Think about the first time you visited a particular blog.
You just clicked through a headline on Google search results or LinkedIn.
Because, even though you’ve never visited this site, the headline promised to solve a problem.
And once you landed on the page, you just wanted to get the information you came for.
Yet, this is where various blogs start to differ in an obvious way.
After 10 minutes of scrolling through some blog posts, you still struggle to know the business behind the blog.
A marketing consultant? A marketing agency? A marketing software company?
You can’t tell because the blog never referred to it.
Of course, you may get the information you need from this page.
But you still don’t know how this business could help you in the future.
And once you leave, the website could have successfully lost a potential customer.
Product-led content can help your SaaS company avoid this problem.
In this guide, I’ll show you how to create product-led content to solve your audience’s problems and promote your product.
How does product-led content work for SaaS?
Product-led content for SaaS simply means a content approach that weaves your product into your content. So, while showing your audience how to solve problems, you’re also pointing out how your product can help.
Product-led content is the most natural way to market your product within a content piece.
First, you create content around the problems your product can solve. Then, mention your product where they can help your audience.
It’s subtle, and no visitor will be pissed off.
In fact, they’ll be happy you have their interest at heart.
Here’s an example from Ahrefs:
Note that when I say content here, I’m referring to more than just the written content.
So, product-led content can be in formats such as:
- Text (blog posts, ebooks, and white papers)
- Video (YouTube videos and webinars)
- Audio (blog post audio and podcasts)
- Interactive product demos
I believe creating product-led content for your SaaS company is a no-brainer.
Why?
See 3 critical reasons below.
Why you should create product-led content for your SaaS company
Increase brand awareness
As I mentioned earlier, your audience may love your content yet still know so little about your product.
Of course, some will say growing your SaaS blog increases brand awareness.
Yes, it does.
But blog popularity alone is insufficient for a SaaS company.
I would argue that if your audience only remembers “great content” when they think of your brand, they’ll spend money on competitors when they have problems your product can solve.
In other words, product-led content ensures your audience remembers “great content” and “problems your product can solve.”
This way, when they need to solve those problems in the future, your product will be on top of their mind.
Convert customers
Product-led content shows how your product solves problems.
This especially happens in the middle and bottom of the funnel content.
At this point, visitors already understand the problem they want to solve.
So, seeing how your product can eliminate this problem will compel them to at least try it.
And if your product meets their expectations, they can become long-term customers.
Retain customers
After converting a prospect into a customer, you still need to feed them more content.
Because they need to know more about your software.
That’s how they’ll get maximum value from it.
Product-led content should ensure you create content around every problem your product can solve.
When you achieve this, you’ll drive your customers to satisfaction in a short time.
And as a result, they’ll continue to renew their subscriptions year in year out.
How to create SaaS product-led content
1. List your product features and their benefits
People pay for your product because it can execute tasks. And your product features are integral to that.
To create product-led content, start by understanding your product features and their roles in executing tasks.
After all, you can’t market your product effectively unless you understand it deeply.
The first step is to list your product features and common tasks people execute in your product.
You can even go further by executing these tasks. But during the process, note what each feature does.
Going through this will bring some content ideas to your consciousness.
And naturally, your product will fit into these content pieces.
Let’s consider Semrush, a popular search engine optimization software, as an example.
When you land on its dashboard, you’ll discover many features.
But I want to look at the backlink gap feature.
This feature can fit into topics such as:
- Backlinks gap analysis
- Competitor backlinks analysis
- SEO competitor analysis
- How to acquire backlinks/link building
You’ll notice that the feature’s importance to each topic reduces as you come down the list.
What I mean is that for a topic like “backlinks gap analysis,” this feature takes center stage.
While for a topic like “link building,” Semrush will show its other features in addition to backlink gap.
Depending on the topic, a content piece may need one or several product features.
From your product features, you can start generating relevant content ideas.
2. Speak to product developers and customers
If you speak to Rolls Royce Phantom’s designers and engineers for an hour, you’ll likely get new insights about how the sedan delivers a luxury driving experience.
The same applies to software products.
Even though you’ve marketed your product for years, designers and developers can still provide new insights about the problems it should solve.
Or in another case, you can ask about obscure features to learn more about them.
