If you're a founder or a marketer at a B2B SaaS Startup in its early stages of growth, learning to use AI to quickly kick off content production is the only way you can keep pace with the competition.
This guide will help you see that you can use AI to increase your content production without sacrificing quality. In fact, for most B2B SaaS marketing teams, the checklist below will result in an improvement in both the quantity and quality of their content. Here's the quick summary, but you can scroll down for detailed tips and examples:
Draft an outline based on a quick targeted search and summarization using your favorite AI tool
Generate the full draft section by section using some of the following tips
Make it specific to your voice as an early-stage startup
Find and add links to relevant sources, cases studies, examples
Add visuals and keep it skimmable
Scrub out that dreary AI language
Factor in your overall content strategy, such as brand voice, positioning, relevant CTAs, etc
Check that you're hitting all the right technical SEO boxes with respect to your core keyword
1. Drafting an Outline
To consistently produce great content for B2B SaaS using AI, get in the habit of starting with a game plan—an outline that not only matches up with your SEO goals but also grabs your readers' attention.
Pick Your Keyword: This will be something that is dictated with your overall SEO and Content Strategy, which we cover in this blog post.
Check Out the Competition: Use tools like SEMrush or a quick Google search to see what the top articles with your keyword are doing. What are they talking about? How do they break down their info? This sneak peek will help you both learn about the subject, see what works well, and identify gaps that no one is covering.
Sketch Out Your Ideas: Do a quick search for "[keyword]+article" and "[keyword]+blog" to see what others are saying. With your research in hand, jot down some of the most interesting ideas, or the points that you want to make sure to cover. Tools like ITX Copilot or the AI assistant in Notion can be super handy for this, because they already have summarization and retrieval skills built in, but you can also use ChatGPT with a prompt similar to the one at the end of this list.
Generate an outline with AI: Now's the time to let AI do the tedious stuff. Simply feed your research to date using a prompt similar to the one below to your AI - that's your outline.
Crafting Your Title and Finishing Your Outline: Iterate on your title a little - while still keeping the target keyword in it - then re-read the outline to make sure it flows well and makes sense.
Prompt to sketch out ideas
Scan and summarize the most interesting points about '[target keyword] in the following articles. You can share more than one bullet point per article. If more than one article discusses a particular point, only include that point in your summary once. Make sure each point or idea is covered in 40 words or less.
Prompt to generate an outline
Generate an outline for a blog post titled: "[insert title here]". and optimized for the keyword [target keyword]. Make sure that the outline covers the following points: - idea 1 - idea 2 -...etc
2. Generating Content with AI
Creating the First Draft
AI writing assistants can produce comprehensive, well-structured content at an astonishing pace. The key is to provide detailed prompts with SEO best practices, like the ones you'll see below.
For this first step, you've already done most of the work: just ask your favorite AI tool to either generate a full draft based on your whole outline, or to write out section by section depending on the total word count you're aiming for.
Optimizing your content for SaaS startups
a. Add links to content that makes sense for early-stage B2B SaaS
Start by enriching your content with insights from the top minds in the industry. Venture capitalists often share valuable perspectives and data in their blog posts. Use ITX or ChatGPT web search to find articles by VCs on topics related to your keyword. Look for examples, case studies, or standout quotes that you can link back to, directly referencing the author. This not only bolsters your post's credibility but also gives you great content for social media snippets—don't forget to tag the authors when you share!
b. Include relevant case studies of other SaaS startups
Case studies are gold when it comes to illustrating success stories or lessons learned. Ask your AI assistant to help you find articles describing how other SaaS startups navigated challenges or capitalized on opportunities related to your blog topic. Including these case studies adds depth to your content, and helps your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) see the potential impact on their own business.
c. Create Real-life Scenarios
To bring your points home, ask AI to craft a real-life scenario or use case featuring your ICP. This personalized touch helps readers visualize how the insights you're sharing could play out in their own business contexts. It's a powerful way to make your content more relatable and actionable.
d. Add Visuals
Visuals can dramatically increase the impact and readability of your content. Use your AI assistant to search for and include relevant illustrations—be it infographics, charts, or conceptual visuals. When requesting visuals, be specific about the type you need to best convey your message. Visuals not only break up text but also provide an immediate, clear understanding of complex ideas.
e. Link to Well-Known Publications
For data-backed credibility, turn to well-known business and management publications. Sources like McKinsey, BCG, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, Business Insider, or even tech publications like The Verge or Wired Magazine. The first ones often have comprehensive studies and statistics that can add weight to your arguments, and the second ones are on top of Big Tech trends.
