Full Transcript for Do B2B SaaS Listicles Still Work in 2026? | Concurate Originals

have written listicles wherein we are also talking about other industry segments. Is it right or wrong? So my answer to that is, till the point you are confident enough that you can actually help the clients in other industry spaces. Even without significant experience in that domain, there is nothing wrong in saying that. But if you are doing false claims that you have experience in that domain and you will be able to deliver results, then you are just, you know, deceiting the readers. which I would say is not right. Subhasri Banerjee: So Aditi, Aditi Syal: Hope that answers your question. Subhasri Banerjee: the idea of publishing listicles has been around for some time now and companies are publishing hundreds and even thousands of listicles. Do you think this is still a good strategy today? Aditi Syal: Yeah, as I mentioned, the strategy is not wrong, but how it gets implemented is what matters because Google is not just trusting one listicle that you have written. Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: As per their EEAT algorithm, they would look for other signals also which backup your claim. If you are calling yourselves the best for a specific job or a specific product fit, What else can give Google a confidence that, yes, you are deserving and you can deliver on what you are saying? Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: The real case studies, the real client testimonials, the same message getting covered on third party websites, not just your website. So, and then one of their pillars is experience. Okay. What I just told were about demonstrating the expertise experience. Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: If you have been in the field for many years and you have, let's say spoken at industry conferences and there is some sort of proof around the fact that yes, you can do it. Then there is nothing wrong. So till the time, so what is Google trying to do here? Let's understand that. Google's primary primary idea is to ensure that the searchers or their customers or their users get the best search experience on their platform. They do not want that the people to feel that Google is just giving them random Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: products as a list, right? So Google would want to do its due diligence by confirming the same thing from multiple resources and only when the algorithm feels that they are confident enough to recommend they would do it. Subhasri Banerjee: Absolutely. And Aditi, you were talking about how your team was able to generate leads with these SaaS listicles that you have written. So the question that I have for you is, why do most B2B SaaS listicles fail to generate leads? Aditi Syal: That's a good one. As I just mentioned about the third party signals and not adding the proof that you can actually deliver the results is where Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: things go wrong. So for example, let's say in sales conversation, sometimes our clients ask us, do you have experience of writing for a complex product like

ours? Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: To that, let's say it's from an industry that we have not written for. Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: How do we go about answering that? We say that we are nowhere calling ourselves as an expert in your industry. You Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: are the experts. But where we are calling ourselves the best? That when we come in a room to interview your experts, to get the right information, to present in any sort of listicles, we come back with thorough research. We ask the questions that can help us communicate the message in the listicles that, Yes, your product or service can actually help with what our readers or prospects are looking for. So if B2B SaaS listicles are not able to do that, they would Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: fail. Because these listicles are just a discovery point, OK? The decision does not happen at discovery. In a listicle, when the readers come, maybe they would make a short list of 5 out of 12. Then on those 5, they would spend more time researching whether it puts Subhasri Banerjee: Yes. Aditi Syal: their unique situation. Does it help in accomplishing the goals they are hoping to accomplish with your product or service? Do they relieve them of the pain point that they have faced with the alternatives that they were using before your product or service? If Subhasri Banerjee: Mm. Aditi Syal: The listicle is not able to give that kind of information. No, it won't make the cut. Subhasri Banerjee: So Aditi, for a company that has a very complex B2B SaaS and they are trying to communicate their value proposition to their audience, what is one best practice you would recommend them in terms of content? Aditi Syal: They got to write those listicles, but they need to support it with a topical authority as well and pain point SEO. Now, what do Subhasri Banerjee: pain point is... Aditi Syal: I mean by pain point SEO? So there is this a patent tech that we do marketing for and Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: it can help users reduce their legal counsel expenses. Okay, Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: so we have written pieces like how to reduce legal bills. Okay. Now in that if we are able to tell how you can use the product to reduce the legal bills, they would be more open. Right. Or a similar case would be let's say, in the same patent tech space, the users we know have a goal of creating strong patent portfolios. So let's someone is searching how to strengthen my patent portfolio. Okay, if we can answer that in a way that we are not just telling them the best practices, but the how tool fits into that whole workflow at different stages by providing them analytics and all. So that is also something I would want my clients to have besides the listicles because we don't just want to work on the discovery, but we also want to work on the conversion. Subhasri Banerjee: So Aditi, know Lily Ray's take on this and we just heard about your take. Now let's focus on Google. So Google has long recommended that review content include real evidence of testing the reviewed products and services. So does your team follow the best practice, this best practice? Aditi Syal: Till the time it is possible. So let me give you one incident from our own experience. There was a company in voice AI domain, okay? And we were asked a listicle on ElevenLabs alternative. And ElevenLabs Subhasri Banerjee: You Aditi Syal: is like a OG or a king in the space, right? Subhasri Banerjee: Yes. Aditi Syal: Now, when we needed to do that, how did we go about it? We actually took subscriptions of the product wherever it was possible. We tested it in different ways that the target audience would look for. there were from what I remember, you only had done that testing yourself. So how about you tell how you went about that whole piece Subhasri Banerjee: Yes. Aditi Syal: writing? Subhasri Banerjee: So there were nearly, so when we were in the shortlisting phase, we found around 20 tools. So I remember signing up for each of these tools. Then I recorded my voice, like to see how accurately the tool was replicating my voice. I tried, for some of the tools, I even tried different movie dialogues. So it was a very lengthy process where I was. spending at least 15 to 20 minutes with each of these tools. And then some of the tools allowed me to download the voice samples, which we eventually embedded in the articles. Some of these, some of those didn't. For those, we were able to track down a couple of YouTube review videos, which a couple of reviewers have posted on YouTube and we embedded those in the article. So yeah, that kind of deep research, hands-on research that we did where we are actually testing all the tools. And I was able to see the difference between each tool. while I was trying it myself, where the accuracy was more, since I have an Indian accent, I wanted to see how, which tool was more accurately getting a hold of that. So yeah, that level of hands-on experience gave me the actual knowledge that I was required, that was required to write the piece that was completely unbiased, purely based on how those tools were functioning in terms of the AI voice generation feature. Yeah. Aditi Syal: So exactly, on foundational level, what we tried to do Subhasri Banerjee: is. Aditi Syal: was we tried to help the readers pick the right voice Subhasri Banerjee: it is. Aditi Syal: AI that suits their requirement. And for that, Subhasri Banerjee: requirement. Yes. Aditi Syal: we did not do superficial work. We actually went in depth to give Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Hmm. Aditi Syal: them that information. So that way, we are not just aligning with what Google wants, but ensuring Actually Google also wants the same thing. They also want the searchers or the readers to get the right and actionable information for whatever decisions they are trying to make. Subhasri Banerjee: Absolutely. So Aditi when you're writing a B2B SaaS listicle, there's a

