B2B SaaS content marketing in action: Katy's story

"Why do I need to think about content? Don't we just need a bigger budget for ads?"

Katy, a fist time founder, was doubtful when her CMO suggested spending a five-figure sum each month on a B2B SaaS content marketing agency. 

Like other SaaS companies, their series A startup was already spending tens of thousands on ads and other paid lead generation channel.. While the returns were shrinking (each click was costing $$ with other companies muscling in on their keywords), the ROI was clear. Money into paid search = money out.

Katy was not a fan of SaaS content marketing. At least not at first glance.

She like marketing that a) delivered fast results and b) offered a clear ROI proposal to the board. In her opinion, content (and SEO) was too "vauge."

But then her CMO showed her the data.

Costs per click were only going one way (up), and most of their ad spending was defensive and targeting clicks for their branded keywords. Conversion rates were dropping at the same time traffic was. Being an early mover in the market wasnt giving as much of an advantage as it used to.

"Rank organically with SEO in the top ten results on Google, and we can get a lot of this traffic effectively for free plus we can use content to power lead gen campaigns and bring down our CPL."

Katy was sold and gave the CMO the green light to onboard a B2B SaaS content agency.

Here's what the B2B SaaS content agency Katy's team hired did next.

Created These Three Types of B2B SaaS Content 

The basics of B2B SaaS content marketing are that value always comes from three key types of B2B SaaS content:

• Content that builds SEO authority.

• Content that increases your keyword reach beyond your primary keywords to gain organic traffic.

• Content that defines your brand identity beyond SEO and powers lead generation.

Let's go deeper into these three areas, one by one.

1. Thought leadership content to build domain authority

This content helps your SEO by improving your organic search performance for your primary keywords—the ones you target first and foremost. 

You know that you need to do this. But figuring out how to get links can be a bit of a mystery. Well, the answer is simple: you create content that attracts backlinks. Simple but not easy. 

It's not easy, partly because SEO is competitive. 

Your B2B SaaS is probably one of many businesses trying to get ahead in your niche. Some websites can gain authority over time just by producing high-quality content that gets shared and linked to.

However, the fast track to building authority is to conduct link building outreach.

Learn more:

This means reaching out to reputable sites in your niche and offering them guest posts from your brand's executives that deliver real insight to their readers.

Note: Contact us to learn how we can help turn your executives' POVs into guest posts.

These guest posts can then organically link back to supporting content hosted on your blog. 

The three steps to this process are:

1. Create high-quality thought leadership content on your website.

2. Pitch websites in your business niche with topical ideas their readers will find interesting.

3. Write guest posts that link back to content hosted on your site.

When you post on reputable third-party websites, you will also attract backlinks from the readers of the sites who will use your content to support their own thought leadership efforts. 

As a result, your domain authority will gradually snowball, becoming bigger with each backlink.

Katy’s SaaS content agency team reached out to dozens of leading publications in their niche, several of which then published ghostwritten bylines by Katy. This not only boosted their website’s SEO but also helped position Katy as a B2B SaaS thought leader.

2. Evergreen content to grow beyond primary keywords

What startups (and B2B SaaS companies in particular) sometimes forget is that their potential audience is much larger than those looking directly for their product.

We could call this your brand’s "wider audience." The individuals in this audience will have a vast range of interests related directly or indirectly to what you're selling. 

For example, imagine Katy’s start-up sold a cloud-based password manager for enterprises. 

After some basic keyword research on tools like Ahrefs or Semrush, her team might have figured out that the primary keyword they wanted to rank high for was "enterprise password manager."

They knew that any potential customer would search online using this primary keyword when they needed a password manager for their business.

However, before a potential buyer looks for Katy's product, they will probably search for information on the issue her product is supposed to solve.

These prospective customers might look for long-tail keywords like "password storage" or "how to save multiple passwords." Therefore, these search terms are essential keywords for Katy's B2B SaaS to target with relevant content and web page optimization. As long as they have search volume, they are on the menu.

