5 Problems Startups Have With Content Marketing

A little memo about healthy content marketing

It is somewhat unfair when people implement an interesting idea and then see it sinking due to poor outbound communication. I thought I’d share a biased perspective on some of the prominent problems young projects can have with their efforts and content marketing in particular. Here’s what I came up with.

Can’t Explain the Product and Its Benefits

If people don’t understand what it is and why it is good, they won’t buy it. It is true for anything from heavy machinery to delivery services. For those who work on the product day in and day out it can be hard to clearly explain why others should use it.

Describe the product from the customer’s point of view. You may be proud of those top-notch tools and only the best raw materials, but it doesn’t necessarily ring any bell for the end user. Instead, tell them how the product or service will make their life better and how to get the most out of it. If you want to, keep the technicalities for people who will understand them. Which leads us to the next point.

Produce Wrong Content for Wrong Media

Different audiences appreciate different things. An article full of complicated technical details will find no response in a publication about celebrities and lifestyle. Similarly, an article lacking such details will look awkward in a specialized magazine for tech geeks.

Study the audience and speak accordingly. If you have a business project, you probably already know your typical client. Most likely there are only a few types of potential buyers. They read certain types of articles, have that much money, and are willing to spend this much time on your content. All you have to do is adjust your messages and the channels you put them through. But to see what works best, you have to analyze the response.

Neglect Analytics

If you don’t know what works and what doesn’t, you essentially don’t know what to do. Even if you think that you make just the right content for the right people, it is always better to check the numbers.

Track your marketing performance and test different approaches. As simple as that. You try different articles for each particular outlet or audience segment and see which topics and writing styles work better. Then you refine the best tactics and measure again. As long as you keep collecting and analyzing the data, eventually you’ll find several most viable formats to go with. And then you try something new and exciting.

Promise Too Much

Of course, a young and growing project is something to be excited about. It may look like your products will revolutionize the market and end poverty across the world. You believe in your team and want to tell everybody that you will change lives. Unfortunately, this may not be the case.

Build your messages on the actual facts and be conservative about the future. Even if your project is outstandingly good, loud promises never look credible. It would look even worse if you underdeliver, which sadly is a common thing. Assess your capacity objectively, be honest with yourself and your customers, and be conservative about your expectations.

Skip Content Marketing Altogether

Having no content marketing may be the least obvious problem with content marketing. While there is hardly any business that doesn’t put at least some effort in content, young projects may be reluctant to spend time and money needed for a decent strategy. After all, both resources are scarce to them.

Start small and keep quality over quantity. The magic of content is that you can make it good without large budgets and top creative bureaus. Since you have a business, your team has the expertise needed to make this business work. Therefore, you can share this expertise with your content. You can educate and explain the benefits of your product right from the start.

Bottomline

Content marketing is important, and not just on the discovery stage of your sales funnel. It is not that difficult to come up with key outbound messages and kick off the communication. Eventually you will learn what works best and get bigger budgets, along with bigger audiences. I hope that this quick roundup will help you bring your project to the right audience.