The B2B SaaS Content Marketing Guide

Introduction

Content is the fuel for a smooth-running marketing engine; without content, you cannot connect emotionally with leads or educate decision-makers. In B2B SaaS marketing, content marketing has the power to transform companies’ fortunes, touching every aspect of the customer lifecycle, driving brand awareness, and even customer loyalty.

In short, a strong content marketing strategy is essential for all B2B SaaS companies that want to grow. In this guide, we’ll explore the role content marketing plays in the success of B2B SaaS businesses and discuss how to build a robust strategy that will fuel your growth.

Does that sound like a lot? Well, it is. You can use the quick links at the top to jump to the section you are most interested in learning more about. Happy reading.

What is B2B SaaS content marketing
What are the benefits of content marketing
How content marketing is used in B2B SaaS
How to create a SaaS content marketing strategy
How to tell a story through content marketing
4 content marketing best practices
B2B SaaS content marketing examples

What is B2B SaaS content marketing?

You know what content is. You know what marketing is. Put them together, and what do you get? A marketing strategy aimed at attracting and engaging customers through various content types, from articles and videos to online courses and podcasts.

In the B2B world, content marketing specifically centers around creating content tailored to businesses to attract, convert, and retain ideal customers.

SaaS content marketing serves many purposes. It allows prospective customers to get to know your product better, showcasing how it can meet their specific needs while positioning your brand as a leader in the space. Ultimately, your B2B content strategy framework will educate your audience on the problems you can help them solve, provide your software’s value, and drive business growth by building trust.

What are the benefits of content marketing?

Content marketing is essential for all B2B SaaS businesses wanting to drive sustainable growth. To help us illustrate its value, we’re breaking down the key advantages B2B SaaS content marketing offers businesses.

Boosts lead generation. By putting valuable content like whitepapers and webinars behind a lead capture form, you can collect contact information and enter valuable leads into your sales funnel.
Builds brand awareness. How are your dream customers meant to know your business exists if you aren’t marketing it? Paid advertising is only half the battle; you need organic content, too. Regularly publishing content via your owned channels, including social media, email, and your blog, helps increase your brand’s visibility while building a reputation as a trusted authority in your industry.
Demonstrating thought leadership. If you want to position your business as a thought leader in your industry, you need to share informative content relevant to your niche regularly.
Educates your audience. Most SaaS products have a level of complexity that will take users some time to understand. The effectiveness of your content will determine how easy this process is; if you have a wide range of educational resources like tutorials and user guides, this will help users get the most value out of your software. If you don’t, well, you’re missing a trick.
Drives website traffic. Content marketing and SEO go hand-in-hand. It works like this: keyword-rich, search-engine-optimized, high-quality content boosts your search engine ranking, pushing your content to potential customers who are searching for solutions relevant to your content.
Supports onboarding. The fun doesn’t stop when the customer converts. Onboarding is a critical stage in the consumer journey, as a poor onboarding process can lead to high churn rates. Providing support to your new customers through tutorials and FAQs can help them get set up with your software and help them see value faster.
Drives engagement. Content can play a role in long-term customer retention, too; keeping in regular content with your customers through newsletters and product updates shows you value their experience and are committed to investing in your product’s continual development.
It’s measurable! Not all marketing efforts can be tracked, but content marketing is highly trackable, meaning you can analyze and optimize your campaigns as you go.

The role of content marketing in the B2B buyer journey

Content plays an important role at every stage of the B2B buyer journey and should be tailored depending on the questions potential customers will be looking to have answered at that time. The goal is to guide prospects through this journey by providing them with the support they need via valuable, relevant content. Here’s how content marketing aligns with each stage of the buyer journey.

Awareness stage

During the awareness stage, potential buyers are just beginning to recognize a problem or need.

At this stage, content shouldn’t push a hard sell but instead focus on attracting attention, educating, and positioning your brand as a thought leader and reliable source of information.

Types of content to use include blog posts, infographics, and social media content that introduce relevant industry topics, trends, and challenges, helping to build awareness of the issues that your SaaS product addresses.