This knowledge can produce a few content ideas.
Beyond developers, speak to customers.
They’re on the other end of your product and have different perspectives to developers.
You can get feedback through emails and surveys about your product experience.
See this example from Payoneer looking to get feedback through a survey:
In addition, customer support reps can provide information about common complaints they receive.
Generally, speaking to these 2 groups of people will provide more insight for content pieces.
3. Read user reviews and monitor mentions to uncover content ideas
With user reviews, customers say what they love and hate about your product.
Naturally, these can influence a prospect’s buying decision.
But they can also be a source of content ideas.
For example, in a typical review, users will explain the problems they solve with a product, what they love, and what they hate.
So, if users love solving a particular problem or using a feature, you can create even more content around it.
Visit review sites like G2, Capterra, GetApp, and TrustPilot to understand users’ experience with your product.
For example, look at this ActiveCampaign review on Capterra:
Even though the user rated ActiveCampaign 5 stars, this con reduces their overall satisfaction.
In this case, ActiveCampaign can create a few blog posts that show how its features can help bloggers achieve their goals.
That said, don’t expect all product feedback on official platforms.
Some people would rather tweet about your product to their followers or write a blog comment.
In some cases, bloggers can mention your product in a “How-to” blog post.
From the top of my mind, I first heard about Streak in a Copyhackers blog post where the blogger used it to track cold email opens. This type of mention can inspire content on your own product blog.
Yet, it’s easy to miss out on this critical information to create better content.
How do you tackle this?
You can use mention tracking tools to see what people say about your product, competitors, and industry.
A tool like Awario lets you track important terms for your product, competitors, and industry.
Tracking user reviews and mentions supply many questions to answer in your content.
4. Use keyword research to screen content ideas
In the first 3 steps, I dwelled on how to find content ideas that allow you to showcase your product features.
However, just jumping in to create content about any of these topics is a bad idea.
Why?
Your content strategy will be erratic and lead to poor results.
A better option is to find high-potential topics through keyword research.
Keyword research is the process of uncovering terms your potential audience uses to find information in search engines.
With thorough keyword research, you’ll write about topics your audience wants to read.
Now, keyword research starts before you even use an SEO tool. After all, an SEO tool will only work on the seed keyword you provide to it.
First, I like to imagine a searcher’s intent for a term.
After that, I put that keyword in Google to see the results that show up for it.
Sometimes, these results may surprise you.
For example, try “confident speaker” and “powerful speaker.”
Once you confirm that the search intent makes sense for your business, you can continue with an SEO tool.
Personally, I use Semrush for keyword research. But other top tools can do the job.
From your content ideas, enter a probable keyword into your keyword research tool.
The tool will then provide details such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and trend.
Generally, you want to target keywords with keyword difficulty below 40% if your blog is new (or has low domain authority).
Because these keywords provide the best chance to rank high on Google.
A keyword difficulty higher than that, and you may struggle to get considerable organic traffic from targeting the keyword.
For instance, no matter how good the content is, I think a low-authority blog won’t rank on Google’s first page for the keyword “SEO.”
I mean, even a top SEO authority website like Ahrefs doesn’t rank in the top 10.
Again, another problem with very competitive keywords is that they’re broad terms, and people have said most things that need to be said about them.
So, you’ll likely be saying what everyone has said.
A low-difficulty keyword gives you more opportunities to have unique opinions.
And since most of them are long-tail keywords, you can better create content suited to the search intent.
Another controversial issue is how much search volume is good for a keyword.
There’s no simple answer in this case. Sometimes, you can settle for a keyword with a lower volume but higher business potential.
But what if there’s no volume (that is, Volume =na)? Should you still write about such topics?
If you think the topic is critical to your ideal audience, you can still write about it.
In some cases, SEO tools won’t detect search volume if it’s too low (i.e. below 10). So the search volume may just be too low rather than nonexistent.
In addition to keyword difficulty and volume, you’ll find similar keywords and relevant questions.
Sometimes, you may end up targeting one of the similar keywords if they make more sense.
After keyword research, you should have a few topics you want to write about in a few days or weeks.
5. Determine how your product fits into a content piece
Now that you’re getting ready to create your content, you’ve researched competing pages and defined your unique approach to the topic.
