Like any other business, nevertheless, your SaaS company needs a viable means for branding and marketing. Inbound techniques may be different in terms of marketing channels used for the distribution of material, but what all of them come down to is the content that your future customers should find compelling, informative and interesting to consume.
And, before you ask, you are not wrong to think that blogging is both the alpha and omega of effective content marketing investments. And, yes, there are ways to turn your SaaS blog into powerful machinery for attracting new customers and converting them into loyal ones.
Here’s how.
Everyone’s a writer these days, as you might have experienced first-hand, but not everyone can manage to appeal to larger audiences if writing about subjects that cannot be categorized under lifestyle, fashion, or entertainment. Some pieces on business models and strategies can be copy-written with ease, but when it comes to something as delicate as cloud computing, you have to be especially careful.
Never stray too much from what your niche is actually about. Now, what you’ll be writing about will depend upon whether you choose a B2B or B2C approach, but since purchases are your end goal, try including both categories and offering resources that all potential customers may find valuable. Be that an article focused on SaaS metrics, a piece about SaaS sales, or reading material for SaaS startups, every blog post you publish should display your knowledge and competence in this field.
SaaS isn’t a narrow theme at all, but there’s only so much you can write about that your customers would actually want to read. Emotion and urgency are two of the most effective tones a blog writer can use in order to persuade a reader into converting, but making a compelling, emotional case for cloud computing-related products isn’t so easy.
Because of that, you’ll need to make your SaaS pitch as effortlessly understandable as possible. Your offer is certainly more attractive, useful, beneficial, and lucrative than other IaaS and PaaS solutions, so be sure to always emphasize that. In fact, devoting a paragraph or two to explaining that comparison in each of your posts will appeal to both their common sense and their purchasing impulses, thus ensuring you urgency and emotion alike.
From there on, your blog-enhancing strategy can trace the same route that most of the marketing-savvy bloggers follow, regardless of their niche of choice. Besides implying notorious SEO methods that will only make your blog easier to find, but don’t exactly convince your audience to subscribe to your email newsletter or make an actual purchase, these strategies highly rely on cross-linking as well.
If unfamiliar with the method in case, don’t worry, since cross linking is far from complicated and simply means exactly what it says – embedding one website page with a link that leads to another. In your particular case, that implies cross linking your blog posts with your products and service pages. That way, someone who’s reading your article on the best customer service solutions for aspiring startups will come across a section about the best SaaS knowledge base providers, it’s link will lead him or her straight to your offer, thus maximising your chances for making an immediate on-site sale.
Similarly to cross links, call to actions are yet another effective technique that you’ll have to master. Once again, the term is self-explanatory, and suggests a direct invitation for visiting an online store, subscribing to an email newsletter, or contacting your customer service, all of which are actions that bring your prospects one step away from becoming paying customers.
You’ve probably assumed that a “direct invitation” to make an action cannot actually be a direct one, and you’re right. Creating effective call to actions means making them subtle, unobtrusive and creative; that may only be a mere formality, but like all formalities in general, it’s something that shouldn’t be avoided. Though what you actually mean to say is “Call us, we’re best for providing that kind of service”, what readers prefer to hear is “In case you cannot manage by yourself, we’re always glad to be at your service”. Subtleness simply sounds more professional, which is certainly a competitive edge worth having.
Most commonly, such call to actions are reserved for the last paragraph or a conclusion of your blog post, but you can also write a couple of template ones and make them a design feature on your sidebar.
There’s a reason why blogging is still one of the most effective marketing methods – unlike advertisements, blogs actually offer valuable pieces of information about the product or service that a reader intends to pay for. To shake off their hesitation, solve their dilemmas and make sure that they are about to close a smart deal, future customers research the product first and read about it as much as much as they can. And, where better to do that than one click away from your product page?
However, there still might be some answers that they would want questions to, which is why engaging them in a conversation is best way to drive their uncertainties away. To do that, add a comment section at the end of your blog and invite readers to leave feedback or ask you whatever it is they want to know more. That way, you might have a chance of convincing them face-to-face, which almost always has a favorable outcome.
While compelling content, cross links and CTAs are certain to coax your readers into making the first major touch point with your SaaS company, thus gradually converting into customers, engagement will make already existing ones loyal. Be sure to communicate with them every step of the way, remind them that you’re at their service by sending them customer retention emails with special offers, and most importantly, post your high-quality content regularly.