To capture traffic from people searching for these keywords online, Katy's SaaS content agency created high-quality "evergreen" content that answered their customers' questions. 

Blogs with titles like, "3 safe ways to save multiple passwords" and "How enterprises safely store employee passwords." Once these blogs started to rank organically, Katy’s team were saving thousands in traffic acquisition costs. Even with Google's generative AI in Search (SGE) taking some top of the funnel traffic, high quality content meant that Katy's B2B SaaS was still appearing as a source and getting lots of traffic.

3. On-page SEO copy that defined their brand identity

Brand identity and brand awareness are topics that Katy's internal team probably thought about a lot. But they had yet to learn that SEO content creation could also help with their brand image.

A positive feeling is not something you can magic out of thin air with SEO, but here are three things that excellent SEO website copy and strong brand identity have in common:

• Functionality. Both content and brand should have a great user experience. Anyone consuming a brand's content should be able to take away something that benefits them. This could be an answer to a question, helpful tip, or inspiration. We recommend businesses conduct a three-point check for all their web copy to test whether the content is valuable or not.

• Recognizability. When someone looks at your site, reads your content, or uses your product, they should know it's "you." A recognizable identity through your content can pay dividends in the long run. 

• Believability. You should never host or produce content that is not believable. Your customers should be confident with your credentials when they consume your content.

If all the copy on your website meets these three criteria, your users will have a better experience, and your search marketing performance will improve too. Once Katy’s SaaS content agency made her website's copy more readable, conversion rates started to climb. They found that some of their high performing pages were converting at more than 10% from SEO traffic alone.

What

Content was naturally at the core of Katy's SaaS Content Agency's strategy. But every piece of content her agency created was not just optimized for the right keywords and search queries, it was also expertly targeted at individuals in different stages of their buyer's journey. This meant in-depth, high-quality content.

The first page of Google's search engine results page (SERPs) is filled with content Google's algorithm thinks people enjoy and find helpful.  

Brands that consistently appear on the first page of search results drill down into their target audience's search intent with ‌target keywords and create information for them that is trustworthy, accessible, and relevant. This information rises to the top of Google search engine results by meeting Google's Helpful Content guidelines and generating backlinks from other trustworthy sites.

The content on your site should:

• Deliver a good user experience (i.e., it makes it easy for searchers to find the information they seek).

• Be trustworthy and offer high-quality insights.

• Fit the kind of topics your buyer personas and target audience search for online.

• Be part of a content strategy.

• Be backed up by solid technical SEO fundamentals like a good internal linking structure.

Buffer have a great blog post on the topic of what makes "good" B2B content. You can read it here.

Create content that ticks these boxes and is optimized for relevant keywords that have volume and you are guaranteed to succeed at SEO and improve your website's ability to help customers find helpful information. 

Creating great content will create long-term value for your business by building brand awareness. 

Takeaways

Katy's B2B SaaS experience is based on the experience one of our clients has had with their SaaS marketing and SEO journey. 

Leveraging website content as a key part of their marketing and sales funnel meant their SEO efforts saved over five thousand of dollars a month on ad spend and gained dozens of leads that would have otherwise been missed.

The reason why is that Google ranks content similarly to how your potential customers rate your business. Ultimately, the best solution becomes the most popular. SEO, in this sense, is not the goal, but the result.

SEO pays dividends when a good business generates excellent content that people appreciate. For B2B companies, understanding this foundational digital marketing point is vital. Otherwise, SEO work is just a wasted effort.

Based on Katy's experience above, we recommend that companies work with a B2B SaaS content agency that can produce three main types of content for SEO campaign success:

• Evergreen content for winning secondary keywords.

• Thought leadership for building authority.

• Web copy for improving brand identity.

To talk to a B2B content and SEO agency with experience helping b2b SaaS companies with lead generation, contact us, or read one of our case studies first.