Navigating your SaaS buyer’s journey via the most suitable content type is essential since it’s pointless to create content that targets everyone but, in fact, doesn’t target your ideal SaaS buyer.
The three essential stages of your SaaS buyer’s journey are the awareness, consideration, and decision stages. In this article, we will focus on the awareness stage and show you which content types you need to use for this stage in order to nurture your potential buyer to the next stage.
However, before we begin, let’s see what the awareness stage is precisely.
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What is the Awareness Stage in the SaaS Buyer’s Journey?
The awareness stage is the first stage of your SaaS buyer’s journey, and it’s the process of awakening potential buyers to become aware of your SaaS business, your brand, and your overall SaaS services.
During this stage, your potential buyers are just beginning to realize they have an issue and need more knowledge about potential SaaS solutions. They are in the early stages of gathering information and aren’t yet ready to make a decision regarding their purchase of which SaaS company to choose.
These SaaS potential buyers are your less qualified leads, so it’s crucial to invest in the right content types to nurture them and build trust with your SaaS brand. This approach will increase the likelihood of your potential buyers entering the next stages and making a purchase in the near or distant future.
To effectively address this stage and navigate your SaaS buyer’s journey, creating educational content that will provide value and guide them to your SaaS website is vital.
Content Types for the Awareness Stage
Since SaaS SEO isn’t the same as general SEO, and you must pay attention to inform the potential buyer in the awareness stage, you need to provide them with content types that provide education.
Let’s see all the content types for the awareness stage.
Blog Posts
One of the most robust things regarding any SEO, as well as SaaS SEO, is writing blog posts.
It’s the most prevalent content type during the awareness stage since it serves as an easily accessible and non-intimidating medium that potential buyers can find within seconds via Google and other search engines.
The defining characteristics of an awareness-stage blog post are as follows:
- Primarily informative content aimed at addressing questions and solving problems.
- Absence of sales-oriented language or unnecessary brand references.
- Clear and comprehensive, providing sufficient information to resolve initial issues.
- Educational, demonstrating industry expertise and subtly offering insights into the benefits of doing business with your brand.
- To identify topics for your awareness-stage blog posts, compile a list of questions your potential buyers may ask before purchasing your services. These questions should focus on something other than your specific service but on the problems they are trying to solve with your SaaS services.
For instance, your SaaS SEO won’t be effective if you offer a team management SaaS platform and aim to create awareness-stage blog posts if you begin by writing how your services directly help with team management. Instead, you should create content about the various reasons for having a team management platform, why it’s important, and what’s its purpose, and subtly mention that these platforms are highly valuable without aggressively promoting your own SaaS brand.
This approach allows you to establish a connection with your SaaS audience and provide them with valuable information.
Of course, not all blog posts are the same and have a different purpose. The three types of blog posts you should write for the awareness stage are the following:
- General SaaS industry trends
- General SaaS industry tips
- ‘’How To’’ blog posts
- Ultimate Guides
- Best Practices
It’s valuable to mention that you need to address all types of these blog posts since, otherwise, you will leave a content gap that someone from your competitors will fulfill and steal your potential SaaS buyers.
Educational Content
The blog posts are also educational, but here, we address a different type of educational content, and the three main types include the following:
- Guides
- Tutorials (Step-by-Step)
- Walkthroughs
Addressing various content types for the awareness stage doesn’t just mean writing content and articles; it also means creating guidelines, tutorials, and walkthroughs since the potential buyers in this stage are still learning about SaaS services, and most don’t even know about your company.
You can create a web page where you can publish these content types, or even better, create different pages for each if you plan to publish all of them to educate the audience regularly. These are the essential things that each of these content types addresses:
- Guides: A set of tips, instructions, and educational information on a specific SaaS topic.
- Tutorials: A teaching method dependent on step-by-step examples to show the discrete steps of how to use something (for instance, a project management tool)
- Walkthroughs: Showing step-by-step software solutions that guide potential buyers via a series of actions to help them understand the bigger picture.
Content Pillars and White Papers
To provide in-depth industry analysis, you must create content pillars and white papers for your potential buyers in the awareness stage.
In order to understand why these two content types are highly beneficial for this stage of the buyer’s journey, let’s see the definitions for both of them:
- Content Pillar: A content pillar is an informative, educational, and substantive piece of content on a particular theme or topic that can be divided into various segments, sections, and materials.
- White Papers: A white paper is a research-based report which provides a more concise description of a complex topic. It aims to provide potential buyers with an understanding of a problem, which in turn helps them solve it efficiently.
Of course, your content pillars and white papers need to be about your SaaS company, services, or SaaS, in general, to inform, educate, and further interest the potential buyers in the awareness stage.
Introductory eBook
An eBook is a digital book that your potential SaaS buyers can download from your website or email on their desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
However, only some eBooks are suitable for the awareness stage. For instance, an advanced eBook is a content type for the consideration stage, while an introductory eBook is for the awareness stage.
Why?
Because you don’t want to confuse your potential buyers in this stage by giving them advanced SaaS content they don’t understand, which will trigger them to leave your site and go to your competitor’s sites.
Instead, an introductory eBook will make your potential buyers even more aware of the problem, give them valuable information, educate them, and slowly but surely move them toward the consideration stage.
Remember, as long as you don’t push them to purchase immediately and create the content precisely for the awareness stage; they will undoubtedly read the entire introductory eBook and further research on your website.
Educational Webinar Landing Pages
An educational webinar landing page is a web page that generates webinar registrations for a particular theme or topic with the ultimate goal of converting page visitors.
This webinar page will tell your potential buyers what your SaaS webinar is all about and explain the benefits they can get from the webinar.
Once again, your webinar for your potential buyers at this stage needs to be aligned with their awareness.
Interviews with Industry Leaders
Why would someone in the awareness stage and still not quite sure they have a problem and still educate themselves about SaaS believe you and your services?
Logically, they won’t, but you can change that and make them more aware of your SaaS company and the benefits of your SaaS services by posting interviews with industry leads. These interviews will show them you are a valuable and trustworthy source of information, your company is successful, and your services are purchased by the best in this niche.
Data Visualization Pages
Lastly, data visualization pages such as infographics and studies are also crucial to nurture your SaaS potential buyers in the awareness stage.
They are highly informative and engaging since they interestingly relay the most critical information on a particular topic. The reason why they are incredibly appealing in this stage is because they are easy to understand, consume, but also share.
Your potential buyers can pull the essential information from them quickly rather than reading a lot of content. These content types can trigger their interest enough to move them toward a more detailed consideration or decision stage.
Also, they are easy to share, so you get free marketing from your potential buyers as they share them on social media and raise awareness about your SaaS brand. Your SaaS SEO is crucial, but extra marketing from people unaware they are helping you is also beneficial.
We have come to the end of our article, and now you know the content types for the awareness stage of your SaaS buyer’s journey.
And remember, it’s crucial to implement all these content types if you want to address everything your potential buyers need to know at this stage while subtly navigating them toward consideration!
