Startups are fighting against external obstacles. Enterprises are fighting against internal ones. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This fact completely alters what you should focus on and how you should plan your content strategy for startups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This piece will correct some bad advice from people who have never grown a startup through content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n No. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t let anyone proselytize you into thinking that you, right now at this moment in time, need to invest in content marketing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It might be a good idea. It might not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It depends on your constraints, strengths and opportunities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you have enough runway to invest in a long term channel? Are you in a heavily competitive niche? Are there channels by which you can reach your target customers quickly and efficiently? Do you have the skills and experience to orchestrate an organic traffic play?<\/p>\n\n\n\n To put it bluntly, if you need leads in a week, and you have no extra dinero to put into \u201cexpensive content\u201d (more on that later), it just ain\u2019t gonna work for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s not to say you can\u2019t start laying the foundation for content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But by no means are you required to invest in any channel that isn\u2019t the highest impact activity for you. You\u2019re a startup; you\u2019re here to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While content marketing can be used to test messaging and experiment in the early days, you should wait to invest heavily in the program until you have the following in place:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product market fit refers to the process of ensuring that a product satisfies a specific market need or demand. It is the stage at which a startup has validated that its product is desirable, feasible, and viable<\/a> in the marketplace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Achieving product market fit means that a company has found a profitable business model and is ready to scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the best ways to identify this, for the context of content marketing, is whether or not you can drive conversions through cold channels like advertisements or outbound emails. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At the very least, this means you\u2019ve identified a customer segment, messaging that resonates, and a conversion funnel<\/a> that drives ROI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Positioning refers to the process of creating a unique image and identity for a startup’s product or service in the minds of its target market. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It involves identifying the unique features and benefits of the product, as well as the target market’s needs and pain points. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The goal of positioning is to differentiate the startup’s offering from its competitors and communicate its value proposition<\/a> to potential customers. This will help the startup to identify its target market and communicate effectively with its potential customers, which can lead to faster market penetration and increased sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You don\u2019t need a style guide, personas, a complex content calendar, or any too robust. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But you do need to know who you want to reach and how you want to talk to them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As I\u2019ll explain, it\u2019s harder to generate ROI with content marketing<\/a> for startups. That\u2019s the reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So you need to consider whether or not you have the resources required to move the needle in a meaningful way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I can\u2019t tell you how many prospects I\u2019ve talked to that are going up against behemoths like Intercom and Drift, but only have the marketing budget to write 1-2 blog posts per month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I have to have the tough conversation of telling them that by investing that little, they\u2019ll only be wasting money. They won\u2019t get results, and they\u2019ll just be incurring an opportunity cost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, you don\u2019t always need to sprint out of the gates. If you have a long game vision of where content can go, you can always start building the foundations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But don\u2019t expect to rank for something like \u201cbest CRM<\/a>\u201d if you\u2019re only willing to pay $200 for a blog post every 4 weeks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The biggest fallacy in SEO and content marketing is that it\u2019s free traffic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This might be true in the sense that you don\u2019t have to pay an ad network for CPMs. But that content doesn\u2019t appear out of thin air. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You have to factor in:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s another cost most people don\u2019t think about: as a startup, your content generally needs to be orders of magnitude more \u201cexpensive\u201d than that of an enterprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why? Isn\u2019t that unfair?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, but enterprises have embedded advantages that lower the \u201cmarginal cost of content.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n When marginal costs decrease, all things considered, \u201cmarginal utility\u201d increases \u2013 meaning they get more ROI from the same efforts that you put in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Image Source<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n They have an established brand (which tends to increase click-through-rates on search engines and social media content). They have an audience and email list – people to launch their content to right away. They have high domain ratings, making it easier to rank content that is subjectively lower quality than other content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They can write 5 blog posts a week and rank 4 of them by next week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Try doing that at a startup, and you\u2019re apt to waste a ton of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For further reading, check out my piece on content economics.<\/a> This explains the journey your content needs to take in order to build a flywheel, starting out expensive and differentiated and eventually scaling out into templatized, revenue producing content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are distinct advantages you have as a startup, and you\u2019ll need to lean heavily on those. Things like less red tape, founder-led content and authenticity, focus, and leverage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Say \u201ccontent marketing,\u201d and 5 different people will have 5 different ideas of what you mean. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While some include only blogging in the mix, I broaden the scope to include other channels and efforts like podcasts, social media posts, video content<\/a>, content for partnerships, sales enablement, advertising content, guest posts \/ guest blogging, and more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In that sense, you probably do need to invest in content marketing. It\u2019s just a question as to whether content marketing is a standalone revenue generating function, or if it\u2019s a supporting function for another revenue stream like sales or advertising. