The Top 4 Kinds of Content Every Software Company Should Have
Scary but true: Many SaaS startups do not have a marketing strategy, a marketing team, or really, any marketing budget. And even if they do, it’s usually smaller and less strategic than it should be.
Marketing for software companies still suffers from reluctance to invest in strategic content creation. Marketing has earned a reputation for being a cost center, a department that spends a lot of money but makes no return. It’s the first thing to go in spending cuts and layoffs. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Marketing success relies on strategic thinking and strategic spending.
Many software teams do not have the resources or the expertise to go all in on a strategy. Instead, they might spend the least they can at a content creation company to churn out some blog posts. Or they might crowdsource website content from sales, product, and that poor soul in product who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And when no one sees that content, the only strategy that remains is to pay for ads to direct eyeballs to that content.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing this; it’s just unlikely to yield the desired results, and reinforces the idea that marketing isn’t “worth it.” That’s because the focus is often on creating and not strategy.
There is a way to build a simple, solid strategy without investing thousands in paid ads, and it requires a foundation of four strategic, valuable types of content. Here are the types of content you should have for a simple, effective, and not completely expensive content strategy for marketing a software product.
Cohesive website copy
Search-optimized content
Post-sign-up automated nurture emails
Promotable assets
1. Cohesive website copy that leans on value, not features
Your website should speak to your target audience and entice people to become customers. But that doesn’t mean that actually happens. We’ve seen plenty of copy created by marketers that suffers from featuritis—aka the condition of trying to sell a product based on a feature list, not the value the product brings to its potential customers.
How do you know if your website copy is any good, let alone cohesive? Here’s how we break that down.
Cohesive site copy must tell a story
Not necessarily a “Once upon a time” story, but something that flows intuitively. Here’s an outline of how I think about writing or updating website content ideas that flow.
Value proposition subtitle
Catchy CTA
Section one
Problem/pain point stated in a value-driven way
Yes: Your data is just sitting there, but it could be making you money
No: Leverage your data to drive innovation
Consequences of pain that’s poorly or never alleviated
Section two
Value-oriented solution
Yes: Data-driven collaboration = happy customers = more money
No: Deliver insights at the speed of innovation
CTA to a free trial if you have:
A conversion-driven signup form
An email campaign set up to accompany it
Section three
Proof points
Proprietary statistics pulled from customer data or case studies
Statistics from trusted primary resources, research institutes, and/or government data that are footnoted, not hyperlinked. That way visitors will not be encouraged to leave your site. Hyperlink in blog posts, not on a home or product page
Section four
Unique, specific benefits that link out to more specific product pages
CTA to those pages, not to a demo
Section five
Assurances: security practices, compliance programs, etc.
End section
CTA to demo and/or free trial
Cohesive website copy is conversion-driven
Another downside of featuritis is that it simply isn’t convincing. Would you hire someone based on the physical characteristics listed on a driver’s license or based on their resume? Features are the driver’s license; value is the resume.
Conversion-driven copy is persuasive and actionable. If it spends too much time explaining or is so full of jargon it’s practically unparseable, you might as well have nothing on your site. Yeah, I said it.
2. Search-optimized content
It’s critical to create content that people want to read and that they can find. This might sound easy, because we often assume we know what people want. But often we don’t know what people want, so it’s hard to create the right content. It's hard to think about what your customers want to read instead of what you want to say, especially when you think your customers are just like you! (Hint: They’re not.)
Second, it can be complicated to turn what someone wants to read into something they can find. You have to write content that’s great for both readers and search engine site crawlers. If Google can’t parse your article, it won’t show it in search results, even if it’s relevant to the reader’s search query.
Content for a software company is no different than content for a celebrity gossip blog. A gossip blog wants to be there for anyone searching for Harry Styles. You want to be there when anyone is searching for “pipeline automation” or “data monetization” or whatever kind of tech you provide.
Here’s what you need to create SEO-friendly content.
A relevant keyword list
Use any kind of SEO tool and look at what your site already ranks for. Does it seem relevant, or are you surprised that 75% of your organic traffic goes to a random page from your product documentation?
Then research non-branded keywords you think you should be ranking for. What companies rank in the top 10 for those keywords? Are those keywords difficult to rank for? Do they have any search volume associated with them?
So often companies think they should rank for something like “DevCompSec” and don’t realize that it’s not something that anyone is searching for because no one else calls it that.
Next, check out your competitors. What organic keywords drive traffic to their site? Which keywords pertain to you and your business?
With all the information you just found, you’ll have a robust keyword list.
Keyword-related content
Now it’s time to do something with those keywords. Use them to decide what you’ll write about in your blog. Figure out which site pages you want to rank for what keywords, and then make sure you use those keywords in your site copy.
