Why you can’t ignore content as an early-stage startup

Is content marketing really important for your startup?

Tereza Litsa

Published in

The Startup

7 min readMay 7, 2018

It’s not easy being an early-stage startup when priorities keep changing and your future is still unclear.

How can you grow your business to ensure a viable future?
What’s the best way to reach the right people?
Will your customers like your product?
Will investors be tempted to pay attention to your business?
How can you convince all of them of your value?

When important questions about your company’s future come up, it’s common to overlook ‘marketing stuff’ to favour business development and sales.

I understand you need to prove a sign of growth and most importantly, you need to be able to cover your expenses.

I’ve been exposed to many startup environments through the years and I’ve chatted with many startup enthusiasts in their early stages.

Many people seem to acknowledge the power of content marketing but when it comes to getting practical, it gets harder to justify its cost.

Content sometimes feel like a ‘luxury’ and you may end up hiring an intern to ‘do some writing for the blog and manage the social accounts.’

Does this sound familiar?

You may be lucky and the intern may do a good job of setting up a content and social presence. Or you may be not. An intern is hungry to learn and grow, which is great, but doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to showcase an appealing content and social presence.

It’s time to treat content marketing more seriously

What you need is someone to help you put content marketing at the forefront of your business growth.

When you’re at a stage that you want to reach more people and engage with potential customers, content can be a great ally.

Content and social media offer the potential of reaching a new audience that may be interested in your business. There is an opportunity of finding bigger success than cold calls and traditional advertising.

It’s not necessarily more expensive, but it certainly requires your approval of paying the appropriate attention to this area.

I’ve had many interviews in the past for startup roles as a Content Marketing Manager and I’ve had very interesting conversations. Most people were interested in using my experience to grow their online presence when they had already realised that they need to invest in content and social.

However, there’s a big difference between a thought and a practical action. I’ve received several emails or calls from people who told me that they’d like to work with me but they are unsure if their current budget allows a new hire.

“We’d like to stay in touch when our budget improves”

No, this doesn’t imply that I was asking for a $100k salary, but rather that several startups are still unsure of whether they can justify a content marketing role as part of their business.

What’s tricky with content marketing is that you don’t just invest money in it, but also time.

You need to be patient to see the growth and the business opportunities it can generate.

There’s no overnight success with content marketing but it can still lead to multiple benefits.

That’s why many startups are impatient to see direct results and they prefer to rely more on business development and outbound marketing.

If you’re looking for business growth then blend inbound and outbound marketing together as early as possible.

However, a combination of inbound and outbound marketing could make the perfect mix for a viable business growth that relies on different techniques that can complement each other.

Hence, if you invest in outbound marketing waiting to see the results of it, why are you still hesitant about inbound marketing?

Four ways inbound marketing can grow your startup

Add value

Use your content to add value that your target audience will enjoy. Involve social media, search marketing and email marketing to build an audience. Your content marketing should be a combination of good content and effective distribution.

Showcase your expertise

Use your existing knowledge to prove your experience in the niche industry. Your content can be the first step to brand building through the use of a unique tone of voice and an authentic storytelling.

Start thinking of your content as an opportunity to elevate your thought leadership.

This will make it easier to build trust with your new readers and eventually convert them into ambassadors or even clients.

Build relationships

Outbound marketing is not always easy. Cold calls and emails can’t be successful all the time. What if you’ve had the right content to start a conversation with a prospective client?

Use your content more strategically and create posts that will improve your lead generation process.

This adds further value to your content as you start using it with a clear purpose in mind. Moreover, it can also bring you closer to influencers or new investors and you can explore further opportunities that go beyond getting a new client. There are numerous examples to support this exception benefit!

Blend marketing and sales goals

What’s good with content marketing is that it can serve multiple goals. You may decide that your focus will be on one goal (e.g. brand awareness and thought leadership as a start), but this doesn’t mean that you can’t have secondary goals. In fact, these goals can turn soon into your primary objectives, depending on how the priorities change.

Content marketing is in between marketing and sales and it can help your startup find success between awareness, engagement and business development.

This is the sweet spot that a content marketing strategy can explore and as you start creating more content, it will be easier to measure the new opportunities for growth.

How should I start with content marketing then?

If you’re part of an early-stage startup and want to make a case for content marketing, then here are some tips on how to start.

Decide on objectives

Bring the team together (even if you’re only two people, it’s still a team) and agree on your next priorities. Decide on the objectives that you need to meet and explore how content marketing can help you with specific goals. Focus on SMART goals.

Instead of saying “I want more clients” you can say “I want to increase my SQLs by 30% in the next 6 months through content marketing”.

Prove how content marketing can bring you closer to your goals

It’s good to set realistic goals when starting with content marketing. You can’t expect from your content to land you 100 new clients every month if you’ve just started. Make a case for the rest of the team of all the reasons that could make content marketing an integral part of your growth strategy.

Start small and test different ideas

There’s no need to have a big budget to get started with content marketing. All you need is the right mindset that will help you find the benefits of a consistent content marketing presence. Keep testing different content types or ideas and try to stand out from what your competitors are already doing.

Allow time for growth

The easiest way to lose interest in content marketing is to expect unrealistic results in a short time. When starting with content marketing you need to agree on allowing a good amount of time to set up a strategy that will bring long-term benefits. You can still measure the growth in traffic, engagement, clicks and shares but the benefits can reach a higher level with the right dedication.

Seek for strategic work, don’t just create content for the sake of it

SMART goals can also be part of your content planning. A common mistake is to think of your content plan post-by-post. This may bring some positive results but it doesn’t help you in seeing a bigger picture of how each piece of content is linked to your business goals.

Moreover, you may become repetitive if you don’t focus on the content gaps and the answers to the questions you want to provide. Set up a plan and start thinking ahead to make your content more strategic.

There’s no need to push yourself to create a blog post every week if you don’t add value from one week to another.

Seek for quality rather than quantity.

The next topic will be on community building. Stay tuned!