SaaS Content Marketing: The 9-Step Roadmap for Success

I’ve spent the last decade helping SaaS companies achieve real growth through content.

That’s included bringing in over $400K from a $1K content budget. And completing a project that drove 200K+ product sign-ups without spending a single dime on ads.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to build SaaS content engines that scale like that.

But let’s cover some fundamentals first.

What Is SaaS Content Marketing?

SaaS content marketing means creating and sharing content like blogs, videos, and more to attract, convert, and retain users for subscription-based software products.

For example, Notion caters to various personas and stages of the buyer’s journey through a variety of formats. 

Each piece of content is tailored to a specific user and their needs. 

Like a video tutorial on building a help center, aimed at customer success specialists who need a streamlined way to answer product questions.

Why Is Content Marketing for SaaS Businesses Important?

Using content marketing can attract your target audience, build trust, and persuade them to buy.

Here’s why content marketing works so well in SaaS:

• Prospects do a lot of research: SaaS buyers spend time understanding their problem, evaluating tools, and looking for guidance. If your content helps them along the way, you're more likely to earn their trust.

• You’re not selling to one person: B2B deals often involve people from different teams, each with their own priorities. Content helps you speak to each of them.

• Good content builds authority: Sharing original insights or genuinely helpful resources positions your SaaS brand as one worth trusting. That’s especially important when you're selling something complex or new.

• It also supports your sales team: Content answers common questions, highlights use cases, and removes doubt, so sales can focus on closing deals.

Take Zapier, for example.

They share practical, expertise-driven content on their blog, knowledge base, social media, and other channels.

The result? 

As of May 2025, Zapier drives over 2.6 million organic visits per month. Which means they attract a substantial number of potential buyers from search results alone.

How to Create a Powerful SaaS Content Marketing Strategy

Before you write a single blog post or start a podcast, follow these steps:

1. Build a Solid Foundation for Your B2B SaaS Content Strategy

SaaS companies need to have proper product pages and lead generation forms on their website before they even start thinking about other content.

Take note of this advice from FinTech writer Vivek Shankar:

“Many SaaS companies begin with SEO and then focus on the rest, getting it all backward. Your product comes first—get that story in place before doing anything else.”

To do it right, start with:

• Nailing your messaging: You need to know exactly how your product solves user problems. So, your content can reinforce this narrative. 

• Creating a functional website: A website that’s easy to navigate and engaging helps visitors find what they want, understand your offerings, remember your brand, and convert.

• Create key pages: Build foundational pages like your homepage, product pages, and feature pages to clearly explain what you do, who it’s for, and why it matters.

For example, Webflow does a good job of positioning the platform as a tool for achieving much more than just a visually appealing site.

They translate this message via all core website pages, like the homepage:

Their other content then reinforces this positioning by focusing on broader outcomes—like turning traffic into revenue, running experiments, and creating sites that drive real business results.

2. Really Know Your Audience

SaaS content that performs needs to be created for real people, not imaginary personas.

You’ve seen them: 

“SaaS Sally, 32, loves productivity tools and wants to optimize her workflows.”

But if you want your content to work, you need to know what your audience is actually doing. On the job and in real situations. 

So, answer these questions:

• What specific tasks do they perform every day?
• What questions do they ask sales?
• What do they complain about in Slack channels or Reddit threads?

You can find this information by sitting in on demo calls and reading sales notes, and doing research in relevant communities.

For instance, we recently launched a research-driven content campaign targeting a question prospects kept asking during sales calls: Can AI content rank in search?

Proving that AI content can rank just as well as human-written content—when done right—helped us address a major buying barrier. 

We also exceeded our conversion targets without any promotional budget.

3. Set Realistic Goals

The best SaaS content programs are focused on reaching one or two high-impact goals.

Here’s how you could approach setting realistic and actionable goals based on where your company is right now:

4. Become an Expert on Your Product

The best SaaS content marketers act like product experts and translators.

When you know how your product works, where users struggle, and what they care about, you can create content that’s actually useful and engaging. 

To understand your product from the inside out:

• Test features and document friction points
• Collect support tickets to uncover common frustrations
• Reach out to your product team with questions 
• Observe important product and sales meetings

If you work with anyone else to create content, make sure they have access to this knowledge 

For example, I attend all product syncs to understand every detail about the products I promote. 

It helps me create content that dives deep into tool features. Like this recent webinar I hosted.

5. Plan Content That Moves Buyers Forward

From here, plan your content around two key areas: what your business is trying to achieve and where your buyers are in their decision process.

