Content marketing is a low-cost marketing strategy for startups. With content marketing, startups can produce valuable content for their target audiences on a shoestring budget. Many startups have adopted content marketing as their primary marketing strategy to gain new customers. Nerdwallet, a recent IPO, has a valuation of over $1.5 billion. In its first five years, Nerdwallet relied heavily on content marketing to drive traffic and increase customer base.
Content marketing tools such as social media automation, APIs, scripts and even AI-driven content are frequently used by startups. Most businesses are unaware of the specific marketing strategies to use to drive traffic and revenue.
- Write SEO-friendly blog posts
- Make use of Case studies
- Posting as a guest on industry websites
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Write SEO-friendly blog posts
The first step in using content marketing for a startup is to start publishing SEO-optimized blog content. Starting a blog is the easiest and most effective way to start content marketing and increase traffic and customers. With SEO-friendly content, you can target specific keywords and drive targeted traffic to your site. To get thousands of organic visitors per month, do this for all relevant queries in your niche.
Using a keyword research service is the first step. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush are examples. These tools can accurately estimate keyword volume, difficulty, and other data points. This will help you find low competition keywords for which your site can easily rank and gain initial traffic.
Once you have a list of keywords in mind, you can start writing blog posts. Focus on one set of related keywords per blog post to help Google understand what you’re trying to rank for. The topics you write about should be tailored to your target audience. Less writing about a topic equals more topical authority and better ranking for more keywords. If you’re not familiar with SEO terminology or the best tools to use, you may want to hire a content marketing agency to produce high-quality results.
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Make use of Case studies
Case studies are an underused content marketing strategy. Because most customers don’t know what your company does, you won’t have a strong brand recognition or customer trust. Even if you write great content about topics that interest your customers, they may doubt your ability to meet their needs. Write case studies about how your company helped customers. Investigating how you identified, approached, and resolved a customer’s issue will help you gain credibility and trust. Some ways to maximize the impact of case studies are:
Include your customer’s backstory
To make a case study effective, you must first prepare your customer. Begin your case study by describing your customer’s persona and their issue. “X company in B2B agriculture was having major supply chain issues due to COVID restrictions,” for example. It doesn’t have to be long, but identifying the customer will help other customers see how your company can help them.
Early solution/results sharing
Case studies can be tedious for some customers. The first page results allow the customer to quickly see the problem and solution. If they want to know more about the case study, they can look into it. This is a good way to increase case study engagement and ultimately attract more customers.
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Posting as a guest on industry websites
Sharing your expertise on industry-leading websites is great content marketing. Guest posting allows you to leverage the website’s audience. Instead of waiting months or years to build a loyal following, start writing guest posts on industry-relevant sites.
Right strategy can lead to immediate revenue for your business. By guest posting on the right sites, you can gain leads. For example, if your target market is chief technology officers (CTOs), you should guest post on sites where they frequent. Guest posting opportunities include Hacker News, Crunchbase, CIO Journal, and VMware.
You can get immediate exposure to your target audience by guest posting on these sites and linking to your landing pages and contact information. Many startups use guest posting and other press release methods to get their first customers. Getting backlinks to your website is also beneficial for SEO.