Content Marketing for Startups

Content marketing is one of the best investments for startups. When done well, content marketing can help you test your product, create a proof of concept and ultimately help you scale either through investment or organically building your business.

Let’s take a gander at why content marketing is a worthwhile investment for startups.

Build your audience

Right now you’re developing your new product or service. You’ve done all your market research but you need to test whether there’s a real appetite for it on the market. This means a kick-arse launch where you sell to customers eager to buy.

Content marketing can help you gather all those people in one place. You use your content on either social media or your own site to explain to people why signing up for your mailing list is worthwhile.

You keep them excited about what’s coming up and they feel special because they are going to be the first to know about when your awesome new product goes live.

This buzz-building around your brand will get people wanting to buy. You’ll fill your list with quality leads so that your initial launch gives you a good idea about the desire for what you’ve created.

And if you’re super savvy about it, you’ll have pre-sales before you launch so that you can have some kind of clue about how the launch will go.

Now, I’ve made all of this sound super simple. Whack up some helpful blogs, do some beautiful social media posts, maybe boost them with paid ads and get people onto your list. But it’s more complicated than that and will take some testing to work out what works.

This means testing landing pages, finding out about your audience, segmenting your list and really getting deep into what they want. Only then will you stand a chance at that big bang of a launch.

Low financial risk

Content marketing for startups has got a low financial risk so if you’re short on cash, you’re not betting all your funds on a fancy ads funnel. However, that’s not to say that content marketing is free. It is far from it and one of the biggest mistakes I see startups make when it comes to content marketing.

There are a couple of problems here:

Firstly, if you see content marketing as “free” then you’re not valuing it. This means that you’re putting your marketing muscle into something you don’t truly value.

Secondly, if you’re not accounting for the cost of your time in creating the content, you don’t really have a good eye on whether your product is making a profit.

Let’s say you spend six months creating content and you’ve got lots of lovely orders for your product. You then need to maintain your levels of marketing to increase sales so you can grow the business. But you’re too busy now to do this job yourself. So you hire an outsource content marketer as you don’t need someone full-time just yet.

Except their fees take a chunk out of your profits and you feel like you’re having to go backwards for a bit before going forwards. If you’d accounted for the cost of your time first then you’d be able to see the true profits from your product and either tweak or be prepared for the temporary drop.

But overall, organic content marketing doesn’t need a whole lot of cash to do it – just your time. It opens up marketing for startups as you can reach your ideal customers where they are.

Content marketing builds trust

When you’re a startup, building brand trust is crucial. You are new to the marketplace and so having a strong brand will build trust with your audience. This is especially important if you’re lacking those all-important reviews, to begin with.

You’ll need a consistent set of graphics, a consistent tone of voice and consistency in your messaging. Content marketing will sit at the heart of all this as it’s often the first thing your customer will see of your brand.

Content marketing helps your startup exist

When your business is new, no one knows about it except family and friends. In fact, your first sales will be from this lovely group of people. But that’s not sustainable for growing a business. Eventually, you need total strangers to buy from you. So they need to find you.

Enter content marketing and its superpower of search engine optimisation. This means answering the questions that your future customers are asking in both the content you own (like your blog, podcast and video) and on your social media.

Getting someone to find you online should be your goal at the start of your marketing. Unless you have the big bucks for a great out-of-house advertising campaign or maybe TV. But you’re a startup so let’s assume you’re not a lottery winner or chatting with the angel investor just yet and right now you need to show that people love what you do.

This means getting them to find you and visit your webshop or website. Depending on what you do.

SEO forms a part of content marketing and is a long-term investment for your site. The stuff you put out today will still be paying dividends in years to come. It gives your startup a solid foundation to build on and scale your business.

Why is content marketing important for startups?

Content marketing is an easy entry point to market a startup. It has low risk and high potential to help you scale. This doesn’t mean it’s a low-skill entry point.

I may be biased but the words you use and how you use them will make or break your content marketing job. You need to have compelling copy to get people to buy. All those bits of micro-copy across your content are little nudges to help someone along the buying journey.

Plus, that strong branding we talked about also takes skill and is a key part of your content marketing. It’s always worth investing in training if you’re going to DIY this side of things or invest in contractors to help you out. It can save you a lot of money correcting content at a later date.

I did an SEO project with a startup last year where they were sure they already had the keywords sorted. They just needed me to help with the technical side. I did some research and realised their keywords needed a bit of finesse. Sure the data looked okay but a little digging revealed they needed to be way more specific to attract the right audience.

Now imagine that on a larger scale – needing to adjust and tweak search terms because you’re getting lots of website traffic but no one is buying because it’s not the answer to their questions. Bit of a waste, right?

So it’s not just content marketing that’s important for startups, it’s getting that marketing right.

How do I create a startup content strategy?

If you’re starting with a blank page then building a strategy can be lots of experimenting with what works and what you enjoy. The key to a good strategy is to track the data, analyse it and use it to make decisions.

If you’ve got some content already going out then you’re going to have data to look at. Always start with the data.

Then understand the customer journey. Are they doing what you need them to do? Are they being nudged in the right direction? If not, where are they falling out and disappearing off to your competitor?

Finally, look at which platforms work for that first point of contact. Are you using all the features on there? Have you tested what works?

Only then can you make decisions about the best content strategy for your business and importantly, the time you have available.