The Secret to Content Marketing for Startups

When you start a business, there’s a lot on your mind: you think about how to fund all the equipment you’ll need, how to keep track of revenue and expenses, how to make enough profit, and how to get the word out about your business.

Content marketing? This might be the last thing on your list. You certainly have other priorities.

We agree. But as a startup, it’s important to put yourself out there and content marketing is the perfect combination between branding and marketing. This is our first approach for shaping the perception of a brand, while also driving sales. Here’s how you can do it too.

Summary

• Content marketing is the most cost-effective way to get the word out about your startup.
• Build your new content marketing strategy one month at a time so you’re not overwhelmed.
• Keep the focus on your customers and their needs, not your company.
• Review your content strategy regularly to make sure you’re reaching the right audience with the right message.

What you need to know before you start planning

1. Decide who you are

First thing first. You need to decide who you want to be known for as a company. Let’s say you have a skincare startup. You need to decide how you want to put your product out there. Will you be doing tutorials? Will you be writing blog articles on the products? Will you join Tik Tok and do short videos on them? The options are endless, you just need to figure out what works best for you and stick with it.

Of course, you can change things along the way, but be careful not to make too drastic of a change, because you might lose the followers and customers that joined you on your journey from the beginning.

You don’t need fifty thousand views of a post to be successful. Ten views from the right people will drive more revenue than thousands of random views.

Balloonline note: Not sure what to do? Do in-depth research on all the available platforms. You might even want to do a survey for the people you might think are your audience to help figure things out.

2. Offer content to the people you want as customers

Have you defined your target audience? Offer them the content they want! Let’s keep going with the skincare startup as an example. Is your target audience teenage girls that struggle with acne? Tik Tok and Instagram might be your answer. Make your content fun and exciting while also offering qualitative and informative content.

Do you have a more diverse audience? Make sure you offer different content for your different types of audience. We know it might be difficult at times, but keep in mind that teenage girls, for example, don’t respond to the same content older women do, so you need to find a balance between them if you want to transform your audience into customers.

Balloonline note: Make a list of all the platforms you want to be on and see if they are right for your audience.

3. Create content that helps

Make content that solves problems. It’s easy to forget your goals and get caught up in the next thing that can make you go viral. Content marketing is usually intended to solve problems. Spotting problems to address is one of the most underrated skills one can have. Open your eyes and pay attention to what’s going on around you and you’ll find things to solve in no time.

The better you get at doing this, the more successful your content marketing will be at building your brand and generating revenue. Determine what you want the reader to take away from your post before you start writing or filming and then create content that delivers the goods.

Balloonline note: Keep a list where you can always add new content ideas and make sure to check up on your competitors at least once a month. You never know what you might learn.

4. Stick to a schedule

If you want results you need to stick to a schedule and show up week after week. You can’t post this week, then be MIA for a month and then post again. Not only will it increase your chances of getting to be better known, it will also show you are consistent and committed. This is a plus for any business, big or small.

Force yourself into action. It might be intimidating and scary, but consistently showing up is an essential ingredient of content marketing.

Balloonline note: Take a day out of the week to do all your content stuff. Doing this you won’t feel overwhelmed and you’ll leave time for other things you might have to do.

5. Play the game

When we say play the game, we refer both to the short and the long term. Content marketing can provide you with immediate gratification in terms of sales and long term value when it comes to building your brand. Every post should show your expertise on a certain topic. Once you provide enough useful content, your followers will start reaching out to you to solve their problems. That’s the end goal: to gain their trust and become their go-to business.

Balloonline note: Write on a piece of paper or in a document all the reasons why you started doing this in the first place. When you feel like things are not working out the way you wanted them, go back to that list and read it.

Planning, scheduling and analyzing your content

In this part, we will discuss tools that can help you with your content strategy. Since we know that as a startup the budget is small or nonexistent, all the tools we are going to mention are either completely free or have free features that you can use.

1. For writing and sharing documents

First thing first. You need a place where you can write your strategy and planning and share it with others. For this we recommend Google docs and spreadsheets. Yes, we know, everybody knows about this one. But if everyone knows about it, it also means it’s a useful tool that works, so you can’t go wrong with it.

2. For checking your grammar

Although google docs offers an in-app grammar checker, we also recommend Grammarly. Grammarly is a digital writing assistance tool. It detects spelling, punctuation, and other common errors in texts. You can use it as a Chrome extension, you can download it for Windows, Microsoft Office and even your phone. It is free to use for spelling, grammar and punctuation, but it also has premium features that you have to pay for, such as, fluency, readability and plagiarism.

3. For content creation

Creating visuals for your social media can be scary and challenging, but it doesn’t have to be. Not everyone knows how to use Photoshop or Illustrator and that’s okay. There are many free apps and websites that you can use. One of them is Canva. Canva is a graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content. The platform is free to use, offering a lot of diverse templates you can use, but it also offers premium features that you have to pay for. 

Another thing you need for your visuals are photos of course. If you don’t have a budget for this, you can use free stock sites that offer a variety of images for everything you need. Some of our favorites are Pexels, Pixabay and Unsplash. 

4. For scheduling

Now that you have your plan and your content, you are ready to post it. You don’t want to do this on a daily basis, however. It is time consuming and it can become stressful in no time. Thankfully, there’s scheduling. For Facebook and Instagram you have Creator Studio, that let’s you schedule all your content for these two platforms. Well, almost all your content. You can’t schedule your stories yet, but hopefully they will add this feature soon. The best thing about it? It is completely free. Of course, there are other platforms such as Buffer, Hootsuite or Sprout Social, to name a few, that let you schedule posts for more platforms, including Twitter, Pinterest or Linkedin, and also offer you analytics tools, but they are not free.

5. For analytics

You can’t keep posting content without seeing if it works. You can start with some free tools offered by Facebook and Instagram called Insights. They are quite useful and offer you free details on your account. You can also go to google analytics to see the visits to your websites, but you probably already know this.

Another useful tool is Hotjar. This is a behavior analytics and product experience insights service that helps you empathize and understand your users, and get their feedback through tools like heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys. It works great together with Google Analytics.

Conclusions

You don’t have to be worried about not having a budget for your marketing. With a killer content strategy and some good content, you build an audience, drive sales and increase conversions. All you need to invest is time.

One question remains, though. Quality or quantity? Neither. You have to keep in mind that not all your followers will see all your posts so the more content you put out there the bigger are the chances that they will see at least one of your pieces of content. So, while quality is important and useful, quantity also is when you put yourself out there.