By Jenny Goldade, Content Specialist
The buyer’s journey doesn’t end with a lead converting to a customer. After someone becomes a client, the goal is to turn them into a promoter of your brand. This way, they help your business bring in more leads.
To turn a customer into a promoter of your business, your software as a service (SaaS) content marketing strategy needs more customer retention content. In other words, your marketing strategy and customer engagement should go hand in hand. According to Salesforce, “84% of marketers say they adapt marketing strategy and tactics based on customer interactions.”1
This means you want to give your customers a good experience so they
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Stay loyal customers.
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Tell others about their good experience.
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Give your SaaS business valuable insights and feedback to incorporate into your marketing strategy.
Let’s go over what makes customer retention messaging different, some content examples, and how to incorporate them into your SaaS content marketing strategy.
Learn how Ironpaper can help your business create a B2B content strategy that attracts and retains customers.
How Your Messaging is Different for Customers Than for Leads
Messaging plays a vital role in customer retention, but only 8.2% of B2B leaders feel their messaging is very effective. Let’s change that by going over some messaging tips.
Only 8.2% of B2B leaders feel their messaging is very effective.
Ironpaper, 2022
To be most effective, your customer retention marketing strategy can’t just re-use your lead-focused messaging. You’re speaking to a different audience with a different purpose. That doesn’t mean you need to start from scratch. You may be able to rework existing content to be customer focused. Once you find a piece to repurpose, follow these best practices.
Expand on Key Points
Often, lead generation content is high level since leads are just learning about the pain points your business solves, while customer-focused content goes more in-depth since clients are more experienced with how you solve their problems. By taking a key point in an existing lead-focused eBook, article, or another content piece, you can expand on it to make it a customer-focused resource.
Keep Your Promise
Lead-focused content makes a promise to solve leads’ pain points. While customer-focused content takes action on that promise, so make sure you show them how your products and services solve their pain points.
Be Personal
Customer-focused content is a great opportunity to create personalized content. Since you know your customers on a more personal level, you can create more conversational content pieces tailored to topics they’re interested in.
Choose Your Supporting Content Types and Subjects
For B2B SaaS companies, your customer retention content strategy should focus on three key areas:
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Training and support
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Education
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Customer appreciation
Training and Support
Ongoing training and support matters for both your customers and your team. Your customers need the right resources to better understand your products and services. If they don’t know how to make the most of your solutions, they may become frustrated and take their business elsewhere.
Customers may also become frustrated if they hear one thing from sales, another from customer support, and so on. This happens when teams work in silos instead of working together to solve customer pain points. To prevent miscommunication, your training resources should keep your team on the same page about product messaging.
Not sure what training resources to start with? These are a few ideas.
Customer Training
- Video tutorials: These could be in-depth webinars about how to navigate your system, short quick-tip videos about how your solution solves specific pain points, or even a screen share showing the step-by-step process of completing a task in your software.
- In-depth training guides: Training guides can help your customers troubleshoot problems or questions. For example, a CRM software company may have guides on how to create reports or segmented lists.
- FAQ articles: Articles are a great way to answer your customers’ frequently asked questions. To make the content more interactive, consider adding gifs and videos. For example, let’s say the article is about turning off a specific setting. The gif or video could show them what options to click in your software to get to that setting.
Team Training
- Internal talking points: This makes sure all your teams share the same messaging with your customers.
- Product fact sheets: These serve as refreshers on what your products and solutions offer your customers. Instead of just listing features, mention what pain points the features solve.
- Reference document with important links: Compile a document with easy-to-access links to articles, videos, and more to share with customers.
Education
Just because someone is a customer doesn’t mean nurturing stops. B2B SaaS businesses should provide their clients with ongoing education to help them be successful and to continue working to earn their customers’ business.
These are a few educational resource ideas:
- Customer newsletters: HubSpot’s 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Trends report found that companies use email to improve customer loyalty and retention.2 One email idea is a customer newsletter, which keeps clients up to date on your products and services, as well as industry insights.
- Personalized emails: These could be a triggered email series on specific topics or even quick personal notes from the account lead. Another option is to have automated emails come “from” the account lead rather than a generic email, so it feels more personal. Many email clients will let you set the “from” name and email address, making even automated emails feel more personalized.
- Industry insight pieces: Keep your customers up to date on the latest trends impacting their industry by writing articles and guides. You can even include these in your emails.
- Social media groups: You could create a social media group for customers to get support, share insights, and more. HubSpot’s 2022 inbound marketing report found that investing in customer relationships is 33% of companies’ top social media goal.2
Customer Appreciation
Customer retention content needs to go a step further than just providing support and education. You should also show your customers that you value them. This value can be expressed by asking for their feedback and rewarding them for their loyalty.
These are a few ideas for customer appreciation content:
- Customer feedback: Send email surveys, conduct interviews, or schedule working sessions to ask for feedback and suggestions on your products and services (Bonus, create a report with your findings to share with customers.) Then, you can use their feedback to improve their experience and make sure they’re getting the most value possible. You could even give them a reward for participating, such as a gift card.
- Discounts: Give customer-only discounts for upgrading to the newest version of your software or adding a new feature.
- Giveaways: Run customer-only giveaways to thank them for their loyalty. The prize could be one of your products or services, or it could be a tech tool like a tablet that they could use to access your software. (Don’t forget to mention the giveaway in your customer emails and/or social media groups.)
How to Incorporate Customer Retention Content Into Your SaaS Content Marketing Strategy
Regularly Check on Your Customers
To implement your customer retention content into your marketing strategy, you need to find a balance between automation and personalized outreach. Get into the regular habit of following up with your customers, whether that’s sending a quick, personalized email, triggering an automated email series, or using a template as a starting point.
For example, here’s a sample email template:
Hi (first name),
I wanted to check in with you to see how things are going with (product name) and if you’ve run into any snags or have any questions. Please let me know if there’s anything I can help you with!
Also, I know you’re interested in (topic) since it (insert pain point it solves), so I compiled a few more resources on this topic for you.
(Training resource link)
(Educational resource link)
On a related note, I also think your business could benefit from (topic) since it (insert pain point it solves). Let me know if you want to talk more about it.
Chat soon,
(Insert name)
Take Advantage of Account-Based Marketing
Account-based marketing can play a major role in delighting customers in the buyer’s journey. According to HubSpot’s 2021 State of Marketing Report, 70% of marketers report using ABM.3 With ABM, you can target specific groups of customers who are all interested in a certain topic.
The data collected during the buyer’s journey helps you better understand what topics interest people.4 Once you have a topic of interest, create supporting resources like the ones we mentioned earlier. Then, you can target that niche group on that topic for upsell or cross-sell opportunities.
In other words, don’t forget about the delight part of your inbound marketing strategy:
Attract → Engage → Delight.
Set your business up for success with customer retention content
The goal of customer retention content is to keep current customers while turning them into promoters of your business. To do this, your buyer’s journey can’t stop when a lead converts to a customer. You need to continue to delight your customers through training resources, educational content, and customer appreciation.
By following these steps, your B2B company can find success in adding customer retention content to your SaaS content marketing strategy.
Sources
1Salesforce, Seventh Edition State of Marketing, 2021.
2HubSpot, State of Inbound Marketing Trends, 2022.
3HubSpot, Not Another State of Marketing Report, 2021.
4McKinsey & Company, The future of B2B sales is hybrid, April 27, 2022.
