Content Marketing for Startups

Marketing for startups will always remain a challenge as they don’t have the time and resources to outline effective marketing strategies and as a result, cannot reap the benefits of projected revenues due to poor marketing tactics. If you have a great product but it remains unknown to the market, it will not benefit you much. However, if the marketing is done right with effective content marketing, it can be a great tool for startups to leverage the benefits of content. Following is a guide to help you succeed:

Define Keywords and Your Target Audience

Whenever you embrace marketing, you should embrace it properly. Don’t leave loopholes when it comes to content marketing as that can easily lead to failure. Your marketing message should be targeted and audience specific. For startups, this approach is very important to master. When you develop your product, you develop buyer personas as well. You know who the audience for your product truly is. When writing your content, remember that it is the same audience you want to be talking to, not everyone. By doing this, you can avoid making the number one mistake that most startups make when embracing content marketing.

Another thing to focus on is to know about  the popular keyword searches for your product. This is essential because these are the terms anyone would type in, if they were looking for a product you sell. The more you focus on such keywords, the more chance you have to show up your content in the search results and attracting traffic to your site.

Tell Your Story

The main idea behind content is to attract your audience so it needs to be quite compelling to pull them to you. Initiating a startup isn’t easy and you need a way to connect with your audience. Telling your startup story is both a great way to appeal your audience and make them feel a part of your adventure. Talking about your idea behind the product and why you think it will benefit the average consumer is a great way to establish that initial relation with your audience and help them to understand your roots. When your content is competing against millions, you need to find a way to be unique and every startup is unique in the way it is initiated.

Showing your audience the challenges you faced or behind-the-scenes footage helps give your content a personal and emotional edge. What you need to keep in mind is that you don’t want your content to sound too much like a sales pitch. Rather, the basic idea behind it should be to create a connection with the audience that helps them understand your product, eventually leading them to buy it for the benefit it provides.

Use the Right Channels

While different social media channels may be popular among the masses and your competitors may be using a handful of them, there is no reason for you to be doing the same. This is another mistake that startups make when initiating their content marketing. Trying to master every social media channel is like digging your own grave. Social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and/or Pinterest are some of the most popular but what’s important for you is to target those where your audience is present actively. If you are relentlessly posting content on one social media channel and your target audience doesn’t really follow it, do you think it will bring much benefit to you?

The other thing to consider is the unique characteristics of each of these channels. For example, Twitter is best for posting links, such as links to your blog, while for more visual content; Facebook may give the boost you need. Every network also has a different way in which its audience intercepts and responds to posts, so for a startup, it is essential to understand which channels should be used and how to use them for the best benefit to create the connection with their target audience.

Focus On Informative Content

While we talk about content strategies, you must remember the kind of content you should be creating for your target audience. With so much content already making waves across channels, what can help you stand out? That’s the approach you should take with all your content, which means researching & brainstorming ideas and using already existing ideas with a twist may attract your audience.

One way to go about this is to solve your audience problems. Identify their issues and attempt to offer solutions. This can help you connect with them and establish yourself as an authority with your audience. You can use different approaches such as creating videos, infographics, eBooks and others to give your audience easy-to-understand access. What you write about is very important for a startup to hit the right notes. So, find out what’s bothering your audience and how you can proceed to address that in your niche.

End Note

Content marketing is evolving rapidly, so along with doing all this; you need to keep up with the changes involved in order to be in line with the competition. Following these key rules for your content marketing strategy can help you start on the right foot. To continue taking the right steps forward, make sure you are incorporating weekly statistical analysis to measure your efforts and are quickly adapting to any changes evolving in the content world. For example, adding images to your blog/article posts helps to rank them better and visuals are fast becoming an important element of content.

Furthermore, make sure that along with writing content, you are also incorporate other kinds of content in your strategy that helps you engage audiences of varied interests.