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Content Marketing

How to Create an Exceptional SaaS Content Marketing Strategy in 8 Steps

Learn how to create a data-driven SaaS content marketing strategy that delivers leads, improves SEO, and increases sign-ups with these proven strategies

It’s no secret that SaaS is a crowded area. No matter what you’re offering, there are likely a handful of competitors trying to outmaneuver you at every turn. 

To help you stay one step ahead, you’ll need a powerful content marketing strategy that not only drives traffic but also nurtures leads and turns curious visitors into loyal customers. 

In This Article, Learn How To: 

  • Define your content marketing goals and make them easy to understand and act on
  • Build topic clusters that boost your SEO efforts
  • Orchestrate multi-channel distribution like a content marketing pro
  • Shorten time-to-value and encourage faster product adoption

Discover a suite of best-in-class content marketing tools with the Originality.ai Content Optimizer, Grammar Checker, and AI Checker.

Step 1: Get Clarity on Your Audience and Goals

The very first step on your content marketing strategy for SaaS is to get clear on who you’re targeting and what your goals are for your content. 

This is the time to create audience personas and map the customer journey to various stages.

Next, set SMART goals

Once you better understand who your message is geared toward and what you want to achieve as a result, it’s time to break those goals down into SMART goals, meaning goals that are: 

  • Specific: Generate X marketing-qualified leads per month
  • Measurable: Such as a number of sign-ups, inbound traffic, or demo requests
  • Achievable: Check how they measure up against last quarter’s performance
  • Relevant: Related to business goals and objectives
  • Time-bound: Have a goal of completion by a set date.

Then, align KPIs to different stages of the funnel

At this point, you’ve clearly defined your goals. From there, it’s just a matter of matching those Key Performance Indicators to different stages of the content marketing funnel. For example: 

  • Awareness: organic sessions or social shares
  • Consideration: content downloads, webinar attendees
  • Decision: trial sign-ups, demo requests

Understanding your audience and turning goals into actionable steps means you can now unleash the rest of your SaaS content marketing strategy, the next stage of which is creating the actual content. 

Step 2: Audit Your Existing Content Library

Rather than starting entirely from scratch, it’s a good idea to take a step back and analyze what you’ve already got. 

Catalogue your blog posts, ebooks, webinars and case studies and look for any missing topics or gaps in your content pillars (more on those below). 

Tag pieces by the amount of traffic and engagement they got, as well as which ones drove the most leads or trial sign-ups. 

Step 3: Build Pillars and Topic Clusters

Choose anywhere from 3-5 core pillars that are tied to your overall value proposition. 

Example: If your SaaS is a team collaboration tool, you might have core pillars situated around “Remote Team Productivity” or “Project Workflows.”

From there, for each pillar, create a detailed pillar page. It should be by far the most comprehensive piece of content out of everything you write in that topic cluster. 

You’ll then create topic clusters around each pillar. These are shorter posts or other content assets that link back to the pillar page. 

This method of creating content is commonly known in SEO and content marketing circles and is a great way to boost your authority as part of Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines for people-first content.

This is also the point at which you should do some deeper keyword research and find high-intent keywords (such as “best team collaboration software comparison”) and other long-tail keywords your competitors aren’t targeting. 

Prioritize your results by search volume vs. difficulty and align them to your funnel stages.

Step 4: Create a Content Calendar and Workflow

The next step in creating an exceptional SaaS content marketing strategy is to create a content calendar and editorial workflow

Start with content that’s tied to product launches or other industry events, as well as seasonal trends. Break your content down into:

  • Top of Funnel: Blog posts, infographics, short social clips
  • Middle of Funnel: eBooks or guides, webinars, email courses
  • Bottom of Funnel: Case studies, ROI calculators, product tours, demos

From there, create a spreadsheet that assigns roles and deadlines, such as: 

  • Writer
  • Editor
  • Designer
  • SEO lead
  • Promotion owner

Then, have an editorial review section that functions as a checklist for messaging, branding, CTAs and on-page SEO. 

Step 5: Getting Started with Multi-Channel Distribution

Once you’ve mastered pillars, clusters, and content assignments, it’s time to share that content with the world. 

Owned channels

Owned channels like your email or social media are the perfect opportunity for you to nurture incoming leads. 

Segment your emails by user behavior, for instance, people who subscribed to your blog versus downloaded your free guide, so that you can guide them through the funnel accordingly.

To avoid scattering yourself too thin on social media, pick the one or two areas where your users tend to congregate most (e.g. LinkedIn or Facebook).

Earned Media

Earned media means guest posting on industry blogs, making appearances on podcasts, PR, and influencer marketing to amplify your brand and build awareness, as well as establish thought leadership. 

Paid Amplification

According to Harvard Business School, paid media is focused on promotional material. This might encompass paid search (think Google Ads) or promoted posts on social platforms.

Step 6: Repurpose and Refresh Your Content

Another key component of an exceptional SaaS content marketing strategy involves repurposing and refreshing your content. 

This can be done in a variety of ways. For instance, you could repurpose content by:

  • Turning a webinar into a series of blog posts, short videos, or slides. 
  • Longer guides could be carved up into downloadable PDF checklists.
  • Transform longer videos into short snippets for socials. 

Once a quarter, it’s worth going back and revisiting older content to update stats, incorporate new case studies if any are available, and check your search engine rankings to see how your keywords are performing for that content. 

Step 7: Measure the Results, Refine, and Reiterate

In order to know what kind of results your content is generating, you’ll need a broad overview with the ability to go granular. This is normally done with a combination of Google Analytics, your preferred CRM, and SEO tools. Look at metrics including: 

  • Which content led to marketing qualified leads, which were then passed on to sales qualified leads and closed. 
  • What was the time-to-first value, in other words, how quickly did trial users have that “light bulb moment” after they consumed your content that made them want to say “I need to sign up for this!”
  • What was their engagement rate? You can gauge this by looking at metrics like the number of video completions or scroll depth.

From there, run experiments on your content, such as split testing headlines, different CTAs and other formats (video versus text, for example). 

Review the results each quarter, double down on the winners, retire the losers, and revise the calendar accordingly. 

As you continue to do this over time, you’ll start to see a pattern of your best-performing content. 

Step 8: Embrace a Product-Led Mindset

Focusing on using the actual product as the main driver for attracting and retaining customers is at the heart of a successful SaaS content strategy. 

In essence, your product is your lead generator. That means designing every touchpoint to make it push-button simple for a prospect to sign up, see the value you deliver, and instantly understand what makes your service unique and high-value.

SaaS Content Marketing: Final Thoughts

Content marketing for SaaS, like all industries, is a marathon, not a sprint. Much like SEO, it’s not a once-and-done task. 

The good news is that once you understand how to approach it, you’ll continue to build momentum month after month.

What’s more, by focusing on making your product the driver of your marketing, you help prospects and customers alike experience firsthand the very benefits that your content strategy backs up — more light bulb moments and a more intuitive user experience.

As you continue to do this over time, you’ll attract more qualified leads and bring out brand ambassadors who wholeheartedly recommend your solution.

Get industry-leading, patented content-quality tools to elevate your SaaS content marketing strategy with the Originality.ai Content Optimizer, Grammar Checker, and AI Checker.

Then, learn more content marketing best practices in our top guides:

Sherice Jacob

Sherice Jacob

Sherice Jacob is a seasoned copywriter and content professional fluent in English, Spanish, and Catalan, with over 25 years of experience crafting high-converting copy. Passionate about AI, she enjoys exploring the new innovations and possibilities it brings to the world of content creation.

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