Whether it's management consulting firms, financial newspapers, or tech magazines, integrating this data into your post (with proper sourcing) can significantly enhance its authority and relevance.
f. Scrub out AI language
Experienced content marketer usually can tell when something has come out straight from a AI assistant from the grammar alone. Below are examples of instructions that you can tack on to your prompts to scrub off some of that Gen AI aftertaste:
Don't use the verb "utilize".
Don't use the sentence structure 'not only... but also' more than once in the entire blog
Don't link two propositions with the '-ing' form of a verb more than once in every blog section. Instead, use parallelism or link propositions with 'and'.
Use a friendly yet professional tone
Don't add an introduction or a conclusion - dive straight into the subject
Generate this in bullet point format, and use less than 50 words per bullet,
Use at least 3 sentences that are shorter than 15 words in each section.
Some of the clean-up will definitely have to be manual, however. No getting around that yet, unfortunately!
3. Keeping your SaaS Content Marketing Strategy in mind
Tailor AI to Your Brand’s Voice and Audience
First up, get your AI assistant dialed in with everything it needs to know about your product and your audience. If you're using ChatGPT, you'll find it pretty straightforward. Zapier has a blog post on it here.
Feed it your messaging house, product descriptions, and the details of your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This will not completely get rid of some of the generic stuff that plagues AI-generated content, but it will get you halfway there.
Strategic Calls to Action
Your blog doesn't only serve branding and SEO purposes. It's also here to convert readers to users whenever possible, so make sure that it includes some sort of CTA.
These CTAs should feel like natural next steps in your content's flow, however, so if they don't make sense, don't try to force it.
Make Room for the Human Touch
AI is powerful, but there are things it can't do (—yet), like guess what the rest of your team is working on, or what your product roadmap looks like.
Plan spaces in your content for the kind of interactive elements that are unique to your team and product, like quizzes, widgets, calculators free tools, interactive demos, etc. Your blog post will be more engaging for it.
4. Technical SEO Checklist
And now, the final SEO checklist. These are very small things, but they compound over time and they ensure you get every little drop of SEO juice from your blog post. The don't cover stuff that pertains to your whole website or your CMS set-up, however, so you'll need to cover those separately.
Keywords Optimization: Strategic placement of keywords ensures your content is discoverable. Your target keyword should be in
The title tag and the H1 title
The first 100 words
The body of the blog, multiple times
Some of the subheaders
Meta Tags and Descriptions: Include the keyword in your meta description, and in the metadata of your images, assets, thumbnails etc where relevant.
Linking back to your hubs: make sure that your 'spoke' articles link back to the main 'hub' content piece in your hub-and-spoke content plan.
Example of a hub-and-spoke plan designed by EarlyScale Marketing
Mobile Optimization and Loading Speed: Ensure your content is accessible on mobile devices and loads quickly to reduce bounce rates. Image and video compressors are your friends here.
5. Why Content and SEO are Particularly Relevant for B2B SaaS Marketing Strategies
There are good reasons why content marketing is the cornerstone of many B2B SaaS startups' marketing strategy. We usually recommend it to early-stage B2B founders for the following reasons:
Longer Sales Cycle Management: B2B SaaS startups face extended sales cycles that can only succeed after multiple touchpoints. Effective SEO content marketing builds awareness and thought leadership, keeping your brand in continuous conversation with potential buyers, and alleviating some of the burden from your sales team.
Multi-faceted Buyer Teams: B2B purchases involve multiple decision-makers with often care about different things. SEO and content marketing make it easier to cater to end users, influencers, and economic buyers all in the same channel.
Demonstrating Scalable Growth to VCs: Early-stage SaaS startups need to show VCs they can scale efficiently by lowering acquisition costs. Investing in SEO—a channel that compounds value over time—makes it easier than simply relying on 1-to-1 paid channels, like PPC, product advertizing, or sponsorship.
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So there you have it - AI content marketing that doesn't suck.
Obviously, you won't be able to apply all the recommendations above every time, but even half of them will help you produce something pretty decent in a couple of hours, even when you are not deeply familiar with the subject.
That is, until AI gets good enough to do the whole process described above without needing our intervention. But don't worry; by then, we'll be ready with some ways to optimize it for your marketing needs.