When it comes to running your own startup, the prospect of finding success can seem pretty grim. According to statistics, about 90% of startups fail, and that failure rate is about the same across all industries. There are many reasons why some startup companies might go belly up, including lack of managerial qualifications, inexperienced founders, and failure to reach the right people.
Another reason for startup failure is the lack of a clear content marketing strategy. And in 2022, there is no excuse for not having one.
Your startup, regardless of how skilled your employees are or how great your product or service is, is not going to get in front of the eyes of your target audience by itself. This is where content marketing comes in. Content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing, but it generates three times more leads.
To help you out, we have put together a list of things you need to do to develop a killer content marketing strategy. You’ll also find some useful examples, so read on.
1. Define a Buyer Persona
Researching your target audience and creating a buyer persona will help you figure out who’s going to be buying your product. Obviously, demographic data is a good start, but you need to go beyond that and look at their biggest challenges, pain points, and their interests.
How do you find all of this?
Well, the simplest way would be to ask them using polls, surveys, and focus groups. You can also check out where they hang out online, check your competitors’ followers, and use the data gathered by analytics software.
One of the best examples of defining a buyer persona is Coca-Cola’s original “Share a Coke” campaign launched back in 2011 in Australia, which used personalized Coke bottles. The genius thing about this campaign is that it allowed the company to reach 42% of the population with just 150 different names on their bottles. Plus, they invited everyone to buy a Coke for someone else as well, not just themselves.
Image source: https://us.coca-cola.com/store/
2. Create High-Quality Content
Great content allows you to:
- engage your audience
- raise awareness about your brand
- boost your SEO
- establish your startup as a thought leader in the industry
Covering every single channel is almost impossible, so you need to decide at least on those that are relevant to your niche and your audience. As for content type, you can’t go wrong with blogs, images, videos, and infographics. Those are the top four formats leveraged by marketers.
For a great content marketing example, take a look at how Somnifix uses its blog not just to promote its products, which help stop snoring, but also to publish useful, actionable content that allows readers to improve the quality of their sleep through other methods, such as proper dieting and exercise. You will also find out everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the science of sleep, snoring, sleep apnea, and other sleep disorders, as well as possible solutions for each.
Image source: https://somnifix.com/blogs/snews
3. Share Customer Success Stories
Audiences are tired of being pitched to, which is why so many startups are turning to influencers for collaboration. This can be very effective because your audience gets to hear about your product from someone who is relatable to them rather than some corporate entity.
However, an even better option would be to share success stories featuring your customers. This not only provides social proof but also makes your startup come off as genuine.
BaseLang, an online platform for teaching Spanish, used social proof to its advantage by sharing actual customer testimonials. The platform even came up with a branded hashtag, #BaseLangStories, to spread the word across its social media accounts, which is quite similar to what Coca-Cola did with the #shareacoke campaign.
Image source: https://baselang.com/blog/success-stories/adam/
4. Create a Content Calendar
The best approach to executing your content marketing strategy would be to create a calendar that contains all there is to know about:
- the type of content you will be producing
- frequency of publishing
- publishing dates
- relevant links and keywords
- promotional plans that include distribution channels and budget
How often should you publish? HubSpot has done a fair bit of research on this, and they suggest 3-4 content pieces per week for smaller businesses looking to boost organic traffic, while larger ones should publish 4-5 times weekly.
As for boosting brand awareness, shoot for 1-2 times a week if you’re running a smaller startup, or 3-4 times a week if you’ve got a bigger organization. Of course, feel free to adjust your content calendar based on the specifics of your business and your target audience. Just try and remain consistent in terms of quality and quantity.
Image source: https://www.hubspot.com/
5. Keep Track of the Results
After doing all of the above, your startup will reap the benefits, but you’ll have very little use of them in the long run if you aren’t tracking your KPIs. Sure, it’s great that you have awesome content, but you need to determine what is and what isn’t working and why. Using the information gathered through analytics, you can eliminate parts of your content marketing strategy that aren’t working and focus on those that are bringing real results.
Five9 was able to build a campaign around its eBook and drive four times as many leads and three times as many deals as they did in their previous campaign. Instead of focusing on their product and its features, they created a buyer-centric eBook called “Practical/Tactical: A Guide to Maximizing Agent Efficiency.” It drove so many new leads that their head of marketing had to turn off the notifications. By tracking the performance of their content before and after they published the eBook, they were able to use those numbers for their future campaigns.
Image source: https://content.marketingsherpa.com/heap/cs/five9/3.htm
Summing up
Although content marketing involves a lot of work, your startup will definitely benefit from it as long as you have a solid strategy to lean on. We hope that you will find the advice presented in this article helpful and that you will implement it while building your own content marketing strategy. Good luck!
