In this internet era, content really does matter. Knowing that, from startup to established companies focusing heavily on content marketing strategies to grow their Brand.
Whether to form a Brand-new reputation or expanding settled-business, content planning is something that adds value to the brand always. But Content marketing strategy for Startups is a whole different game.
Agree, that startup has unique concepts and techniques, But competition is with Giants.
With contents, Startups have a chance to make a decent first impression with unique message delivery that adds value in the market and also offers something that the audience never have before.
But before jump on to how startup strategize content campaigns, let’s first know the meaning of content marketing.
What is content marketing for startups…
Content marketing is the process of creating digital content about a specific topic, keyword, industry, and services to educate the target audience with quality information and direct them to take some action afterward.
Just like industry leaders, Digital contents is also a need for the startup as well. Even more, content marketing for startups is the most cost-effective, results-driven marketing channel. Which they can trust upon.
Not limiting to information delivery, content marketing helps your startup to get more exposure and to get your name out there.
Information can be delivered through any content form like website, Blogs, articles, newsletters, emails in typed-text forms or it can be via graphics like images, animations, infographics, video and audio content like podcasts or radio ads.
Every content model has its reach and audience.
So better to understand what ultimate goal, a startup content marketing strategy will aim at. Because compare to an established company, startup have a somewhat challenging situation, due to limited resources. Further sharing…
Actionable content marketing strategy for startups…
1 Determining WHAT content will achieve, a Goal
Every content you are about to create a must-have specific goal to achieve.
Content Goals can be anything but specific like it to get more traffic, increase in conversions, number of signups, seminars registration, SEO benefits or Making an email list, anything but particular.
When you have a set goal, things become easy for content creators to design a message and link other factors in the right direction. Also, it’s become clear to evaluate content success.
2 Identify WHO are your target audience
As a startup, you are aware of what you are offering. But you also need to identify who your target audience is.
Finding the answer: Who will watch, read, listen and engage with your content?
There is a need to create a buyer’s persona covering demographic to psychological factors that your prospects are showing.
To create content in your audience’s voice, you need to understand them first and also what they want.
3 Have a look…WHERE your competitors are promoting
For those who are willing to grow can learn even from their competitors.
You are new in the market, so why not learn from someone who is already in it. Research where your competitors are promoting their business, which kinds of content they use, the same as the features they provide.
Not only in terms of convincing USP’s in content but to find out how you can make your marketing campaigns even more useful with the right solutions.
Also Read: Digital marketing or Content marketing or Social media marketing ??
4 Keep the eyes on the Marketing funnel
To ensure effective content strategy for startups, along with recognizing the target audience you need to find out the purchasing level they are in. When your ultimate destination is decided, an action-oriented content will direct your audience towards the goal at each level.
Content creation at each purchasing level:
- Awareness:
Here you create contents informing your target audience that your brand exists and focus to direct at your website or Business profile. At this stage, they will know more about your startup and your offerings.
- Interest:
Content that gives options to solve their problem, the focus is to get their attention.
This stage they inner feel like, your products have something that benefits a lot.
- Consideration:
It’s a stage of filling the gap between their problems and solutions you have.
Now your content educates them, How you will solve…via a case study, tutorials and How to-articles.
- Action:
Directive content to notify, where will they get a solution and what to do next?
A Landing page will display product features and a CTA to make a Purchase.
- Post-purchase:
Focus to collect product feedback from product users. That helps in making improvements and to get testimonials to feature on your online assets. Don’t forget, Your already customer feels good to hear from you after-sales.
5 Prepare your startup content plan, answering HOW to do marketing
Like your startup business plan, you need to create a content plan for your startup, to implement everything at a defined time. This content plan will be answering…
- Which online platform to use ?… Is it on websites, social media, paid media or Community sites?
- How many resources and budget to spend?
- Researching for the right keyword, topic and content curation
- What will be the content creation frequency?
- How many social media posts you will share a day, monthly blogs to publish, or newsletters to send, etc.
- Who will handle graphic design works?
- Preparation of site-lists to post ready contents
- Period to analyze campaign performance
But challenges for a startup while content planning is, having bigger goals with tiny budgets, organic reach is free but it demands patience.. while paid is effective and quick.
Yet the most important one is to hire an employee or freelancer or doing inhouse…who will create content??
Having own in-house content team may costs more, due to the time and money it requires. Whereas managing multiple freelancers is also be quite challenging enough.
So in that case, you have a Content marketing consultant, who be there to guide, also to implement the content process on your behalf.
That’s a cost-effective plus result-oriented solution, you can opt for.
6 Content creation
The stage of implementation. After performing all the above steps, here comes a time when actual contents are being prepared.
Sharing some elements that add values to the created contents especially for a startup marketing campaign:
Content must not be created with the sole purpose of just posting it out…it’s for a startup and has to deliver some credibility to the audience.
Make sure that the content you write is appealing and define the question: What next.
Exactly, Action-driven content.
You have a 1200 to 1500 article written, but not all have that time to read it all when accessed on mobile devices…so why not convert that into creative infographics or video content?
Use quotes, numbering, bullets, short paragraphs, images and whitespace that gives readers some space for breath while reading your concise content.
Content must be in such a way that provides solutions and answers that the audience is looking for.
Also Read: Benefits of hiring freelance content writer over full-time employees
7 Time to post your contents (WHEN)
Before hitting the “Post” button, proofread the written content, also make sure that it’s optimized for the search engine by using headings, keyword within and an image alt-tag.
In the case of social media, use the relevant hashtag that grabs the attention of the audience you want to reach.
Technology hasn’t developed a software that creates various types of contents for your campaigns, but you can get the help of some automation tools to schedule and post your handmade-content on the optimum date and time.
8 Analyzing the content performance
In the content plan, you have already decided the time to analyze your content performance. After chosen intervals, you can track how effective your content are performing. There are some paid as well as free tools available to track your campaign performance, also guide to optimize your marketing efforts.
Get the help of google’s free tools (Not just analytics and webmaster) that give you insight into how your website content and blogs are performing, how much traffic and conversion it brings.
Social media content performance can be measured by the post reach, engagements, likes, comments, shares, profile popularities…and inquiries you get from that.
Final content:
Now you have a Report Card in your hand, so you can figure out which campaign to heavily work on and which one to optimize?
Content marketing for startups is aways on a trial and error basis. Due to not having proof and relevant data on-hand,you have no data to assume how your campaigns will work?
Indeed it takes time to get that targeted traffic and online sales, but all you can do at this starting point is to deliver quality content to your audience. And that trust in your Brand is everything beyond just numbers. Isn’t it??
Above all, content strategies must be your best option from the early stage. As it contributes more than just having your brand name out there, and also delivers the continuous values to the market, that your competitors probably don’t.
We know as a startup, you have limited time and the budget to handle everything, at minimum. So it’s better o have some partner on-side who knows what you really need. That’s why we here. At wordzyx, we are contributing to a new brand, via our content marketing consultations and proven content marketing strategy for startups, like yours. Considering your business type and content needs, we prepare a result-driven content plan that saving your time and let you focus freely on your most important goal. That is Service offering.
Also Read: How Content Marketing Agency Benefits your Business ?
Ketan Parmar, a content strategist and founder of Wordzyx, a content strategy agency from Ahmedabad. Currently working with small businesses and startups, Ketan contributing their Business growth via content strategies plus website optimization, through own proven marketing experiences. He’s on a mission to promote content marketing as an Investment for a business, rather just advertising costs.
Read something more about, Ketan parmar.
