The SaaS Content Production Process: A Step-By-Step Guide

When it comes to building brand awareness for a SaaS brand or product, content marketing is one of the most popular strategies being used today.

That’s because SaaS businesses rely on content to attract and engage customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

But what exactly is SaaS content marketing? And how can you produce the kind of content that will help you achieve your business goals?

In this article, we’ll answer those questions and provide a step-by-step guide to producing SaaS content that successfully converts prospects into customers.

What Is SaaS Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing reliable, relevant, and engaging content to attract and retain customers.

In other words, SaaS content marketing is all about using one or multiple types of content to generate leads and customers for your business.

And it has proven itself to be an excellent strategy. According to the Content Marketing Institute, businesses that use content marketing have six times more conversions than those that don’t.

Now, how do you create content that successfully attracts potential customers and leads them towards a conversion?

Let’s talk about some steps in SaaS content production that can help you win more customers.

1) Identify Your Target Audience

Before you write or create any content piece, you first need to identify who you are making it for.

Not only will this help you know what topics to talk about. But it will also enable you to identify the content types and distribution channels that would most effectively reach your target audience.

We will talk more about those content types and channels in later steps.

For this step, however, you can do two things: build a customer profile and pick a target SaaS sales funnel stage.

Build A Customer Profile

Creating a customer profile or buyer persona will help you get a better understanding of who your target audience is.

When building one, you would want to include information like:

• Demographics: age, gender, location, job title, etc.
• Technographics: what type of devices they use, what SaaS products they’re already using, etc.
• Psychographics: interests, values, and lifestyle choices.
• Firmographics (for B2B audiences): company size, what industry they’re in, etc.

Once you have this information, you can start to build a picture of what your ideal customer looks like.

And with that knowledge, you can create SaaS content that appeals directly to them.

Pick A Target SaaS Sales Funnel Stage

Now that you know who your target audience is, it’s time to decide which stage of the SaaS sales funnel they’re in.

The SaaS sales funnel has eight distinct stages: awareness, interest, consideration, evaluation, purchase, retention, and advocacy.

One of the beauties of content marketing is that you can create content for all of these stages.

The challenge is creating targeted content that would appeal more to potential customers in the different stages. And your goal is to create content pieces that speak to customers at each stage of their journey.

At the top of the funnel, your objective is to build trust with your potential customer. So the content in these earlier stages is more educational. Sounding too sales-y may even turn off your audience, hurting your marketing efforts.

But as you move on to the middle of the funnel, you would want to show your leads that your SaaS product is the best choice among your competitors.

So, content pieces for these stages can sound more promotional. You can create buyer’s guides, product comparisons, or case studies.

And when you go past the Purchase stages and are trying to retain your customers, you can go back to educational content. It can be through tutorials or more educational guides that can help them improve their businesses.

This is just an overview of a SaaS content marketing funnel. But it should give you an idea of how to appeal to customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

2) Know Your Target Audience’s Pain Points

The best SaaS content speaks to the pain points of your target audience.

Your goal is to show your potential customers that you understand their struggles and that you have a solution to their problems.

To do that, you need to know what their most pressing problems are in the first place.

Here are some things you can do to identify your target audience’s pain points:

Look At Support Requests & Questions

One of the best places to look for your target audience’s pain points is in your own support requests and questions.

These are the issues that your customers are already having. Look for ones that come up frequently. 

You can also use this opportunity to improve your SaaS product. If you’re seeing a lot of requests or questions about a certain feature, it might be an indication that you need to work on that particular area of your software.

Another way to get support requests and questions is by looking at SaaS review sites like Capterra or G2. You can see what people are saying about similar products in your space and what their specific issues are.

Monitor Social Media Posts & Forums

Social media posts and forums are also a great way to find out what your target audience is struggling with.

You can use social listening tools to track certain keywords and see what people are saying about them.

You can also join relevant online communities and forums to get a better understanding of the issues that people in your target market are facing.

Analyze Your Website’s Analytics Data

Your website’s analytics data can also give you insights into your target audience’s pain points in the form of cold hard data.

To do this, you would need a tool like Google Analytics.

Look at the pages on your site that are getting the most traffic. These topics are most likely the current trending topics among your potential customers.

3) Establish What Content Types You Will Use

As we mentioned earlier, your ideal content type will depend on your target audience.

To produce SaaS content that appeals to them, you need to identify what type of asset or media they’re most likely to consume and engage with.

Some of the most popular SaaS content types include the following:

Blog Posts

Blog posts are a great way to show your target audience that you’re an expert on a certain topic.

