Enter content marketing for startups.
More and more startups take advantage of the power of content marketing and use it as one of their main forces to scale their startup. In this article, we will talk in detail about content marketing for startups, and how they make the most out of it.
Let’s go!
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the creation and sharing of online material such as articles, blog posts, videos, and eBooks videos. The main purpose of content marketing is to inform rather than sell.
Content marketing focuses on creating and distributing valuable and relevant content to attract and retain a specific audience. It is used by small and large businesses alike for a number of reasons such as:
- Driving traffic
- Generating leads
- Building authority
- Increasing loyalty
According to Hubspot, B2B companies that publish content 11 times a month generate nearly 3 times as much traffic as those that do it once a month. At the same time, B2C companies that publish content 11+ times a month generate 4 times more than those that blog only 4-5 times a month.
Great content is the foundation of most marketing strategies. And building a content marketing funnel is the foundation of great content. Whether you’re doing social media marketing, SEO, PR, or paid advertising, you need quality content to make these very strategies work.
Most people think of content marketing like blogging, but the concept is much broader. Although blogs are the best way to get into search engines, they are not the only format you can use. Depending on your field, available resources, and audience preferences, you can choose from a variety of content formats: videos, images, infographics, eBooks, reports, webinars, apps, slideshows, and podcasts.
Also, keep in mind that content marketing services are different from paper writing services or academic writing services. The main difference is that the former is about Business while the latter has a clear focus on Academia.
How Can Content Marketing Help your Startup?
Content marketing brings relevant organic traffic, creates trust and authority, and expands brand awareness. Which is exactly what a startup needs.
Cost-effectiveness
According to Penguinstrategies, the cost per lead of content marketing is 31-41% lower than the cost of paid search. But we need to be upfront about content marketing: compared to ads, content marketing is more complex, more expensive, and it takes longer to bring results. Regardless, it’s you should see it as an investment with a high ROI.
Besides this, many marketers use AI content generator tools nowadays, which are also cost-effective and have an indirect influence on your ROI. Yeah, AI models have started to rule the world. By using image and text annotation as training data, you can develop an AI model that will work more effectively even in content marketing and boost ROI in the long term.
Long-term results
Your content is a business asset. As you spend more time and effort on content marketing, your content footprint expands; your content will start appearing in search results. If you are the answer to people’s questions users ask Google, you will be positioned as a thought leader. This will also add credibility to your brand.
Loyalty
For many startups and entrepreneurs, building audience trust is the key to success. Sharing relevant and valuable content is a great way to build relationships with fans and customers so you can generate leads and retain an audience.
Content Marketing Team’s Work Organization
To make content marketing successful, it’s usually more complex than other marketing channels like email or paid advertising.
First and foremost, you need to turn content marketing into a system. And that system is run by a team. When it comes to your typical content marketing team for blog posts, it’s usually made up of these members:
- Content marketer: creates the content strategy, chooses topics according to customer personas and audience, and writes the post outline and guidelines.
- SEO specialist: analyzes the potential of a given topic as well as makes a list of keywords that should be used in the article.
- Author: creates the content draft according to the post outline and guidelines.
- Designer: creates any images and original artwork.
- Editor: edits and publishes the author’s drafts.
- Link-builder/ outreach: tries to build as many quality backlinks as possible so the article can rank on the SERPs and gain organic traffic.
- Project manager: manages the whole process.
A couple of these roles can be combined in a single team member. Accordingly, the SEO specialist is sometimes the link-builder as well.
Also, the content marketer can also be the project manager. This is when mastering context switching as a specialist becomes helpful.
Outsourcing your content marketing activities
Many startups are the size of a content marketing team alone. So, although content marketing comes with many benefits, it requires many resources. Therefore, content marketing for startups can be a struggle for such small organizations. This is why many startups choose to outsource their content marketing activities.
If they are already collaborating with a startup marketing agency, then they usually outsource their content marketing activities to the latter. Most startup marketing agencies offer content marketing services and make sure that the startup has relevant content on its blog which brings quality inbound traffic.
How to Create High-Quality Content for Your Startup
So what separates good content and bad content? And how can you make sure that your content belongs in the first category?
Content brief
Besides a good team and solid team communication, good content equally needs a good brief. Like in any project, a good-written or a bad-written brief can mean the difference between success and failure.
You will also be able to avoid mistakes if you have a quality technical task for a copywriter. It usually consists of the following parts:
- A brief description of the target audience
- Examples of qualitative articles of your competitors
- Description of the structure of the article + H2 headings with embedded keys
- A list of main and additional keywords
This is what the brief content writers take into their hands looks like here at GrowthRocks.
Website
colours.com
Scope/ Intent
A guest post that examines why blue is the best color in comparison to other colors.
Title
Why Blue is the Best Colour in 2022
Article Outline (Headlines)
The Basic Colors
Blue & Yellow Equals Green
Blue & Red Equals Purple
Magenta Sucks
EpilogueFocus keyword
blue
Supporting Keywords
red
green
cyan
aestheticsInclude backlinks
www.colourblue.com/blog/cyane, anchor text = “shades of cyan”
www.colourblue.com/blog/colour-wheel, ancor text =colour wheel”Length
1,000 words
Language
English US
Lastly, don’t forget that any blog article is a touch between a potential customer and the business. Accordingly, the better you build a bridge between the potential customer and your sales team, the faster the content will start working. Illustrate everything you write about with examples of your expertise.
Content Marketing for Startups: Conclusion
Content marketing that brings in leads is:
- Thoughtful and targeted to your potential customer’s needs and objectives
- Based on a deep understanding of niche and industry trends
- Created by an expert team and based on market research
A content marketing strategy gets results for those who play the long game. It’s not a magic wand that will bring you crowds of customers right away. Good results require weeks, and sometimes, months. Therefore, content marketing for startups can be
Since content marketing needs more hands than other kinds of marketing to do it right, startups usually outsource their content marketing activities to relevant agencies.
Either way, content marketing is one of the best ways to create organic traffic and generate leads for your startup’s product or service.
I write for GrowthRocks, one of the top growth hacking agencies. For some mysterious reason, I write on the internet yet I’m not a vegan, I don’t do yoga and I don’t drink smoothies.
