Daniel Horning, SEO Analyst from Linkflow, sits down with Traci Ruether, founder of TR Content Marketing on this episode of Search and Revenue. Together, they delve into the ins and outs of digital marketing within the B2B SaaS space.
You’ve probably noticed that the world of B2B SaaS marketing is constantly shifting. With AI, social media, and user behavior changing at lightning speed, staying ahead of the curve is no small feat. In a recent chat with Tracy Reuther, a content marketing consultant specializing in the B2B tech space, we delved into some of the key trends and strategies that are shaping the industry today.
Tracy Ruether’s Journey in B2B Tech Content Marketing
Why don’t we start with just a little background on how you got to where you are today, some of the people you’ve worked with and what you’re doing now? 01:50
So my name is Tracy Ruether. I’m currently serving as a content marketing consultant specializing in the B2B tech space, so I partner with a number of brands, and I’m kind of working with them on everything from, you know, advising on SEO best practices, creating a content strategy and calendar, and actually creating the content itself. And also I do some ghost writing and things like that. So I found my way into content marketing by way of my first role as a copywriter with level three communications was what it was called at the time. It was then acquired by Centurylink and spun off and rebranded as lumen. To that end, I’ve always been very much in the tech space, and my next role after lumen was as a content marketer at Wowza media systems, which is a B2B SaaS company. And we were our customer acquisition strategy was pretty much entirely inbound, very reliant on SEO. And that was, you know, back in the glory days of SEO, where if you put the right resources and effort behind it, it was pretty easy to just drive a ton of traffic to your website using, you know, search optimized long form articles and things like that.
That’s definitely a place of passion for me, but I’ve expanded into also coming up with a strategy that is looking at social channels, email distribution, paid every everything else that comes with content marketing.
Now, with marketing in the face of that for your brands and clients, as you’re consulting with them, what does that look like? How do you address those challenges? 04:15
Yeah, I mean, I think even long before the I overviews were rolled out in Google, we’ve just been seeing this trend for like ten years now where, you know, first, first they introduced like featured snippets and knowledge panels. Where it used to be enough to answer one of those questions and you could count on getting any user that’s typing that query into Google to click to your site in order to get that answer, people are now being served the information they needed within Google, and I don’t think that that is unique to Google. Today, we see all of the platforms doing it, I mean, Instagram, you can’t post a link in the caption to something and LinkedIn, a lot of marketers used to just use it to share. “Hey, here’s our recent blog”—but anyone who’s paying close enough attention knows that any of those posts that are just a link to something else are not going to get the same reach or impressions as something that is created so that it can be consumed more natively within the platform.
I think all content marketers face the challenge of creating content that can be natively consumed across different platforms. This might involve optimizing a featured snippet so that when someone is exposed to your brand within a search engine, even if they don’t click through, they still get the best possible answer. Ideally, this helps build brand awareness or even mention your product within that featured snippet.
When posting on LinkedIn, instead of just sharing a link to a blog, you should consider repurposing that blog into an engaging carousel that encourages deeper interaction. That’s really the only way to gain impressions now.
It’s also about reframing our efforts and metrics. We used to focus heavily on clicks and conversions, but as marketers, we need to get comfortable with more top-of-funnel, brand-building activities that aren’t as directly linked to conversions. Especially in B2B SaaS, where the sales cycle is long, you have to be comfortable with these less conversion-focused efforts just to be on people’s radar in the first place.
Understanding Success in Today’s AI-Driven “Digitalscape”
So, as you’re doing that and working with clients to better represent themselves within their own search results, are you then monitoring on the back end for increased branded traffic? How does that translate into the next steps in the high-consideration journey, eventually leading to calls, calendar events, and so on? What are you seeing on that side for KPI? 08:14
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s still very much an evolution in how we can be measuring some of these things, such as AI overviews within the SERP. As marketers to my knowledge, we haven’t yet been given tools from Google to really track brand mentions and what not within those AI overviews. You’re also going to need to look at brand lift. Maybe on platforms like LinkedIn, instead of looking at Google Analytics to see how much percentage of traffic is coming to your website through LinkedIn, I think you need to look at LinkedIn in its own right to monitor how much impressions your posts are getting, how your your audience is growing, and then and then you’re able to, even though it’s a walled garden in its own right that allows you to have your own owned audience within LinkedIn. So, you know, you can send newsletters to your LinkedIn audience specifically. And in that case, that really does become valuable to just build your user base within these different platforms.
So in what ways are you innovating that with your clients to stay ahead of the curve? 09:53
I think related to the point above, it’s no longer enough just to create a long form SEO report and call it good. Just as much or more of the effort that you’re putting on content creation should be dedicated towards content distribution. And I think that’s through repurposing that long form article into a carousel, an infographic, maybe a webinar. And maybe you’re taking clips from that webinar that you’re resharing on these social channels, but really trying to get the most bang for your buck out of each piece of content that you create. Likewise, we’ve all been hearing about EEAT for years, and the phrase thought leadership is often overused but I would say that in a world of AI generated content everywhere, where paradoxically, we also have more ease and flexibility to create user generated content than ever before, we really should be shifting our focus to not just be about this branded content that you’re posting from your company LinkedIn page, but also doing employee advocacy and executives building their own audience on LinkedIn.