They also give you the opportunity to rank for keywords that people are searching for. And if people like your blog post, they might share it with their network, which can help you reach even more people.

Note that SaaS-related blog posts, especially in the B2B market, are usually in long form (at least 2000 words).

SaaS products are very technical. And even if you’re just writing something educational on SaaS-related topics, anything less than 1000 words just might not be enough.

Still, the more important thing is making sure that you have 100% accurate facts and sound advice in your blog posts.

Remember that content marketing works because potential customers are hungry for reliable information that can make their lives better.

Video Content

According to Semrush, video has been the highest-performing content type in 2022.

And it’s not hard to see why.

Videos are a great way to get your message across in an engaging and visually appealing way.

They’re also easy to consume and can be easily shared on social media and other online platforms.

Infographics

You may also use images and infographics as a content type. They’re visually appealing and easy to digest.

They’re also a great way to break down complex topics into bite-sized pieces of information that your target audience can understand.

What’s more, being a visual piece of content jam-packed with information, infographics are very shareable. And if your audience does share them, your infographics (and brand) can reach more people.

Podcasts

Podcasts are a great way to reach a B2B audience.

Businessmen and professionals are always hungry to learn new things that can help them improve their businesses and job performance.

And because podcasts are usually around 30 minutes long, they give you enough time to dive deep into a topic and provide valuable insights that your target audience will appreciate.

One good strategy you can accomplish is to invite thought leaders and professionals to guest in your podcast episodes.

This can help you attract new listeners and provide more helpful content. Plus, if you can get those guests to vouch for you, that would build you up more as an authority in your niche.

What’s more, podcasts are a great way to reach SaaS professionals who are always on the go. They can listen to your podcasts while they’re commuting, working out, or doing other things.

4) Plan Your Content Distribution Channels

Now, how are you going to get your content out there?

There are a number of different ways to distribute your SaaS content. And the best way to reach your target audience is by using a mix of distribution channels.

Some popular SaaS content distribution channels include the following:

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)

One of the most organic ways to make your content visible is to have it rank high in the SERPs.

But ranking in searches takes time, effort, and a lot of search engine optimization (SEO). After all, all of your competitors are also fighting for those top spots.

SEO is the process of optimizing your content to rank higher in the SERPs.

And while it can be complex, there are a number of simple things you can do to improve your SEO. These include using the right keywords and phrases, having a mobile-friendly site, and creating fresh content regularly.

Social Media

Social media is one of the most effective SaaS content distribution channels out there. It allows you to reach a large audience with just a few clicks.

Videos and infographics are particularly well-suited for social media. But you can also use this channel to drive traffic back to your blog or website, where people can consume more of your SaaS content.

When it comes to choosing which social media platforms to use, it largely depends on your target audience.

For a B2B audience, you might want to focus on LinkedIn, since it’s a professional networking platform. In fact, a lot of businessmen and professionals post their own blog posts on their own LinkedIn pages.

For a B2C target market, however, you may want to focus on more popular platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. If you’re trying to reach a younger audience, you may even want to explore TikTok.

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is another great way to reach your target audience, especially those who don’t know about your brand yet.

With paid ads, you can target a specific audience with laser precision. You can also control how much money you want to spend on each ad campaign.

You can have your ads on different channels too, such as searches, social media, and retargeting ads.

Just a side note on social media ads: it can give you a big boost in your combined social media marketing and content marketing efforts.

With it, your videos and images can reach even people who don’t follow your company page.

Not to mention the ability to target these ads with the exact market segment you want to reach.

Let’s take Facebook ads, for example. When you run paid ads on this platform, you can target them to specific age groups and various demographic factors.

This ensures that your SaaS content is reaching the right people at the right time.

Email Marketing

Email marketing can also be an effective SaaS content distribution channel, especially if you’re targeting leads somewhere in the middle of the SaaS sales funnel.

It allows you to send your SaaS content directly to people who have signed up to receive your emails.

This way, you know that your target audience is interested in what you have to say. And since they’ve given you their email address, they’re also more likely to read and engage with your SaaS content.

YouTube

Since video is one of the most effective content types out there, we can’t just simply ignore YouTube as a content distribution channel.

YouTube can be considered both a search engine and a social media platform.

It’s the second most popular search engine, next to Google (which is YouTube’s umbrella company). And it’s a social media platform because users can interact with each other and share videos with one another.

There are a number of ways you can use YouTube to distribute your SaaS content. You can, for example, create how-to videos, testimonials, or product demonstrations.

