Table of Contents
- Answer these four questions to create a solid content market research for your SaaS
- 1. What triggers people to begin the buying journey?
- Q1: What triggered Jess to begin the buying journey?
- Q2: What job are they trying to get done?
- Q3: What are their pains with other solutions?
- Q4: What are their selfish desires?
- The magic is how you combine these ingredients 👩🍳
- Step 1: Choose target buyer
- Step 2: Identify target moments
- Step 3: Brainstorm marketing ideas
- Step 4: Craft your promise
- Step 5: Choose your call-to-action
- 9 ways to do content market research for your SaaS
- 1. Customer Research
- 2. Audience Research
- 3. Social Share Research
- 4. Media Behaviour Research
- 5. Backlink Research
- 6. Top Content Research
- 7. Community Research
- 8. More Community Research
- 9. Virality Research
- How to do Content Market Research for your SaaS through Social Media and Forums?
- 1. Twitter Advanced Search
- 2. Twitter Lists and Topics
- 3. A shortcut for making Twitter Lists:
- Slack, Circle
- Example: You're an ecommerce marketer and want to speak on niche podcasts.
- Example: You sell makeup and want to partner with non-competitive brands.
- Example: You need new content ideas for your audience of nutritionists.
How to do Customer Research for your SaaS Content Marketing (2023)
We curated the best way to do customer research for your SaaS content marketing from experts.
Note: SaaSwrites is a curated growth marketing hub and resource built to help SaaS founders grow their products. We sincerely thank all our experts for their constant value addition to this world.
Updated on: 06/03/2022
Content market research for SaaS is essential to create that perfect content marketing strategy. We curated the best market research techniques for SaaS founders from experts in this post.
After reading this, you will be inspired to create and conduct your market research.
Let’s go!
Answer these four questions to create a solid content market research for your SaaS
Marketing is harder than ever
Wanna quickly figure out what works with buyers? You don’t need to spend 100s of hours doing research There are only 4 questions you really need to answer to get started.
If you can these Qs, coming up with smart marketing ideas feels easy.
You need to know:
- What triggers people to begin the buying journey?
- What job are they trying to get done?
- What are their pains with other solutions?
- What are their selfish desires?
Answer these 4 Qs and you've got the foundation of your next big idea
1. What triggers people to begin the buying journey?
It’s a simple strategy framework to turn real customer stories into smart marketing ideas that work
The best part? You don’t need to convince your team or client to *let* you do research
You can get everything you need from ONE buyer interview
The Trigger Technique using an example… Katelyn recently interviewed Jess (not her real name) about her decision to buy a Bark-Box subscription.She asked Jess to retrace her buying journey in detail.What she shared was powerful and helped me come up with a killer idea.
Q1: What triggered Jess to begin the buying journey?
A “trigger event” is a moment when your buyer moves from being uninterested in your product to being in the market for a new solution.
Fun fact: Marketers who leverage trigger events spend 80% less on direct marketing costs 😲
Q2: What job are they trying to get done?
People don’t buy because of *who* they are. They buy because they have specific “jobs” they want to get done and they “hire” products to help them. When you understand the job, you can position your product as the best solution.
Q3: What are their pains with other solutions?
Buyers typically seek out, try, and buy many different solutions to get their job done before looking for a product like yours. If you know what else they’ve looked at, you can find clever ways to get in front of buyers sooner.
Q4: What are their selfish desires?
People buy for emotional reasons and then justify their decisions with logic. When you understand the underlying personal motivations of your buyers, you can craft messages and offers that get them reaching for their wallets.
After just ONE customer interview...You have the foundation of a killer marketing campaign. Think of these 4 cornerstone insights as your raw ingredients. And, much like cooking,
The magic is how you combine these ingredients 👩🍳
Here’s a 5-step recipe to follow...
Step 1: Choose target buyer
Be specific about who you want to reach and, most importantly, when you want to reach them. When you know the trigger event and job they’re trying to get done, pinpointing the right target buyer is easy.
Step 2: Identify target moments
You already understand your buyer's "job" and pains with other solutions. Combining these insights will inspire clever ways to get in front of buyers sooner.
Step 3: Brainstorm marketing ideas
If you’re a creative person, then you’ll be brimming with ideas by this point. And your ideas are more likely to work because you’re targeting the right people at the right moment. (Rather than blindly following the latest marketing trend) Once you’ve picked an idea, you’re ready for the next step
Step 4: Craft your promise
You already know what buyers have tried and how other solutions fell short and you know what selfish desires drive buyers. Combining these insights can help you craft a compelling promise
Step 5: Choose your call-to-action
You’ve got a great idea and strong promise—now you need a call to action .When you understand your buyer’s underlying selfish desires...And you know what triggered them to begin the buying journey... You can entice them to act now.
This is powerful stuff, right? You don’t need to spend weeks doing research or digging through survey data Just ONE customer interview paired with The Trigger Technique framework can unlock 10, 20, or even 100 highly-targeted marketing ideas.
Every buyer's journey begins with a trigger event. That’s why smart marketers start there too. If you want to get in front of buyers sooner, in less crowded channels, with better messages…And wow your team/client is in the process...
