Buyers don’t just buy products; they buy the experience products give them. And the best way to create this experience is by giving them content they can’t resist.
Turn users into buyers faster by following the five content models shared below. As a bonus, I also provide four examples of the models in action, so you can see how they can work for you.
But first, let’s get acquainted with the B2B buyer journey (because it’s a bit more complicated than you might think).
Understanding the B2B Buyer's Journey
This journey isn’t linear. The way you introduce a product directly impacts how a user connects your solution to their problems.
Buyers go through the following stages when deciding whether a product is the right fit for them:
- Problem Identification: the user has identified a problem and is looking for a solution.
- Solution Exploration: the user is searching for the best solution for their problem.
- Requirements Building: the user identifies what characteristics they need in a product through business case data, expert consultation, response comparison, etc.
- Supplier Selection: compares responses from sales reps, price-point, quality, etc.
Once you understand the buyer's entire journey, you will start to see a persona. This persona provides insight into content that aids a product strategy catered to the buyer. The goal is to encourage them to buy. Do this because:
- Content that shows you hear and understand a buyer’s problem builds confidence.
- Building confidence through solid content instills trust and creates product bonding.
- Product bonding creates buyers that will happily pay for the products you offer.
How the Buyer's Journey Impacts SaaS Content
Thinking critically about a user's journey means understanding all possible problems and solutions they might encounter.
Part of the analysis is being aware of product funnels and understanding the differences in the way your product team solves potential buyers’ problems.
Build a collection of content for your team that displays expertise on the subject matter and shows your understanding of:
- The problems of the business
- The industry
- The subgroup
- The type of players on the buying team
This establishes your company as an authority to critically analyze each aspect of your buyer's journey with adequate knowledge.
Sample Content for Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey
There are three stages of the buyer’s journey: bottom of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and top of the funnel. You can’t treat each one the same. It’s important to create targeted content for each stage of the journey, as doing so helps engage your prospects and move them closer to making a purchase.
Top of the Funnel Example
There are several goals for creating top of the funnel content:
- Creating value
- Educating your audience (primarily a cold audience) about the problems you solve
- Building brand awareness
- Helping your audience understand its problem
Unlike bottom of the funnel content, content at the top generally has low conversion intent. But that doesn’t mean you can ignore it. Top of the funnel content is critical to moving your audience to the middle of the funnel and eventually to the bottom. Without it, you’re not starting in the right place.
Examples include:
- How-to’s
- Thought leadership
- Expert roundups
Here’s an example of an expert roundup:
Middle of the Funnel Example
Middle of the funnel content is associated with middle-level search volumes, buying intent, and conversions.
This is the place to clearly outline the value of your product. You can do this with web pages such as:
- Product tools
- Market and industry research
- Case studies
All three of these content examples are good for engaging your audience, moving them through the funnel, and securing backlinks from relevant websites.
Here’s an example of a case study:
Bottom of the Funnel Example
The bottom of the funnel is the best place to address prospects with a specific problem and need. They’re searching for a way to solve their problem, so it’s your opportunity to step in and show them the way.
Your objective with content at this stage is to drive prospects to take action, such as signing up for a free trial or booking a demo.
Examples of bottom of the funnel content include:
- Features and benefits
- Use cases
- Competitor comparison
- Integrations
These types of content are all pages on your website. You may already have these pages, but don’t assume that they’re performing as well as they could.
Your content on these pages should be fully dialed into your audience’s wants and needs. And of course, the use of CTAs is critical to your success.
Here’s an example of a features and benefits page:
Building Trust is Critical to Writing Standout Content
Build trust in a meaningful way with empathy. We can show empathy by sharing knowledge of a product and the solution it offers potential buyers. This shows you’re concerned, you value their choices, and you understand their problems.
Represent yourself so that users can understand you’re doing everything in your power–using all available information, knowledge, and expertise–to solve their problems.
To represent yourself masterfully through content, remember two key points:
- Think critically about the entire journey.
- Use data or create a unique experience that sets you apart.
Start by building wide-open content that establishes expertise and exhibits competitive differentiation.
Ask yourself this crucial question: What experiences can my product create through content that no one else can?
To answer it:
- Use case studies
- Reflect on how you improve KPIs
- Think about how you solve problems in your business
- Review reports
- Review internal factors
- User behaviors
Potential buyers want an enjoyable experience that only you can provide them. You can do that with the five content models I’m about to share.
Five Content Strategies for SaaS
Pairing your content and product to create a masterful content journey is an art. These five models provide a framework that helps you assess your product while creating your content.
#1: Showcase Your Product's Specialty Early
Always showcase the specialty of your product early on in the funnel.
Showcasing your specialty builds trust from the beginning, especially if you make them aware of a problem they might not even have known about.
#2: Highlight the “Aha!” Moment
Part of showcasing your product early on is leading the user to their “Aha” moment, which turns users into buyers.
How do you do that?
If you look at the funnel, trends emerge that indicate how people go from being:
- Mature clients to super advocate champions.
- Not yet adopted to product adoption.
- Not interested in accepting a trial.
- From freemium to paid.
The “aha!” moments are experiences that turn people into advocates, or mature users, or move them along the path of product maturity.
