Do you remember the last time you signed up for a SaaS product?

Let me guess!

You stumbled upon a blog post on a search engine or an ad on social media.

Landed on the page.

You read a piece of content introducing you to the product, and you were prompted to download a freebie or join a weekly newsletter.

You get a series of emails in the following days persuading and showing you why you should invest in the product. 

Eventually, you get convinced and you pay for it.

O yes?

This right here is the traditional content marketing strategy which worked very well back then and still works now

But…

What if there was an easier and more effective content strategy for getting more free trial users and paying customers for your SaaS product?

Well, the good news is that there is

But before that, a little story

When I created my first info product and was about to launch. 

I decided that rather than sell, do the whole job manually. It was better I build a sales funnel that would automate the sales for me.

At this point…I didn’t know how to build a sales funnel, although I knew what it was

I had to turn to Google and do a bit of research.

“Guide for building a sales funnel”

 

As expected, I got plenty of results on the first page, skimmed through most of them but one caught my attention

 

Going through the article, it was indeed a complete guide

That’s not the gist…

As I read down, after all the informative parts of the post, I get to discover through the post that this systeme in fact has a tool that I could use to build a sales funnel for free.

This got me more curious and excited at the same time…

Moving forward, they stated clearly the step-by-step instructions on how to get started building your own sales funnel with their tool right on that post

Needless to say…

I signed up for this tool right there and built my first sales funnel. (thanks to the neat simple interface and awesome job of  the UX copy)

I would later explore more of the product features and eventually became a pro user ( paying customer)

Noticed any difference in my story and the buying journey in my introduction

Well, the kind of content used by systeme is what is called product-led content 

And on this blog post, we will be discussing why SaaS companies Should Adopt product-led content in their content Marketing strategy for more success

Ready?

Let’s do this…

What Is Product-led Content Marketing?

According to Dr. Fio Dossetto, 

The Editor in Chief of contentfolks, and the previous Senior Editor at Hotjar

“Product led-content is content where the product is woven into the narrative to illustrate a point, solve a problem, and/or help accomplish a goal.”

This strategy focuses on what your product does and how it can solve problems for people. 

Essentially, you are creating content that talks about the features of your product and its use cases. (not in a way that appears salesy)

You’re merely weaving your product or features of your product into the content

Remember my story?

You want to create content that educates potential customers on how they can use your product in their day-to-day lives. 

If you’re an Early Stage SaaS Company Adopting product-led content will set you up for success and establish you as a thought leader in your industry. 

You do not want to make the mistakes most SaaS companies are making by not investing in product-led content

Benefits of Product-led Content For Early Stage SaaS Companies

When you’re in the early stages of startup life, it can be tempting to jump right into creating content that advertises your product and its features. 

However, there are some benefits to incorporating product-led content into your marketing strategy when you’re just starting out with your business. 

Here are some strong benefits of Product-led Content for early stage SaaS Companies that show how extremely effective it can be for the overall growth of your SaaS business

1) Get Scalable and Less Expensive Leads

Getting just one quality lead for your business is getting more and more expensive each passing day. 

So for an early-stage SaaS Startup, there’s no better and cheaper way to get leads than to talk about your product in your content in a way they don’t feel compelled to

And how do you get this right?

Using product-led content…

This will make your prospects more likely to become customers because they can see how what you have solves their problems and meets their needs. 

Your content would have taken them from being completely unaware to being problem-aware, solution-aware, and product aware ( although most SaaS customers are always problem-aware)

And this automatically reduces costs because when leads reach out, they already know your solution is a good fit for them. 

2) Generate More Organic Leads

It’s widely agreed that content is king. 

And according to HubSpot, marketers who use content generate 67% more leads than those who don’t and are found six times more often by prospects searching Google. 

But the truth is…

It’s not just any content that will make you stand out in a crowded market – it needs to be targeted, useful, engaging, and educational. 

The best type of content to achieve all of these goals is product-led.

And think about this for a second…

What if 80% of your SaaS company content is product-led?

