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Startups face many challenges right out of the gate. One of the largest of them is getting a firm foothold in the marketplace. This means becoming established within your market niche with your prospective clients and partners, and with search engines. However, the most cost-effective way to achieve all of this is through content marketing. For many startups, this becomes another challenge as there are many considerations to factor into a content marketing strategy. Let’s take a closer look at what content marketing is and how you can utilize it to bring success to your startup.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the term used to describe the strategies used to conceptualize, create, plan, and share brand content on digital platforms. When used correctly, content marketing is probably the most valuable lead-generation tool in your kit. Lead generation helps startups to connect with new customers and builds a client base which results in business growth.
The Benefits of Content Marketing
There are several good reasons to incorporate content marketing into the overall marketing strategy of your startup. They include:
- Lead generation (which converts prospects to customers)
- Brand awareness
- Creating traffic for your website
- Promotes brand loyalty from your growing customer base
- Makes your brand a trustworthy authority within your industry
The Basic Steps of A Content Marketing Strategy
An effective content marketing strategy is complex. It is built with several different layers and relies on tactics that are pre-planned and executed correctly. To get to that point in the process, there are a few steps to follow. Here is a breakdown of what those are.
Step 1 – Establish Goals
Without goals in place, it is difficult to hit targets so the first step in an effective content marketing strategy has to be clearly defined goals. The goals will likely be different for each of the pieces of content created. One may be to educate readers on a service or product, another may be to bring awareness to your brand. Accomplishing goals is easier when you know what they are. If you reach them consistently, then you know your strategy is successful.
Step 2 – Know Your Persona
Who are the potential customers you intend to reach with your content? This is the persona you are trying to identify. In the process of creating a target audience, you need to know enough about them to speak directly to their needs and wants. What makes your product or service something your audience would purchase and use? By defining who you are speaking to in your content, you can focus on reaching just those individuals.
Step 3 – Learn About Your Competition
One effective piece of intel that will help you craft an effective content marketing strategy is to investigate what your competitors are doing. Finding out what content they are using that brings them success will give you a great starting point. When you have an idea of a direction that is already working within your niche market, you save time and money from trying to figure it out on your own. There is a lot of value to come from watching what your competition is up to.
Step 4 – Include Topic/Keyword Research
Knowing who your target audience is is important, but knowing the keywords they use to find products or services like yours has greater value. This allows you to narrow down the specific search terms to use in each piece of content to help you reach your target audience more effectively. Topic research helps you define the subject matter of your content. Having the right content for your audience attracts traffic and leads to better engagement.
Step 5 – Look At Existing Content
Every startup, even new ones, has existing content. It may be old website pages or promotional material. Taking another look at this content is a good idea as it may inspire new content, it may help define a direction to go with new content or could reveal a brand voice or style worth resurrecting and updating for future content. It is important to remember that existing content would have worked in some way before so reviewing what you have can save you from having to start from scratch.
Step 6 – Develop The Strategy
By the time you get to this step, you have completed all you need to build the foundation of your content marketing strategy. The plan you develop now will be created around content topics and the order you wish to feature them. Now you have to create content that incorporates those topics with keywords that match and speaks to the audience you want to reach all aimed at the goals you plan to achieve.
Step 7 – The Execution Plan
With your content strategy framework defined, it is time to look at where to execute your plan. Your options include:
Channels
Where will you distribute your new content? There are many options here ranging from social media to guest posting, email marketing, and SEO-optimizing content online.
Sales Funnel
The main idea behind new content is to draw new prospects and feed them through your sales funnel so they convert to customers. Your content should assist in creating a simple, seamless process that captures your audience and moves them to becoming customers.
Schedule
A production schedule is important in that it creates a consistent flow of new content. This keeps prospects engaged and keeps you on track throughout the execution of your strategy.
Final Thoughts
Content marketing helps startups achieve success. When you know who your audience is, and why they need your product or service, you can better target those prospects. Defining the goals you want to reach with each piece of content, and tailoring it to reach your audience with keywords and topics of interest, you increase the odds of converting your followers into customers. Content marketing is an effective tool that gives startups even footing with established competition and an edge within their niche market. Your business will benefit greatly from content marketing making it a wise investment with a strong return.
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Codrin Arsene has ten years of experience working as a Fractional CMO for startups with dozens of clients across the world.