The Best B2B Content Marketing Formats You Should Consider for Your SaaS Company

With so many options available, you may be wondering what are the best B2B content marketing strategies for your SaaS company? Today, the online world has shifted and the average buyer now consumes about 3-5 pieces of content before making any major purchasing decision—making content a vital aspect of any marketing plan.

Content should be the backbone of your B2B SaaS marketing content strategy. Serving as an inbound marketing generator, original content is one of the most effective ways to draw in customers and build trust. As a review, here are just a few reasons to consider a content strategy, especially in the SaaS space:

• Establish brand authority– Set yourself apart as the expert within your field and build brand authority. This not only demonstrates how well you know your product, but your customers as well.
• Empower your customers-Buyers no longer want to engage in long conversations with sales reps. They want to have all the information (i.e. content) at their fingertips in order to make a quick and informed decision.
• Gain new customers through SEO-Now more than ever, it’s easy to target your ideal customer through keyword research and SEO best practices. By choosing specific words and earning backlinks, your perfect customer can easily find you and you’ll climb the page rankings in Google.
• Build customer loyalty- By offering useful advice and valuable content that best serves the customer, the buyer will think of you when it comes time to make a purchase.

In this post, we will be diving into the best B2B content marketing strategies grouped by content type.

Part of The Founder’s Guide to B2B SaaS Content Marketing. Available as a PDF and Video Series.

The Best B2B Content Formats

Blog Content

Educational and user-focused blog posts are perhaps some of the most effective content types to highlight specific features of your SaaS product, or outline how to overcome challenges. Your audience (i.e. potential customers) want to come to an industry expert to solve their problems. If you can be an industry thought leader–you’ll be top of mind when making a purchase.

Here are some examples to consider based on the sale cycle stage:

Awareness Stage: Industry news, research analysis
Valuable information is the number one way to acquire customers. If your brand can become the go-to source for industry news, this not only helps build brand authority—but customer trust. The focus here should be on B2B SaaS news and research, not your specific product.
Example: ‘LastPass Research Finds 92% of Businesses Believe Passwordless Authentication Is in Their Organization’s Future’

Consideration Stage: How-to blogs, listicle blogs.
Content at this stage should highlight how your software works and why the customer should consider your product to solve their problem.
Example: ‘How To Use Our Hotel Management Software To Never Experience Overbooking Again’ 

Decision Stage: Product updates, team interviews, case studies
Now is the time to convince your readers to make a purchase! In the SaaS world, monthly customer retention is often the goal for your software, so content should be focused on exciting, engaging new features within your product. If you’re focused on targeting new customers, they’ll want hard proof your product is the right fit for their needs. The focus here should be on standing out in a strategic way. Why is your product the best for their specific use case?

Example: ‘Rock Content Increases Annual Recurring Revenue 650% with the Help of the HubSpot CRM Platform’

Video Content

Today, more than ever before people are consuming video content over all other forms of media. On average, people watch 30 minutes of video on their smartphones every day. Video content can provide short spurts of informative content in a very compact way. Blogs with video within the B2B SaaS world, attract three times as many inbound leads as blog posts without video.

Customers also have a very short attentions span, so consider creating a video that highlights the features of your product, or a how-to tutorial in 30 seconds or less– which provides information in an accessible, bite-sized format. How-to videos are an essential part of any SaaS company’s content strategy because they make the explanation part incredibly easy.

Have a new software that no one knows about? Create a video showing customers how it works and how it solves their specific problem. 

Audio Content & Podcasts

More decision-makers than ever are starved for time to consume content. Instead of being able to sit down and actively watch videos or read, they need to hear you on the go. Podcasts make this possible for B2B brands. By either creating new audio-only content by sharing your knowledge and expertise or repurposing existing video content, you can reach an entirely new audience.

The popularity of podcasts has only been growing in recent years, with 32% of US adults listening to at least one podcast episode in the past month. Beyond that, sampling podcast listeners, 76.8% listen to podcasts for more than 7 hours each week. This presents a huge opportunity to target affluent individuals who are hungry for knowledge on specific topics regularly. In recent years, brands such as HubSpot have spent millions on building out their podcast network due to the promising nature of the space. By effectively creating regular audio content you build a massive opportunity for your brand.

Case Studies

One of the best B2B content marketing strategies is implementing case studies into your arsenal. Customers love to connect with a personal story and build trust upon learning how your software or tool helped someone.  88% of people are influenced by testimonials and treat them like a recommendation from a personal friend. Case studies are like testimonials on steroids.  Try creating a case study video, which is far more engaging than text. They don’t need to be particularly in-depth, but they do need to cover the basics:

• A real customer interview
• A quick shot of the customer experiencing your product
• A ‘before and after’ of how life/businesses has changed since discovering your product

A case study in this format tells a story and also feels authentic, which creates high-level content marketing that inevitably leads to a long-term influx of customers. 

As an example, Hubspot does this flawlessly showcasing how their product helped those in the SaaS space.

E-Books & Whitepapers

While e-books & whitepapers aren’t always the best content piece for the average company, in the B2B SaaS space they’re an important aspect of marketing. Whitepapers and e-books are key for demonstrating authority and thought-leadership.

A best practice within a content marketing strategy is often to distill the information into serviceable information. But when it comes to whitepapers, it’s okay to get a bit nerdy. Now is the time to provide scientific information on how your software will help solve the customer’s exact pain points and problems. Whitepapers are lengthy and should include aspects such as graphs, infographics and illustrations that help provide context to technical concepts.

One key tip: While blogs should always be readily available, consider providing access to whitepapers via email sign-ups for ultimate lead generation.

Email Newsletters

While some may say email is a dying form of content, we happen to think it is one of the most vital. While all other content-sharing platforms could disappear tomorrow, with email you have complete ownership over your contact list. Those who have chosen to sign-up for your email newsletter have a clear interest in your product and there is no shelf-life to the content. Customers can reference it again and again in their inbox.

Email newsletters are also a great way to re-purpose content. You don’t need to come up with an entirely new strategy, just re-purpose your blogs, videos, and case studies into a visually appealing package sent straight to your customer’s inbox. This is a vital way to help keep current customers engaged with your software, as you share helpful tips on how to use the product, as well as new functions as they become available–boosting long-term customer retention.

These are endless best practices when it comes to B2B content marketing strategies, but we think these top five strategies will give you a good foundation. Building out a proper content pipeline will not only serve as an in-bound lead generator, but it will also help establish your SaaS company as an authority within the space.

Looking to outsource your content marketing for your B2B SaaS company? Connect with the Sonan Digital team today.

Part of The Founder’s Guide to B2B SaaS Content Marketing. Available as a PDF and Video Series.