How Can You Align a SaaS Content Strategy With Sales Goals?
SaaS Perspective
How Can You Align a SaaS Content Strategy With Sales Goals?
In the dynamic world of SaaS, aligning content strategy with sales goals is crucial for success. We've gathered insights from Marketing Managers to Founders, offering their single best piece of advice on this topic. From identifying core business problems to aligning search intent with promotions, explore the fourteen strategies that these experts swear by for harmonizing content and sales.
- Identify Core Business Problems
- Analyze Sales Team Feedback
- Focus on Educational Content
- Utilize an Editorial Calendar
- Align Messaging with Storytelling
- Map Pain Points to Solutions
- Prioritize Helping Over Selling
- Address Target Audience Pain Points
- Solve Unique Business Problems
- Adopt a Long-Term Content Strategy
- Understand the Buyer's Journey
- Address Pain Points at All Stages
- Collaborate with Sales for Relevant Content
- Align Search Intent with Promotions
Identify Core Business Problems
Understand the core business problems your product or service solves. At ASG, we use the Problem Identification Chart, which highlights the problems we can address, their impacts, and the root causes. Our sales team uses the PIC to link root causes to larger business problems. As a marketer, focus on the root causes of the immediate issues your customers face. Marketing to these root causes draws in prospects, converts them into MQLs, and provides the sales team with a solid starting point for their discoveries. By knowing which root cause resonated with a prospect, the sales team can use the PIC to uncover the impacts and business problems, effectively building the business case for our services.
Analyze Sales Team Feedback
Guide your content creation by analyzing feedback from your sales team to identify common customer pain points. This ensures that the content you create directly addresses the needs and concerns of your prospects.
For example, if sales data show that prospects frequently ask about the integration capabilities of your software, create detailed blog posts, white papers, and case studies on that topic. That way, you'll not only help the sales team close deals but also build a content strategy that drives meaningful engagement and conversions.
Focus on Educational Content
Realize you're in it for relationship-building and not "selling" with your content strategy. Sales will result after you've provided educational content at various touchpoints, meeting the audience where they are online. It's a long game. But focusing on the target, their hang-ups, and how you can help solve their problems will help you reach sales goals much faster.
Utilize an Editorial Calendar
Start with an editorial calendar. All that in-depth buyer persona analysis and keyword research will really start to shape a clear content strategy when you lay it out in an editorial calendar. Just like you wouldn't skip steps in a sales funnel, don't overlook this crucial tool. A well-planned editorial calendar helps you stay organized, remain focused, and ensures that you're creating impactful content.
I suggest you kick off your editorial calendar by planning out the entire year. Choose a different theme for each month, based on your preliminary content research. Within each monthly theme, you can break it down into several sub-themes. The key here is specificity. Aim to create a foundational piece of content for each month that ties back to your themes. This approach ensures that your buyer personas are engaged with relevant content at every stage of the sales funnel, month after month. You might even consider using Google Calendar to manage this process and keep everything on track.
Align Messaging with Storytelling
The key to successful sales and marketing alignment is about understanding our prospects' and customers' desire for validation of their pains and the validation of the pains we solve.
So, the easiest place for sales and marketing to align is actually around messaging. And in particular, it's about creating validation through storytelling.
Our customers do not care what we do; they care about the pains we solve. And in particular, which of their specific pains we solve.
Focusing on the right use-case and case-study stories provides the reality that customers crave, and the more they hear these stories, the more they will see you as the right solution.
Remember, nobody believes you when you say you are "the world's leader," "best-in-class," or have the best AI in the industry. That is marketing speak.
What they want to know is that by using your AI, they will be better off at solving their specific use case. And through your solution, they will now be able to spend more time around other company growth opportunities.
Map Pain Points to Solutions
Know the exact pain points your customers face and the emotional effects it has on them. Map out the problem-solution framework and build content around that. Leverage storytelling, case studies, and real-world examples to build authority and credibility in your industry. It's all about knowing the exact challenges and providing value to them to help solve those challenges. Valuable content that guides them in the right direction and leads to your solutions. You always lead to your solutions, never with your solutions. No one wants to be sold to, but everyone wants to be helped.
