Content Marketing for Tech Startups
If content marketing is about any one thing, it’s education — which makes it, IMHO, a perfect fit for startups. You have a brand new, innovative product or service the likes of which the world has never seen before. Now it’s time to tell the people about your company. Chances are you may have an uphill battle in terms of educating the public about why your product exists and how it fits into the market — and only content marketing can rise to the occasion.
Whether you’re designing custom digital health software, turnkey apps for small businesses, or headless content management systems your potential customers have questions that need answering — and depending on your market fit, you may be starting from scratch. Short of going on a media tour, how are you going to spread the word about the benefits of your great idea? Content marketing. Let’s explore how content marketing for startups works, and what best practices you can follow to ensure your efforts work!
Content marketing for startups: the basics
It’s hard for us to believe that there are still people out there who aren’t familiar with content marketing — especially after all the posts we’ve written about it — but if you’ve been busy building your startup, you may have missed it. So here are a few of the basic things you need to know about content marketing before applying it to your startup.
Definition of content marketing
“Content marketing is a strategic approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
— Content Marketing Institute
Content marketing has a long and hallowed history — we won’t go into it again — but it seems to have been around nearly as long as there have been brands. The truth is, no matter how old and venerable your company may be, your customers still benefit from useful content that helps them understand your products and answers their questions. Right now there is a bag of Nestle Toll House chocolate morsels in my refrigerator with a recipe for cookies on its side. I’m sure I could go to Pinterest and find dozens more recipes telling me how to use those little chocolate chips in new ways. That is content marketing in a nutshell (chocolate shell?).
If content marketing works for these household names, it can certainly work for your startup.
How content marketing works
Content marketing takes many forms. From recipes to case studies to social media videos and blog posts, well-designed content that keeps your strategy in mind not only tells your brand story, but it also helps you cultivate a relationship with potential customers. Establishing yourself and/or your company as a thought leader and a reliable resource of information builds trust and brand recognition. Eventually, we hope that relationship will lead users to give you their information, and allow you to begin the process of moving them through the sales funnel.
Developing a content marketing strategy for startups
Research tells us that having a documented content strategy is key to success — but what does a strategy consist of? Generally speaking, you want to know why you’re creating content, how you’re going to create content, and what success will look like.
What goes into your content marketing strategy:
Define your goals (brand awareness, leads, etc.).
What value do you want to create through your content?
Predict the obstacles you may run into along the way.
Who are you creating content for?
What does the typical content cycle look like? Map out the journey.
What ideas and messages do you want to convey?
What channels are you going to use to distribute the content?
When you’ve answered these questions, it’s time to buckle down and start thinking about the content creation process.
How to create content
We may be biased, but we think it’s imperative that you hire professional writers to create your content. The fact is, no one knows your business better than you do — but that doesn’t mean you know how to tell your story in a way that’s compelling, answers questions, and solves the dilemmas your potential clients are struggling with. No matter what kind of content you want to create — whether it’s a simple blog post, a YouTube video, or a 20-page research report — somewhere along the way you need a writer to whip it into shape.
(Not sure where to find a trustworthy freelancer? We have some tips.)
While a good content marketer can help you develop compelling content, you’ll need to start by understanding what your value proposition is and how to translate that into content topics.
Take, for example, enCappture — a company that creates turnkey apps for small businesses. enCappture makes mobile app development quick, easy, and affordable for small- and medium-sized businesses that may not otherwise have the time and resources needed to create an app. The value proposition is clear, and we’ve helped them articulate it in ways that make it easy for potential customers to understand. From blog posts that focus on different features in the apps enCappture has created and launched, to videos that allow founder, Denise DiSano, to clearly articulate why turnkey apps are game-changing for busy business leaders, we find new ways to express the same sentiment while capturing consumer attention. We worked together to hone in on the main message enCappture wants to convey, and then parse it out in order to create an editorial calendar of compelling content.
While working with Vessel Partners, our challenge was a bit different. The highly technical and complex world of healthcare applications requires some translation for the average reader. And while Vessel’s clients may be more well-versed in these complex topics than the average joe, we still need to boil down years of research about how to create engaging, usable healthcare apps into easy-to-digest content that explains what Vessel does. Meanwhile, the content needs to answer the questions potential clients may have about the complex topics Vessel tackles.
The moral of these stories is this: You know your business, we (and other content marketers) know ours. We know how to research what your potential customers are looking for, and how to turn your story into a piece of content that adds value to their lives. So don’t rely on your engineers or your sales team to try and put together a blog — hire a professional, whether that person is a permanent part of your team or a freelancer.
As a startup, you need to tell the world your story, why your company is different, and how you can make their lives better. In many ways, these are the same challenges established companies face, but they have the benefit of brand recognition. A Nike logo or a McDonald’s jingle evokes decades of brand conditioning, but as a startup founder, you’re just beginning that journey — and using content marketing to establish your brand reputation can help you get there faster.
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