Marketing in the initial phase of startup is pretty hard. A major chunk of your capital is spent on product development. Then there are many operational expenses too. Not much is left to spend on marketing activities. But, marketing at this stage is very crucial. You have to tell the world that you exist. How would you do it? The answer is “Content Marketing”.
Yes, Content Marketing is your chance to let the world know about your existence. It is not only an affordable channel, it is highly effective too. You already know what content marketing is. It is the creation and sharing of articles, blogs, videos or any other online content that is of some value to your target audience.
You might be wondering how it works and what it has in for your startup? Let me explain it you. You need to create the content that holds the interest of your target audience and provides value to them. This in turn will give you recognition, provide traffic to your website, engage your target audience and build a relation with them.
Now that you know what is in there for you, let’s see how it works. The key to effective Content Marketing is creation and distribution of engaging and valuable content. To achieve that, you need to answer a few questions.
Content Marketing can help you achieve a few goals like building traffic organically, attracting and conversion of target audience, building links and brand awareness. As a startup, you obviously want to achieve all these goals. But, you need to prioritise your goals to get better results.
The kind of content you create and share would depend on what is your priority. If for e.g. your priority is creating brand awareness, you need to create a content that appeals to a wider audience. But, if your priority is high conversion rate, you would create content for a narrow audience.
This brings us to our next question. Who is your audience? Deciding who you want to create the content for is crucial for content marketing. To whom should your content appeal? The answer is simple. You should create the content for your potential customers.
For this, you need to know the size of your target audience. What are their interests? How saturated the market is? How many competitors are there? What new and unique can you offer to your target audience?
You know what you want to achieve through content marketing. You have also decided who you want your content to reach to. Now, you need to decide what your content would be about.
First of all, you need to find the search terms or Keywords used by your target customers. Then, you need to see which among them is relevant to your product/service. Analysing the content produced by your competitors can be a great help. Tools like Alexa’s SEO Tools and Google’s Keyword Planner can help you. These tools will help you find the top keywords used by your competitors. You can also analyse the gaps in the content provided by them. So that you know what exactly you need to write about to strike a chord with your audience.
Once, all these questions are answered, you are ready to create and distribute the content. Remember to create a content that is interesting as well as engaging. A content that makes your target audience interested in your startup is the best content. No compromises should be made to the quality of content.
Content distribution should be done through all possible online channels. Social media, blog posts, email newsletters, digital PR, etc. are some of the channels you can use. Also, measure the results obtained from content marketing. It will help you to identify the bottlenecks and improve your content. The goal of your content marketing decides what would be the ideal way to measure the success of your content.
We discussed content marketing and how startups should do it. Now we come to the point how would it contribute to a startup’s growth.
For a new startup, building an identity in the eyes of customers is very important. Content Marketing helps you do that. Your content is your voice, your opinion. It helps your target audience identify you and connect with you. It creates a favourable image which leads to future profits.
Content Marketing would serve as a basis for your other marketing strategies. Good quality content will help you in SEO by driving organic traffic to your website. It would help you to increase newsletter subscriptions and social media engagement. It would help in building strong customer relations.
If people are able to connect with your content, they would like your startup. They would trust and respect your brand. A bond will be created that can be leveraged into revenue. Great content helps you create loyal customers from the very start of your startup.
What makes content marketing a growth factor for a startup is its affordability. No huge marketing budgets are required for successful content marketing. All that is required is a good quality, valuable and engaging content. A content that has the potential to attract and hold the interest of your target audience does not cost much. But, the pay-off is higher than you can even expect.
Content marketing can become a growth factor for startups if they are able to understand their market and provide relevant content. Acquiring and then holding the interest of your audience is the key. Once you excel it, your efforts would translate into revenues.