9 ways to do content market research for your SaaS
Ross Simmonds shares 9 ways marketers can use research to increase the likelihood of content success:
He has created content that has:
- Generated thousands of backlinks.
- Generated hundreds of shares.
- Generated millions in sales.
How? By Prioritizing research...
Here are 9 ways to do content market research from the expert.
1. Customer Research
One of my fav ways to figure out who an audience is for a SaaS product is to run an analysis of the reviews that a company (and its competitors) are getting. Scrape all the job titles for the reviewers and do an analysis of the most common job titles.
2. Audience Research
In a remote world, the location of your audience isn't always the most important anymore BUT tools like @AudienseCo offer a great insight into this. It's also valuable for learning how your audience self describes themselves. Here's my audience
3. Social Share Research
Want to create content that gets shared? Study the content that has already gotten them. Use @BuzzSumo to better understand what links get love on FB, Twitter, Pinterest or even Reddit.
Look for trends on the 'type' of content that resonates.
4. Media Behaviour Research
What podcasts, newsletters, blogs, YouTube channels and other media channels does your audience follow on a regular basis? Tools like @sparktoro help with this... This is powerful cause you can use it to find the stories that have content-market fit.
5. Backlink Research
What type of content in your industry generates the most links? In Martech, we found that free tools get the most links followed by definitions (i.e what is SEO) followed by stats posts.
Export industry content by links, track by content type and analyze it.
6. Top Content Research
Go to Reddit and sort the content in a niche Subreddit by the top posts. Go to Product Hunt and type in a keyword-relevant to your industry. See what content has generated the most engagement to see trends around the type of content people want.
7. Community Research
Want to tap into a community? Do a search for the sites that get shared within them the most. You can do a quick search in Hackernews for @TheHustle and see a ton of their greatest hits in this community.
8. More Community Research
Go inside of the Slack channels, Facebook groups, Discords and spaces where your audience is spending time. Look for threads that get tons of engagement. These are insights around what your audience cares about and wants more information on.
9. Virality Research
Go to the search bar on Twitter and type:
[KEYWORD or Phrase] min_retweets:50 min_faves:50
This will give you only the posts on that topic with a minimum of 50 retweets and 50 likes. Use this to get insight into what type of content people resonate with.
How to do Content Market Research for your SaaS through Social Media and Forums?
Forums and social media platforms are GOLD for your SaaS content market research. Your customers have already expressed their hearts, pains, and desires in once these platforms.
Amanda Natividad shares how to find the right customers, readers, listeners, and social followers...
There are:
- 48 million Reddit users
- 200 million Twitter users
- 740 million LinkedIn users
Your marketing doesn’t need to reach all of them.
In fact, it shouldn’t.
1. Twitter Advanced Search
Filter hashtag or user data by number of RTs or Likes:
#skincare min_retweets:1000
@amandanat min_faves:500
(Try the Twemex extension to see Likes directly on people's profiles)
2. Twitter Lists and Topics
Find influencers in your niche and look for the lists they created. Scroll through the relevant Twitter Topics and make lists as you come across interesting people. Follow the content and reply with your amazing insights.
3. A shortcut for making Twitter Lists:
Look up a user's SparkScore. (It's a free @SparkToro tool!) Under Related Accounts you'll see 9 accounts that user frequently engages with. This may indicate they're in a similar niche, and you can add them all to your List.
Here's Amanda’s :
Search for a job function that represents your ideal customer, and filter by location, 1st/2nd/3rd connection, etc. If they post, engage with their content. Pay attention to others' replies too. (Don't immediately slide into their DMs with a pitch)
Find a new and trending post. Jump in with an awesome comment — one that's relevant, detailed, and ideally, has a link to your site. (Do the same on Quora.)
Slack, Circle
As you get to know more people on social media, you'll start to be aware of private communities. For example, some marketing ones:
- DTC Fam
- Superpath
- Swipe Files
- Demand Curve
- Forget the Funnel
Join and participate.
But this takes a lot of time.
And you'd still have to research the influential podcasts, blogs, and YouTube channels to:
- Consume
- Pay to sponsor
- Create content with
- Pitch yourself as a guest for
This will take you weeks. So use SparkToro to save time.
Example: You're an ecommerce marketer and want to speak on niche podcasts.
Think: What are the current pain points in my industry?
SparkToro search: My audience frequently talks about "supply chain."
Pitch yourself as a guest.
Example: You sell makeup and want to partner with non-competitive brands.
Think: Who do I share an audience with?
SparkToro search: My audience frequently uses the hashtag "skincare"
Sort by Avg. # of Views. Scroll through and make a list of potential partners.
Example: You need new content ideas for your audience of nutritionists.
Think: What are their other interests? SparkToro search: My audience uses these word(s) in their profile "nutritionist" Create content on kids & nutrition, or on public speaking advice for nutritionists.
By the way... If you're a SparkToro user, you have 3 always-free full queries in your dashboard. You can see all the data you'd get in a paid plan. That "nutritionist" query is in here too!