Consideration stage

During the considering stage, buyers have identified their problem and are actively seeking solutions.

At this stage, your content should be more in-depth and focused on guiding them toward understanding how your SaaS product can meet their specific needs. As buyers will be evaluating their options, you want to position your product as a strong contender by addressing common pain points and showing how your solution fits within their broader business context.

Types of content to use include e-books, whitepapers, case studies, and webinars, which offer detailed insights into your product’s capabilities, use cases, and the benefits it provides.

Decision stage

During the decision stage, buyers are comparing options and are close to making a purchase decision.

At this stage, your content should be highly specific and geared toward closing the deal. This should address any remaining objections, highlight your unique value propositions, and provide clear calls-to-action that guide buyers towards making a purchase or signing up for a trial.

Types of content to consider include product comparisons, detailed specifications, customer testimonials, and interactive demos, which provide the necessary information to reassure buyers that your SaaS product is the right choice.

Post-purchase stage

During the post-purchase stage, content continues to play a crucial role, even though the buyer has converted.

At this stage, your content should aim to enhance their onboarding experience and reduce churn by ensuring they quickly realize the value of their investment.

Types of content to consider include onboarding materials, user guides, and advanced tutorials which help new customers get the most out of your product, while ongoing content like product updates, newsletters, and customer success stories can help foster loyalty and open upselling opportunities.

Advocacy stage

During the advocacy stage, satisfied customers can become powerful advocates for your brand.

At this stage, your content should encourage and facilitate customer advocacy by strengthening customer relationships while leveraging their success stories to attract new leads and reinforce your product’s credibility in the market.

Types of content to use include case study collaborations, testimonials, and referral programs, helping turn your best customers into vocal promoters.

However, it’s important to remember that the bigger the buyer, the less linear their journey to purchase. With more chefs — or stakeholders — in the kitchen, they are more likely to move back and forth through the stages and explore more options before selecting a product.

Types of B2B Saas marketing content

Want more detail on the type of content you’ll need to create? We’ve got you covered.

Another way to look at the customer journey is through the B2B content marketing funnel; this helps illustrate how your content will move from more educational and informative at the top of the funnel to more product and value-focused as the customer becomes more aware of the business and approaches the bottom of the funnel. Let’s break down the type of content you’ll create based on each section of the funnel.

Top of funnel

At the top of the funnel, the primary goal is to capture the attention of a broad audience and introduce them to your brand. Therefore, your content at this stage should educate and inform.

You can create content that addresses common pain points or questions within your industry, helping you provide value without requiring a commitment. Types of content include:

Blog posts. Blog posts and articles are fundamental to SaaS content marketing. They provide a medium for sharing a wide range of information, insights, and ideas with your audience. For SaaS platforms and technology products educational articles can sometimes cover some very niche topics and often require a lot of research into specific areas of technology.
Social media posts. Social media content, such as LinkedIn or Instagram posts, helps increase brand visibility and drive initial interest. You can often repurpose existing content by turning it into infographics, linking it to resources on your blog, or driving leads to webinar sign-ups.
Infographics. Infographics offer a visual representation of data or complex processes; they’re decisions to simplify complex concepts and capture attention. You can have a lot of fun with these, as they’re a great way to disseminate information visually.
Videos. From explainers to webinar clips, there are lots of ways you can use videos during this stage to introduce prospects to your product. The key is to keep these top-level by speaking to a broad audience.
Podcasts. Podcasts are a great way to attract new customers. They provide an opportunity to share insights with your audience and discuss industry-related topics in more depth.

Middle of funnel

In the middle, prospects move into the consideration stage, actively researching solutions to their problems. Your content should provide solutions to specific challenges while showcasing your expertise.

