SaaS content writing is the act of producing written editorial content for a software-as-a-service business that’s used to help generate demand. Demand generation, using these types of articles, usually includes some type of distribution to specific social media websites (like LinkedIn or Twitter/X) as well as designing content specifically for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes.
Key Takeaways
- SaaS content writing is the act of producing influential written content that helps to generate inbound demand generation for software-as-a-service businesses.
- The main KPIs that SaaS content writing should be benchmarked against are traffic, free trial sign ups, MQLs, SQLs, and MRR or ARR.
- The main types of SaaS content writing is going to be: buying guides, software comparisons, tutorials, free resources, statistics roundups, listicles, and reports.
What is SaaS Content Writing?
SaaS content writing is the process of hiring an editorial or SEO team to help generate demand for your software business. The content acts as a vehicle to gain attention and awareness for your software brand and help to display the authority and trust that you need to nurture MQL/SQL/MRR/ARR growth.
In addition, terms like top-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel are often used to describe buyers in their personal decision making journey. They can be put into the following buckets, which usually align with the content production:
- TOFU/Unsure of my problem: The software buyer is not entirely sure of their problem. As a result, they are using tools to help them learn information and insights about their own problem definition. Oftentimes referred to as the “awareness” stage of the process.
- MOFU/Knowledgeable about the problem: The software buyer is aware of which problem that they have and are investigating the broader market to get a firmer comprehension of it. This is where a buyer is going to be looking for potential solutions to their problem.
- BOFU/Knowledgeable about the problem and a specific company: The software buyer is knowledgeable about their problem, the solution, and is investigating which companies that they may want to work with or sign up for. Considered “bottom-of-funnel.”
Related: SaaS SEO Guide
Differences in SaaS content writing and regular content writing
SaaS content writing is very different from regular content writing. Here are a few of the ways that it’s different:
- The content needs to match the distribution channel: In reality, you’ll need to determine where your distribution levers are for the content that you’re producing. And how that should influence the style, tone, and writing that you produce. For example, writing email marketing content versus writing content for LinkedIn. These two platforms are going to require drastically different levels of thought behind the editorial.
- The content needs to contain new insights: No matter what distribution channel or industry that you’re in, you’re going to need to attract a viewer to your page. If you aren’t surfacing some type of new insights, it’s going to be very hard to do that. Most likely, you’ll need either new statistics, reporting, unique case studies, or something rather “shocking” that aligns with your ICP (ideal customer persona) in order to make that happen.
- The content will need to be extremely high quality: We always say that any type of B2B or even B2C SaaS content will need to have a healthy degree of original research behind it. And be written in a way that’s highly authoritative and professional. There’s nothing worse than an article that clearly doesn’t have any supportive evidence behind the reasoning and reads in a way that sounds “too informal.”
Key benefits to SaaS content writing
Here are the key benefits to SaaS content writing for your business:
- Generates trust with your visitors: Whenever a software buyer is doing research into a particular solution, they want to buy from a provider that truly comprehends their problems. In some cases, we’ve started to even call this “pain point” marketing. However, the act of producing content (regardless of where it goes) for your SaaS business is that it helps buyers see that you’re a thought leader. Thus, generating trust.
- Helps you to sell your solution: In many SaaS content types, you have the ability to be able to display the power of your own software solution. As a result, there’s always a way to position the outcome of the writing with the alignment of your software business. Whether you have a free trial to a paid account funnel or whether you have a business development representative model—you’re helping to sell by utilizing content.
- Helps to educate your Users: Very similar to how these types of content pieces can help you sell, it can also help you educate Users. In short, your editorial articles can become a type of customer portal or knowledge base that your Users or customers can access and learn from. As a result, they become more familiar with your software tools key benefits and may either become a customer or stay a customer.
Related: SaaS SEO Case Studies
Drawbacks to SaaS content writing
Here are some of the top drawbacks to SaaS content writing:
- Can be highly expensive: Just due to the nature of the type of content that’s required and the level of knowledge that the writer needs to have in order to make it accurate, the writing can be expensive. This is a big drawback for startup SaaS companies looking to grow.
- Can take considerable time to get traction: If you’re distributing to channels like LinkedIn or attempting to get SEO to work for you, this can take considerable time. Especially in SEO, where you’ll have steep amounts of competition (both with direct competitors as well as content competitors), you may have to invest 6 to 12 months of time to really start to see signs of revenue and subscriber growth.
