Every new beginning is a challenge. The same goes for startups. When you are getting your startup off the ground, you invest all you have got to make it work. But, money is always tight, and it seems that you never have enough to invest in a robust marketing strategy.
Fortunately for you, content marketing is a budget-friendly form of marketing, and it can effectively get the word out, engage new customers and also retain the existing ones.
According to a new study by CMI and MarketingProfs, 90% of B2B companies use content marketing as a part of their marketing strategy.
So, what is content marketing?
Content marketing involves creating different forms of content – blogs, press releases, white papers, social media posts, opt-in email marketing campaigns, videos, newsletters, and images – and posting them online with the intent of engaging the target audience.
6 Ways to Improve Startup Content Marketing Strategy:
- 1. Budget Smartly
Although content marketing is budget-friendly, it isn’t cheap when you are investing time and energy into developing it.
So, carefully evaluate your analytics and put your money, time, and effort toward the strategies that are currently working for you. For instance, after analyzing your current data, if you realize that most of your social media traffic comes from Instagram, don’t waste much of your time, money and effort on other social media platforms.
Allocate to the highest amount of your budget, time and energy to the strategy that works and has the potential for growth.
- Set Clear Goals
If you don’t know what you want your content marketing to do for your business, your strategy is likely to fail. Set clear goals.
For example, if you have to focus on a few social media channels, take a look at the current stats for each of these channels and then set goals. Where you want these channels to be in a year, in terms of followers, traffic and engagement? Once your vision is clear, break down your annual goal into monthly milestones.
Lastly, figure out what actions you need to take on a daily/weekly basis to ensure that your monthly/yearly goals are met.
- Document Your Strategy
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 53% of the most effective B2B content marketers have a documented strategy. Marketers who do not document their strategy have reported that content marketing isn’t effective for them.
Having a simple 3-page document that outlines your marketing plans and goals is a great way to start. So, take the time to write down your content marketing strategy.
- Use Content Marketing Tools
Research shows that using tools to create, curate and distribute content is one of the ways successful marketers achieve great content marketing ROI. Using the right content marketing tool can help you achieve success with your content marketing strategy, and the rewards are worth it – improved audience engagement, better lead generation and sales, and reduced customer acquisition cost. - Incorporate Multimedia in Your Content
In the US, each day, up to almost 75 million viewers consume video content. And nearly 6 million Americans listen to their favorite podcast weekly. So, using multimedia like video, audio, image, interactive text, animation, and podcast in your content can significantly boost the engagement levels.
- Engage Your Audience
Engage with your audience to truly understand what they want. Pay attention to their comments and questions. And don’t forget to ask for feedback.
Your audience might be different on different channels. For instance, your Facebook audience might not be the same as your Instagram audience. So, repackage your content for different audiences to engage with them.
Following the six content marketing strategies outlined above can help your business to succeed. That said, content is ever-evolving, and you need to redefine your content strategies to stay relevant. So, make sure you re-visit your content strategy now and then and revise the approach as needed.
Author Bio:
Sofia David is a digital content marketer at Contenteum where she heads and executes the content creation strategies. Contenteum is a holistic platform that helps SEO agencies and content teams in planning, researching, creating, optimizing, and publishing content to help with rankings. Sofia believes that good content is what offers true value to the reader and that is why she creates content with a reader-first mindset. When she’s not working on new content, she finds pleasure in gardening and loves to play Scrabble every chance she gets.
