The Content Marketing Institute tells us that content marketing is the strategic approach that is focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience.
The purpose? To drive profitable customer action.
In its simplest form, content marketing is how you communicate with your current and potential customers without selling to them.
Yes, that’s right. There is no selling going on here. It’s non-interruption marketing. Your goal is to provide valuable information so people reward you with their business.
Now that you have a clear understanding of content marketing, let’s look at why content marketing is so important for startups.
Content Marketing is Cheap
As a startup, you might not have an enormous budget set aside for marketing, so using content is a good way to get your name out.
Content marketing is significantly cheaper than traditional forms of advertising such as radio and TV.
Blog writing is one of the most cost effective ways to “advertise” your company. It is also one of the best ways to make your content work for you. You can either host your own blog on your website or guest blog on other pages. Often a combination of both is beneficial.
When you write appealing, educational, informative content, and it gets shared on social media and reposted, you’ve gone a long way towards building good will with your target audience without spending much money at all.
Content Marketing is Effective
While you could generate website leads using Google AdWords or other pay-per-click options, your cash-strapped startup benefits from content marketing because it provides inbound links to your website for a very minimal cost.
Content marketing increases your odds of showing up on the first page of a Google search because Google loves fresh content that provides many inbound as well as outbound links.
Google rewards websites who do content marketing right. Your SEO improves organically.
It does take time to rise to the top of search results, but if you’re using the right keywords, header structure, photos, and videos, Google will reward you.
Content Marketing Builds Your Reputation
Your startup is just getting off the ground, and not many people are familiar with you. They don’t know your brand, and you certainly haven’t earned their trust yet.
Instead of spending large sums of money on traditional marketing and expensive ad buys, content marketing provides a cheap and effective way to build your reputation and encourage trust in your company.
How-to videos, helpful articles and encouraging social media posts help you create trust in your startup and work to build your reputation.
Content Marketing Includes Many Options
Content marketing refers to the following content you may disseminate online as part of your content marketing strategy:
- Blogs and Article Postings
- White Papers
- Social Media Posts
- Email Newsletters
- Infographics
- Videos
- Images
- Webinars
- Ebooks
- Case Studies
- Downloadable Resources
- Presentations
Should you just throw this information out there? No, the best plan is to have a content strategy.
Additionally, you don’t want to post just because you want to write content. The purpose of your content is to interact with and engage your audience. You want them to want to read more from you.
Final Thoughts
Content marketing is important to all businesses, and 90% of B2B companies are currently using content marketing as part of their marketing strategy.
So, it makes sense that you use it in your startup, too.
Here are some other great statistics:
- You can generate three times the number of leads with content marketing than you can with paid search.
- Studies show that more than 80% of consumers feel more positive about a business after learning about them through online written content.
- It costs 60% less than traditional marketing.
- More than 70% of people would rather learn about your company through articles than ads.
Are you a new startup ready to utilize content marketing? Are you looking to get your new business off the ground and watch it rise to success? We are here for you. We can help answer your questions and guide you through the process. Outsource your finances, payroll, HR duties and more to us. Contact Escalon today to get started.
Image: Jeremy Bishop