Related: SaaS SEO KPIs
10 Types of SaaS Content Writing
Here are the ten different types of SaaS content writing that you may want to consider for your software business:
1. Listicles and Checklists
Checklist and listicle are a great way to provide an ample resource to your ICP (ideal customer persona) with minimal writing. In many cases, keywords like, “[industry] checklist” appear in Ahrefs and SEMRush.
Presume you’re in the preventative maintenance space, then you might see keywords like “preventative maintenance checklist” appear in Ahrefs. This keyword shows that there would be a demand for a simple and usable resource that targets the managers (buyers) in the field.
The same might apply to this type of content getting distributed on LinkedIn or other forums where your buyers may frequent.
2. Buying Guides
Buying guides are content types that help in-market buyers evaluate the software solutions that they’re browsing. Think of this as a type of comparison page, however, the key difference is that you’re looking at providing best practices, tips, and other “avoid these mistakes” type of editorial that can guide the buyer.
You may want to perform investigative journalism or original reporting on pricing, upcoming features, feature gaps, or other unique insights that may make the content or article perform optimally given the distribution channel.
In many cases, B2B SaaS software solutions don’t publicize their pricing. Which can become a highly engaging pain point that your buyers align with (transparency).
3. Comparisons
Comparisons can be broken down into a number of individual pages. Comparison pages are one of our favorite SaaS SEO strategies. Let’s say that we have a competitor to our hypothetical startup Tweeter. And the other startup in the field that’s very popular is called Birdie. Well, in many cases, buyers will search for keywords like the following:
- Birdie Alternatives
- Birdie Pricing
- Birdie vs. [Another Competitor]
These keywords offer opportune times to promote your own software solution. However, you’ll need to ensure that you directly answer the question for the User in the most helpful way, first.
4. Tutorials
Tutorials are popular ways to align with buyers during the middle-of-funnel phase. A tutorial can be a helpful way to align with your buyers by building trust through a simple problem resolution. For example, showing off how you might analyze a website. Or showing off how you might solve a more modern problem that’s not discussed, is a great way to display expertise.
That expertise can go a long way in generating demand. As an example, if we are a SaaS SEO agency, yet we don’t provide these types of tutorials that help SaaS companies grow, then how will our customers know that we’re the top professionals in the space?
The same applies when you produce tutorials for your prospective customers. Think of a recent and modern problem that’s a common sticking point for your ICP (ideal customer persona), then write a tutorial on how you solved it.
5. Resources
Free resources, very similar to tutorials, are great ways to build trust with your audience. Let’s presume you have a preventive maintenance software solution. There will most likely be buyers in the market that are looking for templates to use for their business. Maybe it would be a preventive maintenance job description template (used for hiring). Or maybe a preventative maintenance work order template (a tear sheet used to complete tasks).
These free resources get you in the eyes of your ideal customer. Distribution channels for these types of resources are often going to be search engines and forums.
6. Statistics Roundups
Statistics roundups are great ways to begin your thought leadership journey. Instead of having to perform custom research yourself, you can take snippets from a variety of sources and put together a narrative based on those statistics.
These types of roundups typically perform quite well as they are highly supportive in factually displaying a position. For example, showing growth in a particular market segment. Or showing decline in a particular market segment.
Think of a “hot topic” that’s trending in your industry right now. Then do the research to create a comprehensive roundup using statistics readily available online.
Resources like ExplodingTopics and Statista are always helpful.
7. Reports
Reports are very similar to statistics roundups, however, usually contain original reporting. This is reporting on industry-specific trends and changes. Usually, original reporting is one that’s done on an annual basis since it can take up considerable time generating the research and surveys required to produce the content.
8. General Guides
Top-of-funnel guides can be very helpful resources for your SaaS business. As an example, generating a glossary of content that helps customers understand specific words or abbreviations. This type of general guide resource would be an ideal content type to produce for a SaaS business.
In most cases, this will be distributed for the intent of driving organic search visitors.
9. Case Studies
Unique case studies are one of the best ways to generate inbound demand through social media channels. Case studies that have massive amounts of success (that shock factor) are usually quite popular.
