Are you looking for a way to generate more leads for your SaaS?
Are you wondering how SaaS companies like HubSpot, Slack, and Buffer have been able to scale so fast and build huge audiences of raving fans who now consider them the authorities in their market?
Have you ever consider that one of the major reasons these big SaaS companies have been able to generate more website traffic and B2B leads is because of their blogging strategy?
Research conducted by Hubspot in 2019 found that businesses that focus on blogging are 13X more likely to see a positive return on their investments.
And according to DemandMetric, companies that leverage a blogging strategy received 67% more leads.
Plus, having a blog that works for you will help increase your revenue and massively boost your customer lifetime value (CLV), as you’ll be able to communicate in a meaningful way with consumers on an ongoing basis.
Let’s find out exactly what some of the fastest-growing SaaS companies are doing and how you can replicate their blogging success for your SaaS company.
Related Articles:
- How To Start A Blog In 2021
- How To Scale Your Ecom With A Business Blog
- Top 12 Web Hosting For Your Business Blog
Table of Contents
SaaS Blogging Strategy
With over 10,000 SaaS companies and at least 7,000 SaaS companies in the marketing space alone in 2021, starting a blog might be exactly what you’d needed to start to scale your brand.
It provides your SaaS with a platform to better connect and increase awareness with your ideal prospects and customers.
Not only does having a blog help you in driving 55% more traffic to your SaaS, but it will also help you build an email list faster, and help you increase your ROI on ad spend.
Now let’s see some of the reasons why a blog will help you increase your SaaS revenue potential.
Generate More Traffic To Your Website
One of the biggest advantages of blogging is that it generates more traffic for your SaaS company and it extends your reach of potential customers.
Blogs can result in a 434% increase in indexed pages and a 97% increase in indexed links.
Plus, companies who blog get 97% more links to their websites.
So your ideal prospects will be able to find your SaaS product more easily when they’ll do a simple Google search regarding a specific problem that is somewhat related to your offers, or when a post is shared by others on social media platforms.
A business blog is different than a regular hobby blog as its main focus is to increase your sales and is generally full of great compelling content that pulls your readers towards your SaaS product.
When done right, the content is both helpful and relevant to your target audience and will help you reach new potential B2B SaaS customers.
Initially, your readers will come for your content as it answers some of their questions and initial problems, but then it’ll start to effortlessly pull them towards your products as your offers can help them even more.
How Slack Generates 500,000 Website Visitors Per Month With Their Blog
Slack are all about helping their SaaS customers communicate in a faster, better organized, and secure way than email, so it’s no surprise that productivity is a central focus for their blog.
They use their blog to pull in people from search engines who are looking to boost their team productivity and collaboration.
Have a look at their blog posts and see how these are great content that bring value to their readers and convert some of them into customers.
See how their blog post “Boost teamwork in the hybrid workplace with Slack” or ” Unlock the secret to better workplace communication” bring immediate value to their readers while laying the way to present their SaaS product as the ideal next step for them.
For example, in their post titled “Channeling change: How to use Slack to maintain your team’s human connections,” one of their last tip at the bottom of the page introduces their SaaS product and mentions that “Leaders who want to prioritize humanity in the workplace can help by choosing tools like Slack that encourage engagement, transparency, flexibility and a bit of fun too.”
The rest of the section is all about inspiring their readers so they feel ready to jump in and try Slack.
Slack’s blogging strategy is a combination of 4 main types of blog posts:
- Practical workplace tips
- Company and product updates
- Personal stories
- Product tutorials
Including these types of blog posts not only generate more traffic to their website but also gives Slack a clever way to provide customers with more product info without just referring them to a boring “help” page.
This is a great tactic for you to use to increase your SaaS customers retention.
At the end of articles about product updates, the CTA often links readers to more product-related information and gives a few links to other product updates they think their readers might like to know about.
This combination helps Slack get more than 500,000 visitors per month. That’s a lot of eyeballs.
What questions (blog post titles) could effortlessly convert your readers to SaaS customers?
