SaaS marketing is challenging. While a majority of the industries can use multiple channels with ease to advertise their offer, but the scope is limited for SaaS businesses. A SaaS product is intangible and it is constantly evolving. Most importantly, Software as a Service is something that most customers perceive as too technology-oriented, and hence have little interest and patience to get familiar with.
That’s why the information in a knowledge base you possess is your strongest marketing asset. Your marketing mantra should be “educate, convert and retain” instead of “build it, and they will come”. In order to convince the potential customers that your solution is what they need, a knowledge base is of critical importance.
1. Great Knowledge Base Articles Are the Key to SaaS Marketing
For a beauty or fashion industry player, the marketing strategy is usually straightforward and simple as it encompasses makeup tutorials, a red carpet coverage, and etc. In fact, it can guarantee the blog brimming with visitors. But, SaaS isn’t exactly something an average person wants to read about.
It goes without saying that your business relies on narrower audience segmentation, but that still doesn’t mean that your potential customer base longs for uninspiring content. Educational resources are the core tenant of SaaS marketing, but only if they provide value and practical information in a convenient and easy to read format.
That’s where knowledge base articles enter the scene. Rather than technical guides, they are an ideal juncture of engaging blog posts and customer support. Creating a perfect knowledge base article means looking at the bigger picture – instead of writing about functions and features of your SaaS, show some real examples of how it can be used for your customer’s benefit. Once they know what’s in it for them, they’ll be interested to know about it.
2. Educational Content Is SEO-Friendly
Apart from allowing you to grow your audience organically, knowledge base articles have a great potential for smart and effective SEO investments. If properly written, such articles, eBooks and user guides can include plenty of product-related keywords, thus ranking your website higher on search engines.
The best thing is that you don’t have to use an SEO expert for this part of your marketing strategy. Use Google Analytics instead, and find out what inquiries are suitable for your SaaS goals. You can then use them to create SEO-friendly FAQs and keyword-empowered articles that will answer all your customers’ demands.
3. Effective Customer Support
To be specific, SaaS businesses need to adjust marketing tactics to their unique customer lifecycles. Your revenue relies on the monthly fees, which means that customer retention plays a more significant role than customer acquisition. Instead of selling a product, therefore, you should focus on selling experiences and satisfying the clients.
In marketing terms, using your customer support as a unique selling point is suggested. Customer-oriented service helps SaaS products to stand out from the crowd. A knowledge base that is informational and interesting at the same time is excellent, but helpdesk solutions can make your marketing even easier.
It equips your reps with everything they need to know about customer preferences and pain points, while simultaneously automating their day-to-day operations. All of this leads to reduced tickets, inquiries and frustration on both sides, thus increasing customer satisfaction and compelling your clients to stay with you month after month.
4. Informative-Driven Strategy
Until recently, knowledge bases were built exclusively for internal intelligence. Though customers now draw on them as well, their use in sales, customer service and employee onboarding is still unparalleled. Indirectly, your marketing strategists can leverage them for audience targeting.
Take Shopify, for instance. Their SaaS was developed in perfect compliance with their customers’ needs, thus becoming one of the biggest names in the industry. In other words, your marketing investment won’t be very successful if your product doesn’t resonate with your audience.
Luckily, online knowledge base software systems enable you to get familiar with those you’ll be marketing and selling your product to. By integrating Google Analytics, for example, it will allow you to gather and analyze actionable feedback from existing users. Moreover, it will also help you improve the future versions and develop a product your audience will love.
5. Knowledge Bases Allow You to Establish Yourself as an Authority
Marketing is only a secondary purpose of the comprehensive knowledge base software systems. If they weren’t designed to store, manage and share information in the first place, they wouldn’t be able to perform any other service, let alone acquaint and retain your customers. Though they can’t make you any more knowledgeable than you already are, they can serve as a powerful platform for displaying your SaaS prowess.
In addition to relying on a convenient customer self-service and delightful customer support, your marketing strategy benefits from your expertise as well. If you manage to establish yourself as an authority in your field, your company’s prospects won’t need any additional proof of your product’s quality.
Knowledge base articles and customer-oriented wikis will help in showcasing everything you excel in. Don’t limit yourself to user guides and FAQs, but take a chance to write about SaaS industry, market trends and future. Offer your expert advice, suggestions and practical tips as well. The larger and more versatile your knowledge base is, higher the chances are that you’ll get noticed.
Once you start driving traffic to your website, educating prospects, getting familiar with their needs and delighting existing customers, your marketing job is pretty much done. From there on, you can share your message with a wider audience, thus expanding your business further. Hence, stay knowledge-centered throughout, and your customers will be more than interested in learning more.
Author Bio:
Robin is a Technical Support Executive with a combined experience of 6 years. He is well acquainted with various Knowledge base tools and is currently associated with ProProfs. In his free time, Robin enjoys reading and traveling.