You have just established a new business, but nobody knows you; not even your next-door neighbor. All you do is fantasize about your product and say: “This product is the best” or “I offer the best service.”
If it is actually the best, as you claim, then why aren’t you generating sales from it? You’re just there, broke and frustrated, dreaming about how your business could have impacted people’s lives and the sales it could have brought in.
How can you leave this state and transition to a place where your product or service has massive visibility, and generate a lot of leads and sales?
You do this by leveraging content marketing.
In this article, you will learn how fast-growing startups leverage content marketing. This is the easiest way for you to escape this endless cycle of frustration.
But before you jump the line, you need to understand the concept of content marketing.
What is content marketing?
Table of Contents
Content marketing is the art of creating and sharing valuable and relevant content to attract and retain your target audience. This element of digital marketing called content marketing helps you increase brand awareness, generate leads and convert them to raving customers.
Content marketing can be done through creating blog posts, podcasts, videos, infographics, and social media content.
5 Strategic Ways Startups Can Leverage Content Marketing
The following are the tested and proven ways fast-growing startups leverage content marketing.
1. Build brand awareness
One of the ways startups can leverage content marketing is to build brand awareness. What does that mean? It’s simply announcing yourself on various platforms for your target audience to know and discover you.
As a startup that wants to be recognized locally and globally, content marketing is a necessity. The only exception will be if you already have an established business.
Since startups are new to the market, content marketing can help them tell their brand stories better. In addition, it communicates the gap they’ve identified in their industry and the unique way they’ve crafted to solve this problem.
How do you build brand awareness?
To create brand awareness using content marketing, here are things to do:
- Create a page on any of the social media platforms that your target audience use often. Share relevant and valuable content on the page.
- Set up a blog and create blog articles that solve your audience’s problems.
- Hop on YouTube and create in-depth videos on your target audience’s pain points and solutions.
Also Read:
- 3 Business Growth Strategies for Startups That Want to Scale Quickly
- Top 5 Innovative Brand Awareness Campaign Ideas That Work
- 10 Simple Ways to Increase Your Brand Awareness (Infographic)
2. Establish thought leadership
In universities, professors are respected because they have positioned themselves as the ‘Mr. Know-It-All.’ Students ask probing questions and they give answers to them.
How does this relate to content marketing?
When you consistently create resourceful content that solves the problems of your target audience, you are seen as an authority on the subject. You build more trust. People will always prefer to read (or watch) your content on that particular subject.
For example, many digital marketers love to visit Hubspot because the brand has shared a lot of content on many digital marketing topics. Similarly, SEO writers watch Neil Patel’s videos on anything SEO or content marketing because he is an authority.
How do you leverage content marketing to establish thought leadership?
Below is the step-by-step guide on how to establish yourself as a thought leader by maximizing content marketing:
- Give new insights into the problems your target audience has, and a new approach to solving them.
- Ensure that your content is relevant to their current wants and needs.
- Create in-depth content that will solve your target audience’s problems when applied.
3. Drive organic traffic
According to Statista, over 3.1 trillion searches are conducted on Google each year. So, when you consistently create and publish blog articles that are optimized for search engines, you increase your chances of appearing on the first page of Google’s search engine result pages (SERPS). That way, you drive organic traffic to your website page.
Another additional benefit? Your business is open to visitors who are just coming across your blog, thereby increasing brand awareness.
Also Read:
- Offline Marketing Strategies: 5 Creative Ways to Promote Your Startup
- How to Increase Organic Business Sales Using 7 Techniques
- YouTube SEO Tips: How to Promote and Rank Your Videos Organically
4. Nurture customer relationship
You’ve leveraged content marketing to build brand awareness, drive traffic, generate leads, and finally, sales. Does your content marketing end there?
No, it doesn’t. Since nurturing your customers is mostly done through email marketing, ask them to give feedback about your products.
Then use the feedback to create content so that others who have the same pain points can see them addressed. That way, you’re sending the message that you’re not only after your customers’ money but also prioritize their experiences using your product.
5. Boost lead generation
Another way startups can leverage content marketing is to boost lead generation. Visitors become leads when they submit their contacts in exchange for your free e-book or any packaged resourceful content. That way, you know those who are interested in your future offer. Of course, the digital product you will give them must not be a free one. You can use a trip-wire offer to grow your email list. A trip-wire offer is a highly subsidized product of high value of say, $1 or $7.
As a fast-growing company looking for leads, you can leverage content marketing as a strategic way to capture these leads. So what’s the next line of action?
Package resourceful content in e-books, videos, podcasts, and other forms for your target audience. Share this digital product on your social media pages, blogs, or YouTube videos.
Collect the contact details of those interested for the purpose of nurturing them till you push out your offers. That way, because of the value you’ve offered upfront, you’ll be able to make easy sales.
Also Read:
- 5 Financial Tips for Entrepreneurs Launching a Startup
- 10 Best Lead Generation Software to Get More Leads
- How to Make Email Marketing Work for Your Business and Generate Leads
Conclusion
When you clicked on the link that revealed this page, you were confused about how to take your business out of the cobwebs of obscurity and low sales. The secret has been handed over to you, like the key to the gates of heaven. You now know that you can leverage content marketing to build brand awareness, establish thought leadership, drive organic traffic, nurture customer relationships, and boost lead generation.
Now, it’s time to take action.
