Why Content Marketing and B2B SaaS Are Made For Each Other

Buffer, HubSpot, Shopify, InVision, Canva, Salesforce... We could go all night name-dropping multi-billion SaaS brands that made their name using amazing content. Instead, let’s check out the facts: 60% of top-performing B2B brands have a documented content marketing strategy, 80% have an editorial calendar where they plan the content to be published, and a mind-blowing 94% of them use metrics to measure content performance.  

Content marketing has clearly become an essential part of the business revenue generation strategy. In this article, we will show how it can help B2B SaaS brands attract and convert more leads for their software.

Content marketing and B2B SaaS belong together

Buyers consume 13 pieces of content before deciding whether to purchase/subscribe to a B2B product or forget about it. Now, let that sink in. If you don’t have any content to show—or any useful content that solves the reader’s challenges—potential buyers won’t even get close to considering your SaaS solution, let alone buying it. 

Purposeful content serves four basic goals:

1. It makes the world aware of your brand/product (brand awareness).
2. It helps customers understand what you do and how to use your product (customer education).
3. It helps you attract potential buyers (lead generation).
4. It is essential for establishing credibility and building trust.

SaaS-related content has some specific barriers to tackle to achieve these objectives, and we’re going to spell them out.

Making buyers aware of the problem—and solution

To beat the competition, SaaS products often need to be as innovative and unique as it gets. This means that they might need to address a completely new issue that many customers aren’t yet aware of.

If we traveled back in time by a decade, we could see marketing people starting their day by posting company social media updates to every channel that existed at the time, one by one. Customizing each post, logging into every account separately, and adding the relevant update could have easily taken a few hours. And oh boy, was it tedious!

Then, Buffer appeared, making it possible to schedule posts to various social media ahead from a single place. That was a huge time saver! But how could a marketer know he or she needed the platform if nothing like it had ever existed before! Content generation was the answer for Buffer to make its target audience aware of the issue and promote their software as a relevant solution.

Because for many B2B SaaS brands, the main barrier to creating relevant content isn’t talking about a solution customers know. Their biggest pain is how to reach companies who aren’t aware of the problem or don’t know a product exists that can help them resolve it.

One of our clients, Perfect Price grappled with the same challenge. To raise awareness of its product among short-term rental businesses, the company launched a series of webinars on dynamic pricing strategies. It also publishes a blog to educate customers about the solution, making them aware of the available options for managing revenue from rentals smarter.

Debunking common misconceptions

Content marketing also provides a robust tool for B2B SaaS companies to debunk myths around their matter of expertise. Because various falsehoods and misconceptions seep their way into every industry, often standing in the way of successful sales.

Let us use a customer example again. One of our clients, a US medical call answering company, was struggling with reaching small and medium-sized healthcare providers. Many of them incorrectly assumed that phone answering services were only affordable for hospitals and clinics, not for SMEs. They also feared that an external team would not know how to handle patient calls in a professional and considerate manner.

To overcome these customer qualms, The Doctors Answer had to educate its target group and convince the buyers’ decision-makers that their fears had been unfounded. The company has achieved this with content marketing.

A niche service is hard to find

Imagine that a financial company is looking to ensure compliance with position limit regulations. The compliance managers would like to automate and streamline the process, and they are looking for software that would monitor derivative positions. Where do they start the search? Will your SaaS providing this feature show up in Google (on the first page) so they can easily find it?

It will, if you have created enough quality content on the topic for Google or Bing crawlers to place it on page one. That’s what another client of ours does to put its SaaS in front of the right audience. FundApps generates quality content around position limits, derivative traders, short selling, and shareholding. It also establishes authority in the field with online-based seminars and other learning resources that nurture existing customers and attract potential ones.

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