“Focusing is about saying ‘no’” – Steve Jobs. In this article we list a few reasons why content … [+]
One of the biggest general problems you’ll face as an early-stage startup founder is trying to achieve too much with too few resources. The general principle of solving this problem is to focus your efforts as much as possible – forgo scope in order to achieve higher depth.
This is also true for your marketing efforts – there would be dozens of startup marketing strategies worth employing for your project, however, you simply wouldn’t have the capacity to implement all of them effectively. The key is to choose which one would be the most impactful for your project.
“Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things. You have to pick carefully.” – Steve Jobs
Of course, this is easier said than done. To help you out, below we’ll list a few reasons why content marketing might be the thing worth choosing.
1. Could Be Done On A Budget
Content marketing could be very expensive if you do high-value video productions. It could also be extremely inexpensive if you decide to write content for your blog or social media profiles. In this case, the only direct cost would be your time.
This is great for an obvious reason – in the early startup stages, you don’t have access to a lot of capital. What you have is the time of the founders, and investing it in a well-thought-out content marketing strategy could pay dividends in the long run.
Conveniently, you can increase the resources you invest in content marketing as you grow. Initially, you can do it as lean as possible. Eventually, once your project enters its growth stage and you’ve established that it’s worth the investment, you can increase your content marketing budget significantly in order to increase your growth rate.
2. Could Be Used To Validate Your Ideas
Content is one of the quickest ways to validate ideas in the very early stages of your project. You can judge the intensity of a customer problem by writing about it and distributing your content where your target market is likely to hang out. The interest in your piece of content and the discussion your posts would generate could give you valuable insights into your market.
Moreover, your content could generate your first leads, which you can use for customer interviews and of course – for sales of your product or service.
3. Could Scale Exponentially
Last but certainly not least, the most important trait of content marketing is that it has very high growth potential.
First, it can grow steadily if you are providing value to the people consuming your content because they are likely to recommend it to their peers. Alternatively, the algorithms of the platform on which you are publishing could also help you to grow your audience if your content is providing the algorithm with good engagement statistics.
Second, almost any content on the internet has the potential to go viral. While virality is extremely hard to engineer, it is not out of the ordinary to receive out-of-proportion attention for specific pieces of content (this is valuable information when it comes to validating the interest of your target market). As a startup, you can push the boundaries of what you can do with your content more than established corporations, which gives you a competitive advantage in this regard.
Third, some forms of content have a very long lifespan. Generally speaking, content marketing doesn’t have a big short-term impact unless you pair it with PPC campaigns. The reason is that it takes a long time to build an audience (or to rank on Google through SEO). That said, in the long run, evergreen content can continue bringing attention to your project long after you’ve stopped actively investing in it.
In conclusion, content marketing could give you an extremely good bang for your buck if done intelligently. While it might not be the best fit for your project, it likely is one of the strongest candidates for the marketing strategy of choice for the average tech startup.