This means only one thing; tons of organic leads for your business and more income for you

3) Create Better Engaging User Experiences

Product-led content will help you focus on the user experiences of your audience. 

How can this benefit your early stage SaaS company?

Users need to be able to understand a product within minutes of use. 

The user experience is everything because if a user can’t figure out how your product works, he begins to have doubts about your products and this raises objections in them. 

At worst, you lose them to your teeming competitors.

4) Generate Qualified Sales Leads That Are Responsive & Right Fit

One of the biggest challenges that most SaaS startups face when it comes to generating sales leads is that they rely on social media platforms, PR pitches, and e-mail blasts as their primary lead generation methods–and gather tons of unqualified leads merely occupying space 

While these channels are great in some scenarios, they have limited value. 

Because here is the fact…

Not every lead you generate will be a right fit for your business or product following this route

In fact, only a small percentage of leads are truly interested and willing to buy your offering right now. 

The rest of them might want to learn more about what you’re selling but aren’t ready to pull out their credit card just yet. 

But when your contents are product-led, a larger percentage of people who engage with them are genuinely interested and are most likely to convert into paying customers.

This is a kind of filter that helps you to sieve out unqualified and unserious leads from your business

5) Save Money On Sales & Marketing

We’ve all heard that it takes money to make money…it’s more like a cliche now

But what if you could cut costs and save as much as 50%? Especially in your early stage as a saas company

By hiring dedicated SaaS writers or affordable agencies to take care of creating product-led content for your SaaS Product.

You can reduce sales and marketing spending by eliminating things like expensive agency contracts and huge ads

This is also a good strategy for bootstrapping your startup since it helps avoid spending so much money on ads that may not convert we

6) Build A Stronger Brand Positioning & Trust As A Leader

No matter what stage your startup is in, you want to build a strong brand and a loyal customer base that will follow you to new products. 

When you start out, you likely won’t have many returning customers so creating trust and authority through content is one of your best bets to bring in more sales. 

With product-led content, users can learn more about how your software works, and they will feel closely connected with your company as time goes on.

By sharing knowledge that aligns with their interests, you increase brand awareness and credibility which will ultimately help to boost sales.

How To Best Create Product-led Content For Early Stage SaaS Companies

Now that you’re genuinely convinced of the Benefits of product-led content for SaaS Companies. Here are 5 actionable steps to create incredible product-led content for your SaaS business moving forward

Step 1. Understand Your Product Inside Out

Well, while this may sound like common knowledge, it’s important that I emphasize it.

Truth is, you can only share as much you know

So in creating product-led content. Understanding your product inside out is paramount.

You should understand its entire features, use cases, and every benefit it offers your target audience

This is the first step before stepping out. At this stage, you can call on the attention of the product development team and have all your questions answered and get all the details of the product

This above step applies if you have been hired as a freelancer to create content-led for a SaaS company

Step 2) Identify The Pains/ Problems of your Target Audience That Your Product Solves

From the meaning of product-led content, we understand its main purpose to be providing content that shows how your SaaS product solves the problem of your prospects or helps them achieve a goal.

It is only natural, therefore, that in creating content such as this. You need to identify and establish the major pain points of your prospects

Let’s say you are offering a SaaS tool that helps business grow their social media following to generate more leads for their businesses

You can either go the keyword research route and get tons of ideas of what questions your prospects are already asking or focus on existing customers to dig deeper by asking questions

Here are some relevant questions you can ask your existing customers to figure out their pain points

• What is your challenge in generating leads using social media?

• What’s your major challenge in growing your social media following?

• Are there options you have tried to solve your specific problems?

• Is there an ideal tool you wish could help you better?

• What aspect of our tool do you consider best for your business?

• How to increase lead generation?

• How to get more quality leads through social media?

With questions such as these, figuring out and establishing your pain point becomes an easy peasy. And so, planning out your product-led content will become breezy too

Always bear in mind that most of your prospects will be problems aware and this makes this step even a lot easier than it appears

Step 3) Agitating The Problem (  )

Agitation is what does the magic between talking about a problem and selling a solution. It’s a basic Copywriting formula

So having figured out the pain points of your target audience from the previous step. It’s important to let your audience visualize the consequences if they don’t get a solution to their problem;

how their business will suffer

how it affects growth

how they will continue to spend more etc

Taking a cue from our last example….