Likewise, I think that’s important in an SEO sense, because we know that you’re going to do better if you have an actual name on an article, but you’re also going to be able to stand above the AI generated content when you are creating an article from an actual expert in the field that ideally has even like some research that you built within your SaaS product itself, and that way you can train the bots themselves by becoming the primary source of that information, because it’s just not enough to just regurgitate what’s already out there on the on the web already, as that’s what the bots are using to create their overviews.
So you’re suggesting that when working with B2B subject matter experts, founders, and teams, they should present their niche and their own data from a human perspective in a new way, rather than just regurgitating AI-generated content. Is that where they can win by being thought leaders in their industry, both from a human and technical perspective? 12:32
And I think, beyond that, sharing like a unique POV that the chatbot can’t come up with or even a first hand experience, like if you are advertising to developers, then if you say you have a B2B video API and you’re advertising to video developers then what’s going to resonate with them a lot better than some AI generated article on video Developer Trends is going to be something that’s actually firsthand from another video developer who’s been attending industry events or has seen specific challenges play out within their industry that they can actually write about. So it is all content marketing 101, but I think the pendulum swung so far towards just optimizing for SEO that we got away from some of these pretty straightforward best practices.
Yeah, that makes sense, and it explains why we’re seeing gains on platforms like Reddit and Quora. They’re so human, almost to the point of being hard to read through because they aren’t well-edited. There are grammatical mistakes—it’s almost the opposite of SEO-optimized content that’s designed to rank. 13:36
There’s an AI thought leader named Heather Murray who specializes in AI marketing, and she’s mentioned that some of these flaws are actually going to stand out. A typo, someone in a video saying “um,” or even a cat running across the screen—these more human elements, in a world where everything is so polished by bots, are what’s going to capture people’s attention. It’s really that human authenticity that will resonate more.
That makes a lot of sense. Like a unique thumbprint, no two are alike. AI content, being very programmatic, is easily recognizable as such. As humans, we’re more interested in reading about real human experiences. So with your clients, you likely suggest leaning on their expertise and thought leadership. The human side of things, especially with analysis and a specific point of view, is something that can’t be easily reproduced by AI. Expertise and experience are uniquely human qualities that others seek out and learn from, which makes a lot of sense. 14:32
SEO content writers used to be hired for their ability to take what’s in the SERP and slightly improve it—a “skyscraper” approach. But now, tools like Gemini or ChatGPT can handle that task. However, what these tools can’t do is create a unique perspective that not only outranks but also outperforms in terms of conversions. It’s about crafting content that subtly incorporates your brand’s differentiators and value proposition within those same topics.
Innovating Content Strategies for B2B SaaS
When you’re working with clients, especially in B2B and SaaS, their teams are usually extremely busy. How do you partner with them to get their expertise and thoughts down on paper? What does that process look like? 15:59
A big part of it is, as an SEO and content marketing consultant, educating clients that we need to go above and beyond. We need to either create original research using data from their product or conduct a customer survey to be a primary source of information. Alternatively, if that’s too big of a lift, I advocate for interviewing their subject matter experts to ensure the content provides significantly more value than AI-generated content. Additionally, when repurposing content across different channels, it’s important to build credibility through these efforts. For many clients, I embed LinkedIn posts from their executives within articles to add a personal element. And again, really establish that this article that somebody is reading is fully created by humans and is not just this corporate speak or this AI speak that is just so prevalent out there today.
Smart. As we look ahead, we’ve been seeing more zero-click searches and snippets, with Google pushing for more real estate in the SERPs. We need to rethink where users are going and how to help our clients show up there. What emerging market trends do you think will be most impactful for SaaS platforms in the next year, three years, and five years? 17:45
Yeah, I’m not sure if this is specific to SaaS or if it’s really an emerging trend. But knowing that users are spending time on different major platforms, it’s crucial for any B2B SaaS company, or any company, to understand where their ideal buyers are and focus on those channels. If they’re active on Reddit, you need to build a presence there. If they’re on LinkedIn, then you should be there too. Also, bringing a human element to the content is important. Videos are a great way to do that, and any company without a YouTube strategy is missing a major opportunity to showcase their subject matter experts and allow people to consume content on their own terms. But as we know, YouTube is still the second biggest search engine, though TikTok might have surpassed it. TikTok is relevant to some B2B SaaS organizations, and I’ve seen some interesting B2B content on there. So, video is something that nobody should be overlooking, and it’s closely tied to SEO today.
Lightning Round: Tell Us Your Preferences
As we close the call, I want to thank you for your insightful answers and discussion on marketing. I have a lightning round of questions to fire off. There are no wrong answers—just your favorites. Yes or no. No judgment. One is analytics platforms. Ga4 or universal? 20:54
Universal. Yeah.
Book consumption— paper book or audio?
Paper. Fully. I think I tried to listen to one audio audiobook and I didn’t finish it. And I don’t have a tablet.
Video conferencing. Zoom? Microsoft? Google? Carrier pigeon?
Zoom I’d say, but I’m flexible.
Favorite podcast influencer, speaker and or channel?
I’m not much of a podcast person, but I do follow a lot of B2B marketers on LinkedIn, so to name a few. I love Andy Crestodina. I love Rand Fishkin. Tim Davidson is also highly entertaining, and we talked about TikTok videos earlier. He’s doing the B2B TikTok at its finest. So yeah, those are some of my top three. Perfect.
That’s great. All right. Cool. Well, thank you so much, Tracy. This was a lot of fun. All the best in your marketing adventures and would love to talk again sometime.
Yep. Thank you, Daniel. It was nice to talk to you today and I hope you have a good one.
Thanks. You too.
