Demand generation for SaaS products can be difficult. Marketplaces can oftentimes be crowded, with new product launches constantly adding to the mix and creating noise, a noise that can easily overwhelm potential users and drown out, or dilute your own messaging.
Getting the balance right between sales messaging, to encourage the inquiry or demo request and general information can be challenging, and a solution to do this across SaaS or FaaS websites is to break down content into different areas, such as content hubs and support sections, but we need to look beyond the linear funnel approach and build a content model (with architecture as the means of navigating) to provide touchpoints for users at all stages of their journey.
To do this, rather than looking at the traditional sales funnel and adapting content for it, we want to create a content hierarchy model to accommodate the multitude of user intents and potential user personas.
Individual web pages can rank for a number of queries, and Google understands this. This is why the Quality Rater Guidelines talks about the concept of main content and supporting content. This can be open to interpretation, but for me, main content is the content that directly satisfies the query and intent, and then supporting content on the page helps answer secondary and tertiary questions.
This same methodology and thought process can be used to help generate more MQMs and MQLs.
B2B Content Objectives
In 2019 Walker Sands performed a study of 300 B2B marketers, titled the Future of B2B content, that 29% of B2B brands surveyed were utilizing content as a mechanism of boosting sales and converting new users, with only 18% using content to build brand awareness and 19% using it to build new relationships.
This is a big opportunity for B2B companies, like the greater majority of SaaS providers, to capitalize on as a large percent of the B2B market are focusing more effort on the final endpoint conversion rather than building a generally bigger brand and number of users to potentially convert.
This isn’t to say that end-point conversion isn’t important. but from experience this is often coupled with a strategy of just increasing rankings and traffic, with the notion that maintaining conversion rate and just adding more users will scale over time. However, a lower CPA and greater conversion over time can come from building the relationships and introducing the brand at a much earlier stage of the potential user relationship.
Building User Relationships
A lot of companies map out their ideal customer personas based on some of their pain points and then produce content (with a marketing angle) that they believe or have researched the consume, but it’s also important to put your brand infront of the user as much as possible, even if the direct end of that user interaction doesn’t end with an inquiry form completion.
This can be achieved through creating different content types in clear site sections, and for the most part, all SaaS websites have the essential sections already:
- The core, commercial pages part of the website
- A blog, either all-encompassing or broken into three sections: blog content, press releases, product release notes
- A product support/help section
The support section is one that’s often overlooked, as it’s a natural way to incorporate a lot of niche and detailed user pain points into your website and be visible for answering them For the most part, you’ll be competing with other forums such as Quora and StackOverflow, but from experience, Google likes to vary the content (and content sources) within SERPs, and you can rank relatively well alongside these forums.
By becoming more ever-present for a variety of user queries, you’re helping to build the relationship and show off different aspects of your brand’s knowledge and service offering. This can only be a positive when a user is more confident in either switching provider or engaging with a provider.