What Makes a Good B2B SaaS Writer
A good B2B SaaS writer is about as rare as a “10x engineer.” Whereas a 10x engineer is supposedly 10 times more efficient and productive than the average, a good writer needs to be knowledgeable and more capable in 10 times more areas than the average.
A good writer needs to write well (a skill many professional writers sadly lack) and understand a wide variety of technical and non-technical subjects. I’ve been on the hunt for a good B2B SaaS content marketing writer, and let me tell you: it ain’t easy.
Finding a good B2B writer is a bit like finding a unicorn; some people don’t even believe they exist. The good ones articulate technical concepts at least as well as their clients, are well-versed in both business and software development, have a strong sense of who’s going to read their work, align their work with an overall content strategy, and consistently deliver content that attracts the right readers.
As a leader in the software industry, I learned how hard it was to find great engineers. Now that I run a content marketing agency, I’m learning how hard it is to find great writers. So, join me as I vent a little and share what I think you should know when you’re looking for someone to write great B2B SaaS content.
What is a “good” writer?
A good B2B SaaS writer must first and foremost be a good writer. You can’t be successful in writing without being able to write clear sentences, paragraphs, introductions, and conclusions. “B2B SaaS” is a genre of the art of writing. Ernest Hemingway was a great writer, but would he be great at B2B SaaS writing? Probably not right away, but he could lean on what he knew about writing and apply those skills to B2B SaaS.
Getting “good” at writing is about knowing what works, what doesn’t, and what might work. Like any other creative discipline, there are foundational principles that can (and can’t) be understood intellectually. You know, stuff like “this is a complete sentence” and “this not sentence.”
Then there’s the professional, real-world experience that builds on those principles with nuance, creativity, and intuition. That’s stuff like, “Developers like the word ‘framework’ more than ‘library’” or “I can start a sentence with ‘but,’ but only in XYZ situations.”
I don’t have data about writers in the B2B SaaS industry, but my guess is that they follow a gaussian distribution. There are a few bad ones, a lot of average ones, and very few good ones.
Experts and beginners agree: B2B SaaS writing is hard!
Finding great writers is hard
The challenge of finding a legitimately good B2B SaaS writer is that most writers win their business by being better than the client and not objectively great. It’s pretty easy for a professional writer—even a mediocre one—to be better at writing than their client. Clients already know:
They need help with writing or content
They’re not very good at it
They’re not getting results
Their competition is outperforming them
They just want to delegate the writing
But clients don’t always know how to identify a good writer. In other words, clients are newbies in the content game. They don’t know where to start, so anyone who’s started is already ahead of them. These companies don’t know what they don’t know, and what they do know is not enough to evaluate whether a writer is legitimately great or just somewhere further along. Meanwhile, the gap between “mildly experienced” and “proven professional” is significant.
It’s the same reason my local handyman’s slogan is “I finish the projects your husband couldn’t.” Anyone can tear out a bathroom sink, but very few husbands can install a new one, rework the plumbing, and make everything level.
Why many professional writers aren’t good B2B SaaS writers
One of the most surprising things I’ve learned about professional, experienced writers is that they’re often not great writers. Their content is boring, fails to address the concerns of a reader, lacks structure, and doesn’t flow naturally from one idea to the next. This type of content sucks and readers are developing enough intuition to avoid sucky content.
Boring-ass content won’t address reader concerns
Though boring writing is a cardinal sin in the eyes of the church of content marketing, it’s actually perfectly fine for most people. How can this be? Who wants to read boring content?
Well, there’s a whole universe of boring content called “internal documentation” and it never encounters the eyes of a potential customer. Right now, thousands of writers are producing boring, unreadable content for people who don’t need it to be interesting; they need it to be accurate, concise, and usable.
These docs don’t have to convert or persuade someone to make a buying decision. And that’s a major gap in the experience of many writers. They don’t write for customers, they don’t think like customers, and they don’t know the problems faced by those customers.