From an SEO perspective, you should optimize this content for keywords related to specific problems and solutions, indicating user intent to find a solution. You can also introduce gated content such as e-books, templates, and webinars that require users to provide their contact information in exchange for valuable resources. Types of content include:

E-books. E-books can be immensely versatile, though they require more of a time commitment to create. These are typically comprehensive documents that educate leads on a specific subject relevant to your industry.
Reports. Commissioning or writing your own reports is a fantastic way to establish authority and build trust. You can either provide your own research findings or compile industry insights.
Guides. Another important aspect of SaaS content marketing is the requirement for creating in-app content like smart tips and ‘how-to guides’ to help users get the most out of the platform.
Case studies. Case studies not only show how your product successfully solved problems for other businesses but are essential to building trust through social proof.
Templates & toolkits. Like e-books, templates, and toolkits are designed to support leads while offering something of value in return for their contact information. These resources typically include information that they can apply to their work, such as email templates or social media toolkits.
Quizzes & assessments. What better way to engage users than through an interactive quiz or assessment? Not only are these resources fun but they help with the decision-making process by providing personalized insights or even product recommendations.
Webinars. Webinars require more time commitment than other resources on this list but are invaluable because they allow deeper engagement with potential customers. You can elect subject-matter experts within your business to get involved or invite third parties to be interviewed as part of the webinar, providing detailed knowledge on a specific topic. Plus, you can record these presentations and turn them into evergreen content, capturing leads who didn’t make the live presentation.

Bottom of funnel

At the bottom of the funnel, prospects are ready to make a decision. At this stage, your content should be focused on encouraging them to choose your product or service.

You need to optimize your content for branded keywords and terms related to your product or service to capture users actively searching for solutions. Plus, include clear and compelling CTAs that encourage users to take the next step, such as signing up, requesting a quote, or making a purchase. Types of content include:

Competitive comparisons. Creating comparison content that weighs the pros and cons of different solutions will help you position your offering favorably.
Detailed specifications. Now you’re getting down to the wire, you can begin sharing comprehensive breakdowns of product features and technical details. Buyers will be looking for answers to specific concerns, so make sure to cover all bases.
Customer stories. Share real customer success stories with leads, picking those that are most relevant to their industry.
Consultations. At this stage, your sales team will be developing one-to-one relationships with each leads’ decision-makers. Personalized consultation sessions offer an opportunity to provide expert advice or tailored solutions to prospects who are ready to make a purchase.
Interactive demos. Similar to consultations, hands-on demonstrations of your product allow prospects to experience its capabilities firsthand in a session tailored to their needs.
Promo codes & discounts. Want to clinch the deal today? You can incentivize immediate purchase decisions by reducing the cost barrier through exclusive discounts.
Free trials. Enabling trial users and new customers to get the most out of your software is imperative for low churn rates and higher growth. Implementing great product tours is another important aspect of SaaS content marketing.
Email nurturing. Email nurturing is an important part of SaaS onboarding. When your prospects are trying a product out they often need prompts to keep them engaged and to ensure they discover the value of your product.

Where will this content exist?

When creating a content strategy for SaaS, content is distributed across a range of channels, including within the product itself.

Your business’s website. Your website serves as the primary hub for content such as blogs, case studies, and whitepapers that educate prospects and guide them through the buyer’s journey.
Owned external channels. Social media platforms and other external channels extend the reach of your content. These channels allow you to engage with your target audience, which already spends time before driving traffic back to your website.
In-product content. Content consumed within the product in a SaaS business is some of the most important content because it aids conversion and helps reduce churn. This will include guides and onboarding content designed to help users realize the value of your product as quickly as possible by enhancing user experience and ensuring customers achieve their goals with your product.

Define your goals

Any good strategy starts with goal setting. Establishing what you want to achieve with your content efforts early on will help you form your strategy and keep you focused once you begin crafting your content. The key components of goal setting include:

Identify your primary objective. What do you want your content to achieve? Do you want to raise brand awareness or drive lead generation? Boost customer retention or maximize TTV? There are many objectives to choose from, and different areas of your content strategy may feed into different goals.
Setting SMART goals. You’ve probably heard this before, but goals should always be SMART. This means ensuring they are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This is essential to establishing the trajectory for your content efforts.
Identifying success measures. Now, we’re getting granular. Your next step is to identify how you’ll determine whether your efforts have been successful. Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as an increase in website traffic or improved conversion rates serve as tangible indicators of progress towards your objective, helping you assess the effectiveness of your strategy.
Aligning goals with the buyer journey. As a bonus, you can align your goals with specific buyer journey stages to support your marketing objectives. For example, top-of-funnel content will be closely tied to brand awareness and can be measured via website traffic. In contrast, metrics tied to user satisfaction, such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), can be used to measure the impact of bottom-of-funnel content on customer retention.

