How Today’s Startups Can Be Lucrative With Efficient Content Marketing

In recent years, startups have become the lifeline of the country. Not only do they come up with creative solutions to problems we did not know existed, but they also offer a much better value to the customer. With the US and China being the pioneers in the field, India has now established itself as one of the most startup-friendly countries in the world. As per NASSCOM reports, with 18 unicorn startups, India stands at the 3rd position on a global scale. Bangalore itself has 7200 to 7700 startups at the moment. The recent Union Budget rolled out a series of incentives (including the much talked about Angel tax evasion) that will prove beneficial for the startups.

Now, while such changes in economic policies will help to take care of the funding issues that startups face, the other challenges of startups remain unaffected. Among them, the most towering one is the challenge of creating brand awareness. Startups dream of converting a potential customer who browses the website into a customer. Sadly, most of the time, they do not succeed. In today’s digital world where too much information is available online, it is very difficult to reach out to the target group and create such an impact on them that they become your loyal customers.

In such a situation, the only savior for startups is quality content marketing. Fancy websites and apps will be deemed useless unless they are supported by effective content marketing. Read on to know how effective content marketing can take startups to newer heights of monetary success.

1. Your website is your office

In today’s age and time, potential customers do not have the time to visit your workplace physically. So, for a startup, it is important to treat the website as a virtual office. The potential customer does not have a lot of time to go through it. Hence it is important that the content of the website should be engaging enough for them to get to know of the startup’s nature of work within the first 2 to 3 minutes of visiting the website. As this is the most crucial part of getting new customers, it is best that startups hire professionals for this. Godot Media, Write Right and Niswey are some of the best service providers in this regard. Also, note that it is important for the website to foster two-way communication with a potential customer by allowing them easy contact options. Having multiple communication options (like SMS, call and email) will pay off well.

2. Understanding the customer

There are different types of customers and they all have different reading preferences. It is important to identify the target audience for your startup to be able to give them what they want. To find out the technical skills of your potential customers and their approximate age group. This will determine whether your content will have industry jargon or if it will be written in a manner that a layman can understand. Once a potential customer can connect with what your website is telling them, they will be able to relate better to you. This would mean a higher profit for your organization.

3. Catering to mobile customers

Most commercial websites have about 75 to 80% of their traffic coming from mobile handsets. This creates a new set of challenges for startups. The screen size is now brought down considerably. The person accessing the website may be doing so from any place now and may not have access to pen and paper. In such a situation, effective content marketing techniques (like using shorter sentences) can cater to these changes and ensure that the client is not at an inconvenience at any point.

4. Keep the content meaningful and entertaining

Understandably, people are visiting your website for business and they need to get work done. In the points discussed above, you have already catered to that. Now, just like when someone visits your office to get some work done, you try to establish a good rapport while getting doing the work, you must do the same through your website as well. As stated earlier, the website is now your virtual office. This can be achieved by writing articles, anecdotes and sharing relevant news or facts. Anything that allows a potential customer to know your company as a brand (or you as a person for that matter) will help in your content marketing strategies and bring in more cash for your startup. If you do not know how to do this effectively, you can seek the help of professional content writers like Bhavik Sarkhedi who have prior experience of writing engaging content that the audience can connect to.

5. Monitor the digital plan

Enthusiastic startups generally invest a lot of time and effort in planning their social media campaigns and then they act on it. But after that, they get into the rush of things and forget all about it. They do not monitor the plan and as a result, after a point, there is no optimization of digital media activities. That is where the downfall begins. The golden rule of effective content marketing is that it should be adoptive and one must keep it updated. If, as a startup, you get too busy with delivering your initial clients, try to hire professionals for the content marketing bit. This investment will pay off as it will ensure a steady flow of clients for your organization.

6. Highlight unique company endeavors

Most startups in India are powered by a high amount of creativity. But most often firms are unable to put that across to a potential customer. Understand that someone who is looking to do business with you will visit several other websites as well. Quite a bit of the service that you are about to give him will be offered by your competitors as well. If you can point out things that are unique to your startup, you will have their attention. Subsequently, chances of them choosing you over others are higher. Now, despite doing the best of work, sometimes startups fail to identify what to highlight and what not to. If you are hiring a content marketing team for your website, it is advisable that you take their opinion on this. As professionals, they understand the user psychology better.

7. Do not be afraid to share what you know

A lot of startups believe that they must not let out how they get the things done. This is the wrong approach. When people go through your website and see what they like, they are interested. But, if you get into the details of how you got it done (at least partially), they will be able to see the passion with which you are doing it. By displaying your knowledge on the subject, you are proving your credibility as a service provider. This will prompt them to choose your business over other similar service providers. Thus, while it is important that your business tells a potential client all that you do in the first few minutes of visiting the website, it must not disappoint those who want to get to the depth of things. Some of the most successful businesses (like E-Myth, EOS, Worldwide, etc.) had adopted this technique on their path to success.

8. Do not ignore the data analytics

No matter how well funded a startup is, if they want to join the Unicorn bandwagon, they cannot afford to be prodigal. While keeping a track of every penny spent by the firm is important, it is equally important to find out the status of their digital marketing campaigns. Work on the data analytics and bring down both the Cost Per Click (CPC) and the Cost Per Thousand (CPM) as much as possible. A detailed study of data analytics of an organization will help you understand the content needs of the startup. Then, various content marketing tips may be used to give the organization the type of profits it had always wanted. Most content marketing service providers are intellectually equipped to help you with these as well.

It is important to realize that none of the Unicorn startups that we know of had perfect content marketing strategies from the very beginning. All of them made mistakes, learned from them and then rectified the flaws. You too should do the same. With 72% of B2C content marketers producing more content as compared to 2018, things might look challenging for small businesses. However, it is important that you do not lose hope and work on creating rich, keyword-optimized content (that is not plagiarized). Start by identifying the objective of your firm. If you want to raise awareness go for CPM. If more traffic is what you need, there is always CPC.

On a positive note, according to a Forbes report, 56% of businesses lack a content marketing strategy altogether. In such a situation, if your startup can make the most of it, you already have a head start. Thus, irrespective of whether your startup is B2B or B2C, content marketing strategies will help you get home the big bucks and climb up the ladder of professional success.