Coming up with an effective strategy for startups is not an easy task, nonetheless, it is not a rocket science either. Let’s delve deeper into its science.
1. Content Marketing Team, Assemble!
You need to begin the process of your content marketing strategy with an effective content team that will be working for you right from start to finish. The teams may look different, depending from startup to startup, however, some of the familiar roles are as follows.
- Marketing Strategists – They plan the content your team will develop.
- Content Writers – They creatively use their skills and expertise to produce desired content.
- Content Editors – They proofread created content and ensure factual accuracy.
- Content Promoters – They promote content by distributing and marketing it on various channels.
- Designers – They produce graphic content as per the startup’s needs.
- Videographers – They produce and edit video content as per the startup’s requirements.
- Content Analysts – They analyze the performance of content and find out what is working and what isn’t.
2. Time to Pen down Your Startup’s Mission Statement
Once you have your content team in place, it is time for you to come up with an apt mission statement for your startup. The mission statement is the promise that your startup wants to accomplish. For instance, to get you started, here is an example of how you can come up with an on-point mission statement for your startup.
“The mission of [Organization’s Name] is to offer our customers with [service #1] and [service #2] through [action #1], [action #2] and [action #3].”
3. Content Marketing Goals
The next step in establishing an effective content marketing strategy is using your startup goals to create content marketing goals that your team needs to deliver timely. Your startup goals predominantly impact your success. Your strategy should assist your startup to achieve its business goals.
Each goal that you set should relevantly scale your startup. Do ensure that all your content marketing goals are SMART goals, which means they are:
- Specific: Describe your goals precisely so that your team can accurately deliver tasks.
- Measurable: Attach numerical values to your goals so that you can measure them.
- Attainable: Ask yourself, can your team accomplish this goal within the deadline?
- Relevant: Does this goal provide significant value to your success? Will it prove that what you are doing is working out for your startup?
- Timely: All the goals should always have a deadline to ensure timely delivery.
4. Persona Research and Audience Development
The next step is to identify your audience. Your content marketing strategy is only as effective as the leads and audience it brings in for you. If you draw thousands of views every month, however, if only five among them are from your relevant audience, it is nothing but a waste of your time and effort.
Strategically identifying who your content should target will help you determine what kind of topics, ideas, and keywords you need to work with. Following are the characteristics of identifying your relevant audience.
- Demographics: Their age, gender, ethnicity, income, location, job title etc.
- Psychographics: Their hobbies, interests, beliefs, habits etc.
- Challenges: The challenges they are facing to search your product or service?
- Pain Points: What problem in your audience’s life does your product or service solves?
- Getting Information: From where is your audience trying to find a solution to their problems?
- Type of Content They Prefer: What content structure or format does your audience prefer to get the information they are searching for?
- How Can You Help: How is your content helping your target audience to get the information they are searching for?
Your content marketing strategy should have two audience profiles. Firstly, your primary audience that are people who are most likely to purchase your product or service. All the content you create should primarily target them.
Your secondary audience should be people who are almost a part of your primary audience but never make the cut. These people require more convincing from the content you publish which implies your content team should be more strategic with what they develop and write.
5. Determine Your Content Types
Now it is time for you to determine what types of content you will develop for your audience. Content marketing is not just about writing blog posts. Your content team can come up with a variety of options. For example email newsletters, videos, social media content, print content, (magazines, brochures, flyers etc.), ebooks, research reports, white papers, case studies, graphic or visual content. Select the types of content that suit you the best to reach your audience and accomplish your startup goals.
For instance, if your target audience spends a lot of time on social media, produce content on channels they use like Facebook or Twitter. If they enjoy reading, then maybe producing ebooks will be a great idea. Analyze your audience and use survey data to align different content types with the needs and interests of your target audience.
6. Determine Your Promotion Channels
You are developing amazing content, however, it is only as good as the number of people that see it. That is precisely why you need to opt for the right promotional channels for your startup. Following are some ideas to begin with:
- Organic Search: It is mainly the content that ranks on search engines and is visible on the first page of the search results. Such content is keyword heavy. It focuses on a series of primary and secondary keywords that your audience is searching for.
- Email Newsletters: Emails are one of the best promotional channels if you are publishing a variety of content. You can feed fragments of your content to your audience and increase the chances of conversion.
- Social Media: This includes both organic and paid content marketing options.
- Third Party Distribution: You can always use third-party distributors or influencers to post your content. It is a significant promotional tactic as it assists you to reach out to different sources and add your content to their email newsletters, websites or social channels.
7. Creating Content
Now you need to determine your content’s core and its execution process. Make sure you do not neglect the following factors while coming up with your content marketing strategy.
