six content marketing tips to elevate your SaaS brand, expand your reach, and achieve sustainable growth.