Content writing for SaaS is about moving a reader from “this sounds interesting” to “I think this could solve my problem” to “I need this.” Moving a reader through this journey requires that content is interesting enough to keep a human’s attention—and not just any human’s attention, but their target audience’s attention. Even if the audience is boring and curmudgeonous (e.g. information security leaders), a good writer knows how to make content interesting for those readers.
Different readers have different expectations, but a decent baseline rule of thumb is: nobody wants to read boring-ass content.
SEO-rious about search engines (SEOrry, that was terrible)
Writing for humans is tricky for sure, but many professional writers don’t realize they’re also writing for robots, like search engine site crawlers. They don’t know how to use HTML heading elements like <h1>, <h2>, and <h3>. They don’t understand that the structure of online content can significantly influence whether the content shows up when a reader is looking for it. They’ve often heard of search engine optimization (SEO) and SEO content, but they don’t know how or why it works.
Creating content for human eyeballs is just as important as writing for robots, even if they lack eyeballs. If Google’s search engine robots can’t figure out how to read an article, then it has no reason to rank that article high in relevant search results.
Remember, irrelevant search results reflect on the quality of the search engine and the user experience. A search engine like Google isn’t going to make a purchasing decision, but it will make other decisions that affect purchasing decisions, like reducing the potential of your organic traffic. If your customers can’t find your content, then they won’t buy your product. Pretty simple.
The flow must go on
Earlier, I told you that many professional writers produce boring content that doesn’t address reader concerns, is poorly structured, and doesn’t flow. And then I made headings for each of those ideas (e.g. “Boring-ass content won’t address reader concerns”), which preceded paragraphs with topic sentences, supporting ideas, and transitions.
This is called “flow.”
Good writing flows from one idea to the next, bringing the reader along without ever confusing them. That’s what I’m doing with you right now. It’s not particularly difficult to do this, but writers are human and humans overcomplicate stuff.
Sometimes writers want to sound smart so they superfluously use ten-cent words. Sometimes writers don’t actually understand what they’re writing about, so they string together sentences that almost make enough sense for an educated reader. (Thankfully, smart readers are savvy enough to sniff out pseudo-experts.) Sometimes writers are trying too hard, sometimes they’re not trying at all. All of this stuff overcomplicates writing and interrupts the flow of the content.
Good writing flows naturally, respects the reader, and makes sense. Good B2B SaaS copywriters are really good at this. They say a lot with just a few words. They don’t talk about features, but about value. They aren’t boring, continually address the concerns of the reader, know what humans and search engines need to see, and connect ideas to the main topic (e.g. “How to find a good B2B SaaS writer”).
Whether they’re writing a short blog post, long-form content, brand awareness social media posts, or doing keyword research, there must be a flow to everything they do. Every sentence and idea connects with the rest, while also including pain points, marketing strategies, and knowledge of the customer journey.
Great writing needs great content strategy
Writing well is an essential skill for any successful content marketer, but content on its own doesn’t cut it. Making a real difference to a client requires content strategy.
Well-written content is the raw material for an effective content strategy. The whole point of content marketing for SaaS is to get results. For example, we intentionally wrote a piece to increase our organic traffic and it ended up getting more than 1,000 clicks per month after just a few weeks of publication. No social media promotion, no paid traffic—just playing the game and being strategic.
B2B SaaS content strategy turns words and ideas into:
More leads
More traffic
More brand awareness
Anyone can tell you they’ll produce great long term results for your SaaS product, but very few writers and agencies can prove it. (Hint: we can.) A brief stroll through the “freelance writer” twittersphere might convince you that B2B SaaS content writing is so easy, an influencer could do it. Our Stupid Marketing Tweets podcast and Ellis’s TikTok videos disprove that notion.
The internet has significantly lowered the barriers of entry into many industries, particularly content writing. That’s awesome. The tradeoff is that B2B SaaS marketers have to actually know their stuff to be successful. They need to produce the best content marketing strategy for any SaaS business. That’s tough.
Need help? Give us a call. We’re friendly (usually). We’re happy to help you find a good B2B SaaS content writer, build you a SaaS content marketing strategy, or just commiserate with the difficulty of finding a good writer.
