SaaS Content Writing: Tips & Strategies

Creating SaaS content is challenging. Google it and most advice rattles off the same advice—so it must be right…right?

If you want your content to read like everyone else, yes, stop there and get writing. If not, and you dig a little deeper, you'll uncover hidden gems that are going to elevate your writing and your results.

Whilst we haven't quite researched all 6 million+ pages, we’ve tried to uncover as many gems as possible.

Enjoy!

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What is SaaS content writing?

SaaS content writing is the process of creating articles and blogs for brands within the software as a service (SaaS) industry. This written content aims to educate readers, sell SaaS subscriptions, and engage and retain existing customers.

So, what makes SaaS content writing unique?

SaaS subscriptions typically renew on a monthly basis, meaning customers can easily leave from one month to another. This makes engaging them particularly important for retention.

SaaS content also works to demystify a lot of the confusion surrounding SaaS products. These products solve major pain points but it can be difficult to communicate the how without high-quality content.

Put simply, SaaS content is writing that:

• Engages
• Educates
• Retains
• Sells

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Common types of SaaS content

Content is a critical component of SaaS business marketing strategy—but, why?

It creates brand awareness, educates, informs, builds trust and credibility, and drives web traffic, engagement, conversions, and loyalty.

Let’s take a look at some typical types of SaaS content.

Blog posts

Subject-focused content that will attract and engage visitors, build community, and drive positive responses to CTA’s. Some common types of blog posts include:

• ‘How to’ articles on something relating to your industry or product eg How to Manage Your Remote Employee’s Time
• Comparison articles looking at your product vs. competitors eg Product A vs. Product B: The pros and the cons
• Educational blogs explaining a concept or process eg What is MRR: Demystifying Monthly Recurring Revenue in SaaS

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White papers and thought leadership content

Long-form content shares high-level knowledge and insights that build authority, credibility, and trust. The goal of this type of content is to position the brand as a leader within its field—a reliable source of information and knowledgeable enough to create a great SaaS product.

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Case studies

In-depth accounts of how the SaaS product has helped its customers solve problems, deliver results, and drive revenue/profit. The aim is to show prospective customers what they could achieve.

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Infographics

Simplify complex content by turning it into visual information. They can both stand-alone or help break up lengthy copy. They are also:

• Visually appealing and so generates more engagement than other content types
• SEO-friendly and easy to share on social media, winning you backlinks

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Social media content

Although target market dependent, popular SaaS marketing social media channels include LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (X) or Threads. In addition to those already covered above, content could include:

• Product demo and update videos
• Tips, advice and hacks
• Quotes and shoutouts
• Themed posts showcasing company culture
• Promoting/sharing SaaS industry content
• Industry news and trends
• Customer/user feedback and testimonials

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Strategies for effective SaaS content writing

To get results you have to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time. This starts with:

1. Identifying the target audience

Your target audience includes both the type of company—so, the ideal customer profile—and the type of buyer—the buyer persona of the decision-maker within the company.

Target companies are those that will both benefit most from your product/service and meet your revenue and servicing requirements, so start by looking at:

• Company size and headcount
• Annual revenue and growth rate
• Geographical locations and languages

Their identification should inform your buyer persona development, indicating who is likely to be involved in the purchasing decision (buyer, influencer, user) and where they are in their purchasing journey.

Buyer persona criteria include:

• Title, role, and responsibilities
• Jobs to be done (JTBD)
• Pains and challenges

The purchasing journey is managed through your marketing funnel where targeted content is delivered to your audience at every stage.

Whilst they vary in number and title there are typically five stages in the SaaS marketing funnel, spread across three sections—top of the funnel, middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel.  

Take a look:

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2. Conducting research and analysis

If you're not a subject matter expert you can still produce high-quality SaaS content—with one proviso... do your research!

Love it or not, having a system in place will make the task a lot easier. Here’s what we suggest:

• Research your competitors' top content for topics

This information should inform your writing, helping you avoid topics no one is searching for and proving what is currently working. It can also help identify what competitors are missing or lacking giving you the opportunity to differentiate your company/product/service offers.

• Skyscraper your competitors' content structure

Skyscraping is simply researching the structure of existing top content and creating a better version. This lays the foundation for high-quality content.

• Research sources for each section

With a structured outline in place, it’s time to find information sources for each section. You’ll find the writing process much easier if you research ahead of time—even if that just adding helpful resources to each section for when you come to writing them.

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3. Creating a content plan and strategy

The following steps inform your content brief development, ensuring writers have all the information they need to transform your idea into content that will meet or exceed your brand’s marketing goals. You should:

1. Define key metrics & objectives
2. Complete jobs to be done exercise
3. Scan competitive landscape‍
4. Conduct keyword research and identify search intent‍
5. Perform a SaaS content audit to identify gaps and opportunities
6. Create an editorial calendar‍
7. Define a publishing schedule & responsibilities

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4. Writing for SEO (search engine optimization)

Your content, irrespective of quality, has to be found before it can have any impact on your target audience. Of course, quality greatly impacts your content’s success—but there are also other aspects that matter. That’s where SEO comes in.

Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your content—through a number of different techniques—in order to improve its visibility in search engines. There’s technical SEO—which we won't cover here as it relates to the technicalities of your site and not your content—on-page SEO, and off-page SEO.