lot that goes in the background. There's research, they're testing the tools. So how much of that process, or let me reframe my question. Is it OK to automate these B2B SaaS listicle writing using AI? Aditi Syal: So this reminds me of another incident. This is related to Forbes article writing. So we write for a lady. She's the director at some technology company. And one thing she mentions is, if you try to automate an inefficient process, you are actually magnifying the inefficiency. Okay. Subhasri Banerjee: Absolutely. Aditi Syal: So when you are trying to automate B2B SaaS listicle writing and you are not giving the right input to your automation tools, Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: That's where it fails one. Okay. So let's say if you, your automation tool is just like it will rehash the content from top 10 Google results. It is not going to work, Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: but let's say for whatever specific client you're writing and you have fed all the necessary information to that AI, whether it is about product features, benefits, how users feel about it, what is internet saying, sales conversation transcripts or whatever information you can provide. The more enriched you keep it, the better listicle it can provide. But At the end of the day, we all know AIs can hallucinate. We all know the importance of having a human in the loop. only an expert B2B SaaS writer would know where the gaps would be and how they can fill those gaps. So I think it's less about automation or no automation. It's more about with whatever method, are you able to produce a listicle that is serving the goal of writing it for both the readers and the marketer. Subhasri Banerjee: Absolutely. So Aditi as the industry changes, even the B2B SaaS buyer behavior has changed a lot in the recent years. So when companies are writing these listicles or to be honest, creating any kind of content, how can companies make their B2B SaaS listicle search search algorithm proof? Aditi Syal: Coming back to the same foundational thing, till the time it is helping the readers with the information they need, it is Subhasri Banerjee: Mm. Aditi Syal: algorithm proof. proof. Whenever we are in a situation like this, we need to apply first principles thinking. How would Google react to this? Google's only and only goal is to improve the searcher's experience. And in this world, when people are doing their buyer research on AI tools with only reason. Let's just try to compare what was happening historically in the era of blue links. Okay. What would people do? Let's say they are searching for "Best CRM Software". Max to max, they would write one sentence in that Google search query box. They would go to 10 different links, figure out which products might be suitable, then further do the research to figure out what works better for them. And that used to be a long process. Now, when they are doing the same research in the AI tools, they can say stuff like, I'm looking for a CRM software for my globally distributed team, which is 200 in employee size. I do not want a steep learning curve. I want it to have this sort of compliance or like they can mention numerous things either in one query or subsequent queries whenever they are doing their shortlisting. Okay. So always go back to first principle thinking and feel that You need to attract the perfect match for your client. Subhasri Banerjee: Hmm. Aditi Syal: Now, what do I mean by that? In every category, whether it is a product or a service, the positioning is different, right? For example, a tool might be more suited for small enterprises versus large ones. So you need to give the right signals. to attract a perfect match so that when the sales cycle is happening, the conversion should just feel like a formality and try to only attract the ones where you can genuinely help. That's Subhasri Banerjee: Thank Aditi Syal: what can make your piece of content algorithm proof. Subhasri Banerjee: Got it. Got it. Aditi, thank you so much for coming on and having this conversation with me. It's always a delight to talk to you and honestly insanely insightful. Aditi Syal: So I also love these conversations. Let's keep having more of these as we go ahead. Subhasri Banerjee: Absolutely, absolutely. I'm sure a lot of the SaaS founders and CMOs listening are going to find this particular episode insanely valuable. And everyone tuning in, if you want to go deeper into topics like SaaS marketing trends, GEO, AEO and all of that, we have actually written a bunch on it. So you can go check out those articles. They are linked down in the description. And look, if you're watching this and if you're thinking, okay, I want this handled for me, like you want your content to actually show up in AI Answers, and drive real value for your business. That's literally what we do. The link to work with us is also in the description. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Aditi Syal: Okay, bye bye.