In today's fiercely competitive market environment, SaaS content marketing is facing unprecedented challenges. Rigorous scrutiny of organic search engines, declining organic reach on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, diminishing targeting options on paid search and social platforms, budget cuts, and immense pressure on content marketing teams are all impacting the effectiveness of SaaS companies' content marketing efforts. Additionally, the misuse of AI tools to generate large volumes of unread content exacerbates these difficulties. However, even in such challenging circumstances, SaaS companies can still achieve growth through content marketing.
The Importance of Original Content
Original content is defined as any content that is unique, innovative, and provides additional value, whether through new information, different perspectives, detailed analysis, or other novel approaches. In the information-saturated world of the internet, original content stands out. For example, Semrush's acquisition of the media site Backlinko, which published an analysis of 11.8 million Google search results, has been shared over 14,000 times. This demonstrates that excellent original content can still attract widespread attention.
Many SaaS companies equate content with lead generation. While this is part of the equation, the role of original content extends far beyond this. It fosters user trust, positions the brand as an industry thought leader, and serves as the foundation for distribution across other channels. Original content can help companies break free from the sea of SEO homogeneity that SaaS content marketing has been stuck in for the past decade, achieving true differentiation and competitive advantage.
How to Develop an Original Content Strategy
An original content strategy should vary based on the company's growth stage, target audience, and distribution channels. Here is an analysis of three main dimensions:
Stages
Each growth stage has different objectives that can be achieved through various forms of original content.
Early Stage: The goal is brand awareness. The best content formats include first-person (founder) narratives, web-based content, and third-person stories.
Product-Market Fit Stage: At this stage, you need to expand your efforts. Suitable formats include data research, reverse content, invented concepts, creative analogies, or trend analysis.
Growth Stage: The objective here is to scale efforts, prove value in a scalable way, and differentiate from competitors. Recommended content formats include surveys, data research, invented concepts, web-based content, and trend articles.
Objectives
Original content can serve one or more of the following objectives:
Increase Brand Value: Associate the brand with specific values.
Educate and Support: Help the target audience solve specific problems or overcome challenges.
Generate Revenue: Produce leads, registrations, demo requests, etc.
Thought Leadership: Demonstrate the brand's authority in the industry/field.
Amplify Influence: Generate social media shares, brand mentions, etc.
Certain formats of original content are better suited for specific objectives. For example, to enhance brand value, in-depth research through data studies and surveys can be highly effective.
Distribution and Traffic Acquisition
The harsh reality is that without a well-thought-out distribution strategy, your original content is unlikely to achieve its goals. This isn't about writing content to rank high on Google (although it can certainly help). It's not a blog post you can publish on your site and forget about, hoping it will start gaining clicks (and conversions).
The good news is that original content is highly shareable. You can promote it or repurpose it across various channels, including organic search, outreach, social media, communities, Reddit, newsletters, Indie Hackers, Hacker News, Medium, Quora, Slideshare, podcasts, YouTube, webinars, and more.
Especially on LinkedIn, the audience's attention to original content is higher than that for product-centric content, and this is likely true for other distribution channels as well.
Conclusion
In the context of a new era for SaaS content marketing, despite facing numerous challenges, companies can still achieve significant growth by developing a scientific original content strategy. By creating unique, innovative, and valuable content, companies can enhance brand awareness, foster user trust, showcase industry authority, and effectively distribute and acquire traffic, ensuring sustainable business development. Only with a thoughtful, systematic content marketing strategy can companies stand out in the fiercely competitive market and achieve a brilliant future for their brands.
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