Content marketing is an important component of a successful inbound marketing strategy. Well-written blogs, guides, and infographics bring the customer to the business. It’s much easier for buyers to come to you, rather than the other way around. Research suggests around 88% of B2B businesses use content marketing. This is because it has proved successful in producing leads, and is relatively affordable.
Good content is engaging and serves a purpose for those that read it. This is a great way to attract leads to your business, without actively pushing them towards a purchase. This marketing strategy helps avoid the “pushy salesman” persona for your business. Content marketing can help your business to flourish organically. This is ideal for SaaS startups searching for their initial customers, with a more limited budget.
SaaS Thought Leadership
Brand recognition is one of the first steps to building a reputation for your startup. Content can serve as an introduction to your company, allowing leads to get familiar with what you offer. As your brand becomes more recognizable in your market, it will be trusted by new leads.
Good quality content should provide value. Blogs and guides can answer frequently asked questions in the relevant field. By becoming a valuable resource, your company stands out as trustworthy and helpful. This builds a positive relationship, before even making a sale.
Content will continue to serve leads, as well as existing customers. By creating timely and relevant content, you can nurture your current relationships. This is particularly important for customer retention at startups.
Contacts
As well as serving existing leads, content attracts new contacts. Collecting contact information is particularly important for SaaS startups. Beyond your existing network, content should attract relevant contacts. That is as long as you have provided content that answers their questions.
Landing pages offer a dedicated space for visitors to provide their information. Offer these contacts some relevant or helpful content in return for their details.
Without contacts, your company cannot generate leads or customers. Content is an important element in driving new traffic to your website, and generating those conversions.
Searchability/SEO
There is no use having a great solution for your market if no one can find it. Your software solution needs to be searchable.
Content provides a channel through which visitors can find your solution. Users may not be searching for your company outright, but they will be searching for answers.
By answering questions in your market, search engines will recognize your content as relevant. Your website will then be ranked higher in these search results.
By using relevant keywords, each piece of content that you upload will enhance your SEO. More website visitors should result in more conversions, which is what you’re striving for. The number one step, however, is that buyers can find you.
Social Media
Content marketing is particularly helpful as it can assist your other marketing strategies. Combine social media and content marketing, to create content related to what your buyers are already discussing. This is referred to as “newsjacking”.
Relevant content should also be shared across social media channels. Update your followers with your newest blog post or video. This encourages conversation between you and your followers, which builds your relationship further.
Shareability
Your content is shareable. Not just by you, but by your followers and readers. Let your website visitors do some marketing for you.
People trust those that they know to recommend and share reputable businesses. This is particularly useful for SaaS startups. If your content is valuable to a lead, they are more likely to share that with their relevant contacts. It is important to utilize your followers to serve your content, and enhance your company’s reach.
Measure your Success
Having goals for your marketing strategies is important. However, you need to know whether you have met those goals, or whether you need to make changes. This avoids wasting valuable time.
Content marketing provides metrics that some traditional marketing methods do not. Your website allows impression and conversion tracking. This means that you can follow your buyers’ journey.
Startups need to ensure that their time is being spent wisely. There is typically a smaller team and therefore limited time available. Content analytics allow time to be spent on content that works. Spot which pieces are attracting the most attention, and reaching your goals. Sharing these will help reach more relevant leads.
Educate
Your content should inform readers about important topics in your target market. However, it also allows you to show buyers who you are and what you do. Most importantly, it should demonstrate how your solution is useful to them.
For SaaS startups, it is not as easy to assume that people understand your software. For those that have never visited your website before, it is safe to assume that they don’t. Content can educate people on problems that they may not be aware that they have. This is where your business’ solution comes in.
To those who may be aware of their problem, content allows you to differentiate your solution from the competition. Your website, blog posts, and guides can explain how your business provides a better experience than others in your market. Explain how you can solve problems that others don’t – and how they can positively change their life by using it.
Content can also aid lead qualification. A visitor may not be ready to purchase on their first visit to your website. However, as they continue to return to your content, they become more sales qualified. Once again, this saves time as the lead becomes ready to purchase without the need for direct communication.
Quality Content for SaaS Startups
It may take some time to produce quality content. However, this is time well spent. Content has the ability to continue serving your business for much longer than other marketing methods.
Users can continue returning to your blog posts as long as they are live. There isn’t a limit to the number of leads your content could generate.
A good content marketing strategy is also relatively affordable, which is key for any startup. Consider combining content marketing with your other strategies, like social media and email. This is a great way to enhance your existing marketing efforts.
At Nituno, we create high-quality content to generate more leads and conversions for your business. Contact us to talk about building an effective marketing strategy for your tech startup.