Choose relevant content formats based on the key stages of their journey:

• Top of funnel: blog posts, industry reports, podcasts, thought leadership

• Mid-funnel: Product workflows, product education, case studies

• Bottom of funnel: Feature breakdowns, templates, tool comparisons

• Retention: Knowledge base, product use cases, workshops

Then, think of one big idea that can fuel content at each of those stages.

For example, Relato coined the term “Frankenstack” to name a common pain point of messy content operations and built a unique framework around it. 

That core idea was then used across different formats and funnel stages, from blog posts to founder posts promoting the tool on LinkedIn.

To find resonating content ideas, collect questions and concerns expressed during sales conversations, check customer support inquiries, and analyze social media trends.

You can also try specialized tools that use data to find low-hanging fruit content ideas

For example, the Topic Finder tool in Semrush Content Toolkit finds specific, data-backed angles your competitors miss. 

All you need to do is give it a high-level topic you’d like to focus on (e.g., “AI sales”). 

The tool will suggest high-potential ideas your audience is already searching for, but most competitors haven’t covered well.

6. Set Up a Scalable Content Creation Process

Clear processes help you grow your content output without burning out your team or missing deadlines. 

As your publishing volume increases, good content ops keep things organized and moving forward.

That’s why your content operations should be simple, sturdy, and built to scale.

Define the following:

• Role and ownership: Who owns strategy, writing, editing, design, publishing, promotion, and performance?

• Workflow: What are the exact steps from brief creation to publication? And how does content move through each stage?
  
• Goals and metrics: What are you tracking (traffic volume, rankings, conversions, etc.)?

Then, develop standard operating procedures (SOPs), checklists, and templates for your content production processes. 

These could cover processes like keyword research, editing, writing, and more.

For instance, we use standardized content briefs to make sure all key elements are covered.

7. Organically Integrate Your Product Into Content

As a SaaS content marketer, your edge is showing how your product fits into real use cases.

That’s where product-led content comes in.

 It solves a real problem, teaches something valuable, and naturally includes your product as part of the solution.

Take Webflow’s blog, for example. 

Their content connects product features to real workflows—like scaling design systems or analyzing website performance—so readers can see the tool in action without feeling sold to.

To try this approach, start by identifying resonating topics where you can naturally integrate your product:

• Tackle real-life challenges instead of writing generic how-to guides
• Analyze product-related questions asked during sales conversations
• Ask your users directly to learn about their needs

For example, I often email our customers to ask which content topics matter most to them.

This helps us create product-led pieces that address real challenges and showcase our tools in a way that’s both relevant and valuable.

8. Use AI to Improve Quality

AI can help you publish faster, stay consistent, and scale your content efforts—and it’s possible to do all that without losing quality.

The key isn’t just using AI. It’s using it well to create AI content that can rank highly. 

Here are some best practices to keep it mind:

To put this into practice, I use Semrush’s Content Toolkit.

It combines AI with Semrush’s SEO data to generate first drafts you can refine using the integrated blog editor and AI chat.

First, add a content topic and specify parameters like your preferred brand voice, title, and content length. 

The tool will then create a full content draft that draws on competitive data for your topic.

From here, enhance your content by:

• Weaving in your unique expertise and point of view
• Adding quotes and insights from subject matter experts (SMEs)
• Including real-world examples
• Conducting and showcasing original research (when possible)

For example, we often publish industry research at Semrush, and I use that original data when writing various content pieces. 

Just like I did with this article on the top content marketing trends:

9. Determine Your Promotion and Distribution Strategy

Figuring out how you’ll share your content across channels is important for reaching as many target customers as possible. 

SaaS customers tend to use various channels during their decision-making process, including search engines, industry-specific websites, and social media

And you want to be in each of those touchpoints. 

Here’s what you can do to extend your reach:

• Repurpose for different platforms: Adapt content pieces into formats that work on other channel: e.g., repurpose a podcast episode into a LinkedIn carousel

• Use paid and organic together: Boost top content via paid channels to expand reach, especially for high-intent assets like case studies or reports

• Distribute through influencers or partners: Consider collaborating with individuals your audience knows and trusts to reach them more authentically

For example, I broke down our AI SEO research into a content series.

First, I used the research to create three separate articles:

• Can AI Content Rank on Google?
• Is SEO Dead in 2025?
• Does Google Penalize AI Content?

Then, we used ideas and data points from these pieces to create social media content.

Succeeding in SaaS Content Marketing

The companies that win at SaaS content marketing are the ones who know exactly why they’re creating content, who they’re speaking to, and how every asset ties back to their goals.

If you follow this playbook, your content can be similarly high-performing and drive sign-ups. Shorten sales cycles. Retain customers.

It might become the reason your SaaS company grows.