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The typical definition of content goes like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Content marketing is a type of digital marketing<\/a> where you create and distribute valuable content to attract and engage potential customers. This content takes many forms including blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, and more. The main goal is to create helpful content that provides value to your readers and helps them solve their problems. By doing so, you establish yourself as an authority in your industry which will help you build credibility with potential customers<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Content, done effectively, can build trust, shorten deal cycles, and generate standalone revenue. Finally, having a guide to revenue operations<\/a> can help align your content strategy with broader business objectives and enhance overall effectiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given content marketing includes all these various formats, the question is\u2026which is the right content format for my startup?<\/p>\n\n\n\n This depends on a few factors, one of the most important being your price point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Generally speaking, search engine optimization (SEO) works best for low touch sales and product-led growth. That\u2019s because you can drive direct purchases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It also works for high price points, but it\u2019s typically harder to attribute specific revenue value on content, and you\u2019ll have to build out more robust and complex funnels to capture value. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When you have a high price point and a high touch sales, content marketing indexes on events, webinars, high touch campaigns, account-based marketing content, thought leadership content, and generally things that evoke trust in your brand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Image Source<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The first step in getting started with content marketing for startups is developing a content strategy<\/a> that outlines what type of content you\u2019ll be creating and how often you\u2019ll be creating it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A strategy is just a hypothesis. No need to spend months crafting the perfect plan, but get really, really clear about your big vision and the KPIs<\/a> (key performance indicators or key metrics) that will determine if you\u2019re making progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After that, you\u2019ll want to identify which channels are the best fit for your target audience such as blogs or social media accounts like Twitter or Instagram. <\/p>\n\n\n\n From there you can start creating high-quality content tailored specifically to your target audience that adds value and solves their problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You should also pay attention to SEO best practices such as keyword research<\/a> so your content reaches more potential customers via search engines like Google or Bing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s generally a best practice<\/a> to build a content strategy that includes both short term promotion channels like social media and sales enablement (this allows for fast feedback and quick wins) as well as long term compounding promotion (like SEO and email marketing, which reduce your marginal cost over time). <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re starting from scratch, do the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether or not SEO is a core part of your startup content marketing strategy, you\u2019ll need a platform to house all of your owned assets and creative. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Blog platforms are a dime a dozen these days, but some of my favorites are the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I like these because they balance power with simplicity. Marketers can easily upload content, but they\u2019re also endlessly customizable with the help of fullstack developers<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n What you want to avoid is any platform that bottlenecks your content production flow. I\u2019ve seen way too many enterprises prevent their content team from generating ROI<\/a> simply because they can\u2019t upload and publish a damn blog post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You might need some other marketing tools, too, but keep it simple in the beginning. Use only what you need to execute on your content marketing plan<\/a>, publish and promote your content pieces, and hit your content marketing goals \/ business goals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want to get stood up on WordPress<\/a>, Webflow, Contentful, or HubSpot, shoot me an email. We’ve done some sites for household names. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While you don\u2019t need to map out your next 5 years of content topics, you should do two things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your SWOT analysis will help you identify which particular channels, topics, and tactics you\u2019ll rely on. If you’re unsure of how to perform a SWOT analysis, you can use a premade editable SWOT template<\/a> to help guide you through the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ve gotta be honest here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, if you\u2019re a new startup with zero funding and your biggest competitors are HubSpot, Intercom, and Drift, then you face some clear weaknesses and threats. Your content marketing strategy probably shouldn\u2019t be aimed at targeting high traffic keywords at the top of the funnel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps, however, your product is much lower cost and people can sign up directly for a freemium version. It serves unique pain points or audiences that the others don\u2019t. And your founder is well known in the community you\u2019re selling to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These are strengths, and your content strategy<\/a> could index on them by doing a combination of founder-lead thought leadership, influencer marketing collaborations with members of your community, and BOFU content<\/a> to drive direct sales and freemium signups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Pick things others will have trouble replicating or competing with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the early days, you don\u2019t actually know what\u2019s going to work and what\u2019s going to fail. While you want to play the long game, make sure you have methods by which you can identify what resonates and why. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Two of the best ways to do this are through sales and social media platforms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sharing content on social media quickly validates if a topic or message resonates. If it does, double down on that. If it doesn\u2019t, rework it. Be agile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sales is another way to capture immediate value with content. If your sales team is asking for case studies, ebooks, white papers, or blog posts, you can bet that it\u2019s going to be valuable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The most cost-effective way to do effective content marketing at an early-stage startup is to make sure it\u2019s going to have some positive business value, and attaching yourself to sales efforts is such an easy way to do that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n No content marketing strategy should solely index on short term feedback. Otherwise you\u2019ll constantly be on the value treadmill and you\u2019ll be at the whims of other teams\u2019 requests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Almost always, you\u2019ll want to lay the foundations for two long term efforts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n They synergize. The more SEO traffic you generate, the more verified email addresses<\/a> you can collect, and the bigger your cumulative audience gets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Laying the foundations for SEO includes two key things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Link building is a complex topic that includes both passive link acquisition as well as manual link building. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One easy way to start building links if you\u2019re a startup is to use HARO<\/a>. Journalists are looking for expert sources, so just respond to a few every day and over time you\u2019ll build up your website authority (making it easier and easier to rank your content in search engines). