The SaaS Business’ Ultimate Guide To B2C Content Marketing

According to a survey by Content Marketing Institute, 61% of business-to-consumer (B2C) companies are expecting to invest more resources into their content marketing efforts.

Sure, it’s easy to imagine how content marketing is effective for business-to-business (B2B) audiences. Businessmen and professionals are always looking to learn more about their industries and niches.

They actively read blog posts to find solutions to their business problems and to keep up with the latest trends.

But what about B2C audiences? How can content marketing work for them?

In this blog post, we are going to talk about B2C content marketing for SaaS companies.

We will discuss some differences between B2B and B2C content marketing. We will also outline different steps in building a B2C content marketing strategy, and best practices that SaaS businesses can follow.

So, if you are ready, let’s get started.

Why B2C Content Marketing Is Important

Before we dive into the B2C content marketing strategy, let’s first talk about some benefits of B2C content marketing.

It Helps You Build Brand Awareness And Loyalty

When you create quality content, you are able to reach a wider audience and introduce them to your SaaS product. In other words, you can build brand awareness.

Your goal should be to create content that is so good that people will want to share it with their friends and followers.

This way, you can organically grow your reach and build a loyal following of customers who love your B2C brand.

Increases Your Web Traffic And Sales

Another benefit of B2C content marketing is that it can help increase your web traffic and sales.

How?

Well, when you create quality content, you are giving people a reason to visit your website or blog. And once they are there, you have a chance to convert them into customers.

In addition, B2C content marketing can also help you rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is because search engines like Google love fresh and relevant content.

Still, your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy will still come into play here.

So, if you can create quality SEO content on a regular basis, you will eventually start to rank higher in SERPs, which will lead to even more web traffic and sales.

Differences Between B2C & B2B Marketing

It’s important to understand that there are some key differences between B2C and B2B marketing for SaaS.

While both types of digital marketing aim to educate and inform their audiences, the way they go about it is quite different in several ways, including the following:

• Buyer Personas
• Motivation For Buying
• Content Format
• Sales Cycle Length

Let’s talk about them one by one.

Buyer Personas

In B2B marketing, companies typically have a small number of target buyers. This means that they can create very specific buyer personas and then craft their content around those personas.

Your segmentation would depend more on firmographic factors, such as company size, location, and industry.

Your buyer personas would be specific roles in the company, like the CEO, CTO, and other people who make the purchasing decisions for their company or department.

In B2C marketing, on the other hand, you would have a much larger target market. After all, everyone is a consumer.

Your segmentation would be more based on demographics, like age, gender, income, and location. And your buyer personas would be more general, like “working moms” or “college students.”

Motivation For Buying

The motivation for buying is also quite different in B2B and B2C marketing.

In B2B marketing, the focus is on solving a specific problem that the company is facing.

The company is looking for a solution that will help them save time, money, or resources. The ultimate motivation for a B2B buyer is a return on their investment.

In B2C marketing, the focus is on emotions and desires.

Consumers are looking for products that will make them feel happy, stylish, or cool. They want products that will make their lives easier or more fun.

And while there is still an element of ROI for some B2C solutions, it is not as important as it is in B2B marketing.

Content Format

In B2B content marketing, the focus is on long-form educational content, like blog posts, ebooks, and whitepapers. This type of content is designed to help businesses solve their problems.

In B2C content marketing, short-form entertaining content, like videos and memes, are generally more effective in reaching your target audience.

What’s more, interactive content marketing (like Buzzfeed quizzes) is also gaining popularity.

These types of content are designed to capture the attention of consumers and get them interested in your SaaS product.

Sales Cycle Length

Another key difference between B2C and B2B marketing is the time it takes for a potential customer to become an actual paying subscriber.

In B2B marketing, the sales cycle is typically longer because businesses take more time to make purchasing decisions.

They want to be sure that they are making the right decision for their company and that they are getting a good return on their investment.

So they take the time to deliberate it and come to a consensus about whether or not a particular SaaS product is a good investment.

In B2C marketing, the sales cycle is shorter because consumers make buying decisions more quickly.

Since the buying motivation is more emotion-based, they are more likely to make a purchase on the spur of the moment.

What’s more, these decisions are often influenced by their friends, family, and social media interactions. And they are usually only looking at a few options before they make their final decision.

How To Build A Winning B2C Content Marketing Strategy For SaaS Businesses

Now that we’ve talked about some of the key differences between B2B and B2C marketing, let’s take a look at how you can build a winning B2C content marketing strategy for your B2C company.

Step 1: Defining Your Target Audience

The first step is to define your target audience.

As we mentioned before, in B2C marketing you typically have a larger target market than in B2B marketing.

However, you still need to segment your audience so that you can create targeted content that resonates with them.

Think about who your ideal customer is and what their needs are. What type of content would they be interested in? What kind of tone would they respond to?

Once you have a good understanding of your target audience, you can move on to the next step.

