How content marketing helps startups scale

Beyond the long copy and great visuals, content marketing is actually a very useful tool to help businesses scale. And as you all know, scaling your startup requires you to strategically plan, put out and analyze content to achieve certain business goals using a smaller budget. In other words, you’re not investing less, you are stretching your investments further.

However, creating quality content takes time and quite a bit of resources. Hiring a whole team to manage content is not possible for many startups and outsourcing comes with its own challenges. And the more content you produce, the more effort required whether it is analysis, promotion, auditing, and optimization, it all takes up valuable time.

To help on this journey, we explore the ways that startups have used content marketing to scale their businesses.

User-generated content (UGC) could pave your way to viral marketing – with very little cost. This refers to any sort of content that is put out by unpaid creators.

The beauty of UGC is obvious: less revenue is pumped into creating exposure and credibility for your brand. The caveat, however, is that modern consumers regulate their personal platforms and do not just post about anything. The challenge here is how you get things to catch on. 

That’s why brands like Travel Wanderlust have done well in encouraging authenticity and allowing travellers to post content without too many restrictions. This drives engagement on their website.

Previously, companies used blogging to let people know of their presence or product. Content marketing is a strategic form of marketing that delves deeper into the consumer journey, from buyer awareness to developing loyalty. Startups can now make use of SEO tools to overcome the limitations of physical size.

Regularly producing relevant and compelling articles can help your brand connect with readers on a personal level. You do not necessarily have to sell a product, instead, focus on topics that the audience want to know about and conveniently supports your brand.

Integrate influencer marketing with content marketing

Influencer marketing has been around since, well, influencers. And it is definitely not cheap. Brands willingly splurge on well-known personalities to promote their product/services to somewhat of a cult following. The loyalty that fans hold for the influencers is easily converted to revenue.

Over the years, influencer marketing has developed a stigma of being inauthentic. This poses the issue of ads being difficult to trust and being just another paid promotion.

Content marketing, on the other hand, focuses on cost-effectiveness. These two methods hand-in-hand could make your marketing strategy more valuable for consumers above simply boosting awareness.

A mistake some startups make is that they focus on just one of the two, rather than on everything. We did an interesting take on the difference between evergreen content and topical content that is quite detailed.

Long story short, is that you need both evergreen and topical content. After all, why is topical content necessary if evergreen content lasts? There are actually a few important reasons for this. One of them is that spike in views that topical content should create. Regularly publishing topical content leads to consistent spikes, benefiting your brand and boosting your potential leads.

Additionally, by utilising both strategies together, you can show that your brand is a thought leader. You can show those who visit your website that you are knowledgeable about the elements of the industry that will never change, such as how to complete relevant tasks. You also show that you remain up-to-date with relevant industry advances and events. Clients always want to work with companies that are aware of the latest methods and products, as these tend to lead to the best results.

Conclusion

Content marketing is a very valuable tool for startups that are looking to scale and doing it right will mean efficient and effective use of your resources. Just start small and grow your content marketing efforts from there, because every journey does start with a single step.