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like I said, your content has to be amazing. It has to be better than the incumbents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the early days, focus on producing fewer pieces of higher quality. Later, you can scale production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And in the early days, overindex on content distribution.<\/a> No one is going to care or hear about your content if you don\u2019t reach them proactively. Manual outreach to influencers, guest blogging, social media marketing\u2026all ways to get eyes on your content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And join some communities where your target audience hangs out. It doubles as intel gathering as well as a content promotion pool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Facing the disadvantages of less budget, resources, and embedded audience \/ brand value, it\u2019s important to find the edge that you uniquely can exploit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Five of my favorite startup content marketing strategies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n One unique advantage you have as a startup is your company was probably founded on a contrarian insight. You set out to solve a gap in the market. Therefore, you probably have some unique takes on what people should be doing differently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Use this, as well as your unique and authentic experience as the company founder, to drive home the message your product is solving. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Use LinkedIn, Hacker News, Slack groups, your Medium blog\u2026whatever. Write unpolished, stylistically horrendous pieces that only you could write. Experience is the most expensive asset. Use it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Each individual piece of content at this stage should be epic, honest, and differentiated. Eventually, you won\u2019t have time to spend on this stuff, but in the early days, you\u2019re killing many birds with one stone: getting market validation, testing messaging, acquiring early customers through your network, and honing your thinking through writing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When you employ some people, leverage your team to create a \u201csurround sound effect.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Take your centralized content marketing assets and messaging (probably via your podcast or your blog) and build a platform on which each and every individual employee can build a personal brand by promoting your message. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We use LinkedIn for this. Every week we three founders publish 5X per week and our team is incentivized to publish as much as they can. We incentivize the team through lead generation referral fees as well as silly gamification contests to see who reaches the most people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This strategy is hard to operationalize, but it\u2019s extremely effective for high ticket B2B companies like SaaS and services businesses. Further reading on the strategy here. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n One disadvantage you\u2019ll face is the lack of an embedded audience and low domain rating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One way to overcome that is to leverage the networks of influencers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Easy: include them in your content. <\/a>Get them on your podcast. Invite them to your webinars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Advanced: appear on podcasts, webinars, and guest posts at high traffic publications. Bring your message to their audiences and pull them over to you over time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Use Sparktoro<\/a> and your own painstaking research to see which influencers your target market listens to and trusts. A tool for analyzing influencers<\/a> metrics can be of great help here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You either die a thought leader or live long enough to see yourself become an SEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Basically, you\u2019re going to invest in search at some point. Search is a long term channel, like gardening or farming, so it\u2019s best to plant the seeds earlier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n HubSpot, for example, has a massive moat because they started blogging in like 1932. Now they can write a blog post on crypto or some nonsense that they don\u2019t even sell, and they\u2019ll outrank you the next day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So while you\u2019re engaged in the other channels, do this: build links and create pillar pieces that correspond to your core company value propositions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 10X content for the pillar pieces. They shouldn\u2019t target bullshit like \u201cwhat is [keyword]\u201d but something like \u201cbest [keyword] software.\u201d You won\u2019t rank immediately, but you\u2019re building topical authority and planting seeds for the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Build links in a natural and low maintenance way. Don\u2019t build spammy links through mass outreach. Respond to HARO and journalist requests. Take advantage of PR events like fundraising<\/a>, feature launches, partnerships, and trends. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Leverage your partners and current customers for links. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Do things incrementally that add up over time, and then when you\u2019re in a competitive position to invest in SEO, go hard and scale content creation. Commit<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Product-Led SEO was coined by Eli Schwartz, and it\u2019s a blue ocean strategy that uses your product\u2019s unique features, value proposition, and assets to wedge your way into a scaled SEO play that others can\u2019t easily compete with.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDoes Your Startup Need to Do Content Marketing?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
When Your Startup Should Invest in Content Marketing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Product \/ Market Fit<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Positioning <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Sufficient Resources<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Content Marketing For Startups (Why It’s Different Than Enterprises)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
![\"](\"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image3.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nBack Up\u2026What is Content Marketing?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s Your Price Point?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"](\"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image1.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nHow To Get Started With Content Marketing For Startups?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Content Marketing for Startups Foundations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
1. Get a blog platform<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
2. SWOT analysis and basic content strategy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
3. Generate fast feedback<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
4. Lay the foundations for long term compounding channels<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
5. Produce amazing content and focus on distribution<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
5 Content Marketing Strategies for Startups<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
1. Founder-Led Content Marketing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
2. Decentralized Content Marketing: Goliath vs an Army of Davids<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
3. Leverage Influencers Early and Often<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
4. Building the Foundations of SEO Content Marketing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
5. Product-Led SEO <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"](\"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image2-3-1024x522.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Content](\"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Content-Strategy-framework-1024x535.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n