Conduct audience and market research

The foundation of your marketing strategy lies in creating content that resonates with your ideal customer and drives action. That means becoming an expert on your audience and crafting relevant, impactful content that is tailored to their industries, addresses their challenges, and sets your business apart from competitors.

In this step, you will be aiming to answer the below questions through rigorous audience, market, and competitor research:

Who are you trying to reach?
What solutions can we provide?
Why should they care?
What do you want them to do?

Defining your ICP with audience research

The more you know about your ideal customer, the more likely you are to create content that truly resonates and engages. Conducting thorough audience research will help you develop detailed buyer personas, including details such as:

Key demographics
Behaviors, including how they engage with brands online
Goals
Preferences
Pain points

Laying out these details as part of fictional profiles representing your ideal customer will help guide your content creation efforts.

Understand your decision-makers with stakeholder mapping

In B2B SaaS, purchasing decisions aren’t usually made by one person. This is especially true for large organizations, which may require the sign-off from multiple stakeholders.

By mapping each stakeholder and their concerns, you can create content that effectively communicates your product’s value to each group while supporting the decision-making process.

For example, a CTO may be concerned about your software’s technical aspects, while a project manager, as the end-user, might focus on ease of use; in this case, you can direct the CTO toward your technical guides while arranging a demo with the project manager.

Achieve differentiation with market and competitor analysis

In today’s competitive SaaS landscape, you can’t afford not to differentiate your product. Standing out requires more than just having a good product or a good website; you need to clearly and effectively communicate why your product is better than your competitors.

Brand differentiation starts with identifying gaps in the market that you can leverage to offer customers something unique, such as deeper insights or a unique perspective on their challenges.

Develop a content plan

Now that you understand your audience, it’s time to get into the meat of the matter: creating an actionable content plan.

Decide your content types and topics

Your first step is to outline the types of content you’ll be producing based on:

The persona you’re targeting, including their challenges, interests, and needs
Their stage in the customer journey
The action you want them to take
Your goals

Once you know what types of content you’ll be creating, from whitepapers to webinars, you can identify the topics your customers are interested in. Keyword research will help you understand what your customers are actively searching for, helping inform your content themes while ensuring your content is aligned with their interests.

Channel strategy

Next, you need to figure out how you will reach your audience. The tactic here is to choose the channels where your target audience is most likely to be; this information should have been gathered during the audience research phase.

Some channels will be obvious choices based on the content type. For example, there’s only one place for a podcast episode to go! However, other content pieces, such as infographics, are more versatile and may be distributed across multiple channels or repurposed for different audiences.

Creating a content calendar

Finally, it’s time to answer the all-important question: How will we do this?

Creating a content calendar provides a visual schedule outlining all publication timelines. This will help you ensure content is produced on time and delivered to the audience promptly while also allowing you to plan your resources effectively.

Creating your content

This is what we’re all here for! Creating the assets that will act as the bedrock of your marketing strategy. This stage is focused on creating high-quality content that is informative, relevant, and on-brand, delivering a consistent and engaging message to audiences.

Here are our recommendations for acing this stage:

Focus on quality over quantity. Quality is always more important than quantity when it comes to content creation. Your goal should always be to provide real value to your audience either by offering a solution or educating them on a relevant topic. Every piece of content, from blog posts to whitepapers, should be well-researched, thoughtfully crafted, and run through a quality assurance process.
Incorporate SEO best practices. If you’re producing organic content that will sit on your company’s website, you need to consider SEO best practices. This may mean conducting keyword research with SEMRush's Keyword Magic Tool, crafting relevant meta descriptions, and formatting your content to enhance search engine visibility. Yet, always remember that none of this should come at the expense of readability and flow.
Addressing audience pain points. Every single piece of content should be written with a specific customer persona in mind. Whether a whitepaper educating readers on a specific topic or a podcast interviewing subject matter experts, ensure you craft content that serves a purpose and speaks to your ideal customer’s pain points, needs, or goals.
Tell a story. Keep reading for our advice on telling a compelling story through your content.

