The Five Benefits of Content Marketing Insights—and How to Apply Them to Your SaaS Business

Traditional content marketing wisdom tells us we have eight seconds to grab your attention with our first sentence.

Past that point, however, things get a bit more complicated. To really know how effective a piece of content is at delivering on its objectives, we need to look into the details. For SaaS companies, there are particular strategic elements to bear in mind. 

So, let’s dive into the world of content marketing insights, with a specific focus on how you can make these work for a SaaS company.

Why use content marketing insights?

The professionals understand that the power of content marketing lies in its ability to reach out to a target audience and build authority and engagement—but how do you know how effective your blog posts, email newsletters, or downloadable assets are?

Well, generating actionable marketing insights from your content strategy means more than counting the number of likes on a social media post. Gone are the days when you could point to the share numbers for a single piece of content and report it as a success.

Modern content analytics tools allow for far more sophisticated analysis. The goal is to determine how effective your content efforts are by way of attribution. In other words, which content performs best when it comes to boosting conversion rates, and which pieces are most effective in encouraging potential clients down the sales funnel?

Getting the right mix of metrics

It can be tricky to tease out the different factors that contribute to top-tier content performance. One trap that marketers sometimes fall into is to overemphasize metrics that are easy to measure. But basing a report on how many visitors a particular page has received, for example, won’t tell the full story. In fact, that one figure is meaningless on its own; you also need to know how well the page is working to convert visitors into customers.

This is where content marketing metrics and analytics come in. An effective strategy involves a holistic approach without sparing the granular detail. Typical data you’ll want to look at might include:

• Organic traffic
• Site visitors
• Engagement rates
• Conversion rates
• Bounce rates
• SEO performance

In isolation, none of these KPIs will tell you much. Collectively, however, they can build a very informative picture. The exact mix of metrics you track will be dependent on your goals.

For example, suppose you’re looking to increase sales. In that case, you might focus on the impact of SEO on conversions, whereas a startup aiming to boost brand awareness may do better to concentrate on social engagement metrics. But that’s just a lean; maintaining a broad perspective is always important.

Regardless of the specific details of your approach, implementing content marketing insights can be a major component in building long-term and sustainable success. Here are five reasons why.

Five benefits of content marketing insights

Using the right content marketing insights tool gives you a clearer picture of critical metrics you need to track to optimize your campaigns. This has the following advantages.

1) It’s fundamental in determining ROI

You invest in a content marketing campaign in the first place to make money. Modern tools like Google Analytics 4 can help you establish how much of a return you’re getting on that investment. 

You can create custom dashboards to track conversions attributable to different pieces of content across a variety of channels. Using this information, you can generate custom reports that indicate the relative value of each strand of your content marketing efforts.

2) It helps optimize your marketing campaigns

Once you’ve established the ROI of each content channel and type, you’ll be in a great position to optimize your marketing campaigns further. 

For instance, tracking campaign metrics like social media engagement can reveal what time of day or days of the week your target audience is most active online. This can tell you when you should schedule social content in your editorial calendar to maximize its impact.

Image sourced from barnraisersllc.com

3) It’s useful for segmentation purposes

With content marketing insights, you can crunch the numbers to segment your audience more effectively for targeting purposes. This means categorizing everyone who engages with your content according to how they behave. Likely, different types of content resonate more strongly with different groups.

For instance, maybe the majority of users converting on your site arrive there from organic search results, but a significant minority come from one specific social channel. Having this information at your fingertips means your content marketing team can adapt their strategy accordingly.

4) It can give clues to future client behavior

You can take this kind of segmentation one step further. Over time, as you gather insights from data, your analytics tool will be able to suggest patterns of customer behavior. It starts by understanding where your current clients are coming from and how they interact across your content channels. From there, you can tweak your strategy to encourage the sort of customer behavior you want.

5) A virtuous circle of content improvement

All of this means that the better your content analytics are, the more effective your marketing program will be. You’ll learn what kind of output can drive organic search traffic to your site, what content is most engaging for your target market, and what topics to cover to deepen the customer relationship. 

In other words, when you measure the performance of your content, it helps you fine-tune and improve it for future success.

Applying content insights in the SaaS space

So, are there any specific pointers when it comes to using content analytics in SaaS marketing? Well, yes, as it happens. The SaaS market is a very competitive space with several particular characteristics that are vital to remember.

Focus on the long-term

Any SaaS demand generation agency worth its salt will tell you that content marketing for software-as-a-service companies has to focus on developing a long-term strategy. The SaaS sales cycle tends to be long, so ephemeral social media post content is of limited value here. This is a B2B market for the most part, and building authority with clients is key.

That means using analytics to optimize marketing campaigns with informative content written by subject matter experts. This content should aim to build trust over time, showcasing the SaaS vendor’s expertise.

Image sourced from searchenginejournal.com

Prioritize your target audience

Another element of the SaaS space that is crucial to consider is that many products are hyperfocused on a specific market niche. That means you’ll want to use analytics tools that provide custom dashboards to help target quite a narrow (but valuable) field of potential clients. 

A broad sweep of content distribution won’t fit the bill. SaaS companies need to leverage analytics insights about their clients’ behavior to determine which channels are best for reaching potential prospects.

Be consistent

Consistent posting schedules and tone of content are a good idea for any business, but for SaaS operators, they’re essential, as consistency and reliability are core elements of any software-as-a-service offering.

The kind of content management system SaaS businesses should use will enable them to generate detailed reports about website traffic sources, conversion metrics, reader sentiment, etc. 

The virtuous circle of content improvement is never more important than attracting and retaining high-value clients over the long term.

Final thoughts and next steps

Modern technology makes it easier to understand exactly how effective your marketing campaign is. Attributing various measures of success to specific content is no longer a pipe dream, thanks to today’s complex analytics platforms.

So, before you put pen to paper (or, indeed, fingertip to keyboard), take a moment to consider the who, where, and how of your content. Who’s it targeting? Where should it go? How will it engage your audience? With the right content analytics tools, you’ll find these questions significantly easier to answer.

Want more advice about how to optimize your marketing reporting? Then book a live demo with Dashthis today!