If you answered: “content marketing in our SaaS company is outstanding” – my congratulations, your company probably wins in the markets. 

But if you’ve disagreed or don’t know how to determine if it’s good, check out the stats below (data from zenpost.com):

• The fastest-growing SaaS companies average 1,700 website visits each month,
• 98% of top-performing SaaS companies have blogs,
• High-quality content marketing can generate an ROI of 448% or more for SaaS brands,
• SaaS companies spend $342,000 to $1,080,000 per year (or more) on content marketing.

As you can see, content marketing in SaaS companies is an absolute basis if you want digital marketing to work and generate leads, and in the later stage, customers.

Why am I hearing about SaaS content marketing everywhere?

Because the data doesn’t lie.

Content marketing for SaaS:

• costs 62% less than traditional marketing,
• generates about 3 times as many leads. 

(Source: DemandMetric)

Every business needs content marketing to grow organically, and this includes brands that offer SaaS products too.

Content Marketing is such powerful lead generation tool for SaaS companies’ products.

A well-implemented content marketing strategy allows you to help customers understand your product or service without making the sound of “sell”. 

And convert high quality traffic into the leads.

SaaS Industry – Leads types

There are three types of leads:

• cold – I don’t know if I need anything,
• hot – I have a problem, but I don’t know what to do about it,
• warm – who can solve my problem?

Most companies focus only on “warm leads” – the most heated potential customer; they need a specific solution and look for it on the Internet. 

Huge budgets are spent on PPC campaigns to get warm lead. Due to the competitiveness in this area, Cost-Per-Lead is high, and customer acquisition is not always profitable (ROAS <1). Even in LTV. And it doesn’t always work.

That is why it is worth going down the level and starting to fight for cold and hot leads. Build awareness because the SaaS industry requires eight touchpoints to close a sale.

How often should I blog?

Start with data again.

According to data from HubSpot research, companies that posted 4 or more blog posts a week received 3.5x more of the traffic compared to companies that blogged less than once a week. 

Where should I distribute the content?

There are three primary content distribution channels:

Channels owned

The channels you own are those that belong to you or your company. We distinguish here: blog on the website, e-books, lead magnets, podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, mailing lists, social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

Acquired and Shared Channels

These channels are owned by third parties like friendly blogs, news sites, and even review sites. Publishing on these pages is free, but the content will no longer belong to you.

Pay channels

You can use e.g. Google Ads to promote content in a long-tail strategy (long-tail keywords have less competition than short-tail keywords, higher click-through rate (CTR), lower cost per click (CPC) and long-tail keywords are more specific and customers are highly targeted and more willing to buy.

How do I know my SaaS content marketing strategy is working?

The main goal of content marketing, apart from generating traffic and building awareness, is obviously getting leads and converting them into paying customers.

How to verify that content marketing is effective?

Implement and correctly configure analytical tools.

Google Analytics – reports on the sources of traffic, audience behavior and the achievement of goals on the website.

Google Search Console – detailed information on traffic coming from the Google search (keywords, CTR, position in Google for specific pages and keywords, etc.). 

Google Tag Manager – defining specific events on the website than export to GA and set as a goal.

What goals should I set and measure?

• Lead generation: goal completions and goal conversion rate,
• Sales: transactions, time to purchase and assisted conversions,
• Lead capture forms,
• Blog / newsletter subscriptions.

Why Content Marketing ROI Is Hard to Calculate? And how to deal with it?

In the case of content marketing, it is more difficult to determine the ROI compared to, for example, PPC campaigns such as Google Ads or LinkedIn Ads.

In the case of PPC, we see in a specific period how much we spent and how many leads, conversions, and goals achieved on the website. We are holding the campaign and these numbers will not change.

In the case of content marketing, a cost incurred once (creating a publication, distribution, etc.) may generate leads over a period of 6 months, a year, or even longer.

It takes time to gather a data sample that is representative of your content marketing performance. Think about it: A week’s worth of data on your content marketing performance will probably look very different from several month’s worth of data.

What you need to determine is how the metrics you’re tracking roll up into return on investment. For example, how many pageviews does it take to generate a lead? How many leads does it take to make a sale? What is the value of a sale converted through content marketing?

Calculating content marketing expenses is not as difficult as indicating revenue from content.

Therefore, I will show you how to calculate the revenue.

Example:

• Visitors: 14 000
• Lead conversion rate from visitors: 3%
• Leads: 420 (14 000 x 3%)
• Sales conversion rate from leads: 5%
• Sales: 21 (4200 x 5%)
• Avg selling price: $400
• Revenue: $8 400

If Content Marketing Spend is $2000, then Content Marketing ROI = 320% (3.2). If the ROI of content marketing in your SaaS company is >1, it means that it simply pays off.

Check out our article on how to measure crucial marketing KPIs for SaaS product.

Key takeaways – a well-developed content strategy = more leads = more income

• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing, and generates about 3 times as many leads,
• Create and publish at least 11 content per month,
• Use the available distribution channels,
• Implement analytical tools and measure ROI return on investment. You will receive information on what works, what needs improvement and what to give up.