Any marketing expert will tell you that your product is only as good as your marketing. Even if you have revolutionary software on your hands, you won’t be able to reach the target audience without a good promotional strategy.

In most cases, developers first create a product and then try to think of ways to promote it. This leads to various market inefficiencies, with certain niches being littered with amazing software that no one uses. So, before you start working on your solution, it’s much better to perform thorough business research and create a SaaS marketing plan template.

Smart IT engineers often work with the marketing team during the initial development phases, looking for the market gaps they can exploit with their content. In this article, we talk about methods to combine the two and get the most from your SaaS product and promotional efforts.

How does content marketing work for SaaS products?

For the most part, content is a tool that helps us communicate a product’s functionality to an audience. It turns out the intangible, virtual solution into an asset, important feature, or competitive advantage that a potential client can benefit from. Simply saying that a SaaS is great won’t increase sales, as business owners don’t have the motive for making a purchase.

The effectiveness of our content marketing efforts is usually limited by the SaaS quality and features. Making false claims will come back to bite you sooner than later, so you need to make an impact from the get-go. In other words, your product development process should be flexible enough to adjust to marketing and content goals.

5 Focal points of SaaS content marketing

Here are 5 main considerations you need to make before starting SaaS product development:

1. Analyze user interest

The most important content marketing process is keyword research. It shows us global and regional keyword usage, which is commonly an indication of interest in specific software.

Making a heavy investment in a specific feature or platform can come back to bite you if there isn’t a big enough market. Furthermore, the last thing you want to do is create a SaaS product for a niche that is notorious for high competition, small profits, and a low number of users.

Even if you’re great at content marketing and making high-quality blog posts and videos, you’ll have a hard time penetrating these niches.

2. Find optimal marketing maturity

People who participate in young markets usually have limited knowledge of a product or a service. Most of them are still learning about the solution, not wanting to spend the company’s assets on something that doesn’t work or provide value.

On the other hand, mature markets are commonly saturated with lots of different products. Although leads understand the potential benefits these SaaS bring, you have to go against waves of competition.

Your best bet is to find a software market with medium maturation. This niche has knowledgeable users willing to commit to your solution but isn’t oversaturated. In other words, you can make a much bigger impact with your marketing bucks, paid ads, and search engine optimization.

3. Optimize mission and vision

Mission and vision are vital for your market positioning. Although you should always seek ways to differentiate your brand from the field, you should also adjust to what the target audience is looking for. For example, creating an overly complex UI is a step back in a niche that prides itself on simplicity.

Your mission, vision, and positioning should be reflected in your product. Additionally, your content marketing team should find ways to implement this message on your website, social media, but also via platform pop-ups. However, don’t be overbearing, as it might affect the user experience.

4. Explore social media

If you’re a well-established SaaS brand with large social media following, you need to consider how your fans would react to new features and tools. Promoting a new solution would be much easier if you simply modify it for your target audience.

If you’re using a multi-platform approach, you should consider how the same content materials would translate. Furthermore, you should see if you can properly promote your software by using the native content format. If you’re adamant about using a specific social media, you should slightly tweak the software to allow easier promotion and straightforward messaging.

5. Perform surveys

Surveys are one of the most neglected content formats in the marketing world. They’re important for SaaS companies of all sizes and maturity but are crucial during demo stages.

With this type of content, you can check the users’ pulse and learn more about product deficiencies. More importantly, you can gather data about features that people are looking for in a specific type of software.

With these actionable tips, you can tie your content marketing and SaaS development together, achieving the best market fit.