Let’s say that you have figured that a lot of your customers are having trouble engaging consistently with comments on their social media content

You can agitate the problem by showing them how much of deals and sales they lose for not following up and how this is taking a toll on their income

Don’t be boring with this, you can use statistics and storytelling to make this more powerful.

It has proven to work over and over again

Step 4) Weave Potential Solutions To This Problem Into Your Content

After exaggerating the problems, you create tension in the minds of your prospects and this tension creates a desire in them…

This results in them seeking a solution to satisfy this desire to quench the tension

And at this point, you create a list of ways your product solves these problems they have.

But hey! this doesn’t have to appear salesy. Show that you care and you genuinely want to help

One way to be transparent with this approach is to show other options that could help them out which are not your product

This and this are good examples

Step 5) Invite Users To Book a Demo Or Free Trials To Learn More

Don’t bank on the assumption that your reader knows the next thing to do because they may not know.

So to get the best result out of your product-led content…

Always put clear CTAs here and there inviting them to book a demo or have a free sign up for a free trial of your product as it’s the case with most SaaS products

Examples of Product-led Content For SaaS Companies

Need some examples of popular SaaS companies already hitting it hard with product-led content?

Here we go

1) Hubspot

Hubspot, is a SaaS company and an all-in-one marketing and sales platform that helps individuals and businesses with their marketing and sales efforts.

The platform is full of tools that can help you send emails, generate leads, and track your sales.

While they have a lot of content on traditional marketing content, they are one of the SaaS companies that have adopted the product-led content strategy in their business

Reading most of their content, you will quickly realize how it is connected with their product or a feature of their product(tool)

When they talk about a particular topic in their industry and the likely problem their target audience may be looking to solve – they show you how their product or a feature of the product can help solve that problem

For example:

This article about 12 Metrics Website Owners Will Be Tracking in 2022 and Beyond carefully weaves their product at different points as a solution, showcasing how different features of their product can help you achieve your desired goal.

They go further including step-by-step instructions for how the tool might help measure specific website metrics

This is a perfect example of Product-led content for SaaS businesses

2) Grey

Grey is a new SaaS fintech that is helping African entrepreneurs and businesses solve their payment challenges.

It is doing it by helping them receive and make payments through a wide range of channels so that they can make and receive payments anytime, anywhere.

In most of their content, while they try to answer questions of their target audience and provide solutions to them, they do so by weaving the content around their product…And even show the steps to achieve their desires with screenshots

For example:

This piece is about How To Seamlessly Receive US Dollars In Nigeria. Grey agitates the pain of receiving Dollars in Nigeria and shows options to solve this problem ( completely eliminating any feeling of selling from their readers)

And ultimately presenting their product as the best and easiest way to solve the problem with steps on how to get started

Just like in the steps we mentioned on how to create product-led content, at the end of this article.

We see them inviting their readers to install them for Free and start using

You simply have no idea how many users this SaaS company has gotten to be their users

This is another perfect example of a product-led content

Here are a few other SaaS companies using Product-led content:

• Hotjar
• Airtable
• Monsterinsight
• Coschedule
  Etc

Wrapping Up

If you read up to this point, I’ll boldly assume that you’re genuinely interested in product-led content for SaaS Companies

And why shouldn’t you be?

Because let’s face it…

Product-led content marketing has proven to be an incredibly effective marketing strategy since its introduction, and it is still one of the greatest strategies for generating B2B leads today.

Just take a look at some of the figures, like those from a HubSpot study that revealed product-led content marketers have a 60% higher chance of seeing their lead volume increase year over year.

This explains why the majority of B2B marketers surveyed by the Content Marketing Institute think that over the coming years, product-led content marketing will continue to be the most efficient strategy for producing leads and revenue.

So if you’re an early stage SaaS Company or an established one, start creating product-led content now and watch your business take a new shape