Step 2: Identifying Your Goals

The second step is to identify your goals.

What do you want to achieve with your B2C content marketing efforts?

Do you want to increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your website? Boost sales?

It’s important to be clear about your goals from the start so that you can create content that will help you achieve them.

What’s more, your goals will determine what key performance indicators (KPIs) you should track. This will help you measure your success and make necessary adjustments to your strategy along the way.

Step 3: Choosing The Right Content Format

Now it’s time to choose the right content format for your B2C content marketing strategy.

As we mentioned before, B2C marketing generally focuses on short-form entertaining content.

And according to the Content Marketing Institute survey we mentioned earlier, video content is projected to be the top-performing content type this year.

Still, you can diversify your B2C content to other formats, like infographics, quizzes, and even memes, to capture the attention of different types of consumers.

The key is to create content that is visually appealing and easy to consume.

Remember, you’re trying to grab the attention of busy consumers who have a shorter attention span than businessmen.

Step 4: Keyword Research

Just like in B2B content marketing, keyword research is also important in B2C content marketing.

Firstly, keyword research will tell you what topics your target audience is interested in. You can use this information to generate ideas for your content.

Secondly, it will also help you optimize your content so that it ranks higher in search engines and appears in front of your target audience.

Not sure how to do keyword research? Check out our complete guide on how to do keyword research for content marketing.

Step 5: Create A Content Calendar

Once you have all of the above in place, you’re almost ready to start creating your B2C content.

But before you start randomly publishing blog posts, fun quizzes, and videos, it’s important to create a content calendar.

A content calendar will help you plan and organize your content so that it aligns with your business goals.

It will also keep you on track and ensure that you’re consistently publishing high-quality content.

Step 6: Content Creation

Now it’s time for the fun part: content creation.

Still, “fun” doesn’t necessarily mean easy. There are still things you need to be mindful of when you’re creating B2C content, like:

• Keeping your target audience in mind
• Creating visually appealing content
• Make sure your content is easy to consume

We’ll talk more about B2C content strategy further down our blog post.

Step 7: Content Promotion And Distribution

Once you’ve created your B2C content, it’s time to promote and distribute it.

If you want to reach as many people as possible, it’s best to use as many content distribution channels as you can.

Let’s talk about some key channels you should use:

Social Media: Social media is a great way to reach your target audience and promote your content. 

So make sure to post your content on all the relevant social media channels and use hashtags to reach a wider audience.

For a B2C audience, you should use a popular social media platform, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

If you’re doing short-form videos, TikTok can also be a great platform to do this, especially if you have a younger target audience.

Email: Email is another great way to promote your B2C content, although it is a less popular choice among B2C audiences, compared to social media.

You can send your latest blog post or video to your email list or even create a dedicated email marketing campaign for it.

Paid Advertising: Paid advertising is also an effective way to promote your B2C content, especially if you’re targeting a specific audience segment.

You can use platforms like Google Ads or Facebook Ads to get your content in front of your target audience.

Online Communities: Online communities can be a great way to reach your target audience and promote your content.

For example, if you’re targeting new moms, you can join Facebook groups or Subreddits (on Reddit) for new moms and share your content there.

There are many other ways you can promote and distribute your B2C content. The key is to be creative and experiment with different channels to see what works best for your business.

Step 8: Analyze And Optimize Your Content

Finally, don’t forget to analyze your content regularly to see how it’s performing. The KPIs you should be looking at depend on what content formats and distribution channels you use.

We will discuss B2C content marketing metrics further down the blog post. But here are a few examples we can go through for now:

If you’re using blog posts as your main content format, you should track things like page views, time on page, and bounce rate.

And if you’re using social media to promote your content, you should look at engagement rates (likes, comments, shares) and reach.

This data will give you insights into what’s working and what’s not. Consequently, those insights will help you optimize your B2C content marketing strategy accordingly.

Best Practices For B2C Content Marketing

Now that we’ve gone over the basics of how to create a B2C content marketing strategy, let’s talk about some best practices that B2C SaaS businesses can follow:

Keep Your Target Audience Top Of Mind

This one might seem obvious, but I really can’t stress this enough. When you’re creating B2C content, always keep your target audience top of mind.

Your content should be relevant to their needs, interests, and pain points. If it’s not, they’re not going to engage with it.

Use Purposeful Languange In Your Content

When you’re writing your B2C content, use language that’s purposeful and to the point.

Your audience doesn’t have time to read through long, drawn-out paragraphs. They want great content that’s concise and easy to digest.

So, make sure your language is clear and concise. Use short sentences and avoid using industry jargon as much as possible.

Use Power Words And Emotional Language

When you’re writing your B2C content, it’s important to use power words and emotional language.

Power words are words that evoke an emotional response from your audience.

They’re often used in headlines and calls-to-action (CTAs) to grab attention and get people to take action.

Some examples of power words include:

• Amazing
• Incredible
• Unbelievable
• Life-changing
• Transformative

As you can see, these words have a lot of emotion behind them. And they’re effective in getting people to take notice of your content.

