Startups often move quickly, and that ethos may seem at odds with the long game of content marketing. But investing in content early can pay big dividends down the road. Creating unique, helpful content not only generates goodwill among the audiences you’re targeting but can also help influence their purchase decisions.
According to a survey from PYMTS.com, 95% of customers who are inclined to buy a product after seeing influencer content still do their own research online. Having informative content about your product can mean the difference between a purchase that goes to you or your competitor.
Read on to learn more about content marketing for startups, how it can benefit your business, and how to get your own content marketing program off the ground.
Understanding content marketing for startups
Content marketing is the process of creating useful content—such as blog posts, social media posts, and how-to guides—to earn your audience’s trust and nurture them through your sales funnel over time. Unlike paid advertising, which works by directly persuading people to buy your products, content marketing is about building relationships by offering genuine value. As Trevor Crotts, the founder of dog mattress brand BuddyRest, puts it on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast, content marketing is like “walking through the side door” instead of “kicking down the front door with a sales message.”
The idea is that by delivering useful and unique insights that customers can’t get anywhere else, you build stronger connections over time. This type of marketing strategy can be especially useful for startups in the early stages of building brand recognition and trust because you’re offering something valuable (like an in-depth explainer or shareable infographic) for free. Relative to paid media, owned media can be cheap to make and easy to share—a big benefit for cash-strapped startups. And when site visitors or social media followers engage with your content, it becomes a valuable source of feedback you can use to further improve your messaging.
5 content marketing objectives for startups
Setting clear goals for your startup’s content marketing efforts can help ensure the work you put in is aligned with company-wide objectives. The most common content marketing goals align with a classic sales funnel. Here’s what those goals look like, along with tactics that can help you achieve them:
Brand awareness
The first challenge for any startup is to let potential customers know you exist. You can measure the effectiveness of your content by tracking growth in impressions, web traffic, search visibility, and social media mentions.
You can share thought leadership articles, social media posts about your brand’s mission, or well-crafted blog posts about timely industry trends. Over time, content can consistently help boost brand recognition among customers and credibility in your industry. For example, Solé Bicycles built brand awareness by creating lifestyle-driven content that resonated with their audience’s culture. This helped them grow 100% year over year by turning their bikes into part of an aspirational lifestyle rather than just a purchase.
Search engine optimization (SEO) can often help you at this stage. By layering your blog post with keywords identified in keyword research and aligning your post with user search intent, you create content that ranks higher in search engine results, where it is most likely to be seen by customers.
Lead generation
To move toward driving revenue with content, you need to be able to engage with people who could become customers over time. To do this, you need a way to reach them, either via email, SMS, or social media. Content marketing can help you capture contact information like email addresses or forge connections on social media. Measure progress via metrics like new email subscribers and text update sign-ups.
An effective content marketing strategy doesn’t just keep your audience engaged; it turns them into leads that can later translate to sales. You might offer a valuable data report in exchange for an email address, then use email marketing to usher those leads through your sales funnel. Or you can add an email capture layer to your non-branded SEO strategy. For example, a fitness protein brand might publish a blog post optimized for search terms like “best protein shake recipes,” then offer a downloadable recipe package in exchange for an email sign-up.
Customer consideration
Now that potential customers know who you are, the next step is to get them to consider your products. To boost customer consideration, content marketing strategies strive to help customers understand the value of what you offer and how it offers solutions to their pain points. Metrics that you can use to see how well you’re achieving that goal are time on page, repeat site visits, product page traffic, or free trial sign-ups. These all indicate that customers are closer to considering making a purchase.
Some of the content marketing strategies that you can use here are product comparison guides that show how your products compare against competitors, case studies that show the efficacy of your products, or customer testimonials. This type of content all seeks to engage customers beyond the brand awareness stage and closer to a purchase that drives revenue.