But that’s not all.
You have to determine how your SaaS product fits into your content piece.
Doing this before creating content will let you insert your product naturally into the content.
The aim should be to do it so well that your potential customers see your product inclusion in the content as helpful in solving the problem.
You can ask these questions to know how your product will fit into the content:
- Which headings and subheadings will have product features?
- Which product feature will be included?
- Which problem does the feature solve?
- What’s the benefit of solving the problem for your prospects?
Ensure you provide answers to these questions while creating your content outline.
This will make your content creation easier.
And you’ll likely achieve your aim of solving readers’ problems and converting readers to customers.
6. Write helpful product-led content that builds trust
Ultimately, your content has to help people solve problems to achieve results.
Just adding your product to a piece of content won’t convince anyone.
But what is helpful product-led content?
I’d say helpful product-led content is the type of content that provides information to solve your audience’s problems and, at the same time, showcases your product.
Now, if you ask 57 marketers to define helpful content, you’ll get 57 definitions.
Yet, in the end, your content should help your audience and business. Anything outside that is unsustainable.
Your content pieces should be about problems your audience wants to solve.
Not just that, but problems they’ll need your product to solve.
This type of content will build trust with your readers and move them toward becoming a customer.
How can you create this type of content?
There are many good ways, but I prefer the what-why-how content framework.
It’s a straightforward approach and will often help you answer the questions a reader has about a topic.
Here’s a breakdown:
- What (or Who): this explains what a concept is all about. You want to provide information a reader needs to understand the concept.
- Why: a reader will only invest time in a piece of content if it solves a problem. The why of your content explains the potential benefits for your audience. Usually, this reason should be about business growth.
- How: readers must be able to take action after reading your content. That only happens if you show them how. So, once readers know what benefits to expect, show them how to get it. This is where you can insert your product naturally.
While this framework can work for content pieces, it also helps you write better standalone headings and subheadings.
So, before writing about a topic, define its what, why, and how. This will make your content focused on the topic.
And while writing, it’s important to refer to the what, why, and how to ensure your content is in line with them.
That said, you don’t have to write your content or a heading in that order (what, why, and how). You can reorder it if that makes sense for your content or style.
7. Explore various SaaS content types
Today, not everyone wants to read a blog post for 37 minutes.
Even if they like reading, their situation may necessitate other content formats.
And in some cases, other content formats can be more effective. For instance, a video may be more helpful for a tutorial.
That’s why you should explore other SaaS content types to keep your audience’s attention.
Some SaaS content types to try include:
Videos
This format lets you showcase your product more effectively. Your audience will see your interface and how to navigate your product to solve problems.
This is especially useful for tutorials. Apart from helping your audience, videos also help you grow your YouTube channel.
Ahrefs creates videos about search engine optimization. Beyond having a thriving blog, Ahrefs has over 400K YouTube channel subscribers. Ahrefs is an example of SaaS content marketing that most companies can learn from.
Podcasts
According to Edison Research, 89 million Americans listen to podcasts weekly. And these listeners listen to an average of 9 podcasts every week.
This makes sense, as many people prefer to listen to a podcast while driving to work instead of the latest Snoop Dogg gossip. They can also listen while working out or doing chores.
Most podcasts are interviews where you invite industry experts to talk about relevant topics. Beyond finding enticing topics for your audience, it should be relevant to your product.
ChartMogul runs a podcast where guests talk about different ways to use analytics to improve business performance.
So, podcasts are a growing trend that can help you build trust with your audience.
Webinars
These are online seminars that show how your product solves critical problems for your audience. You also get an opportunity to collaborate with complementary SaaS companies.
This means access to a bigger audience and possibly getting new customers.
ActiveCampaign uses webinars to show how people can use its software to solve business problems. Here’s a webinar where they collaborated with Slack:
Webinars are a natural format for product-led content. So, you should run SaaS webinars to showcase your product.
Blog post audio
This just lets you deliver your blog post in an audio format. Then, your audience can listen to your content without engaging their hands and eyes.
Interactive demos
This content format lets your audience engage with your product interface. It has many uses for both marketing and sales departments.
So, even in your blog posts, an embedded interactive demo can show visitors how your product works. And since they can navigate themselves, they spend more time on your page.
