As a SaaS you can’t survive without content marketing in our opinion. It should be the driving force behind your business generating leads for you on a daily basis. Today we’ve outlined tools you can use to run an entire content marketing campaign, most of which are free or at least provide a freemium version.

We’ve also outlined the tools in order of how you will need them to make it a little easier for you.

Tracking

You need to track what blogs are generating the most sessions on your site, and you need to be able to attribute sign ups / conversions and you also need to be able to identify where these users originally came from.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is entirely free but it does take a bit of time to set up correctly. Through this you will be able to identify where your users have come from and who took actions on your site.

Tag Manager

By default Google Analytics won’t be able to track your sign ups, you will need to configure this by either inserting a javascript code to fire an event or else use tag manager which can easily track specific conversions on your site.

Keyword Planning

Once you’ve tracking set up you can then start to create your content. From an SEO perspective its best to answer questions your potential customers have. Below are two keyword research tools that allow you to identify what questions and keywords people are using

Answer The Public

Answer the public finds the common propositions for a keyword you enter allowing you to brainstorm creative ideas that will help your business get a greater understanding for your customers needs

Google keyword planner

Google keyword planner is a great tool to see seasonal stats for keywords as well as give you an idea of how many people are searching for your blog title per month. Choose keywords with high volume and then select long tail keywords to support this as well as broaden the number of search terms you rank for.

Images

Images are a vital part of blogging, without them conversion rates go down as its harder on the eye as you read a blog post. Below are two tools we’ve found very useful when it comes to blogging.

Pixabay

Search for royalty free images, the selection isn;t fantastic but it will keep a few pounds in your back pocket if you are trying to boot strap.

Canva

Canva is a fantastic tool that allows you to get creative and design your own images or info-graphics.

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is probably one of the most important factors of your content marketing. Without it your marketing goes to waste.

Convert Kit

Convert kit allows you to drip feed emails as people sign up to your blog allowing you to have an automated funnel giving you to opportunity for potential clients to self qualify

Bloom

Is a wordpress plugin that allows you to interrupt the user slightly, making them aware of your call to action but not disturbing them from the information they’ve come to digest

Promotion / Competition

Finally, after you’ve created your blog, added you images and have good call to actions its important to promote your blog posts online to get more coming to your site, referencing you on other blogs and in turn, growing your business

Buzzsumo

Find influencers in your industry who can share and promote your content to a niche audience

Moz

Find websites that link to similar content to yours by analyzing who links to your competitors blog.

While doing this is great, the key to content marketing is consistency. Keep blogging and over time, 6 to 8 months you will start to see a return. Keep track of your data, what blog posts worked, what didn’t and eventually you’ll become a powerhouse of content