Measuring impact to determine success

This section is all about data! You can’t just let your content go into the world and never check up on it again; instead, measuring the success of your efforts can help you learn what does and doesn’t work, allowing you to optimize your strategy moving forward.

There is a huge range of metrics you use, and what you choose to measure will depend on the content type you’re analyzing and the funnel stage:

Top of the funnel. You will measure the reach of your content, which means looking at the number of impressions your content gets across all channels.
Middle of the funnel. You will explore engagement metrics, such as web session length, content downloads, and video plays.
Bottom of the funnel. You will track conversion metrics that indicate buying intent, such as demo requests and free trial sign-ups.

Here are some of the most relevant metrics to consider.

Engagement metrics, as understanding how leads are engaging with your content says a lot about it's how effective it is at grabbing and retaining attention.
- Bounce rate. The percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page.
- Average session duration. The average time users spend on your website.
- Pages per session. The average number of pages viewed during a session.
- Dwell time. Time spent on a specific page or post, indicating content relevance.
- Most popular content. Identifies the content that attracts the most traffic and engagement.
Conversion metrics reveal how well your content is at driving actions, such as sign-ups or purchases.
- Conversion rate. The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter.
- Lead generation. The number of leads generated from your content, such as form submissions, when signing up to access a webinar.
- Goal completions. The number of times users achieve specific goals, such as downloads.
Traffic source metrics help you understand how people are accessing your content and will help you optimize for visibility.some text
- Email traffic. Visitors arriving via email campaigns.
- Direct traffic. Visitors typing your URL directly into their browsers.
- Organic search traffic. Visitors finding your site through search engines.
- Social media traffic. Visitors referred from social media platforms.
- Referral traffic. Visitors coming from external websites.

Optimize, optimize, optimize!

Newsflash: content marketing is not a one-and-done activity and neither is strategy optimization. This final stage will last as long as you’re creating content, allowing you continually adjust your strategies based on real-time learnings.

The objective here is to maintain relevance and drive continual success by refining your content strategy based on performance data, industry trends, and audience feedback. This might involve adjusting your content topics, launching different formats, or even testing new distribution channels.

Thankfully, artificial intelligence (AI) can help lessen the burden by automating previously time-consuming tasks such as identifying industry trends, analyzing content impact, and suggesting content optimizations!

Storytelling is a powerful tool that transcends mere information delivery, helping connect with your audience on an emotional level. Here’s how to tell a story that leaves an impact in five steps.

Know your audience

Effective storytelling begins with understanding your audience's preferences, needs, and pain points. Tailor your narrative to resonate with them by considering their demographics, interests, and challenges.

Create a compelling narrative

Clarity is key, so take the time to craft a clear and engaging story structure. For example, when creating a case study, start with a captivating introduction, build tension or curiosity in the middle, and provide a satisfying resolution or takeaway at the end.

No matter what type of content you’re creating, your narrative should go beyond the functional aspects of your product by diving into the values that drive your company. This will create a foundation for impactful storytelling that will spread throughout your content, creating a consistent view of your brand’s identity and story.

Use vivid language

Paint a vivid picture with your words by using descriptive language. Sensory details will help immerse readers in your narrative and make them feel like they're part of the story. Stories appeal to your audience's emotions by evoking empathy, joy, or curiosity, and they are more likely to be shared.

Incorporate real-life examples

Social proof is essential to building trust amongst prospects. Including real-world examples such as case studies, testimonials, and customer success stories adds authenticity and credibility to your content.

You can also incorporate anecdotes and research that helps illustrate your points, contextualizing your content and positioning your business as a thought leader.

