What Makes Content Marketing So Important for Startups

At some point in their time as a professional, almost every digital marketer has come across the phrase - “content is king”. Currently, the B2C industry has made strides in the field of content creation by recognizing its importance, but its counterpart, the B2B industry, seems to be lacking slightly.

Read on to find out the importance of content for Startup Marketing, several reasons why companies should create good content, and also what it should look like. 

Why Bother With Content?

The startup world is immense, with new companies sprouting up each day, all of whom are fighting for visibility, accessibility, and adoption by potential clients.  In a market with such cutthroat competition, it becomes imperative to be able to establish a brand identity early on in order to stand out and not get drowned in the noise. 

Why is Content Marketing Important?

Let’s take an example. There’s a tree on fire deep within a jungle - but, there isn’t anyone around to see or hear it. This basically means that the occurrence of this event becomes insignificant. Your content can be detailed, highly convincing, and extremely relevant - but obviously, none of that would matter if people aren’t able to read it. 

The surefire way that your content reaches people is through social media. Employ all the facilities that social media platforms have to offer to the fullest, and use the groups/communities that you are active in to promote your content. This will ensure that it takes on a life entirely of its own. 

However, digitizing the marketplace comes with a host of benefits as well as problems. 

One primary issue with the marketplace that has become increasingly digital is that there is a huge possibility of prospective customers getting put off in the circumstance that traditional advertising methods are imported into the digital space. 

According to research, an average individual will remain on one website for less than 20 seconds. Currently, the advertising methods, especially those of the 20th-century, are not very well-suited to this digital marketplace. 

Despite small business startups being aware of this fact, the low linger time of typical users on startup websites stands as testimony to this somewhat flawed understanding. 

Understanding Your Audience

Essentially, when it comes to marketing your content, creating a persona is key. Figure out in the early stages itself who your target audience is, and tailor your content according to the same.

Which demographic will largely benefit from the content you create? Is it adolescents, working moms, or retired professionals? For your content to be successful, it needs to reach and resonate with the right audience.  

Content Has Influence Over Other Strategies

Your business plan may contain several branched-out efforts. For example, 

• You want people to sign up for your email list
• You want to drive traffic and boost your SEO
• You want relevant information to be shared on your social media
•  You want to find a way to connect with influencers or network among valuable contacts

You can achieve all this and more with the help of carefully curated content. Content trumps all when it comes to any other online strategy that you can devise.

The key to best use this strategy is choosing good, well-established blogs that have a wide reach (which obviously, lies within your identifiable target audience). You can try to keep a spreadsheet to keep these blogs in check. Also, find out and record whether they publish guest posts.

Also, keep in mind that it’s quite alright to not hear back from the bigger blogs - there are several that aren’t as big but have a well-established audience. Try your luck with those since they are much less in demand and are more likely to revert. 

Reasons why Content Marketing is Crucial

Content is Entertaining

It’s a given that users turn their backs on anything the instant it appears to be an advertisement that is trying to sell them something - which means they will leave the website and have kept their money with themselves. 

The solution to this very basic problem is to use content to convince and persuade users in a manner that they find useful and entertaining.

Your business website needs to appear as if it is a friend to your prospective customer, who casually recounts the benefits of the product or service you’re offering in a manner that the user doesn’t feel like they’re being sold to. 

It’s Educational

If you are able to come up with content that feels less like an ad and adds value as an entertaining or educational message, there is an increased chance that your product or service will sell. 

Prospective customers look for a sense of companionship and reliability before they let themselves get convinced to purchase from your website. Your content should aim at doing exactly this, which thus makes content so crucial in the customer acquisition and conversion processes. 

Startups Tend To Lead The Pack

As a smaller company, you are more likely to be flexible, agile and will tend to make decisions and strategize in a much shorter span of time.  Most probably, you are also better placed to be able to develop a concise and consistent schedule and stick to it. The audience finds your business reliable and thus makes it easy for you to build a relationship with them outside of your corporate anonymity. 

Adds value and trust

It is very important for you, as a marketer, to be able to gain your customers’ trust.

To do so, the content that you create needs to be highly informative. Some companies are reluctant to come up with such content in fear of giving away too much detail that ideally, customers should be paying for to lay their hands on.  This is an attitude that isn’t going to get you very far. 

Your customers need to feel empowered, and they need to feel like they have gained some sort of valuable knowledge that they can take away with them. This helps set the scene for the next stage - the phase where the actual purchase of the product or service occurs.

When you are able to put up content that helps fulfill your customers’ queries and thereby their curiosity, you are going to be viewed as a brand that is knowledgeable, valuable, helpful, and more importantly - trustworthy. 

Content Marketing Is Cheap

Most often, startups struggle with funding and try to cut costs at every possible avenue. Most of the finances go into product development, and allocating a small budget to marketing usually does the job. 

Good Content Can Be “Evergreen”

If you are able to produce some sort of content that stays relevant despite the passing of years together, your content can definitely be considered as “Evergreen”. This entails that you create content around topics that aren’t trends, and instead, focus on the larger picture. 

Think about something that you will always need to inform your clients about or questions that you would like answered. In order to keep up with changes brought about by technology, you are at liberty to tweak and adjust your content. 

Content Develops Your “Voice”

Each and every business has its own Unique Selling Point - and thus, would like to have some kind of way to fully be able to convince its audience that it is worth purchasing from. In this scenario, content becomes the main driving vehicle to help develop an authoritative voice that helps cement your brand identity in the minds of your audience. 

Ultimately, it is all about establishing a brand identity, which leads to an establishing reputation, which then gives way to a voice of influence. Content that is smart helps communicate that you are a desirable business to be contested with. 

Pitfalls To Watch For

There’s always going to be several pitfalls, so here are a few for you startups to keep in mind:

Quality

When producing content, it is vital to keep in mind that quality is key to effectiveness. If you are too quick and jump the gun, your quality is inevitably compromised - which may end up negatively affecting your search rankings, too. Your quality will dip and with it, your reputation.

Founders Spending Too Much Time On It

Oftentimes, it is a great idea for founders to shell out content created by themselves. For example, inside stories as well as case studies rank very well with audiences in terms of engagement, and founders obviously are the best-suited to talk about the happenings in their company. 

However, sometimes, it so happens that the founders are devoting an excessive amount of time towards creating content for their blog. This time is vital, especially for an upcoming business, and can be spent on other more important business activities. 

Being able to connect with your potential clients using layman terms and language that is easy to understand requires you to get down to the basic level. It needs a lot of time and effort. In addition, customer acquisition takes away valuable time from handling other (possibly more important) aspects of your business. 

To make your task easier, you can streamline your content marketing strategy, especially if you are a small business. When chalking out a market plan for startups, financial analysis reports come in very handy. It takes into account several factors, including the company’s operations and commercial accounts, among others.

In conclusion, creating engaging content goes a long way in building trust and becomes what digital shoppers are looking for on a daily solidifies. It strengthens your customer acquisition process.

It’s crucial to get your online content strategy right in the very first go - otherwise, you will struggle at the time that your company requires it the most.