💬 We've all heard about the power/effectiveness that content marketing can do to drive growth for SaaS and startup brands - but with the new era of search, more competition, higher prices to compete in terms of acquisition (and the list goes on)... the content game to generate growth is becoming more challenging.
It's now about marketing managers and founders to think outside of the 'usual SaaS/B2B content playbook' - approach to content needs to be thought about in terms of strategy for the whole customer journey - meaning, content needs to be catered for acquisition, but also for activation, customer support (retention), advocacy/referral, and numerous other areas/objectives.
So, what I'm sharing with you today below are some of those content initiative approaches to seriously consider doing (if not already) for those who are marketers/founders in the world of SaaS and/or B2B.
💬 These are some key opportunity areas around content and education support resources for brands to add as experiments to test, add to the future marketing roadmap, or for those doing some of the below already, some thoughts for optimisations to consider - plus, I included some references as I go along.
If there's one initiative that can help SaaS startups with retention and improving LTV (and even the likes of product upgrades with increasing ARPU/ARPA), is by creating damn good education resources around features and solutions related to the product.
Whether part of initial onboarding and also via other behavioural triggers (like low activity, usage on certain features, etc), highlight features visually through the likes of mini Loom videos, or even the likes of gifs.
And promote these via email flows and even the likes of low-budget ads (depending on audience bucket sizes and your goals).
Something which a few brands have done is create an academy experience, which is essentially a curated resource library of existing articles/posts, but packaged up together nicely to create easy steps - a great initiative, especially for new suer acquisition. Plus, helps with TOF/MOF marketing content too for acquisition/nurturing, as well as helping with activation.
Related to the above in terms of creating educational resources, ensure to create really good documentation and knowledge bases.
There's nothing more frustrating for users when it comes to understanding features and what's possible, and then running into issues, and finding no documentation around assisting - sure, chat can be available, but having this info in a consolidated place like a knowledge place does help reduce friction around problems that users may run into, which does help retention.
Having a frictionless onboarding experience really does help with activation and providing a seamless experience for new users.
And as part of onboarding strategies, such as walkthroughs, pop-ups or internal checklist prompts, comes with providing educational resources that are related to whatever feature you're highlighting.
An initiative to help with user retention and even engaging the likes of 'freemium' users (where you want to improve free to paid signup conversion rates), us by hosting AMAs and events (like webinars, 'office hours', etc), where you share valuable resources/education to these segments.
Each segment has a different goal, and regardless of those who turn up 'live' or opt-in to these content initiatives, it's worth promoting through channels like email automation, to help with goals you have for each segment.
Plus, you can even use pieces of content, and host internally or externally on your blog/resource section - there's always a way you can repurpose.
To help with user acquisition and product upgrade efforts, a good strategy that I've seen prove to be really effective, is by working with B2B content creators/thought-leaders/influencers, where they can create mini-content snippets and tutorials around key features.
In many ways, like what you see eCommerce brands do with UGC ads on the likes of TikTok/Instagram, but in the context of B2B SaaS marketing.
User (focus) groups are awesome for numerous objectives, like research and gaining qualitative/quantitative insights, where you can understand the problems/solutions they face - and based on the problems they bring up, you may identify gaps in messaging/content strategy which is not addressing some areas. And the simply solution here is by creating helpful resources around these areas.
In conjunction with the above with the theme of research/user feedback, create guides/resources based (or even optimise existing guides), around any friction points or common problems that users may face.
Then, distribute that content to those segments (that answered).
Whenever you're promoting specific features or sending out 'data update' emails based on product usage, tie in helpful content that's related.
Now building a community is another topic altogether (which I've created a helpful checklist for too with strategies/tactics and initiative ideas) that can really help SaaS and B2B brands create a competitive advantage.
And by competitive advantage, I mean everything that comes along with scaling and thriving communities, such as - helping with user acquisition (TOF/MOF), referrals, retention, product upgrades/upsells, and lots lots more.
The amount of content ideas that you can gain from owning a community is amazing.
