Are you looking for new ways to attract, convince, and convert with your content? Let’s talk about it.
By this point, you already know the basic tenets of content marketing. You have a blog. You have a social media presence. You know how to create content for your audience. So, we won’t bore you with the basics in this post.
Instead, we’ll discuss how to level up your SaaS content marketing game for 2021 standards and beyond. Let’s dive right in.
Build a Community for Your Content
Having a blog is great, but having a community is even better. By intentionally cultivating a community around your business, you can actively attract potential customers and nurture them with a steady stream of brand-focused content.
A community is simply an engaged group of people who share the same interests or goals, and every business can build one. Your community is made up of customers (both prospective and current) who share similar pain points and the common goal of resolving those problems.
The content that you share can educate your audience about their problem and highlight your product as the solution. You can also learn a lot about your customers by observing how they behave in your community. What do they enjoy reading? What do they share? Where do they share it? This insight can help you better engage with your audience.
So, how do you build a community?
1: Go to where your audience hangs out. If your audience is on social media (and chances are high that they are), you also need to be on social media. It’s okay to maintain a blog on your website, but you should be promoting your latest posts on social media.
2: Create content that they care about. Find out what your audience wants and needs to learn and create the content that they’re looking for. This isn’t just content that’s focused on selling your product, but also content that will help your target customer realize the goals that extend beyond the scope of your product. This is the key to creating a valuable community for your target audience.
3: Repurpose your content. Don’t stop after creating your original piece of content. Repurpose your content so that it can travel beyond your blog. A blog post can become a podcast, YouTube video, tweet, Instagram graphic, or Facebook question of the day, just to name a few. This allows you to (at least) double your reach without doubling your effort.
4: Start the conversation. Use social media to begin meaningful conversations with your audience. Address the latest news and hot topics in your industry to attract a greater number of people to your posts. As long as the conversation is respectful and insightful, you don’t have to avoid controversial topics either. Remember that the end goal of all of your content (including conversation starters) should be to provide value for your target customers.
Create More Video Content
Video is the wave of the future. It killed the radio star, and it’s quickly becoming one of the most important forms of content that you can create.
Thanks in large part to YouTube, the average American consumer primarily finds out about new SaaS brands through social media videos, whether that’s through traditional video ads and influencer content. Beyond self-promotion, SaaS businesses can also use video to educate consumers about their problem.
Video works well at every stage of the funnel, from awareness to nurturing to onboarding. Take advantage of YouTube’s immense popularity as the Internet’s second-largest search engine to build awareness for your business and product. Create content that educates your target audience about their pain. Then, use YouTube’s subscription capabilities to actively build a community on the platform. Ask people to subscribe to your channel and keep them around by delivering resourceful videos.
When creating video for your content marketing strategy, follow these best practices:
- Keep your video short – Videos that are 10 minutes or less perform the best
- End with a call to action – Give your audience the next step at the end of the video
- Don’t use a script – Create and follow an outline but avoid using a script which sounds rehearsed and can rob your video of authenticity
Offer Quizzes
Another great way to interact with your audience is through quizzes. Quizzes are popular because they promise quick and definitive actions with a relatively small investment of time.
You can use quizzes in multiple ways, including:
- To drive traffic to your site – Attract new leads by offering expert insight and clarification
- To grow your email list – Turn your quiz into a lead magnet and collect email addresses in exchange for the results of the quiz
- To help your audience decide – If offering multiple services, offer a quiz as a way to help your prospective customers figure out the best choice for their needs.
Quizzes help your target audience learn more about themselves which can be very empowering. And when used as a lead magnet, it gives you access to your audience so that you can continue nurturing them until they’re ready to convert. To create a quiz in minutes, use a professional tool like Quiz Maker or Typeform.
Set Up an Academy
Move over, blog. Instead of briefly touching on a plethora of topics, set up an academy on your website. This allows you to teach your target audience all of the basics that they need to know about a topic in order to succeed. You can call it an academy, a school, an institute, university, or brainery. Whatever its name, you’ll use this space to share educational content that helps your users understand the following:
- The problem – What the problem is called, how the problem may negatively impact your customers, what happens if you don’t resolve the problem
- Your solution – How your product solves the customer’s problem, how your product compares to your competitions, how other customers have reached their goals after using your product
Your university should carry your audience from 101 to graduation. To keep your audience engaged during the learning process, assign homework and use quizzes to track their progress. Also, celebrate their progress throughout their time at your university. When it’s time to graduate, get fancy and issue a certificate that can be shared on social media. This move will validate your customer and give them a sense of accomplishment and pride that they can share with their social circle.
How to Take Advantage of These Content Marketing Trends
To take full advantage of the above social media trends, don’t forget to do the following:
Know Your Goals
Assign goals for your content marketing. Do you want to build awareness for your SaaS? Generate customer loyalty? Activate word-of-mouth marketing? Every piece of content that you create, from your social media posts to your academy workbooks, should help you meet your goals.
Adopt a “Mobile First” Mentality
These days, the majority of Internet traffic originates on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. Instead of creating content that looks good primarily on desktops, make sure that your content is optimized for a mobile viewing experience. Avoid pop-ups that have a tendency to frustrate the mobile user.
Update Your Existing Content
Now that you know the goals of your content, update your content accordingly. Google prefers to promote fresh or updated content, so ensure that every piece on your blog is reviewed at least once this year. Update facts, links, keywords, headings, data, and even images to freshen up the content that may have gone stale on your blog.
Also remember that your target audience will arrive on your website at different points in their journey. Be sure to have an abundance of content to serve your audience, no matter where they are in the sales funnel, from awareness to discovery to evaluation to purchase and beyond.
Final Thoughts
You won’t find success by aimlessly creating content. Instead, success comes as a result of using content that empowers your customers to reach their goals.
Use the above tips to take your content marketing game to the next level in 2021.
Before you go, check out these related posts:
- The Art of the Upgrade: How to Convince Your Customers to Buy More
- How to Grow Your Email List With Lead Magnets
- How to Get Your SaaS Customers to Renew: 8 Strategies to Do Right Away