Conversion and sales
Once customers are engaged with your products, the next step is turning that interest into sales. This is the most critical stage for every business, but particularly for startups that might not have resources to play the long game. Early sales establish your credibility with customers and investors and extend the runway by generating much-needed revenue. Success here can be measured through purchases, conversion rates, and overall revenue growth. In fact, more than 41% of marketers say they measure the success of their content marketing strategy directly through sales.
Customer retention
Content marketing can help boost customer loyalty by creating ways for customers to stay connected to your brand. Retention can be measured through metrics like repeat purchase rate, customer lifetime value, and churn rate, which show whether customers continue to engage with you over time.
Consider hosting live Q&A sessions on social media platforms, sending post-purchase tips or tutorials, or starting a forum where customers can share tips. By giving your target audience a place to connect with you and each other, you can turn casual buyers into brand advocates who actively promote your products.
How to get started with content marketing
- Define your target audience
- Choose content formats that suit your goals
- Generate content ideas
- Develop a content calendar
- Plan a promotion strategy
- Determine key performance indicators
These steps can help you develop a content strategy that supports customer success. They can also give you valuable insights you can incorporate into your broader digital marketing strategy:
1. Define your target audience
The first step in any content marketing strategy is to figure out who your target audience is. Try to learn as much as possible about who your potential customers might be. This will frame your own content strategy by helping you choose the most relevant topics, formats, and distribution channels.
2. Choose content formats that suit your goals
To make sure your content marketing efforts are as effective as possible, select content formats that can best find your audience. For example, if your goal is to drive sales among Gen Z customers, posting short videos on social media channels like TikTok or Instagram can be more effective than a blog post. If you’re trying to establish your credibility in a business-to-business (B2B) environment, thought leadership articles might be a better fit.
3. Generate content ideas
A steady flow of ideas will keep your content marketing efforts fresh and relevant. Start by focusing on your buyer personas and brainstorming what their key questions or interests might be. Each of these challenges or topics of interest can be content topics.
4. Develop a content calendar
A content calendar helps you plan what you’ll publish and stay on schedule. You can start by identifying key marketing moments like product launches, holidays, or seasonal trends, which can help you think through the right content for each moment, whether that’s a seasonal email campaign or a timely blog post. The goal here is not to lock you into a rigid plan but to give you visibility that can help guide your content creation and scheduling. A simple spreadsheet or even Google Calendar can offer enough structure for a small startup.
5. Plan a promotion strategy
You could develop great quality content, but it won’t get you very far if no one sees it. You also need a solid promotion strategy alongside your content creation process, which maps out how you will distribute your work through social media channels, email marketing, and other distribution channels. A strong promotion strategy can support your inbound marketing efforts by making sure you are reaching the people who are actively looking for the solutions you provide. For example, you might share a blog post, repurpose it into a short video for TikTok, and feature one or both in an email newsletter to extend your content’s reach across different channels.
6. Determine key performance indicators
The right key performance indicators (KPIs) help you measure if your content marketing strategy is working. Website traffic, conversion rates, and click-through rates are all great metrics to track. Tools like Google Analytics can let you see where your traffic is coming from and how users behave on your website. These insights show you which channels or types of content are driving results so you can double down on what’s working and refine or retire what isn’t.
Content marketing for startups FAQ
What is the 70-20-10 rule in content marketing?
The 70-20-10 rule is a popular framework you can use to balance the content you create. About 70% focuses on the main topics your audience cares about most. From there, 20% explores related topics, and the remaining 10% could be dedicated to experimenting with different ideas or formats. This division helps your content stay consistent while still giving you room to be creative.
What are the 3 Cs of content marketing?
The 3 Cs stand for create, curate, and circulate. You create original content that your audience is likely to find useful, curate other relevant content from trusted sources, and circulate through the channels where your audience is most likely to see your content.
How do you get started with content marketing?
Start by figuring out who your target audience is and what your business objectives are. Then choose the types of content you execute well, make a plan for creating and publishing, and decide how you’ll promote it so it reaches the right people. Finally, track your results and refine your plan, if needed.