In addition, producing video marketing (for YouTube) around the same case study content can be a highly beneficial way to bring in a large number of eyeballs and quickly earn the trust of your audience through the statistics that you’re using in your case study.
10. Thought Leadership
Thought leadership content, usually distributed in email marketing, is the type of content that leans into current news. For some industries, let’s say that you’re in the preventative maintenance space (since we keep using this as our example), there might not be as much “impending news” to discuss.
However, even recent political and economic trends can be motivating factors to discussing changes that might be expected in the industry or space. By forecasting potential outcomes, challenges, and changes in the industry, this can make the brand (or your software solution) an “active participant” in the industry.
The result of that? Trust and authority that you can later capitalize on.
Related: Marketing for SaaS Startups (Guide)
Top SaaS Content Writing Mistakes
Here are the top SaaS content writing mistakes:
1. Using AI-content
AI-content, while helpful, most times takes existing content that’s already quite popular on the internet, and rewrites it. Because of this, AI-content can have a rather “bland” tone to those that are knowledgeable about the space.
The outcome of that? Leaving someone rather unimpressed. Which is the opposite thing that we want to do. Our recommendation is to use AI-assistive writing as a guide for coming up with unique ideas. However, using your own discretion to capitalize on the content that’s being written and position it to have a unique “spin” that matches your brand and tone.
2. Rewriting existing insights
If all your content team is doing is taking existing articles and insights available on the internet and “rewriting it,” then they’re really no different than AI-writing. It’s important to have a unique and original take on a subject-matter.
A lack of engagement on your writing due to this lack of “interesting new information” will also go against everything that the content writing and content marketing stands for.
3. Failing to promote your software solution
While small, we often see this—companies failing to align their software solution to content marketing. In a way, this is a problem that comes up for companies that are almost “too good” at SaaS content writing.
When you’re so focused on writing highly competitive and unique editorial, you can forget to ensure that there’s alignment to your software business. Our recommendation? Wait until you’ve truly found the best “hook” and story for your piece, then at the very end, ensure that there’s alignment to your software solution.
Related: SaaS Content Audit (Guide)
Top Tips for SaaS Content Writing
Here are our top tips for SaaS content writing:
1. Have a problem statement opening
A problem statement opening is one that positions the intention of the article with empathetic alignment. For example, a problem statement opening could be something as simple as, “I was tired of having to copy and paste lines of code into every row in my spreadsheet. So I decided to fix it with this simple script.”
The opening should tell the reader what they’re about to learn or what they’re about to solve for themselves. This will manage their expectations and ideally spark engagement.
2. Use a title that’s catchy
A simple, yet catchy title is going to be key to grabbing someone’s attention. Specifically if you’re distributing your content writing piece on social media websites, you’ll need something that is going to impress your readers.
Case study articles do this really well. SEO SaaS products have done the following, “We Grew to 1M Visitors in 6 Months, Here’s How”
That type of a title is really catchy because it contains a “shock factor” that generates the click.
3. Optimize your article for SEO
If you’re unfamiliar with on-page optimization, then read our guide. Try to optimize all of your articles for the development of topical authority and the opportunity to get traffic from search engines.
A simple scan of your article and ensuring it aligns with a relevant keyword can be a great way to “double up” on your acquisition strategy.
4. Utilize supportive statistics, facts, and resources
The more statistics, facts, resources, and other supportive material you can use, the better. It simply helps craft a narrative that you’re looking to align to. For example, if you have a counter position to some type of recent news, you’ll want to use as many supportive facts to help support your view.
In a way, this is simply professional and high-quality writing. However, for readers, it can make the piece highly shareable. Which is good for your SaaS business.
5. Write with clarity
It’s more important than ever. Having professional writers produce your material is key. Looking to get help with this? We can help you! Take a look at our SaaS content writing services if you want to get an overview of how we’ve helped clients.
Other SaaS Resources
💬 Editorial policy
Why trust SERPdojo? All of our content is written by SEO experts with more than 8+ years of experience.
In addition, our team has been able to trace back of all our findings to more than 100+ clients over the past 5-years.
While some of our opinions in these are articles are just that, we have extensive experience in SEO and have backtested many of the strategies we discuss.
🕵️ Fact checked
This article was fact-checked for the accuracy of the information it disclosed on:
November 23, 2024
Fact-checking is performed by a board of SEO specialists and experts.
Please contact us if any information is incorrect.
