Researching this post confirmed that marketing has moved toward content-centric strategies. Nearly every SaaS company I looked into is doing some form of content marketing. I saw whitepapers, blogs, and eBooks galore.
But there’s a big gap between people simply doing content marketing, and those doing it well. Indeed, only 4% of B2B content marketers are considered “masters” at the craft. And the difference is obvious. While the majority of companies exhibit signs of content marketing, many are simply checking the content box. They’re not adopting content as central to their marketing strategies.
But the four SaaS companies below stand out, and they’re well on their way to master status.
The recent report, Marketing’s Missing Link: Why Marketing Investments Fail without a Content Operation, explains that companies with a streamlined content operation consistently produce both quality and quantity content. Specifically, the best content marketing operations cover these five areas: centricity (buyer-focused), journey (mapped to personas and sales stages), engagement (drives action), diversity (variety of channels and content types), and freshness (new and original).
Take a look at how these elements play out in the content by these four SaaS companies.
Pegasystems
4 SaaS Companies Mastering Content Marketing by @amurphias
Pegasytems targets businesses in a number of industries including: financial services, insurance, healthcare, government, manufacturing, and others. Both their blog and resources page are regularly updated, keeping content fresh and filterable by topic and industry. This makes it easy for Pega’s target verticals to find content that’s relevant to their needs and challenges. Also, in terms of content diversity, Pega’s resources page sports analyst reports, case studies, eBooks, infogaphics, presentations, whitepapers, web casts, and more.
Kroll
Kroll has fantastic B2B content, covering complex topics such as compliance, due diligence, and cyber security across industries and regions. Like Pega, filterable blog content makes it easy to narrow down articles relevant to your business. Their software solutions help customers identify risk, manage compliance, and navigate litigation. And their visual, buyer-centric content provides potential buyers with thoroughly researched information on topics aligned with their challenges in these key areas. You can find a variety of content types on their resources page, including webinars, whitepapers, benchmark reports, and case studies.
Blackboard
The second you land on Blackboard.com, you’re hit with visual, compelling content on topics for both students and educators. Their homepage links to blog content, trend reports, and eBooks. Their main navigation bar allows buyers to choose their focus: K-12, higher education, government, or business. And as you make your way deeper into their website, additional content relevant to those personas is made available in many formats such as articles, infographics, analyst reports, and more.
Zendesk
We’ve talked about Zendesk’s awesome content marketing strategy before, and they continue to blow us away with their fresh content. Their videos, webinars, whitepapers, and infographics provide potential potential buyers with tons of valuable best practices and how-tos around customer service. Zendesk’s content is easy to digest, focused on the needs and interests of the buyer, and comes in a variety of formats. Their visuals provide a fun, consistent style to their assets—which make them look pretty appealing side-by-side on the resources page.
These four companies provide excellent examples of content marketing for SaaS businesses. All of them consistently create fresh, buyer-centric content in a variety of formats—making relevant content easily accessible to buyers as they dig into their needs and these companies’ solutions.
So if you’re looking to ramp up your SaaS content marketing, take a page from their books, well, eBooks.