Closing the B2B SaaS content gap for better sales

Let’s jump straight to it and cut out the fluff. B2C brands (in e-commerce) are incredibly good at talking about their product. But a lot of B2B SaaS brands are the opposite of that.

Why is that?

The average fashion website:

-> Blog content focuses on the product story

-> Influencers (both micro and macro) and celebrities wearing the product

-> World-class photography

-> Expensive models

-> Lookbooks

The bottom-of-the-funnel content is spot on. They show more than tell - they sell a transformation.

And they don’t even sell products that help solve a problem. But yet they make it way better than your average B2B SaaS business?

Let’s look at your average B2B SaaS business:

-> Blog content that’s “afraid” to talk about the product

-> Landing pages without real product shots

-> Confusing copy that includes buzzwords

-> Lack of cases and feature deep dives

-> Hidden pricing (even though some have become better at transparency)

-> Gated demos

Additionally, there’s an underinvestment in product imagery, video, and design. It’s a rare sight to land on a B2B SaaS feature page and get a 360-degree view of how the feature works and what direct and non-farfetched benefits it brings to the prospect.

That’s why you leave most B2B websites without even knowing what their product really does…

This leaves the prospect with 2 choices:

They leave the website and check if their competitors are presenting the information differently. Since your website didn't push the right buttons.
They booked a demo because… the website left them with questions instead of answers.

Let’s dive a bit deeper into the latter one, demo booked. That’s the bread and butter of the sales team. That’s their first opportunity to understand the prospect, their needs, their pain points, their timeline, and so on. Or at least that’s the goal with the demo call, the reality is different. A lot of prospects come to the demos with questions that your website and content should have answered. Because your website is your always-on salesperson that’s available 24/7 if you make it so. If not, then it will be lost in the galaxy of almost an infinite number of other websites (Forbes estimated in February 2023 that there are 1.13 billion websites in the world).

Prospect wants to know how a specific feature helps them solve a specific pain point? That could be a blog post answering that query and then pitching a demo.

Prospect wants to see a use case for a main feature? That could be an existing landing page selling in your product differentiator while walking them through the use case.

Prospect wants to know how you’re different from the main competitors in your field? That could be a comparison post highlighting your most valuable differentiators and how your product separates from other products in the market.

Now imagine what the booked demo would look like if the lead came through your content. They know about your product, and the pain points you solve and have a (relatively) good understanding of how you’re different from the rest - because they’ve read about it already.

So..what would that demo call be like?

You would jump straight to business and talk about product specifics (such as integrations), timelines, budget, MSA/contracts, etc. The sales cycle would be shorter and the customer LTV would likely be longer (other factors weigh in on this, but broadly speaking), since the prospect makes a vastly informed decision to become a customer of yours.

So why wouldn’t you want the sales team to focus on the selling (mainly closing) and let your content/website educate, pitch, and inform instead?

Content that works cross-functionally is more valuable for the business. Matter of fact, your marketing must be integrated with the business strategy, particularly sales. The (not all but most) content your team produces shouldn’t only attract new customers, it should also assist the sales team in their outreach. Or even better, during the sales process.

Let me provide you with an example that showcases this:

Company: ERP software (SaaS)

The sales executive is in the middle of the sales cycle with a prospect - the offer has been presented and now it’s time to overcome objections before potentially closing the deal. A B2B sales cycle can be lengthy and rarely in a straight line, but for the sake of ease, we’ll keep it uncomplicated in this example. The prospect is comparing your software with a competitor and one dealbreaker is the accounting capabilities in the ERP - since the CFO is the decisionmaker in this project. Spot on - your marketing team has already produced a comparison list post that in-depth presents your ERP’s accounting capabilities (and also compares it to the biggest competitors in the market, which happens to include the one that your prospect also is evaluating).

Here’s an example of a list post we did for one of our clients Buildbite.

The beauty of it is that it’s your blog post - you have the power to highlight all the benefits, differentiators, and value propositions you can. Of course, you should be unbiased and give a fair description of your competitors, but you should heavily sell your product on these kinds of posts.

The prospect is evaluating different options and is landing on your page to be sold to. So why not use that opportunity to do so?

And also, how nice would it be for your sales executive to be able to say:

“Glad you’re valuing the accounting capabilities. We know how important it is, after all, making sure that the accounting capabilities scale with your business is crucial. I know you’re in a growth phase and we’ve made sure that the accounting on [software name] not only fits your current stage but also fulfills your needs as you grow and require more advanced features such as X and Y. Our goal is to not limit you, but instead grow with you - implementing a new ERP solution takes time and resources, that’s why we want to make sure that you never have to implement a new ERP solution as your business grows.

Since we know how important it is, we’ve even created an article that’s dedicated to accounting and gives an unbiased comparison of us and other alternatives, including [the alternatives they mentioned].”

And then they send the article over and follow up on it, or even go through the main parts of it on the call. That’s one of tons of examples where marketing and sales are working cross-functionally, and not in silos.

Unfortunately, we often see companies with friction between their marketing team and sales team. The marketing team mainly focuses on top-of-funnel marketing where most content is focused on awareness. We’re not saying that this is wrong, creating awareness is valuable, but it’s not driving business and it doesn’t provide the sales team with enough qualified leads. When it becomes challenging is when all (or most of) the resources are invested into top-of-funnel content, and bottom-of-the-funnel is being left out.

It’s more effective to capture the demand, rather than creating it.

In this article, we go more in-depth about our thinking behind starting with the bottom of the funnel and working your way up to the top of the funnel.