Many tech leaders that want to establish an audience are dismayed to find that to draw in organic traffic, they need to write basic articles like “What is DevCompSec?” They want to be out there doing thought leadership and showing the world how their product will change technology.
But when they make that content, no one reads it.
To attract organic traffic, you simply must write to what people are searching for and why they’re searching for it. Often, that means setting aside what you want to talk about to instead provide the content your audience wants.
Targeted landing pages
You need landing pages that speak specifically to important keywords and have content that specifically speaks to that keyword.
Here’s an example I did for our own business. I noticed we weren’t ranking for “content marketing phoenix.” That was silly because we are a content marketing business, we are in the phoenix metro area, and the keyword was not difficult to rank for.
So I made a page specifically around content marketing in Phoenix. It’s different content than we have on our homepage, and that’s exactly what we want. There’s no reason our homepage should focus on Phoenix when most of our clients are not in Phoenix. But we still want to capture that traffic, so we have a targeted landing page.
This is a valuable content strategy for software companies as well. Many of your landing pages may well be targeted to specific features and/or capabilities. Great! Figure out what people are searching for and build those pages just for them.
3. Post-sign-up automated nurture campaigns
If prospects have signed up for a free trial or demo, those are some of the most valuable email addresses you have, and you have to do something about it. I’ve seen a number of startups that offer a free trial or free version but when someone signs up, it’s total silence from the startups. No confirmation email, no “thank you” message, and not even an email telling them how to get started.
Email marketing is not easy to get right, but sending nothing to your new subscribers is wrong. Until you find a groove, you’ll send out a lot of emails that go largely unread. That’s fine! That’s data you can learn from.
An automated follow-up campaign is the most crucial. Here’s the cadence you need.
Immediately post-signup
As soon as that person’s email address hits your database, they should receive an email that:
Welcomes them
Points them to resources that will help them in their free trial
Highlights the top two to three things they can do with their free trial
Makes clear where they can go for help
Emails during the trial period
Often, free trial users drop off because the learning curve is too steep. You may not be able to do anything about the learning curve itself, but you can and should remind them that you exist and provide helpful content that gets them over the curve quickly. Don’t forget, even if they’re not (yet) paying, they are active users of your product. If they love your product because it solves their problems, you’ll turn them into paying customers who will advocate for it to others.
Post-trial emails
If someone doesn’t convert after a trial, you just haven’t converted them yet. Don’t go silent; maintain a respectful cadence of email content over the next, say, 90 days or so. Don’t let those valuable leads slip through your fingers
4. Promotable assets for lead generation
One of the most basic tenets of inbound digital marketing is having a piece of collateral that people will either give their email for or help move them through the funnel. We’re talking ebooks, case studies, whitepapers, fact sheets, etc. You should have at least one of those—preferably one for each stage of the funnel.
Here are some of the top promotable assets I strongly recommend your company prioritize.
Case studies
In content marketing, case studies are gold, especially in the tech field. Case studies prove that people love your services and succeed with them. Proof you have the impact that your marketing says you’ll have.
Case studies are generally for people in the middle or bottom of the funnel. That is, they’re already interested specifically in your service, not just in the valuable information you provide. They help convince those people to keep looking and take action.
Ebooks and whitepapers
Ebooks and whitepapers make great content for any stage of the funnel. Just make sure to target topics to funnel stages accordingly. A deep dive into how to use a feature of your product is not a top-of-funnel, awareness-level ebook. That’s bottom of the funnel.
Regardless of funnel stage, choose a topic you know is a hot one.
Think about common objections your sales team fields or questions from customers. Or even blog posts that are extremely popular. Those are all indicators that people care about that topic. Use those indicators as a sign to create a piece that goes more into detail.
Checklists/fact sheets/reports/infographics
Companies have a lot of successful, effective top-of-funnel content with industry or trend reports, fact sheets, and infographics based on those reports.
If you have the resources for a report or to partner with another company that has a report, take that opportunity. Sharing facts is excellent for establishing credibility and generating interest.
If you can’t fund a report at the moment, instead do some in-depth research into hot topics and create a central fact sheet or infographic. For every stat you could ever think of, find it and put all the stats together into a report. Look for trends, identify opportunities, and share it all with your audience. They can be very effective tools for sales teams looking to provide value to prospects.
Part of any marketing strategy for software development companies must include thoughtful, strategic content. Remember, content creation is not a strategy itself. First, you need a strategy, then you figure out what content to create. While it’s almost always better to have something instead of nothing, if you want to see results, you’ve got to put in the work. Or you know, hire someone to do it.
