Many startups and small businesses do not to bother with content marketing at all. They do not have the resources to set up an efficient content marketing team and they are simply not big enough to make an impact with their content. As a result, most start-ups rely on landing pages and PPC ads to drive traffic to their website. Also, most start-ups focus all their energy on product development while neglecting content marketing completely. However, the assumption that content marketing is not a good fit for start-ups is completely untrue.
Advantages of content marketing for startups
So why should startups and product studios spend precious resources, time and effort on content marketing? What are the benefits?
• Content marketing can help create a brand and business identity
• More web traffic can be diverted to the company’s website. Once a company starts publishing content on various platforms on the Internet that have ready audience, some of these readers can be directed to a company website with the help of backlinks.
• Sales cycles are shortened with effective content marketing. With the help of effective content you can guide your customer through the purchase funnel.
• Conversions and sales rates can be increased with the help of content marketing. Content marketing helps customers make informed decisions and gives them a sense of empowerment. They will appreciate and trust your brand more, which will help turn them into customers.
Content Marketing tips for start-ups
First and foremost, any marketing coaching for small business ventures would advise that start-ups need to have a content marketing plan and strategy in place before creating campaigns. Without a proper plan and strategy, content marketing campaigns can become money-pits with no clear goal. The plan and strategy should clearly describe the content creation, planning, publishing, tracking and analysis processes.
Start-ups don’t have the resources to build and market all the features of their products in one go. Break up the features of the product and the problems that it solves into various themes. Use these themes for creating and testing content. Tracking the response to different pieces of content will help you prioritize the features of the product.
Along with the market acceptance research as we have discussed before, you can research links and existing content related to your industry. You and your content marketing team should also figure out the journey that customers are likely to take to reach your content and the various stages of the consumer or purchase funnel that will ultimately lead them to buy or sign-up for your products.
You should preferably use a content marketing editorial software to track content marketing efforts. Using such an application keeps track of the frequency with which content needs to be published, the target audience and the theme of the content that needs to be created. Such software allows you to create visual workflows of the content marketing process.
Social media platforms are great content discovery platforms and they are excellent channels to get your content to potential customers and leads by sharing your content on these various social media platforms. However, relying solely on social media networks is not wise as there are so many other ways to distribute content. Content discovery networks like Outbrain is one of the best ways to increase the visibility of your content and in turn your brand.
It goes without saying that you need to devote time and energy to the various stages of content marketing – right from the planning phase to the analysis phase, for a successful content marketing campaign.