You can also include links back to your website or blog in the video description. This way, you can drive traffic back to your site and increase your chances of conversion.

5) Do Your Keyword Research

One of the most important steps in SaaS content production is keyword research.

Why? Because if you want your SaaS content to have the right topics and to rank high in the SERPs, you need to use the right keywords and phrases.

You also need to use them throughout your SaaS content, including in the title, meta tags, and body copy.

There are a number of free and paid keyword research tools you can use, such as Google Ads Keyword Planner and Moz Keyword Explorer.

6) Create A Content Calendar

Creating a content calendar is one of the most important parts of your content marketing strategy.

This calendar will help you stay organized and ensure that your SaaS content creation efforts are on track.

It will also help you monitor your progress and measure the performance of your content marketing efforts.

When creating a content calendar, there are a few things from earlier steps you need to keep in mind.

These include the following:

• The topics you want to cover
• The keywords you want to target
• The type of SaaS content you want to create
• The distribution channels you want to use
• The date and time you want to publish your SaaS content

7) Create & Edit Your Content

When you’re done with your initial content calendar, then it’s time to start creating your SaaS content.

This step will, of course, vary depending on the type of SaaS content you’re creating.

If you’re creating a blog post, for example, you’ll need to do things like write your headline, come up with a catchy intro, and format your body copy.

On the other hand, if you’re creating a video, you’ll need to come up with a script, record your footage, and edit everything together.

Needless to say, being your SaaS company’s founder or CEO, you can’t possibly do all these things alone.

Nor should you.

You need to build a team of SaaS content marketers who can help you with the different stages of SaaS content creation. You can even hire experienced freelancers to help you with these tasks.

If you have a bigger SaaS business operation, you may even need a content director to be on top of this team.

8) Track Your Content Marketing Performance

Once you’ve published your SaaS content, it’s important to track its performance.

This way, you can see what’s working and what’s not. You can also make the necessary changes to improve your SaaS content marketing results.

Let’s talk about some key performance indicators (KPIs) you can track:

Unique & Returning Visitors

The number of people visiting your content pages is the most direct indicator of how well your content is reaching its target audience.

It may also help you see how effective your SaaS content distribution efforts are.

You can track this metric using Google Analytics. And when you’re monitoring your website traffic, you should take note of your unique and returning visitors.

Your unique visitors are, well, the number of unique people who visit your site.

This metric is important because it gives you an idea of how many new people are exposed to your SaaS content.

On the other hand, your returning visitors are those people who have already visited your site before.

While this metric doesn’t necessarily mean that these people have converted, it’s still a good indicator of the quality of your content.

If they keep coming back to it, that could mean that they find it relevant and useful.

Bounce Rate

Your SaaS content’s bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your site after viewing only one page

This metric is important because it can give you an idea of how engaging and relevant your SaaS content is.

A high bounce rate usually means that people didn’t find what they were looking for on your site

It could also mean that your SaaS content isn’t relevant to their needs or that it’s not well-written.

Like website traffic, you can track your SaaS content’s bounce rate using Google Analytics.

Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your SaaS content.

The more backlinks your SaaS content has, the higher its quality is likely to be.

This is because backlinks show that other people find your SaaS content valuable and worth linking to.

If other content creators are quoting your content and linking to your web pages, that can be a strong indicator that it is credible and engaging to them.

You can use a tool like Ahrefs to track the number of backlinks pointing to your SaaS content.

Social Media Engagement

If you’re using social media as a content distribution channel (as you should), it would do you well to track how your posted content pieces are doing.

Your SaaS content’s social media engagement is the number of times people interact with it on social media.

This metric is important because it can give you an idea of how well your SaaS content is being received by your target audience.

Some things you can track under social media engagement are the number of likes, shares, and comments that your content gets.

Views (For Videos)

If you’re producing SaaS video content, then you should also track the number of views it gets.

Whether you’re uploading your videos on social media, YouTube, or all of them, their respective analytics tools should be able to track these views. Take note that the number of SaaS video content views is not always an accurate indicator of quality

But it’s still a good metric to track, especially if you’re just starting out with SaaS video content production.

Final Thoughts About SaaS Content Production

To sum it up, SaaS content production is the process of creating content specifically for your SaaS brand.

There are many things you need to consider when producing SaaS content, such as your target audience and what kind of content they would find useful.

You also need to make sure that your SaaS content is well-created, engaging, and relevant to your target audience’s needs.

And finally, don’t forget to track metrics like website traffic and social media engagement to see how well your SaaS content is performing.

Looking for more strategies to help you grow your SaaS business? Visit our blog here.