Selling without Selling: The Expert Guide to Content Marketing For Startups

Why You Need to Consider Content Marketing in your Startup

“Selling without selling” is a bit confusing as an opening statement. By the end of this article you will realize that its actually now a gold standard in marketing. Content marketing is a long-term strategy, which means you won’t see results immediately. However, the benefits of content marketing are worth the wait.

Content marketing can help you reach your goals in a variety of ways including:

• Increasing website traffic
• Driving brand awareness and recognition
• Generating more leads
• Building trust among your target audience

This will only happen, though, if you have a good content strategy that is backed by thorough research and planning. By creating high quality and relevant content regularly on different platforms, you will be able to build an audience much faster than if you were just promoting your product or service by other means. That’s because people today are educated consumers who don’t want to feel like they’re being sold; with content marketing, it doesn’t feel like that at all—it feels helpful!

How to Build the Right Content Marketing Strategy for Your Startup

Content marketing is a must for startups and small businesses. However, this is just the beginning – you will need to create a content strategy that takes into consideration your goals, how to reach those goals, how success will be measured and what resources are needed.

The following steps should help you build an effective content marketing strategy for your startup:

• Set your goals. What do you want to achieve with your content ? Do you plan on generating brand awareness? Do you want more inbound leads? Are you interested in increasing sales? Your answers to these questions should inform the rest of your decision-making process.
• Identify your audience(s). In order to create content that engages and converts, first you’ll need to understand who it is that will be engaging with and converting on your web properties. Define as many different target personas as possible; if they share similar characteristics and interests, they are part of the same audience segment. Consider such factors as income level, geographical location, education level and pain points (what keeps them up at night). You can learn more about how to identify audiences here .
• Audit existing content assets (if applicable). If you have been publishing blog posts or creating other forms of digital media throughout the life of your business , take stock of everything that’s already working or not working.* Think about what type(s) of content are best suited for accomplishing each goal.(examples include blog posts ; case studies ; ebooks ; infographics ; white papers)

The Resources You Need for a Winning Content Marketing Game-Plan

The difference between having a strong team and a weak team is the difference between success and failure. If you’re looking for an effective content marketing game-plan, you must make sure that your team has the following resources:

• A dedicated content writer
• A content manager
• A social media manager
• A graphic designer
• An editor who can produce video
• A developer (for interactive content)
• A copywriter

The Best Content Types for Your Brand

With hundreds of millions of registered users and over 600 million unique visitors every month, Quora.com is a terrific platform to showcase your knowledge as an industry expert. By answering relevant questions, you can demonstrate that you’re not just another jerk who made a cool product or service—you’re someone worth listening to and learning from.

In addition to establishing yourself as a thought leader, there are two other reasons why answering questions on the site should be part of your content marketing strategy:

• You’ll get more exposure for your brand by having your name and profile picture attached to each answer you share. This isn’t necessarily “brand building” in the traditional sense since you won’t be sharing links back to your company website, but it will boost brand awareness nonetheless—and that’s half the battle when it comes to digital marketing.
• When people click through from Quora to visit your profile page, they could see additional answers (or even questions) written by you that link back to some useful piece of content on your startup’s website—in which case they’ll arrive with a better understanding about who you are and why they should care about what it is you have to say.

How to Market Your Content and Generate Traffic

• Paid Advertising: This is the quickest way to drive traffic to your site. You can use paid advertising for specific pieces of content that you want to promote, or for your site as a whole. There are various platforms on which you can run paid ads, such as Facebook and Google.
• Content Distribution: Content distribution involves using specialized services that distribute your content across a network of publishers and sites, exposing it to audiences who might not have otherwise seen it.
• Guest Blogging: When done right, guest blogging is a very effective marketing strategy. In addition to generating traffic from the publication’s audience, guest blogging also helps boost your authority in Google’s eyes by increasing the number of backlinks pointing at your site (the higher quality [and relevant] the link is, the more authority it will pass).
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): If you’re creating content for search engines, then SEO needs to be a top priority. If this isn’t already being handled by an expert in-house or through an agency partnership, then you should definitely consider hiring someone who can help optimize your content for search engines.
• Social Media: Social media is one of the most effective sources of traffic for blogs and websites these days; it’s also very cost-effective since social media marketing typically operates on a pay-per-click basis.

When promoting a new piece of content, my first strategy is paid advertising; this gets me immediate results without any extra work beyond setting up some ads in Facebook or other networks (typically I’ll set up ads via LeadPages). I typically set aside 10% – 20% of my marketing budget exclusively for paid advertising campaigns. After running some ads on Facebook/Google/etc., I distribute my new piece through various high-quality social media promoters like Triberr and AdHive (these are both free services).

Next comes SEO; this requires time and effort but if done well will result in some great long-term results

The Best Tools to Use For Content Marketing Without Breaking the Bank

As a startup founder, you’ve got a lot on your plate. When it comes to content marketing, you shouldn’t have to spend thousands of dollars to make your brand look good. Instead, use these low-cost or free tools that’ll help you with content marketing without breaking the bank:

• Buffer is a social media scheduling tool that allows you to schedule posts in advance and set up posting schedules for each platform. This helps you keep track of when and where your content is going out so you can focus on other tasks. The free version allows one user per account and three social media profiles per network for a total of nine social profiles (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). You can upgrade if you need more functionality.
• Crowdfire lets businesses grow their followers and generate leads by creating custom messaging based on behavior from current followers and potential customers. You can use Crowdfire’s engagement feature to identify exactly who has engaged with your posts so that you can engage with them as well! This is especially helpful for startups who are looking to build relationships with their community members but don’t have time for manual outreach every day.

Track, Analyze and Improve With Data

Once you’ve gestated and published your content, the last step is to assess its performance.

This may sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how often content managers neglect to analyze their work.

How else are you going to know what’s working and what isn’t?

There are quite a few tools for tracking your content marketing performance. The most popular ones include Google Analytics (for both traffic and conversions), HubSpot (analytics and CRM) and Mixpanel (user behavior analytics). You can also use specialized tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, SimilarWeb or Moz for advanced SEO analytics or Buzzsumo for backlink analysis.

Running a startup can be tough but with a solid content marketing strategy, you can generate leads and get your business going.

If you Google the term “content marketing,” 2.6 billion matches appear in 0.56 seconds—but that doesn’t mean it’s a new concept for startups.

Content marketing is more than just writing articles; it’s about building a community of loyal followers by creating content that truly resonates with your target audience and provides them with real value.

With content marketing, you’re earning the attention of your prospects as opposed to buying it from advertisers by paying for ads. It’s a cost-effective way to generate leads and market your business because you can reach an entire pool of prospects through content distribution channels such as social media, search engines and relevant industry websites (amongst others). And what’s even more exciting? Your already existing customers will share your content with their network of people which will bring even more qualified leads to your business!

Before we dive into how you can get started on your own content marketing strategy, let us set some expectations: Content marketing is not going to reap results overnight; it is a long-term strategy that requires continuous effort and consistency. If you want quick fixes, this isn’t going to be the right approach for you!

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