Prioritize Helping Over Selling
As a SaaS business owner myself, I believe it's crucial to prioritize genuinely helping your audience through your content rather than overtly pushing for sales. Providing valuable, actionable insights builds trust and positions your brand as a thought leader in the industry. When potential customers see that your content consistently addresses their pain points and offers practical solutions, they are more likely to engage with your brand and consider your product when the time is right. This approach fosters long-term relationships and ultimately aligns content strategy with sales goals more effectively.
Address Target Audience Pain Points
Always focus on addressing the pain points of your target audience with your content. To effectively align your content strategy with sales goals, make sure that every blog post, video, or social media update speaks directly to the challenges and needs of your potential customers. When your content solves real problems, it naturally brings the right leads closer to choosing your SaaS solution.
It's essential to maintain close communication with your sales team to understand the objections and questions they encounter most often. Tailor your content to preemptively answer these concerns, creating a seamless bridge from awareness to decision. This approach ensures your content isn't just engaging but also a powerful tool in your sales arsenal, effectively moving prospects down the funnel.
Solve Unique Business Problems
Know the unique business problems that you solve for your customers so you can speak directly to them! Most marketing teams double down on the technical problems that the product or service solves—and while this may seem like enough to move the needle—it is not enough to get the attention of the C-Suite or Executive Buyer. Buyers buy to solve a current business problem and to align to a future desired problem-free environment. When their current state is untenable or intolerable, they are much more willing to change. If all marketing does is align content to "increasing visibility" or "saving time"—those are nuances, not business problems that a company is experiencing. So—even in SaaS, nailing those three to four key business problems you solve will be the differentiator in your content strategy.
Adopt a Long-Term Content Strategy
Think long-term instead of short-term. It's the minority that lands on a piece of content and signs up for your SaaS. They need to be exposed to your brand numerous times before they even start considering signing up and using your SaaS.
I like to say, you see your content as the first step in a long process of convincing the reader to become a customer. If you can get the reader to sign up for your newsletter, you've won.
So focus more on getting them to stick around, rather than signing up immediately, because you're leaving sign-ups on the table with this approach, rather than thinking long-term.
Understand the Buyer's Journey
I’d recommend focusing on understanding the buyer's journey and aligning your content strategy accordingly. Ensure you collaborate closely with the sales team to identify key pain points, objections, and stages of the sales cycle. Always develop content that addresses these aspects, educates prospects, and helps move them through the funnel efficiently. It’s then important to regularly review and optimize content based on feedback and performance metrics to ensure alignment with sales goals.
Address Pain Points at All Stages
Make sure your content strategy directly addresses the pain points and needs of your target audience at different stages of the buyer's journey. Collaborate closely with the sales team to understand the most common objections and questions prospects have.
Create content like case studies, how-to guides, and comparison articles that provide clear, actionable insights. This alignment ensures your content not only attracts and educates leads but also moves them closer to conversion, effectively supporting sales goals.
Collaborate with Sales for Relevant Content
One piece of advice I would give to a SaaS Marketing Specialist about aligning content strategy with sales goals is to maintain close collaboration with the sales team. Understanding the challenges and pain points that the sales team encounters during customer interactions can significantly enhance your content creation process.
Develop content that not only addresses these issues but also equips the sales team with valuable resources to engage prospects effectively. Regular meetings and feedback loops between marketing and sales can ensure that your content remains relevant, targeted, and optimized for converting leads into customers.
Align Search Intent with Promotions
My advice would be to align search intent with what you are promoting. Keep in mind that more page views do not necessarily equate to more sales.
For example, when people search for 'UGC creator,' they are generally individuals who are trying to learn how to become a UGC creator. They likely have no experience and are unsure how to get started, and if they should even get started—this audience is undecided and not ready to make a purchase.
On the other hand, if you are ranking for terms like 'how to create a UGC creator portfolio,' you are targeting individuals who already have some experience and are on their journey to start. In terms of the sales cycle, they are much closer to making a purchase.
You need to pitch accordingly based on the search terms and optimize accordingly.
