Content marketing is one of the key elements for every SaaS business, especially in reaching and engaging the target audience. But, sometimes, it’s not easy to decide between educational vs promotional SaaS content. Still, the best thing to do is to properly balance different content types, as they’re all essential for the overall marketing strategy.
While promotional content helps you build brand awareness and boost sales, educational content will assist you in establishing thought leadership and enduring customer relationships.
That’s why balance is crucial.
In this blog post, we’ll talk more about the balance between these two particular content types when it comes to SaaS websites.
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Understanding the Content Types on a SaaS Company’s Website
If you analyze and compare a few SaaS websites, you’ll see some recognizable patterns in their content and web navigation strategy. In general, they have a homepage that briefly introduces the product together with its features and benefits. Then, you can find different pages dedicated to product features and solutions, a pricing page, and knowledge resources, i.e., blogs and useful articles.
Many SaaS companies also offer aftersale content that can also be promotional or educational. You’ll see nice and clear navigation and relevant content through buyer’s journey stage no matter what page you land on. But surely, the two main content types will immediately grab your attention – pieces that promote and sell and other content pieces that inform and educate.
Educational SaaS Content
This content type provides value, insights, and solutions targeting specific pain points and challenges. Using an educational approach, SaaS companies position themselves as niche authority, which results in building trust with the audience. Blog posts, how-to guides, tutorials, and webinars are direct examples of educational content you can find on a SaaS company website.
Promotional SaaS Content
Promotional content has the sole purpose of promoting the products and services to drive sales and conversions. When sharing customer success stories, demos, and limited-time offers, you are working on your promotional content strategy. Also, the sales pages are great examples of promotional content, as the goal is to make the page visitor sign up for a demo or buy the product.
Before we discover some balancing tips, let’s remind ourselves why these content types are good for SaaS businesses.
The Importance of Educational Content for SaaS Companies
As we explained, this content type helps your business gain an industry leader position. If you educate your website, and visitors, regularly, offering consistent valuable insights and knowledge, you gain credibility. And you don’t only grow in the target audience’s eyes – you also show your competitors how content strategy needs to be executed.
As a result, you nurture the leads through the buyer journey to build trust and show you really care for them. And surely, when incorporating the right informational keywords and addressing the relevant search queries, you improve your search engine ranking, attracting organic traffic.
Incorporating the Promotional Content Effectively
Promotional content highlights the specific features your SaaS product offers. It serves as a selling point, addressing the audience’s challenges better than the competitors. We can even say that you can brand the common knowledge as part of your strategy to showcase you know how you deal with it.
Naturally, the promotional pieces are accompanied by calls-to-action, encouraging customers to take a specific action like requesting a demo, signing up for a trial, subscribing to newsletters, or scheduling a meeting.
The promotional content is strategically placed at the appropriate buyer’s journey stage. You won’t find a blog post saying, “Our product is the best, buy it now.” Instead, it’s part of the service pages, even the homepage, but also in the emails and educational content you enjoy reading.
Educational vs Promotional SaaS Content and The Balance
Every SaaS business is different, and if something works for one, it doesn’t mean the strategy applies to all similar products or solutions. But how to perfectly balance these specific content types? Is there any formula you can use? Can you find the right number of educational vs promotional SaaS content pieces to maintain consistency?
And while there is no one formula to fit all businesses, you can try balancing with the common 80/20 rule. That means 80% of the content should be informative and educational, while the other 20% should be promotional.
That way, you’re sure you won’t overdo the promotions and become boring for your audience. Still, it doesn’t mean this rule will work for your brand forever.
You surely need to measure the content performance and check on how many impressions, clicks, and other actions you receive. After some time, you can improve your strategy and test different approaches until you find the right balance, particularly for your business.
So, start with the 80/20 rule and adjust as needed (or if needed). Keep in mind that no matter how many similar products there are, you can always highlight your uniqueness and build the content strategy around it.
Final Thoughts on Content Balance for SaaS
So, it seems like we found the initial 80/20 balance for your educational vs promotional content for SaaS. By offering value, you establish your authority and trustworthiness in the industry. And as you simultaneously craft promotional content, you drive sales and conversions.
When you successfully balance between these two content types, you’ll position your business higher in the market, but also in search engine results.
