Want to create and publish killer B2B SaaS content? Start with the audience.
Today, B2B buyers don’t wait around for a sales executive to learn about the product. They take matters into their own hand, sifting through free resources, peer reviews, testimonials, and other resources. It’s entirely a self-directed journey.
That’s why creating and curating relevant, valuable content is the way to go and grab the attention of your target users.
Here’s a simple approach to get started.
How to Write B2B SaaS Content?
Step 1: Know Your Audience
The better you know and understand your target market, the more successful your content marketing efforts will be. You need to understand what they’re seeking when they click on the content you’ve published. To do so, begin here.
#1 Conduct market research
Start with the fundamentals and indulge in some classic market research. What you’re looking for is your content-market fit. This is the point where your content meets and surpasses your market’s needs and expectations.
To find this juncture, consider the following:
- Conduct surveys
- Monitor social media
- Study a focus group
- Conduct interviews
#2 Optimize your buyer persona
Your next step is making the most of your customer persona. And this means examining your negative buyer persona as well. Knowing whom you don’t want to offer content is as important as knowing whom you want to pitch to.
As an early-stage startup, this could include clients you can’t afford on your current scale and leads who are engaging with your content solely for research and the like.
Next, you need to study what their engagement preferences are. Answer questions like:
- Where do they spend most of their time online?
- What type of content do they prefer?
- Do they appreciate humor or a formal tone?
Iron out these details, and you’ve got a strong start.
#3 Study customer feedback
Who better to critique your content than your customers? Collect their feedback to see how they’re consuming your content and ask for suggestions for improvement.
#4 Learn from your competitors
Knowing what works and doesn’t work for your competitors is equally important. It gives you a chance to learn from their mistakes as well as triumphs.
For instance, if your competitor starts a social media account and soon amasses an impressive following, this should prompt you to look at the content they’re sharing and their strategy.
Aside from competitors, you can also look up to B2B SaaS brands creating content in complementary spaces and take clues from them.
Step 2: Develop a Content Strategy
A content marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan of action for your content. It details the topics, writers, publishing cadence, etc. Here’s why you should consider building and documenting a content strategy:
- Ensure each piece of content satisfies the buyer’s intent and meets a specific marketing goal.
- Increase content efficiency by detailing writers, editors, content creators, and timelines.
- Maintain and publish a steady stream of quality content
Tips to Develop a Content Strategy
#1 Audit your existing content
This will help you understand what type of content works and what doesn’t. So, you can build a roadmap for the strategy and find your hero content.
#2 Select the type of content
There are all types of content you can create. These could be blog posts, videos, podcasts, social media posts, whitepapers, or even eBooks.
Use your content audit, market trends, and market research to zero down on the types of content most likely to get you what you want.
#3 Research content ideas
Don’t put off content topic ideas for ‘when the time comes.’ You need to start brainstorming while developing your content strategy. This will help you hash out ideas, set reasonable timelines, and prevent overlapping topics.
#4 Create a publishing timeline
Nothing hampers your lead nurturing efforts like publishing inconsistent content. This shows a flippant attitude towards your audience and can cost you your credibility.
Step 3: Create Compelling Content
The average attention span today is just 8.25 seconds. So, if you can’t convince the reader fast enough, you’re toast. Today, the competition is fierce, and the only way you can get attention is to write compelling content.
Tips to Create Compelling Content
#1 Start strong
Your first line should hook the readers and encourages them to keep reading. This could be a shocking statistic, an interesting anecdote, a surprising fact or even a joke. Also, don’t be scared to add humor to your content if that’s what your audience is into.
#2 Cut out the fluff
Your content must always be well-researched. Never beat around the bush, as it can put off the readers and make them click away. To avoid this, review your content for clarity and remove anything that’s not adding any value.
#3 Speak the reader’s tongue
Always remember your buyer persona. This will help you write in the language that your reader understands best. For example, if you’re writing content for executives, you must use appropriate industry jargon to best connect with the reader.
#4 Pay attention to the structure
There’s nothing more off-putting than huge walls of text. They can kill readability and lower time on the page. That’s why content structuring is so important.
So, keep your paragraphs short and snackable while including visual breaks using infographics and images.
#5 Guide readers toward the next step
What should readers do after finishing a piece of content? Tell them the next step using a call-to-action (CTAs).
Let’s suppose you publish a blog post about payroll management and its challenges. In such a case, you can add a CTA for the reader to learn more by clicking on an industry case study or a video explaining how payroll management automation can help. It could also guide the reader to your landing page.
In this case, a typical CTA would look something like this:
‘Click here to learn more about payroll management software.’
or
‘Click here to know how XYZ company leveraged payroll management systems to streamline their needs.’
Step 4: Promote Your Content
You might have valuable, relevant, punchy, and just straight-up impactful content. But if it never reaches your target market, what’s the point? And that’s why you must take steps to promote your content as widely as possible.
Best Channels to Promote Content
#1 LinkedIn
According to CMI, a whopping 96% of surveyors used LinkedIn for their content marketing efforts. This professional platform is ideal for B2B content marketing, as it cuts out the unnecessary noise and allows readers to focus on truly valuable content.
#2 Email
Email is undoubtedly the best channel to promote content. Since the content goes straight to their inbox, there’s a higher chance of it getting read. This is why it’s the best channel to share product updates, promotion offers, research reports, industry insights, and more.
#3 Guest blogging
Not all content you create needs to be hosted on your website. With guest blogs that you publish on third-party websites, you can get quality backlinks and direct traffic to your own company blog. They’re also a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader and build a readership.
Step 5: Measure Your Results
If you don’t examine how your content is doing with your target market, how will you know whether it’s working?
Nearly 45% of the people surveyed by CMI picked a lack of goal-setting KPIs a challenge when measuring content performance. So, even before you start publishing content, decide on a timeline and metrics to track performance.
Knowing what to measure is important to gauge how well your content is doing. And here’s what you should keep an eye on.
- Site traffic
- Time spent on site
- Ease of customer journey
- Number of returning visitors
- Number of online shares
- Conversion rates
Wrapping Up
B2B content marketing can seem overwhelming at the start. But with this simple guide to get you started, you’ll be creating quality content in no time.
And if you need help along the way, Ukti’s writing services are right around the corner.