Read my Supademo review to see how to create one.
Luckily, you don’t have to create these content types from scratch.
You can repurpose your blog posts into these content types.
Of course, podcasts and webinars may be exceptions. But even at that, your blog posts can feed you with ideas for podcast and webinar topics.
With these SaaS content types, you can reach a bigger audience.
SaaS product-led content examples
Userpilot
Userpilot is a user onboarding tool.
I got to know Userpilot through one of its blog posts on a Google search results page.
And I discovered after seeing some of their blog posts that Userpilot creates content around topics relevant to its product.
And even today, you can visit their blog and see many posts centered around problems that Userpilot can solve.
I think this is an excellent example of product-led content for a SaaS company.
Blog post examples
Product Discovery Process: Step-By-Step Guide for Product Teams
SaaS Onboarding: Examples + Best Practices
Customer Retention Analytics – The Ultimate Guide
Databox
Databox is a dashboard tool that helps connect your data from any tool to track them all in a single dashboard. Then, you can build and share reports and uncover insights from your data.
With over 75 software tools as data sources, Databox can create so many content pieces around these tools.
If you go through Databox’s blog posts, you’ll often see a section of the blog post highlighted in a different color.
This will explain how to use a Databox template relevant to the blog post topic.
This way, Databox can show the direct benefits of its product to visitors.
Blog post examples
Facebook CPL (Cost-Per-Lead): What is It and How Do You Reduce It
Lead Conversion Rate: What Is a Good One and How to Optimize It?
How to Create an SEO Report for Your Client in 2023 (Templates Included)
Streak
Streak is a customer relationship management (CRM) software tool for Gmail.
It helps businesses and individuals manage their workflows right in their Gmail inboxes.
Streak creates content about sales pipeline, email deliverability, Gmail tips, and other relevant topics.
Where necessary, the company highlights how its audience can use the Streak Chrome extension (or mobile apps) to execute tasks.
This can convert people who even had no idea about Streak before reading the blog post.
For instance, I installed the Streak Chrome extension the day I heard about it.
And that was in a Copyhackers blog post that explained how it tracks cold email opens.
This could have been a blog post from the company itself.
Blog post examples
How to separate email threads in Gmail
A guide to designing a pipeline for any workflow in 3 steps
Remote work guide: how we use Streak and other tools as a remote team
ClickUp
As a software company that helps users manage their work, ClickUp has so many topics to write about the workplace.
Thanks to product-led content, the company creates content about problems in the workplace and how ClickUp can solve them.
Beyond images, the company also uses GIFs that show a few steps to complete tasks in ClickUp.
In addition to that, ClickUp adds relevant templates to each content piece.
In a nutshell, ClickUp’s content lures its audience to check out its product.
Blog post examples
Dashboard Improvements to Track Work From Every Vantage Point
Project Closure: 5 Steps to End Projects (with Templates)
Mastering Resource Utilization: Calculation, Benefits, & Strategies
Ahrefs
If you’ve been in marketing for at least a few months, you’ve probably heard of Ahrefs.
And one of the main reasons for that is its excellent product-led content.
As an SEO tool, Ahrefs create content pieces about search engine optimization. While going through their blog posts, you’ll see how the software tool can execute tasks to improve your search rankings.
Not just that, but Ahrefs also embeds YouTube videos that address page topics. This keeps people on their page longer.
So, for some search terms, Ahrefs ranks with its blog posts and YouTube videos.
Blog post examples
Link Prospecting: How to Find Quality Backlinks for Your Website
Finding a Good Blog Niche (The Easy Way)
Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers: How to Earn Big
Conclusion
When you create content on your SaaS website, you’ll face 3 main possibilities.
First, you can have content pages that no one reads.
Second, you can have content pages that bring in loads of traffic but little interest in your product.
Third, you can have content pages that attract people and convince them your product is integral to solving their problems.
You should be aiming for this third possibility.
And you can only achieve it through product-led content.
You can adapt your content strategy today to showcase how your product solves problems.
If you need help creating product-led content for your SaaS company, please reach out to me.
For years, I’ve created product-led content for brands looking to generate leads and signups from their content pieces.
And by working together, we can find the best way to achieve your intended content marketing results.
