SaaS Product Marketing: 6 Steps to Creating Product-Led Content

In 2024, growing your organic traffic is easy and cheap. You automatically generate hundreds of pages, ensure Google indexes them, and watch as leads flood in for demo requests. However, the reality of marketing SaaS products is far more complex. Sadly, those demo calls will never come and a poor effort approach won’t bring you true growth.

With tighter budgets and rising customer standards, converting your organic traffic isn’t so easy anymore. You’ll need to move beyond encyclopedia articles and generic AI tips and start giving your users something concrete and truly solution-oriented if you want to succeed in SaaS product marketing.

Enter product-led content.

In this post, we’ll cover:

• What is product-led content
• Why it works
• First steps you can take to pivot to product-led content fast

Let’s dive in!

What Is Product-Led Content?

Product-led content addresses users’ pain points while introducing a product in a seamless and valuable way.  This product insertion isn’t a hard pitch, and it doesn’t feel intrusive. Instead, it shows that your product is the best way to get from point A to point B. And that’s what makes it such a powerful marketing strategy for SaaS products.

But a product-led approach isn’t just reserved for step-by-step guides and customer stories. Any piece of content where your product is the source of value is product-led.

Common formats include:

• Benchmarks & reports using original data - These are great for positioning your brand as an authority, and reverse link building.
• Programmatic SEO collections sharing templates & other resources - Ideal for acquiring users with a very specific use case.
• Product comparison pages - Best for bringing visibility to your competitive advantages.
• Use case landing pages - Excellent for showing users how your product will impact (and greatly improve) their workflow.
• Case studies - Best for illustrating how your product helps your clients to succeed IRL‍.
• How-tos & step-bysteps - Very useful for demonstrating your expert understanding of real-life workflows and how your product can streamline them. 

And if you’re still not completely sure, check out how major SaaS like notion are doing it: 

Why Product-Led Content Will Boost Your SaaS Product Marketing Strategy

There are many reasons why SaaS content marketing efforts fail. One of the most common is a lack of strategic focus, which leads teams to chase keywords loosely associated with their niche, even if they’re unrelated to their product.

This keyword-chasing leaves teams little room to introduce their value proposition because they’re spending too much time discussing challenges that their SaaS product doesn’t solve. If you want to learn more about this specific issue, check out our guide on content-market fit.

In this section, we’ll focus on why a product-led approach is far more promising than a keyword-oriented one.

Product-led content:

• Engages the right users at the right time
• Makes your product’s value clear
• Facilitates value moments

Let’s take a closer look.

Engages the right users at the right time

Product-led content puts your SaaS before your users when they’re most interested, in a way that resonates with their current goals and pain points.

Here’s an example: Let’s say your SaaS is an automated QA platform. A potential product-led content piece could be centered around low-code testing. If a user’s looking to learn more about this process, they’re probably: 

• Already engaging in some sort of low-code testing, or about to
• Feeling intense pain or uncertainty about the general process (or specific steps)
• In the market for a solution that can simplify this process 

Clearly articulates the value of your product

Product-led content makes your value proposition more concrete by tying it to a real use case.

This is usually achieved by:

• Seamlessly inserting your product into a step-by-step process
• Adding a quote from a client explaining how the product helps them get from point A to point B

Facilitates value moments

Value moments (also known as “aha moments”) are specific points in your user’s journey where they feel your SaaS is the best solution for addressing their pain point. The sooner your users get to their first “aha moment”, the higher the chance of conversion. And the more often your users experience these “aha moments”, the higher their satisfaction and the lower their chance of churning.

Your SaaS product marketing strategy should help you facilitate these aha-moments. Whether by assisting goals-oriented onboarding or by bringing visibility to new/underused features.

How to Start Creating Product-Led Content Today

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s get to the important part. Let's explore how you can start implementing a product-led content marketing strategy for your SaaS.

We recommend:

• Connecting with your product, customer success & sales teams
• Auditing and revamping your current content
• Reviewing your customer stories
• Focusing on specific use cases
• Take ideas from your help docs
• Conduct a programmatic SEO proof-of-concept

Connecting with your product, success & sales teams

Having a solid understanding of how people use your product is essential. Get together with your product, success & sales teams, and get their insights on three key aspects:

• Common use cases
• Common pain points
• Objections and friction

Success and sales are on the frontlines, conversing with potential and existing customers, and helping them make the most of their product experience. So they're a great source of insights into how users interact with your product and the issues they face. Additionally, product teams can help you understand your product in-depth and prioritize features and use cases to promote.

To keep your strategy nourished with relevant ideas, create a solid information stream between these user-facing teams and you.

Auditing and revamping your current content

Users and Google looove updated content. If you have useful, well-written, and competitive content that isn’t converting, adding a product-centric angle could be the way to go.

Before creating new material, assess your current content, and analyze which ones are good candidates for a product-led revamp. Get started with content that’s:

• Close to your product 
• High-ranking
• High-value 

Review your customer stories

Referring to your customer stories in your product-led content may be the easiest way to get started.

Earlier this year, my team and I worked with an up-and-coming product in the enterprise-level B2B SaaS space. When we proposed a product-led approach, our client had two key concerns:

• Their product’s killer feature hadn’t been fully unrolled yet
• Their UI was due for a redesign

Consequently, two of the most common product-led content formats (product showdowns & how-tos) were out of the question. But that didn’t mean that a product-led approach was impossible.

If you have client success stories, you don’t have to go for soon-to-be-outdated screenshots and damning product comparisons. You can use these stories to bring concreteness to your value proposition and inspire your user to take the next step.  Also, make sure they’re strategically displayed on relevant landing pages. Here’s an example.

Write for specific use cases

Your product-led content should be useful by itself. Don't just write a long ad.

Focus on two goals:

• Engaging users through genuine insights into their specific use cases
• Helping them understand why adopting your product is the rational next step in their journey

To achieve it, make sure that:

• Your article provides valuable insights beyond your product insertion
• Your product insertion makes sense logically and narratively (i.e. be organic).
• Your product is framed through jobs-to-be-done and pain points (feature-dumping leads you nowhere)

Take ideas from your help docs

Help docs are a great source of ideas for product-led content. They’re packed with how-tos, best practices, and specific tips on common use cases.

Product teams want to get these insights in front of users as quickly and efficiently as possible. If your help docs are organized correctly, you'll easily find the inspiration for your next article there.

Conduct a programmatic SEO proof-of-concept

Programmatic SEO is one of the best strategies for creating product-led content at scale. So it may be time to consider a programmatic collection.

Commonly, product-led programmatic collections are used for:

• Product comparisons at scale
• Integration directories
• Highlighting product features for specific user segments
• Addressing specific pain points through simple answers or artifacts

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Learn how to conduct a programmatic SEO proof-of-concept.

Your SaaS Content Marketing Agency Is Here

Since 2021, we’ve helped dozens of B2B companies across 5 continents to grow with product-led content. We’ve seen time and again how product-led content can drive conversions, increase customer loyalty, and improve brand value.

Ready to take the next step? Learn more about our content services or book a free consultation.