Content writing mainly falls into on-page SEO, but you can also improve your off-page SEO with the content you create.

Here’s a quick look at what we mean:

• Perform keyword research: this involves organizing words, queries, and phrases by user journey and/or marketing funnel stages.

• Match search intent: different content answers different search queries. It’s key to identify the search intent behind your primary keyword. Search intent can be separated into informational, commercial, and transactional.

• Write an optimized title tag: this helps search engines and readers understand the unique value your page offers. Keep it short, make it unique, and use keywords where possible.

• Optimize the meta description: these are page summaries and are one of the first things people will see when searching. Use active voice, make it actionable, and use your focus key phrase.

• Use headers strategically: they grab reader attention, improve readability, and help Google understand your content. Include target keywords in H1 headers and use H2 and H3 headers to organize the rest of the section.

• Structure content for readability: you want to ensure your content is skimmable and easy to digest. Include a table of contents, present one idea per paragraph, keep sentences short, and highlight important items by using bold and italic text, quotation marks, and numbered or bulleted lists.

• Use internal links: to strategically interconnect your content, helping search engines understand your site's structure and directing users to further relevant content on your site.

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5. Incorporating visuals and multimedia

Visual content simplifies complex information, is more impactful, and ranks well on social media.

They help break up lengthy copy, improving readability in long-form content like whitepapers and blog posts.

Visual content is more shareable and likely to result in more backlinks. Backlinks from authoritative websites inform Google that your content is trustworthy, which can boost your content in SERPs.

Visual content can also rank in the Image and Video sections of Google Search.

Remember: add alt tags to any images you include. They provide alternative text (or alt text) that both people using screen readers and search engines can read.

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Tips for writing SaaS content

So, how?

Writing clear and concise headlines

Headlines are your first opportunity to grab the attention of target readers and convince them your SaaS content is worth their time.

Headlines need to:

• Grab reader attention
• Be relevant
• Address search intent
• Be optimized

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Using simple and straightforward language

When it comes to SaaS content writing, less is more. Keep it simple and jargon-free, with sentences that are short and to the point. Never assume your audience is tech-savvy, so explain any terms or concepts that aren’t common knowledge outside of your industry.

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Writing for readability and scannability

Your audience won’t read your content word for word—they'll skim to determine whether it warrants any further attention and once they decide 'there's nothing for me here'—you've lost them.

So grab their attention by:

• Making sure what they are skimming speaks to their pain points by bolding key points and concepts.
• Using keywords in headings, sub-headings, numbered lists and bullet points.
• Keeping paragraphs short to ensure you leave enough white space for readers to process information in shorter chunks.
• Using transitions and connectors to link paragraphs and sentences to create logical flow.

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Writing for engagement

Have you ever been party to a conversation where an individual has everyone around them captivated? All silent—hanging on to every authoritative, charismatic word. When the conversation ends, for the longest second, no one speaks or moves...

That's how you want to write.

• Talk directly to the reader.
• Use active voice
• Make it conversational
• Use idioms and metaphors for engagement
• Use transitional words to create flow
• Use power words to help visualize messages
• Use sensory words to evoke emotions

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Emphasizing benefits over features

Features are what a product or service does.

Benefits demonstrate why those features matter and how they will positively impact customer/user lives. They address pain points and so connect with your target audience, making the decision to purchase more compelling.

As such you should ordinarily lead with benefits but can, where necessary or beneficial, use features to substantiate those benefits.

That being said, feature-led content can add significant value to differentiating SaaS product offers in saturated or fiercely competitive markets.

SaaS content writing is far from easy—and you’ll likely spend more time conducting KW research, identifying search intent, creating briefs, and researching topics than you will actually writing the piece. It’s an incredibly beneficial, but incredibly time-consuming process.

If all of this sounds like too much work—you might want to consider working with a SaaS content writing agency.

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How to choose the right SaaS content writing agency

Content planning and production is a heavy lift and is so much more than just writing. By using the right agency your copy will benefit from a team of experts, marketing specialists, digital strategists, social media managers, and SEO specialists. They will all have high-level expertise, time and results-tested processes, and advanced SEO tools and techniques.    

This can make choosing a SaaS content writing agency a daunting prospect. There are a lot of them to consider, all with their own unique personalities, approaches, and result guarantees. Start by exploring their:

• Experience and expertise: start with their portfolio and case studies. What SaaS businesses have they worked with and what measurable results did they achieve?

• Quality of work: look for examples of different formats—blog posts, long-form content, short-form content, landing pages... These will demonstrate the agency’s ability to produce high-quality content that drives search volume and conversion/retention rates.

• Industry knowledge: a SaaS content writer will save you significant time and effort whilst bringing invaluable pre-existing knowledge, insights, and strategies to the table.

• SEO and strategy expertise: evaluate their on-page SEO expertise by looking at how they optimize their own content. Also, look for evidence of a data-driven approach to SaaS content strategy development.

On the topic of SEO, make sure your SaaS content agency of choice has a strong knowledge of SEO. Ideally, you’re looking for an agency that can offer SEO + Content services—as the two tend to go hand in hand. Working with two agencies can slow down your content production—causing nothing but hassle and headaches.

If this sounds good, get in touch with dslx today. High-quality SEO content, one point of contact, and a wealth of SaaS content knowledge—we’re ready when you are.