Identifying your product's “aha!” moment helps you create content that stands out and instantly connects to your buyers.
You should ask these two questions to identify whether your content is helping users experience your product’s “Aha!” moment:
- Does the content I promote weave a story that leads the user to the “Aha!” moment?
- Do I have content that establishes credibility and authority?
Take your buyers to an aspirational state, where they experience the “aha!” moment and feel encouraged to share the solution you offer with their friends and peers and make it viral.
#3: Create Content To Showcase
To start on content to showcase, be sure to have all the information you need from a potential buyer's point of view.
To do this, ask the following questions:
- Do they have enough vendors in their pool?
- Do they have enough questions answered?
- Do they truly know the scope of their problem?
Next, think about the content itself.
- Is there content that shows you are an expert on the solution?
- Is there content for every stage of your analysis of the buyer’s journey?
The answers will help determine what data you should put earlier in your funnel.
These questions will build a SaaS content strategy and framework to help steer away from a basic blog post and into valuable information potential buyers can’t get anywhere else.
The result will be content that naturally develops trust in a potential buyer.
#4: Use Your Product to Educate
Education is one of the most effective ways to pair content and product. Provide a collection of information that teaches theory to enhance your company’s credibility and improve users’ understanding.
Providing value-added information that educates the potential buyer, shows through practice you are there to advocate for them.
Consider the different mediums you can use to educate:
- Real experiences
- Providing adequate information
- Workflows
- Academic certifications
- Webinar series
- Podcasts
These mediums provide different perspectives and present your data in a new and meaningful way.
Creating a robust database of information helps potential buyers feel more connected to your product’s solutions.
The key is to use these tools to lead them from their unknown need to their known need.
#5: Tell a Story Through Your Product
Understandably, everyone wants to talk about their products and brag about their brand names, product features, workflows, etc.
Instead of telling the story of your product, tell a story through your product.
Focus on telling a story through the content and tools on your site. For example, look at the clothing brand Patagonia.
Patagonia was founded by outdoor enthusiast Yvon Chouinard who sells outdoor clothing to save the planet by reinvesting profits to make products more sustainable. By using their product to talk about their commitment to the environment, they create social value, turning each customer into an activist or a hero for the planet.
On the site's landing page, not one product is shown. Instead, it jumps right into activism and grassroots movements. Even better, when people have a sense they are part of something bigger than themselves, they want to talk about it, creating virality.
As Patagonia has shown, this is often effective at selling your product without directly talking about your product.
4 Ways to Use Content Marketing Strategies
Let’s dive into some other examples like Patagonia so you can see how this works in action.
Example 1: Recurring Data That Shows Evolution
The Hype Cycle by Gartner is an excellent example of recurring data that shows the evolution of a market.
What does the Hype Cycle graph tell us?
It shows the evolution of the market, a person, a customer, and a group of customers so that a potential buyer understands the maturity curve.
It also shows that Gartner has its fingers on the pulse of digital marketing. And by working with them, you become a smarter marketer. By turning their data into something actionable, they show their expertise and leave you wanting more.
As a marketer, it’s crucial that your content showcases expertise, authority, and leads buyers to want more from you.
Example 2: Uncovering The Larger Story In a Decision Flow
MongoDB uncovers the story in a decision flow with their Product Pricing Calculator.
On the left side of the Product Pricing Calculator, everything is included: your background, the costs, risk areas, priorities, and results.
The platform provides a report that shows the predicted expenses of self-management. It helps predict potential problems that could blindside you and offers solutions.
MongoDB provides an experience that shows buyers they are understood and how it can help solve their problems.
Instead of making it about their software, they made it about the client’s potential problems and expenses.
Example 3: Educating Through Assessments
CoSchedule is a work management software for marketers that allows users to assess themselves.
As it takes you through the assessment, you start to realize that maybe you have more of a problem managing your work than you initially thought.
It also allows you to quantify your challenges and pat yourself on the back.
In CoSchedule's case, they provide insight to make your email marketing and your subject lines better. It's one of their core values.
Right before sending an email, there’s an automated test that provides an assessment of the areas you can improve. Thus, it enables you to avoid sending bad emails.
Assessments provide not only an education but an experience that gives valuable information about a user’s work. This also allows potential buyers to experience your products before making an actual purchase.
Example 4: Tell a Story With the Data Only You Have
To tell great stories, use unique data - the data that only you have to connect with your potential buyers.
A great example of this is Similarweb, a company with a second-to-none data source.
What does Similarweb do?
They take information and make it highly relevant to everyone through keywords, trends, and any helpful information their users might search for. What makes them unique is to tailor the information based on the users' perspectives or how the world wants it.
Many companies may have the same data, but how you connect the information with your products and tell stories from the data makes all the difference.
What Does Your SaaS Content Strategy Look Like?
As a product marketer, you must always keep yourself updated with new trends, marketing tools, books, and courses. You can also learn a lot by taking cues from competitors and companies in related industries. The “content game” is always evolving, so your SaaS content strategy should follow suit.
The guidance and examples above should provide a foundation for building a content strategy that produces results. If you’re looking for even more help, sign up for the free Product-Led Fundamentals course. When combined with this advice, you’ll have everything you need to ramp up your content generation machine.