Drive Traffic To Your SaaS
As we’ve seen, businesses that leverage a Blogging Strategy get 55% more traffic, 67% more leads, and 97% more links to their website.
But that’s not all.
Having a blog will also make it very easy for your social media team with its content marketing strategy. They will be able to leverage your blog’s content as their basis for it’s social media marketing campaign.
A blog is an ideal platform for writing content that is both helpful and relevant for your customers.
By combining your blog and social media, you can effectively drive traffic to your website in a helpful way that also establishes you as an authority in your market.
With time and data, you’ll know exactly which blog posts convert most readers into leads and sales.
You’ll then be able to use this information to scale your reach with an ad campaign.
How HubSpot’s Blog Gets 7,980,800 Website Visitors Every Month
HubSpot offers a full platform of marketing, sales, customer service, and CRM software — plus the methodology, resources, and support — to help businesses.
If you’re in SaaS, you’ve probably heard about HubSpot’s massive growth.
They have a traffic rank of #5 in the world… in the online marketing tech space.
The bulk of their traffic (37.12% or 7.9M) is from inbound marketing, primarily through organic search.
From their blog posts, they send traffic using CTAs and contextual links to their landing pages.
On their landing pages, they offer many different lead gen incentives that match their blog article content and the searcher’s intent.
Take a look at their blog post “How to Create an Effective Customer Journey Map [Examples + Template]” and see how their lead gen incentives perfectly match the topic of the article (customer journey).
Scroll the carousel below for more examples.
Some of their content can sometimes become viral and generate lots of traffic to their blog posts which then converts some of them into SaaS customers and others into email subscribers.
By installing a pixel inside their blog posts they can then retarget on Facebook those who haven’t opt into their email list and those who haven’t purchase their product.
Doing so can dramatically reduce your ad spend and increase your ROI as you are now spending money on ads to an audience who already know, like, and trust you.
They like and trust you because you’ve provided them with free value (blog posts) before you ever asked them anything (subscribe or buy).
Develop a Better Customer Relationship
Having a blog is a great way to connect, communicate, and deepen a relationship with an audience of potential and current customers.
Even though most people that get on your blog will not be ready yet to make a purchase, most of them will come back to read your other posts and some of them will decide to opt in to your email list.
Plus, you’ll get to build a pixel of a likely-to-buy audience that you can leverage in your ad campaigns.
Blogging will help you develop a better customer relationship in many ways.
For one, you’ll get to know exactly what they want to hear from you by ending your blog posts with a question for your readers and allowing them to express their opinion in the comments section.
By analyzing and responding to your readers’ comments, you’ll not only connect with them and build trust but also gain valuable insights into what they are looking for when it comes to your SaaS products.
You could also insert a quick survey in key posts in order to better segment your audience and discover what other problems do they need help with.
You can also develop a better customer relationship by crafting some blog posts on:
- FAQ for your products
- How to use your products
- Customer’s stories using your products
How Buffer Uses Their Blog To Develop A Better Relationship With Their Audience
When it comes time to creating content that answers questions your customers might have or to inspiring future ones by sharing some customer’s success stories using your products, Buffer’s blog is a great example for many SaaS companies to follow.
Buffer create compelling content that answers the questions their customers have about scheduling content on multiple social media platforms using their SaaS product.
They’re basically creating content that functions as an interesting and lively FAQ section.
Buffer also leverage their customer’s success stories in order to inspire their readers to become customers.
See how their blog post titled “How Huel Uses Social Media to Reach an Audience of 400,000+” is a great converting article that doesn’t appear to salezy or high-pressure.
And see if your team can also learn from the way Buffer ends their social-proof/customer’s success articles below:
“Managing a multi-channel strategy in the fast-moving world of social media is a huge challenge for any team. Buffer is proud to play a part in supporting Huel as it builds its brand and audience across social media channels. We hope you can find some inspiration from their approach! Have a question? Let’s chat in the Tweet’s comments section below.“
No wonder customers keep getting back to their blog for answers, inspirations, tips, etc.
Incredible value.
This is also a great way to get more website visitors and a likely-to-buy audience through search engines because they’re answering questions that users are actively asking.
