A SaaS content strategy is a comprehensive plan that utilizes [usually] written content to help drive MQL (marketing qualified lead) growth or free trial signups through the writing, distribution, and engagement of content. A SaaS content strategy is usually created with a dependency on the types of distribution channels that the content marketing team is going to use to promote the material. For example, SEO (search engine optimization), social media (LinkedIn, Facebook Groups), or through white papers and free resource downloads.
Key Takeaways
- A SaaS content strategy is a comprehensive plan that looks at buyer persona, distribution channel (platforms), content approach, and uniqueness as a way of devising a plan to generate engagement from visitors and turn those visitors into MQLs (marketing qualified leads).
- SaaS content marketing has become increasingly more competitive in 2024 and it's expected to grow in 2025. As a result, content strategies often require greater amounts of original reporting, original research, and a unique approach to truly capture "engagement" from readers.
- A SaaS content strategy for SEO and a SaaS content strategy for social media should be completely different. Which is why it's important to devise a strategy against your distribution channel, first. Then determine how you're going to compete in that landscape for the attention of your ICPs (ideal customer personas).
What is a SaaS Content Strategy?
A SaaS content strategy is a comprehensive view of what materials the team is going to produce and where they’re going to distribute their content in order to create demand generation for inbound marketing.
Common SaaS content marketing channels
The following distribution channels are often the starting point for any SaaS content strategy. Since most qualified content marketing teams know that each destination contains its own unique qualifications for generating engagement from the content, the strategy usually starts with the distribution channel.
Those distribution channels are usually one or many of the following:
- Email marketing: A SaaS content strategy may be created specifically for email marketing purposes. Whether it’s drip campaigns or nurture campaigns, email marketing material may be created by the content strategy team to motivate MQLs to become SQLs.
- Social media marketing: Distributing content on social media channels like LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and Facebook may be a highly effective marketing tactic, depending on the type of SaaS business that you have.
- SEO (search engine optimization): SEO or organic search, is one of the best ways for most SaaS businesses to generate demand and get free trial sign-ups or leads. Content may be created specifically for the purposes of SEO growth.
- White papers: White papers are usually distributed through third-party media outlets or directly through the website to take visitors and turn them into qualified leads. White papers may contain research studies, industry insights, industry statistics, and more.
- Free resource downloads: Free resource downloads are content marketing materials that are created to provide a solution to a particular problem. These often get distributed directly on the website as a downloadable resource.
Qualifications of the SaaS content strategy
Most commonly, marketers think of their SaaS content strategy in terms of its part of the marketing funnel. That’s building awareness through top-of-funnel content, addressing specific questions with middle-of-funnel content, and answering brand-specific questions through bottom-of-funnel content.
However, SaaS content marketing has become increasingly more competitive. In 2024, SaaS companies, on average, spend anywhere from $342,000 to $1,090,000 annually on content marketing. That’s quite the spend. Meaning, more and more competition.
How SaaS content strategies have evolved
With the increased competition, SaaS content strategies have evolved in the following ways:
- Heavy upfront research: More time is spent researching how to “say something different” to the market. Teams are focused on reading, absorbing, and crafting unique narratives that will actually generate clicks.
- Heavy investment in SEO: Topical authority forces SaaS companies to have to produce large-scale SEO campaigns (in written form) in order to completely compete in the SERPs (search engine results pages).
- Heavy investment in quality writers: Writers are actually getting paid more than ever before. That’s because writes that have “a true ability” to produce uniquely engaging content are getting compensated more than general copywriters.
As a result of this, SaaS content marketing is generally divided into the various distribution channels and how the content teams can craft highly engaging content based on what’s “happening” or what discussion is occurring inside these channels.
Related: Marketing for SaaS Startups
SaaS Content Strategy for SEO
A SaaS content strategy for SEO still embraces many of the older ways of thinking about demand generation: top-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel. Much of the work is based on deciphering where and how buyers are researching particular products in the market.
As an example, a buyer who’s researching “preventative maintenance software” is very much an in-market buyer. They know what pain point or problem they have, they are researching a solution, and have a high potential for conversion.
On the other hand, a more top-of-funnel searcher is going to be looking up “preventative maintenance process” as a keyword.
Examples of SEO keywords based on their funnel:
- What is X, How Does X Work, [Indstury] Process: These types of keywords target top-of-funnel searchers who are looking to improve efficiency and operations within their business. As a result, you’ll be generating brand awareness rather than conversions.
- Best X Software, [Use Case] Software, [Industry] Software, [Competitor] Alternatives: These keywords are going to be more middle-of-funnel, where the buyer has a firm comprehension of their individual pain points and prospective solutions. These pages can be highly converting in nature.
- [Your Company] Pricing, [Your Company] Guide, [Your Company] Sign Up: These bottom-of-funnel keywords target Users who are using search engines to directly engage with answering questions about your brand. Depending on the keyword, these can be highly converting pages.
Want to work with us and get SEO content written for you? Visit our service page right here!
Related: SaaS SEO Guide
How SEO has changed SaaS content marketing:
SEO is still a highly powerful tool for SaaS companies, in fact, the average return ratio for SaaS companies (with SEO) is 5:1. Meaning for every dollar that’s spent on SEO, there’s a five-dollar return that’s expected. That’s extremely high.
