How to Refine an Existing SaaS Content Marketing Strategy

Times are constantly changing, and nothing stays the same for a long time— these two truths are the reason your existing SaaS content marketing strategy might not be working anymore. 

Your product, target audience, business model and the market will keep evolving. If you’re still using the same content marketing strategy that you had when you launched your company seven years ago, chances are it’s not working anymore. 

In order to refine your SaaS content marketing strategy and make it more effective, you need to take a look at what’s going on in the industry and how to adjust for it. 

Mailchimp recognized how video content has become a thing in today’s marketing space—69% of customers prefer video content to other forms of content—and embraced it! Today, short films and documentaries now form the core of their marketing strategy.

Are you looking to update your SaaS content marketing strategy but don’t know where to start? You’re not alone, but it can be difficult to determine what elements of an existing strategy might need to be adjusted or even stopped. 

In this article, I’ll be giving an overview of the key areas that require focus, and provide insights, tools and ideas for how you can make updates later on.

See also: How to improve your podcast advertising effectiveness

How to know if your existing content marketing strategy is still effective 

Critically appraise the following metrics to know if your SaaS marketing strategy is still effective: 

1. Search engine results page ranking (SERP Ranking)

A SERP ranking is a way Google measures your content to see how it responds to users’ queries. Comparing the results from one time period to another is the basic and obvious thing to do when tracking your progress.

If your SERP rankings are lower than earlier, it would mean that your existing content marketing strategy is no longer working as well as it used to, and that it might be time to make those changes. 

A great thing to also note is that Google has now extended the reach of the SERP ranking to include other types of content like YouTube videos, blog posts, podcast episodes and so on. 

2. Keyword rankings

Another great way to gauge how well your existing SaaS content marketing strategy is working is by tracking how well your keywords are ranking in search engines. If your website does not appear high up on the search engines, then know it’s time to make those changes. 

3. Monthly organic growth 

Your blog is getting most of its traffic from organic search, and the publishing of keyword-targeted content would naturally lead to more organic traffic, so it makes sense to keep an eye on this metric. If your organic traffic isn’t growing healthily by 6% or more, it would be wise to change things up a little or a lot, and do things differently. 

4. Social media shares 

Through social media, your SaaS brand could form better and closer relationships with your audience, and I’m sure this is the reason you ventured into it. 

Considering the number of people who use social media platforms today, it is only smart that you track metrics that are social media-centered alongside others. 

Shares are a great way to gauge brand awareness, so if you track this and you see that your content is going places you didn’t imagine; reaching wider audiences, then it’s a sign that you are doing something right in that area. This is where you would resolve to keep the same energy or even tune up your efforts. If it is the contrary however, changes are due. 

5. Conversion rates 

The percentage of viewers that answer the call to action on your website’s landing/sales page is what is termed conversion rate. 

The reason conversion rates matter is that it helps you gauge the effectiveness of all your efforts to get leads to convert and actually take the actions you wish they would. 

For example, on your website, you could have a button on your landing page that says “book a demo.” Monitoring your conversion rates would be tracking how many people actually clicked on that button and booked a demo after going through your website. 

If after all your efforts, your conversion rates are low, it means once again that some necessary changes are due.

See also: Is Influencer Marketing What You Need Right Now?

Tips for refining an existing SaaS content marketing strategy 

Here are some tips to help you refine your existing content marketing strategy:

Change how you view your target audience

Sometimes, the reason your content marketing strategy isn’t as effective as it once was is because you’re catering to an audience that has evolved, or you’re catering to the right audience in a manner that no longer appeals to them. 

For example, if you were writing about how to use Facebook ads from a technical perspective, but now your audience is interested in using Facebook ads in a business context, that might be an opportunity for you to write something more relevant and useful for your readers.

This happened recently with me and the digital marketing agency I work for. We struggled with attracting new customers because we were still creating content that appealed to our existing customers of more than five years instead of focusing on what would attract the new ones.

In the past few months, we’ve been able to refine our content strategy by changing how we view our target audience and what they need now vs. what they wanted five years ago.

Balance your brand’s promotional and educational content

If you haven’t found a balance between promotional content for your brand and educational content for your users, it might be one of the reasons your content marketing strategy may be failing to produce results. 

Perhaps the issue right now is that you are focusing too much on promoting your brand rather than directing some of that effort toward providing valuable information to your customers. Or you’re masking your promotional content as educational while your actual educational content is saturated with you promoting your brand.  Your readers can see through this very clearly, which might impact the actions you want them to take. 

Today, there’s a 131% likelihood that a customer will buy your product after going through educational content. Find the right balance that works for your business!

Change your influencer marketing efforts

You’ve noticed that your influencer marketing effort hasn’t been as successful as it used to be or has never been successful, and there could be a number of reasons for this. 

However, if you want to start seeing results, you might need to adjust your strategy. You need to tweak what you’re doing until you find something that works for you in terms of both influencers and content type.

For example, don’t focus on creating the perfect content for your influencers to reach their followers — instead, find a way that their followers can relate and help them connect with their audience.

Research shows that this approach works much better than trying to create something that’s going to be “good enough” for your influencer.

Also, you should consider using the right tools. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when trying to organize all these different influencers into one place—this is why we recommend using tools like Buffer or HootSuite (or similar integrations) so that everything is automatically tracked and managed.

Explore the incorporation of long-form content 

For some reason, long-form content is now in vogue (content of 1200 words and above), and it might be that it is because your brand is a short-form content merchant, your strategies are not as effective anymore. 

Long-form content is now putting brands in Google’s good books; meaning, their SEO rankings are going higher and higher, their content is more accessible, and they’re gaining more traction as a brand. 

It’s only smart that you explore this new development, and watch your content marketing strategy become effective once again. 

Repurpose old content

If you notice that your strategy is proving ineffective, one possible easy fix might be to dig up old content you may have shared with your target audience and repurpose it in a way that is trendy! It could be an old blog post, old case studies, and so on. 

For example, to repurpose an old blog post, you could revise the blog title and make it look more appealing in line with how people consume written content in present times. Promote it again, then sit back and watch how things play out. 

Tools that could help refine your existing SaaS content marketing strategy

Here are some good but barely talked about tools that could help you refine your content content marketing strategy around:

• BuzzSumo – this tool helps you find the type of content that performs best, so you can replicate that, and see great results. It could also help you generate new and better content ideas and monitor how you’re doing. 
• Quillbot – a great tool that doubles as a grammar checker and a summarizer tool, well-known amongst its users for its ability to restructure sentences from old articles to make them both unique and even easier to read. 

• Drip – Drip offers a lot of services than the more popular email marketing tools, and for lower prices too.

• Cyfe – this tool lets you handle all your social media business on one very easy-to-use dashboard. It lets you see social media analytics from all your social media accounts to know if you are hitting your targets, and all without moving from one platform to another. 

• Topvisor – if you struggle with having a content inventory, Topvisor could help with that. This tool lets you track website keyword rankings on multiple search engines and even helps you with new keyword ideas from different trusted sources.

See also: 5 Tools You Need to Thrive on Social Media

Wrapping up

Let’s face it, everyone is trying to increase their share of the pie, and if you can prioritize thought leadership in your SaaS content marketing strategy, you’ll go far! 

It is vital to monitor things as you go along. And don’t be afraid to occasionally test new strategies. Many of the greatest success stories come from business owners who were willing to take a chance on an unknown quantity.

Should you need consultations or a competent content marketing team to help you with the heavy lifting, hit us up today!

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We have worked with over 24 startups to drive conversions through increased community presence and relevant blog posts that we help distribute. To understand our process, book a 15 - 30 minutes meeting with us.