SaaS Content Marketing Strategy: Why should SaaS businesses focus more on the bottom of the funnel (BOFU) than the top to get leads? (With real-life case study)

SaaS is quite a tricky niche. Since it works on a recurring revenue model, founders have to constantly work towards getting paying customers. Not only this, SaaS tools have the highest churn rate; it can range anywhere between 5%-58%.

In recent research by Hubspot on evaluating the lead generation channels for SaaS businesses, the top lead sources were SEO (14%), email marketing, (13%), and social media (12%).

SaaS businesses no longer see content as just a nice to have; in fact, 92% of marketers view it as a crucial business asset. However, the biggest content marketing challenge that SaaS businesses face is creating content that generates quality leads (51%) for them.

One major reason that leads to such results is they prioritize the top funnel over the bottom one of the buyer’s journey. They create content in an outdated hierarchy that has no relevance to today’s user needs. In theory, it might sound right, but today users aren’t following the same road that founders assume.

This article will dive into why SaaS businesses should focus more on the bottom of the funnel than the top to drive good leads.

Stages in every prospect’s buyer’s journey

Before going further, let’s revisit the three main stages your prospects go through in the buyer’s journey. Each of the stages has its unique importance in the marketing funnel, and the content you create should be intertwined with your buyer’s needs at the moment.

1. Awareness stage

In the first stage of the customer journey, buyers identify their problems and realize their pain points. Now, this is when they start looking for a solution and come across your product. Here, marketers should strive to provide more information to their target audience in a less salesy way.

At this point, marketers mostly create content around-

• What are their buyer’s goals and challenges?
• What will be the outcome of doing nothing?
• How should buyers prioritize their goals?
• What’s the urgency to solve their problem?

2. Consideration stage

Now, your prospect is aware of your product but is evaluating other options as well. Your goal here is to assure them that the problem can be solved and your product is the best solution present in the market. At this stage, your prospect would want to get educated on the solution and talk to your sales reps.

Here, marketers mostly create content around-

• How is the product different (better) from your competitors?
• How should customers decide on the best option?
• How to make a potential customer’s decision process simpler?

3. Decision stage

This is where leads get converted. The decision stage is the last stage of the buyer’s journey, and it’s the most important one. Your goal is to promote urgency and encourage your potential buyers to make their decision quickly. Here, your target person knows about the problem they are facing; they are sure they want to solve it and are considering your product/solution as an option.

Here, marketers should focus on creating more promotional content than educational; it should answer-

• What are your customer’s objections to not buying your product?
• What factors influence their decision?
• What do the buyers expect from the brand before they lock the deal?
• How many people are involved in the decision-making stage?

These are three stages of the buyer’s journey, and content is mostly created from Awareness- Consideration- Decision. But, I firmly differ on this; let’s see why.

Why should SaaS businesses focus on the bottom of the funnel than the top?

Most marketers assume that everything starts from the top of the funnel, and slowly their prospects make their way down to the bottom. First, the customer will want to know about their problem in the awareness stage, moving down to evaluating opportunities in the consideration stage, and lastly, they sign up in the decision-making stage.

Theoretically, it seems correct, but it’s actually not.

Unless you are reinventing the wheel by launching something that nobody has ever heard of, you don’t really need to educate your leads on the top of the funnel topics. Today, prospects are already aware of the problems they are dealing with and the major players they should consider as a solution.

SaaS businesses don’t really need to focus on the top of the funnel, and if it’s a B2B brand, there is absolutely no need for it. People that you are targeting have already been in the business for years and aren’t starting from zero. So, you should prioritize the middle and bottom-funnel to capture people who are desperately looking for leads.

As you can see, the top of the funnel does have the highest search volume, but the relative conversion rate is low. On the other side, the bottom and middle of the funnel have medium to high conversion even with lower search volume.

The top of the funnel mostly includes broad terms searched by students and not professionals. For instance, if you sell a CRM, your target audience isn’t the one searching for its meaning in the first place.

A counterpoint here can be that you can collect email ids in the hope of nurturing them into becoming paying customers. However, the percentage of people converting through is significantly very low, and it would seem like a wastage of resources.

Let’s see an example of a SaaS tool that’s making this mistake

Klenty is quite a popular sales management platform that helps businesses automate follow-ups and send personalized emails at scale. Using Klenty, marketers can automate a lot of their admin work and focus on real tasks. It also offers data and insights to help teams understand what’s working for them.

So, now that you know what they do tell me what keywords you think they should rank for? Klenty does get good traffic every month, which they can surely monetize if used correctly.

Some of the keywords they should rank for can be LinkedIn automation or email personalization software, Klenty vs. (its competitors), Klenty alternatives, etc. However, they do not rank for any of these terms.

Check out this screenshot if you see they are ranking for terms like sales meme, sales forecasting methods, follow-up emails, and others. There is no way people who want to buy their product are searching for this. The quality of leads they would get through these content pieces would be very low and not worth their time.

Now, let’s be clear. I’m not saying that the top has absolutely no value in the marketing ladder, but it’s just about priority in the content marketing game. I would suggest you first focus on direct product-related keywords and pain point SEO terms, then move up the ladder.

How should SaaS businesses leverage pain point SEO to generate more leads?

The pain point SEO is specifically for SaaS businesses looking for product-related signups. Targeting top-of-the-funnel keywords work well for businesses looking to get more traffic or emails, but it can be wrong if you want to pay customers.

So, instead of targeting high-volume keywords, we will shift our focus to lower-volume keywords that are specific and will draw more signups. In short, we are choosing high intent keywords over high volume keywords in pain point SEO. With lower-volume keywords, there are higher chances for your website to rank compared to the higher-search volume ones.

Essentially, all your content ideas should revolve around your customers. For this, you need to have an in-depth idea of who they are and their pain points. You can then easily transform those pain points into excellent topics.

If not, you can ask your customers the following questions-

• What are the problems that they solve from your product?
• If you had to choose an alternative to your product, what would it be?
• How will you describe us to your friend?
• What do you research when looking for a product like ours?

Answers to these questions will help you create comparison posts, top product/service, an alternative to Z, and usability of your product. You can also create content that talks directly about your product.

In the case of Klenty, they should talk more about LinkedIn automation and email personalization tactics. Such topics are searched by an audience in the decision-making stage who are looking for a solution to these problems.

Wrapping Up

Many marketers find themselves in a web of getting more traffic rather than focusing on conversion. For SaaS products, you will have to create content that helps more decision-making and establishes your product as unique. So, try these strategies to focus on the bottom of the funnel and get higher leads.