However, much like all platforms, competition is steeper. Google, more recently, in 2025, has started to change its algorithms to rely more on EEAT (expertise, experience, authority, and trust). And signals that qualify unique insights being distributed into the platform.
In short, Google is rewarding highly authoritative and well-researched unique insights. The reason? It helps them train their own LLM models. And “information” has always been the commodity of the internet.
Your SaaS SEO content strategy should contain the following (checklist):
- Buyer persona research: You should know your target audience, customer personas, and the level of employee that they are (director/VP/individual contributor).
- Competitive research: Using keyword research tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush, you should be able to develop an accurate TOFU/MOFU/BOFU roadmap for your content marketing strategy.
- Topical authority: To completely compete in Google, you should have a topical authority map that connects the information graph of insights that will help you become more authoritative in Google’s eyes.
- Analytics and insights: Capture SEO KPIs like impressions, CTR (click-through rate), clicks, and trials generated from organic search campaigns.
SaaS Content Strategy for Social Media and Email Marketing
If you’re on LinkedIn or Twitter/X, then there’s a fairly good chance that you’ve seen the type of highly engaging content that we’re about to discuss.
Let’s take a look at an example very quickly. This post by Alex Glenn. Alex runs a SaaS product for co-marketing and partnership opportunities. We can see from his LinkedIn post that he included a large amount of research and industry statistics that became very engaging.
This type of “soft selling” is a very good method for content marketing on social media channels. And also alludes to the reason why we indicated how content strategies have changed in 2024 and will continue to change in 2025. There’s simply more competition.
Types of SaaS content for social media and email marketing
There are a few types of content that seem to work particularly well on these channels:
Use cases and case studies
By using a particular piece of software or by performing a type of “stunt,” there’s a good chance that you can generate views and clicks when the end result of the case study is impressive or “shocking.” This is how a number of SaaS SEO tools have started to gain traction. They highlighted how they used the tool to grow a website and as a result, attracted buyers.
Industry statistics
While this is a somewhat “overdone” method of trying to get engagement through content, it can still work. However, the statistics that are highlighted also have to be very “shocking.” Similar to the method of using case studies.
What used to work was statistic “roundups.” However, the more that these roundups started getting used, the less engagement began to occur.
Videos and infographics
Creating video collateral and infographics is still a great way to garnish engagement through social media or email if you’re a SaaS business. And should be put into the same bucket as your content strategy.
Creating storytelling videos, that highlight use cases or highlight solving problems (let's say for example you created a very cool AI prompt that solved a unique problem), you can generate a great deal of engagement on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and email.
Your SaaS social media content strategy should contain the following (checklist):
- A comprehensive matrix of pain points: What type of content are you going to produce and how it will speak to your audience?
- Measurable shock factor: Try to put points to the level of “shock” that your audience may receive from what you post and where you post it.
- Distribution channel: Start with the title of your post and go from there. Include where you plan to distribute your content and why you believe it’ll be effective on that platform.
- Feedback loops: Capture impressions, clicks, MQLs, and other KPIs that give you an indication of what content strategy is working and what content strategy is not.
Related: SaaS Inbound Marketing Guide
Pain Point SaaS Content Strategy
Another way to craft a great SaaS content strategy is to continually target pain points that you know your software solves. As an example, Freshworks is one of the top SaaS companies in the CRM and IT ticketing space. They know (from their product marketing department) that automation and efficiency of workflows are some of the things that bring in the most customers and revenue.
As a result, they design all of their content strategy around leaning into those particular pain points within the specific industries that they serve. For example, that would be the IT, ITSM, and ITOM industries.
The result of that is a SaaS content strategy that’s created around those particular pain points and then distributed to the various channels.
Pain paint to content marketing strategy:
To do this, it’s fairly simple. Know your unique value proposition in the market. And document the top five largest pain points that your customers face. From there, device a SaaS content strategy on all channels you can think of.
That would include:
- SEO (search engine optimization): Performing keyword research around middle-of-funnel keywords that specifically target in-market buyers who know that they have this exact pain point.
- Social media marketing: Helping your audience understand the degree of the problem within their business and how solving it can be “of high value” to them.
- Email marketing: Keeping the engagement of the audience that you’re capturing through social media channels and other platforms.
Common Questions
Questions and answers about creating a SaaS content strategy:
How much do SaaS companies spend on content?
A lot of SaaS companies spend a great deal of their annual revenue back on content. This can range anywhere from 10% to 20% of their annual budget. Which can equal anywhere from $330,000 to $1,500,000 depending on the size of the SaaS business.
Content production and content strategy have become a primary focus for most marketing tactics within SaaS businesses. Even when paid channels are utilized, often, content (like free resources, gated downloads, and other growth loops) is still utilized to capitalize on the visitors that came through a PPC campaign.
Is SEO still an effective content strategy for SaaS businesses?
Yes, SEO is still a highly effective strategy for SaaS businesses. SaaS companies can experience a 5:1 return ratio on their advertising spend in SEO. This is because the landscape for how buyers research software solutions has only grown deeper into organic search.
Buyers are less likely to go to social media channels like Facebook to perform research about which software solution they should use. In addition, newer search engines like ChatGPT search still utilize topical authority and content creation as the primary way of answering questions Users put into the search engine (very similar to Google). As a result, it makes the value of creating highly engaging and informative content even greater.
If you want to learn more about what we do on the SEO side, view our services page.
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November 28, 2024
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