Establish Your SaaS Company As A Leader
Being perceived as an authority or an industry leader is a very powerful frame to establish.
When you are viewed as an authority, your advice, suggestions, and recommendations are more likely to be accepted at least of being weighted higher.
You can establish your SaaS company as an authority through the Strategy of Preeminence of Jay Abraham.
The strategy of preeminence presumes the attitude that you look at your audience, and that you make it a point of deciding you’re NOT GOING TO WAIT FOR MONEY TO CHANGE HANDS BEFORE YOU START contributing, and helping them.
That’s the main purpose of creating content on your business blog.
It is to help someone first, with no strings attached (no opt-in or purchase needed) in a way that positions you as the only viable solution to their problem, challenge, or need.
Establishing yourself from the very beginning as THE ONLY VIABLE SOLUTION, to a problem, a challenge, an issue, or an opportunity in their life, is literally a business life hack.
It makes selling almost effortless as your ideal prospect is pulled (thanks to your content) towards your products.
We buy from people we like and trust, and who appear to be an authority on the subject.
Keep in mind, that you can’t just state that you’re an expert as many people won’t take your words for it and won’t believe you.
On the other hand, if you DEMONSTRATE that you’re an expert by genuinely providing them with solutions via your blog posts to their problems, people will come to see you as a credible authority who is worth following, reading and listening to.
Do this well, and they’ll see you as the ONLY VIABLE SOLUTION to THEIR PROBLEM.
How Zapier Established Itself As The Authority And Get A $5Billion Valuation
Zapier offer a SaaS product that allows end-users to integrate the web applications they use.
In just 10 years, Zapier went from a weekend project to a $140 Million in ARR and a $5 Billion SaaS Company.
While Zapier was young, SEO was enough to turn the startup into a real business, but soon they realized they needed a Blogging Strategy.
And it’s paid off huge, as Zapier’s blog now generates 250,000 monthly website visitors.
Here’s the interesting thing about their approach to content marketing.
Rather than trying to pitch users on the value of integrating tools, Zapier realized early on that people were already looking for specific integrations.
And in order to capture this existing intent, Zapier decided to make the app partners in their integration ecosystem the stars of their marketing and piggyback on their success.
The Zapier team started to harness the power of search results to get more traffic by setting up landing pages for EVERY COMBINATION OF APP-TO-APP that you could possibly connect.
So if you’re searching for Mailshake and Slack, ideally Zapier is in the results.
They’ve done a fantastic job in positioning their brand as the absolute authority in automation as they are always providing great connection ideas to help you save time and money.
In the mind of the readers (and potential customers) Zapier are not pushing their SaaS product down their audience troat, they are simply providing them time-saving solutions.
They first provide their readers with great compelling and actionable tips in regards to saving time from repetitive tasks, and productivity BEFORE ever asking for a commitment (to subscribe or to buy).
They put value first then position automation as a great option to help achieve their audiences’ goals.
Which automation SaaS product do you think the readers now have in mind? Zapier’s, of course, right? 😉
Keep that important part in mind when you or your content team will start writing blog posts.
Increase Your SaaS Revenue
Blogging is so important to increase your SaaS sales that I’d go as far as recommending it regardless of what kinds of products you’re selling.
Why?
Because not only will your blog bring you more traffic with SEO and social media shares, but it will be better quality traffic of likely-to-buy audience as we’ve seen.
Plus, when done right, website visitors who came to your blog will likely come back, either by organic search, or from your email list, or from your retargeting campaign.
This gives you a chance to promote your SaaS product from a different angle, suggest another one, and even upsell them.
As you communicate with consumers on an ongoing basis you’re establishing your credibility, trust, and relationship with them, and almost effortlessly increasing your customer lifetime value.
Remember, there is a reason why the research at HubSpot found that companies that focus on business blogging are 13X more likely to see a positive return on their investments.
Another none negligible way that’ll increase your revenue with a business blog is that you’ll build your email list a lot faster.
According to some email marketing has an R.O.I of 4,300%. So it’s definitely worth spending some time on.