Fair warning, though. Don’t overuse these power words. People nowadays are more careful about accessing clickbait and spammy content.

So, if you use too many power words in your content, people will tune you out. And that could hurt your brand.

Instead, use them sparingly to really emphasize the key points you’re trying to make.

Create Visually Appealing Content

People are visual creatures, so it’s important to make sure that your content is visually appealing.

And remember that you’re trying to reach everyday consumers here.

This means your content should be easy to consume and understand, even if your website visitors are not tech-savvy.

So use visuals like images, infographics, and videos to break up your text and make your content more engaging.

Speaking of visually appealing things…

Make Sure Your Website Is Easy On The Eyes

Your website is the first impression you make on potential customers, so it’s important to make sure it’s a good one.

This means having a well-designed website that’s easy to navigate and use. So having a user-friendly website can really go a long way in improving your B2C content marketing efforts.

Generate User-Generated Content (UGC)

User-generated content (UGC) is any type of content that’s created by users, not businesses. This could be things like product reviews, social media posts, or product testimonials.

UGC is a great way to build social proof and increase trust in your brand. After all, potential customers are more likely to trust their fellow consumers than businesses who obviously want to sell their products.

So if you can get your users to create UGC for you, it’ll go a long way in helping you convert leads into customers.

Encourage Social Shares

Social media is a powerful B2C content marketing tool, but only if your content is actually being shared.

Make it easy for people to share your content by adding social sharing buttons to your website and blog posts. 

Moreover, encourage people to share your content by asking them to do so at the end of your articles or in your call-to-action (CTA).

Create Mobile-Friendly Content

More and more people are using their smartphones to access the internet, so it’s important to make sure your content is mobile-friendly.

This means creating responsive website designs and using large font sizes and simple layouts for your blog posts and other written content.

It also means creating videos and images that can be easily viewed on a small screen.

B2C Content Marketing Metrics To Track

As we mentioned earlier, metrics for B2C content can vary depending on the content formats and the distribution channels that you are using.

Here are some of the most important B2C content marketing metrics to track:

• Unique and Returning Visitors (Website Traffic)
• Time On Page
• Bounce Rate
• Video Views (for video content)
• Number Of Shares and Likes
• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Conversions

Unique & Returning Visitors

When you’re running a blog, it’s important to track how much traffic you are getting.

The amazing thing about this is that Google Analytics enables you to see how many unique and returning visitors you’re getting. The platform assigns a specific user ID for each visitor.

And when the same person visits your website more than once, you can see them as returning visitors.

This will give you an idea of how popular your content is and whether or not people are coming back for more.

Time On Page

Another important metric to look at is time on page, which tells you how long people are spending on your website or blog.

If people are spending a lot of time on your site, it means they’re engaged with your content.

This is a good metric to look at if you want to improve the quality of your content.

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate tells you what percentage of people are leaving your website after viewing only one page. As for video content, the bounce rate is the percentage of people who start watching but immediately leave it

A high bounce rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It could just mean that your visitors or viewers immediately found what they were looking for and didn’t need to look any further.

But if you’re consistently getting a high bounce rate, it could be an indication that your content isn’t relevant to your target audience or that your website is difficult to navigate.

Video Views

If you’re creating videos as part of your B2C content marketing strategy, then you’ll want to track how many views each video is getting.

This metric will give you an idea of which videos are the most popular and which ones aren’t resonating with your audience.

And if you’re running ads for your videos, this metric will also help you determine whether or not those ads are effective.

Number of Shares and Likes

Social media is a powerful B2C content marketing tool, so it’s important to track how often your content is being shared and liked on social media.

This will give you an idea of how popular your content is and whether or not it’s resonating with your audience.

It will also help you determine which social media platforms are the most effective for sharing your content.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The click-through rate (CTR) is a metric that tells you how often people are clicking on links in your content. This includes links to your website, social media profiles, and other websites.

This metric will give you an idea of how effective your content and CTAs are at driving traffic to your website or other online platforms.

Conversions

Finally, it’s important to track how many people are taking the desired action after viewing your content.

This could be signing up for your email list, subscribing to your social media page or YouTube channel, or finally buying a subscription to your SaaS product.

This metric will help you determine whether your content is effective at driving conversions.

Final Thoughts On B2C Content Marketing

Content marketing is a very effective digital marketing strategy, even for a B2C business.

The most important thing to know in B2C content marketing is that your target audience is everyday consumers.

That’s why the best content to reach them is short-form and engaging content. Something that would make them stop scrolling as they browse their social media feed.

This is in contrast to B2B content, which mostly consists of long-form blog posts and somewhat technical educational content.

Nowadays, the most engaging forms of B2C content include viral videos, memes, and even interactive content like quizzes. So you may try exploring those options.

If you want more guides and strategies that can help you grow your SaaS business, visit our blog here.