If you’ve followed my blog before, you’ll know I think content marketing is the best way for B2B SaaS companies to start marketing their business. If this is your first time, then Hello! Thanks for joining. And now you know about my love for content marketing. However, often, when founders start, they’re unsure what to post about. So, in this article, I’ve come up with 5 ideas to get started with content marketing.
Are you ready to start content marketing?
If you’re just starting out, you’re in a great position, as you’re essentially looking to build authority with your marketing. You will undoubtedly want leads, but starting your marketing with content while you work with your network to generate initial clients is a great strategy. Typically, content marketing is a longer-lasting form of marketing which is great for brand building, but unlikely to yield an immediate return on investment. However, if you start it alongside personalised outreach and recommendations from your network, by the time you need to rely on marketing to generate a pipeline, it will already be working for you.
With that in mind, you probably won’t need to think about SEO or keywords too much at first. Just focus on getting started.
If you’re a bit further along, then I’ll be publishing another guide on how to put together a killer SEO strategy on my blog.
5 Ideas to get started with content marketing
Regardless of which stage you’re at, the following 5 ideas are a great way to get started:
1. Explain what your business does
Your business is unique and solves a genuine problem in the market. An easy way to get started is to just post about your business, what you do and what makes you different. Essentially, the more ways that you can say the same message in different ways, the more content you’ll be able to produce.
If you really want your content to resonate with your audience, explain the problem you’re solving rather than the solution you provide. Think about the jobs your customers are trying to do, and explain how your product can make their lives easier.
For every problem you come up with, that can be another post!
Say you provide a CRM system for manufacturers, you could have titles like the following:
- Why do manufacturers need a CRM system?
- How to manage your sales team?
- How to manage your sales pipeline?
2. Answer FAQs from your customer base
Your customers are a great source of new content. And what’s great is that they’re your ideal customer. So you want to try to turn questions they ask you about your product into the content. If your existing customers are asking about it, there’s a good chance that your prospective customers will be too.
Every time I speak to customers, they will likely ask a question that I had never thought of before. Answering these questions as a blog post on your website will help inform your customers and resolve key concerns before they even speak to you.
Here are some common examples:
- What should I consider when purchasing a [insert product]?
- How does the implementation process usually work?
- What do I need to have in place before I can start using your software?
- What are the system requirements?
- How will this help me achieve [insert customer’s goal]?
3. DOCUMENT YOUR JOURNEY
“Wow, you’ve started a business, that’s great. What’s it like?” – how many times do you hear that question when you first told people about your new venture?
The truth is that a lot of people think about starting a business, but are too afraid to take that leap. People would love to hear from a founder and get a behind the scenes look at what you do. And the best thing is that it really helps to build trust and credibility with your audience. If they join you on your journey, they feel like they’re part of it, and are much more likely to buy from you in the future, to support you. You might get some people following you that aren’t very relevant right now, but who knows where they might be in the future.
Here are a few ideas:
- A day in the life of a SaaS founder
- How you build a team
- The first hire of your company
- An exciting new product update
- Meet the team behind the software
- New skills you’re learning to help grow your business
You don’t have to share secrets and don’t mention specific customers or prospects without permission. You can simply talk about how you’re building your business.
4. Comment on other social media channels
When you spend time making content, you want to try and make that content go as far as possible. It’s more something to think about once you’re confident post and creating content, but it can really help you ramp up your efforts.
One great and easy way to make your content go further is by simply commenting on other people’s posts on social media channels. Potential customers or other influential people in the industry will undoubtedly be posting regularly on social media channels. If you follow some key hashtags in your industry, you’ll soon find loads of people posting about topics that are interesting to you.
And, simply commenting and replying to their posts with something meaningful can make a big impact. By commenting on posts from bigger accounts, you can expand your reach to new audiences. And you can use the same information you’ve been writing in your other posts, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
5. CONVERT presentations and decks into blogs or videos
The thing that always surprises founders when I speak to them about content, is just how much content you already have. The sales pitch to a prospect. Your business plan you created to get a small-business loan. That email about company culture to your team. All of these can be converted to content fairly easily, and these can be great tools to start sharing your story with more people.
Go out and get started with content!
So hopefully, I’ve given you a few ideas to help you get started with creating content for your B2B SaaS start-up.
For more information about getting started with content, check out my guide to content marketing for B2B start-ups. It includes ideas about which channels to use, how often to post and how to stick to a posting schedule.
Or, for more advice, let’s have a chat.