Most people who come to your blog will not be ready to buy your product right away, and that’s okay and still very much profitable.
Most who don’t buy will not subscribe to your email list either, that is still okay as you can retarget them with a relevant offer, blog post, lead magnet later on.
BUT some people (around 2% of your visitors) will decide to opt-in to your email list. And this list is GOLD.
How AppSumo Makes $37 Million A Year With Email Marketing
AppSumo is a daily deals website for digitally distributed goods and online services.
Whether you are a SaaS founder or an online entrepreneur, you’ve probably already heard about AppSumo and its incredible growth.
In 2021, the company founded in 2010 by Noah Kagan plans to make over $74 million in annual revenue, and already has plans to hit the billion-dollar mark down the way.
But, what’s really fascinating about AppSumo is that get 49% of their annual revenue from their email marketing strategy.
They’ve been able to grow their email list mainly with their blog where they help their readers with starting and scaling their business.
Growing an email list in your early days is one of the hardest things in any SaaS business. But AppSumo is living proof that this is possible.
They started by creating simple above fold and footer opt-in forms.
The other one that dramatically increased their opt-in rates was to add an opt-in pop-up like the one below:
Data from marketingsherpa show that 91% of people love to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with.
And sending promotional emails helps companies improve their average purchase rate and make more money :).
AppSumo created automated email campaigns that trigger based on their subscribers’ behavior, so they barely have to touch their system for it to keep increasing profits.
How would you like to have such a revenue-cultivating machine that keeps purring in the background as you tend to other parts of your SaaS business?
Brainstorm with your team about ways you can entice your readers to opt-in to your email lists.
Here’s a list of lead generation ideas to help you:
- Small helpful guide
- Email course
- Educational videos or training videos
- Checklists
- Coupon
- free trial
- etc
The most important thing when it comes to creating the right lead magnet is relevancy.
How is this RELEVANT to what your audience is reading right now on your blog post and WHY should they be motivated to give you their email address?
See how AppSumo offer their readers a RELEVANT lead magnet on their blog post titled “Social Media Report Template: How to Create One for Your Business”
If you’re looking to create a social media report for your business and you stumbled onto this blog post, how likely do you think you’ll be enticed to download AppSumo Social Media Report Template? Very likely, right?
Why?
Because the offer is RELEVANT to your search intent (social media report).
The second most important thing when creating your lead magnet is to figure out a way to position your SaaS product as the only solution to their problem.
So that when you suggest it to them it makes complete sense and doesn’t appear as you’re pushing it. It has to be effortless and natural.
If you want a great example of that, look no further than at the bottom of their blog post:
“If you are looking for tools to help you manage your social media and track your analytics, you should check out the AppSumo store. We have several affordable lifetime and annual deals on some of the top software.”
See how they are easily linking their AppSumo store as a way to help their readers to better manage their social media and track their analytics.
Action Steps
In conclusion, starting your SaaS blogging strategy will dramatically help you distance yourself from over 10,000 SaaS companies and position you as a credible, trustworthy authority in the eyes of your audience.
It will provide your SaaS with a platform to develop a relationship with a new market of likely-to-buy prospects.
Not only does having a blog will help you in driving more traffic to your website, but it will also help you build an email list faster, and help you increase your ROI on ad spend.
Now you know the reason BEHIND the success of some of the fastest-growing SaaS companies like HubSpot, Slack, Zapier, and AppSumo
A Business Blogging Strategy.
If you would like to know how you and your team can execute your own SaaS Blogging Strategy to:
- Increase Your Revenue Potential: And pull your ideal prospects towards you.
- Scale Your Backlink Acquisition: So you can get passive inbound leads and customers.
- Build Revenue Predictability: With an audience of ideal prospects who like your content and subscribe to your email and SMS list.
- Delegate Your Content Creation: So you can focus on other parts of your SaaS.
Then you’re welcome to join me and other SaaS owners inside my free Business Blogging Course.
Simply enter your info below and then click on the big blue “Sign Up” button.
See you on the other side.
Max “FreedomSeeker”
Leave a Reply