4 Content Secrets from World-Class SaaS Companies That Any Business Can Apply Use content techniques from titans like Intuit, Salesforce, and Mailchimp to get and keep customers.
By Colleen Jones Edited by Micah Zimmerman
Key Takeaways
- The better your business gets at content, the more your business will grow.
- Show your brand’s purpose through content to build authenticity and trust with customers.
- Scale content operations efficiently with the right processes and technology for sustained growth.
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Every company faces more pressure than ever to offer their customers outstanding digital experiences. Content such as text, images, video and more is the substance of those digital experiences, so every business needs to get content right. Why not learn from the pioneers of digital experience, SaaS (software as a service) companies?
Consider why SaaS companies like Intuit and Salesforce excel at content. From day one, successful SaaS companies support the end-to-end customer experience through diverse content, ranging from inspirational podcasts to product explainer videos to contextual help. As a past head of content for Mailchimp, I know firsthand that when customer experience is digital, content is critical. Consider these four content secrets that can benefit any business.
Related: How to Create Content that Generates Exposure, Loyalty and Sales
1. Show and tell your brand purpose
A meaningful purpose can differentiate a brand from any generation, but especially the up-and-coming Gen Z. One recent study by Roundel found that 73% of Gen Z participants will buy only from brands they believe in.
Adding purpose to a brand starts with defining it. But that can't be where purpose ends. A brand has to demonstrate its purpose or risk coming across as unauthentic or even hypocritical.
Salesforce is a model for showing, not just telling, its purpose through content. From almost day 1, Salesforce has said its purpose is to "build stronger relationships."
Recently, the successful SaaS launched a Netflix-like experience called Salesforce+. This streaming service provides on-demand content with very high production value about timely business and marketing topics, often involving Salesforce customers.
I'm not saying every company has to be Netflix. But every business can offer content that brings its purpose to life. For instance, The Home Depot offers project, buying and inspiration guides that show it empowers "more doing." Patagonia's catalog is more like an outdoor magazine with stories illustrating its commitment to "protect our home planet."
Related: Don't Just Hire — Grow Talent. 4 Ways to Set Your New Employees Up for Growth
2. Go beyond customer service to customer success
Great SaaS have figured out how to handle customer service digitally and enable customer success. Outstanding SaaS offers content to help customers solve problems and get more value.
Content examples include but are far from limited to
- Microcopy, such as labels, instructions, headings, icons, and error messages.
- Wizards or step-by-step interactive guides.
- FAQs that are easily accessible by chat and voice search.
- Contextual help, such as tooltips and notifications.
- Best practices based on the most successful customers.
- Chatbots or copilots fueled by FAQs, contextual help, and other content.
A great SaaS example is Intuit Assist, an AI-powered advisor that works across all Intuit products--and that has earned distinctions like the Fortune 50 AI Innovators. Forward-thinking businesses are taking note. For instance, Wal-Mart recently launched a copilot that allows customers to request "Help me plan a Halloween party" and receive relevant product suggestions across all departments.
Not ready for a full-on AI bot or copilot? Your company can leverage content to help customers and train an AI bot or copilot later.
Related: Why Doing the Right Thing Leads to Long-Term Success
3. Promote less, guide more
Every business faces the challenge of merchandising their products or services to fuel growth. Look at the way high-growth SaaS makes customers aware of relevant new offerings. Rather than blast sales-y ads and emails repeatedly, the best SaaS nudge customers to try new features, products, or services by suggesting them to customers most likely to benefit at the right time.
For example, during my time at Mailchimp, the SaaS grew quickly and added features steadily. So, while the engineers built the features, my teams built the content to encourage and support customers. We found a strong correlation between suggesting a useful how-to article for a new customer attempting a feature for the first time, that customer's success, and millions of dollars in revenue.
I'm not saying your company should never place an ad again. But I'm willing to bet the uptake of your offerings will be much higher if you guide customers.
Even a product as simple as an eyeshadow stick, as seen with the wildly successful Thrive Causemetics, includes detailed descriptions, how-tos (both text and video), images for different skin types, FAQs, statistics, pro tips from the founder, and more.
4 Get your content in order
This secret is about what happens behind the scenes with content. There is no content fairy to magically create and manage your content. (No, not even AI can do that!) But there is content operations — the combination of people, processes and technology that orchestrate end-to-end content. Smart SaaS matures its content operations quickly so that it can scale. At Mailchimp, I added modern content roles, defined new processes and led the adoption of content workflow software.
Recently, Pfizer realized just how important content operations is to sustaining and expanding its business. At Adobe Summit, Jane von Kirchbach, Senior Vice President of Digital, said that "over the period of the pandemic, we touched more than one billion lives. This is our time to amplify how we engage with our customers, with our patients, with our doctors, and hospitals. Content is at the heart of that transformation."
Pfizer transformed its content operations by streamlining its end-to-end content supply chain, automating workflows, and using AI to assist content development. These changes reduced content creation time by more than 50%.
So, as your business has to compete on digital experience, you can gain an advantage by acting like a world-class SaaS. Imbue your digital experience with content that shows your purpose and empowers your customers to succeed. And set up the right content operations to scale. The better your business gets at content, the more your business will grow.