Make use of imagery and visuals

Content isn’t just about the words you use. When creating high-quality content it is important to make sure you create content that is not only rich in terms of the content but also from a visual perspective. This can mean designing dedicated landing pages or even creating videos that summarize the main points of the content.

1. Use AI… sparingly

With the evolution of AI content marketing tools, producing content has never been easier. AI tools like ChatGPT can generate blog posts, social media updates, white papers, or even product descriptions based on given parameters, freeing up your B2B SaaS content writer to focus on strategy and creativity.

However, they are not infallible, and like any tool, it has its limits. You still need to do your due diligence to ensure you’re maintaining a high level of quality when it comes to writing and storytelling if you want to enjoy the full benefits of content marketing.Here are three examples of when AI can help optimize your SaaS content strategy:

AI-powered tools, such as natural language generation (NLG), can create written content at scale.
ChatGPT can help generate top-level ideas and thought starters — but remember, if you can access this information, so can your competitors.
AI tools can help identify opportunities to optimize your content strategy.

To balance the conversation, here are three watch-outs to keep in mind:

Often, AI-generated content reads the same with similar formatting. If you want your content to have a human voice, you should review and edit the tone to be in line with your brand voice.
AI is known to make mistakes and sometimes produce inaccurate information. It’s essential you fact check everything it creates.
AI doesn’t know your brand. For marketing teams, the focus always needs to be on the quality of the content produced and whether or not it is useful and informative to your buyer.

2. Be consistent

If content is king, consistency is queen. In terms of content marketing for SaaS, this means ensuring that your brand story, product USPs, and voice are consistent across all content; this will help you maintain a recognizable brand identity that resonates with your target audience.Our recommendation is to document these elements in a TOV (tone of voice) guideline, which should include:

Your brand personality
Preferred tone, style, and language
Formatting
Use of humor
Your USPs
Your brand story

3. Focus on value-driven content

In B2B SaaS marketing, your goal is to solve specific problems for your audience by educating them on relevant topics or how to use your product.The key here is to focus on creating content that delivers real value. For example, in a product document, don’t just list the product’s features. Instead, highlight how your product addresses relevant business challenges and back this up using data, testimonials, and real customer case studies.

4. Create a seamless experience for customers

Your individual pieces of content shouldn’t exist in isolation. Help your customers navigate across your platforms by using backlinks and clear calls-to-action. Your content should guide customers from piece to piece, keeping them engaged while moving them through the buyer’s journey.

Active Campaign: Product focus

As part of its Help Center, Active Campaign has an entire section dedicated to release notes. This includes the latest product updates and enhancements, providing a breakdown of technical terms users may search for.

This sits separately from the rest of their content and is a great example of how businesses can support existing customers with product-focused content.

Sprout Social: Pillar Pages

Sprout Social, a social media management software, has done some great work creating comprehensive pillar pages around terms their ideal customers will be searching for.

Pillar pages act as comprehensive guides to a specific topic and typically exist within a company’s blog; in Sprout Social’s case, one such page focuses on ‘Social media marketing.’ This pillar page includes links to other pages relevant to the topic, including ‘social media management,’ ‘social media goals,’ and ‘social media demographics,’ forming a comprehensive topic cluster around the term ‘social media.’

These pages also each feature backlinks to the pillar page and links to relevant product features, boosting them on search engines and establishing Sprout Social as a trusted resource in its category.

Hubspot: Courses

Unsurprisingly, Hubspot, a CRM software product, is great at content writing for SaaS. And they offer a wide range of courses tailored to their audience: marketers.

Some of the certification courses they offer include digital marketing, social media, and lead management, all essential skills marketers need to learn. What’s more, these courses are free.

By helping users and non-users upgrade their skills for free, Hubspot helps solve problems for their ideal customers and builds trust, while ensuring their product reminds top of mind.

What’s next?

While there’s a lot to consider when it comes to building a successful content marketing strategy, it doesn’t need to be overcomplicated.You can refer back to this guide whenever you need a reminder of the most important elements of content marketing for B2B SaaS products, ensuring you prioritize the correct types of content for your audience and goals.

Good luck!

The Ultimate Guide to B2B SaaS Content Marketing