CONTENTS:
Introduction
Content marketing refers to a meticulous approach by firms to create and publicize valuable content to reach out to their target audiences and interact with them for creating brand awareness, generating leads, or closing sales.
Content marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing approaches for startups to create brand awareness, share informational content, generate organic leads, and enhance the firm’s ROI without making a heavy investment in it.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
In other words, content marketing refers to the creation of interesting content that aims at educating your target audience rather than explicitly promoting your brand and its products or services. The end goal of content marketing is to generate new leads for the startup firm, besides enhancing its brand visibility.
There are plenty of ways through which you can leverage the potential of content marketing for your startup.
Types of Content Marketing
Social Media: As a startup, your budget might be limited. You can’t afford to spend too much at this stage on brand promotion and advertising. In such a case, you can go for social media marketing. Here, you have the option of launching organic or paid social media campaigns across various platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and others.
Website Blog: Having a blog section on your startup website is a perfect way to introduce your products and services to the world, besides building brand awareness of the same. Through your website blog section, you can post interesting blog content centered around your startup ideas and products or services.
Case Studies: In recent times, case studies have emerged as a top content marketing platform to explain how your brand has helped your client or customers. A BrightLocal report of 2020, suggested that over 90% of customers believe what others are speaking about a brand or startup more than what it speaks about itself. A case study is exactly testimonial or documented proof of how your startup has benefitted a particular customer or client through your products or services. Case studies matter a lot in B2B segments and often act as a crucial factor, which can influence buyers’ decisions.
Email Marketing: Sending emails to customers in the form of coupons, updates, or newsletters can help you directly interact with your customers. It’s a great way to generate new leads while letting your customers know more about your startup brand and its products or services.
Podcasts: A startup should use podcast marketing to share relevant information, conduct interviews with industry-famous people, and provide the necessary tricks and tips to customers about the products or services that the startup is likely to sell.
In addition, you have other modes of content marketing options, including handbill, billboard advertising, TV commercial, print advertising, and off-page SEO content techniques to promote your startup.
A startup needs to leverage the potential of content for branding purposes as soon as it launches its business. According to a report published by Frac, it takes six to nine months for any content-related strategy to succeed. So, the earlier you start optimizing your content, the better will be its impact.
Initially, things may look a bit complicated, but a meticulous content plan can solve many problems.
Factors to Consider While Getting Started with Your Content Plan
Target Audience
Your products and services may not suit everyone. You should figure out first who you intend to reach out to through your promotional campaigns. Unless you have a clear-cut answer to it, you can’t go ahead with a content strategy for your startup. You need to identify your target audience based on their demographics, pain points, and content preference. Google Analytics can give you relevant insight to help you optimize your campaign better. When you have a clear-cut idea of your target audience and their pain points, you can craft compelling content to attract your potential audience.
Competitor Analysis
Before you start creating various pieces of content, take a look at your competitors and understand what they are doing for their startups. You can use various online tools, including SEMRush, AHREFs, and BuzzSumo to understand what your competitors are doing for their online promotion.
Make sure your content (wherever it gets published) is unique, informative, and visually attractive with relevant images, graphs, and infographics. Also, it should be better than the content published by your competitors on various platforms.
Don’t Ignore the Basics
Content creation is a creative art. There is no one-size-fits-all formula to create content that suits all. However, the last thing that a startup expects is to get its content ignored, especially when it has just started its business.
So, present your content in a crispy format, which doesn’t look too overwhelming to readers. For example, if you’re writing a blog post, keep its paragraphs short; use multiple subheadings, and bullet points. In addition, make sure the blog title is captivating enough to generate clicks!
Keep a Tab on the Analysis
Executing a successful content strategy is the dream of many startups. Some succeed, but most of them do not.
No matter how good your content campaigns are, unless you keep a tab on them, you may never know which content works best for your startup and which content doesn’t perform. Analyzing the number of views, page traffic, bounce rate, and blog subscription rate will help you better understand the type of content that your target audience loves to read and share.
Let’s see how content can help in startup marketing:
Get More Email Newsletter Subscribers
A compelling email newsletter lets your subscribers know what you are up to. Besides acquainting your readers with your products, a newsletter also allows you to share your ideas with the world.
You can also discuss your future goal in addition to sharing interesting industry-relevant insights and trends. If visitors find your email newsletter intriguing, they’ll certainly click and subscribe to it. Who knows, you might meet your potential leads or angel investors through a newsletter.
Achieve Google’s Featured Snippet
If you wish to make your startup globally popular, focus on bolstering your content writing strategy.
Whether you’re writing for your company blog or any other publication, you can aim for that Google Zero rank or get featured on top of the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). If your content grabs the top rank on Google as a featured snippet, you can expect more publicity and fame.
Though there’s no magic formula to get your content published as a featured snippet, writing keyword-focused easy-to-read articles with multiple subheadings and bullet pointers while focusing on readers’ intent, can help.
Enhance Your Brand Credibility
A startup website is not just a business website; but a connecting point for the firm and its relevant target audience. According to a survey report by Nielsen, over 70% of customers found the information posted on a branded website is more reliable than any other media report. The credibility of a startup website will grow more if it continues to focus on posting high-quality blogs and articles, which not just enlighten the readers but also intrigue potential investors to invest in the startup.
Helps in Online Reputation Building
Every startup can grow its online reputation by leveraging the potential of content marketing. A startup needs to regularly feature customers’ testimonials, the startup’s vision, accomplishments, and media coverage on various platforms to augment its online reputation and brand exposure.
Get 3x Promotion At Less Cost
According to a Content Marketing Institute (CMI) report, content marketing is around 62% less costly than traditional marketing. But it has the potential to generate three times more leads than any other form of promotional drive if your strategy is right.
A prudent startup owner needs to optimize their content marketing strategy as an effective lead-generation and branding tool to connect with potential customers and angel investors.
In Conclusion
The content strategy won’t generate immediate results for a startup. Initially, it will build brand awareness among its target audience and relevant stakeholders. Eventually, the content will help the firm generate new leads and take the business forward while meeting potential investors who believe in the startup’s ideas and vision.
An effective content marketing strategy can help you at each step of your startup journey. If you’re looking for a hassle-free content marketing plan for your business, contact Startup Digital today. We are an absolute Startup ecosystem built to support Startups worldwide.
