Content marketing is just like food shopping.

What happens when you go food shopping without a list? You spend too much & get a bunch of stuff you don’t need. It’s a waste of time, more expensive & the outcome is often disappointing.

The same happens when you create & push content without a strategy.

A solid content strategy is the shopping list that makes your supermarket trip successful.

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💭 What is a content strategy?

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It’s a plan to help you reach your business goals through the creation & distribution of content. In this case, the goal is growth & every piece of content must contribute to that goal.

Although it’s a plan, we need to leave space for testing & evolving the strategy. This is the best way to squeeze as much success from the strategy as possible.

You want to see what channels work best for your audience, what content resonates best & what formats are best to distribute that content.

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💡 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing as a critical channel for growth, why?

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Simple, it’s cost-effective. And when done well, it works.

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Traditional marketing is all about interrupting a consumer’s experience with ads. Whereas content marketing is all about providing value & creating that all-important demand naturally, without them feeling they’re being marketed to.

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✏️ For example, if a mental health startup notices their audience is coming up with questions about tracking anxieties throughout the day, they may create a blog post that shares simple solutions for keeping track of your thoughts throughout the day.

It answers a question their audience is already asking.

To then squeeze more out of this single piece of content, they can repurpose it across their other channels & in different formats such as:

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• Webinar

• Multiple social media posts
• An email/newsletter
• Gated content
• Infographics
• PR pieces
• Podcast episode

This is called content repurposing. And it’s what makes content marketing so cost-effective (more on repurposing another day 😉).

In turn, making content marketing such a powerful tool amongst marketing teams in startups. You’re listening to your audience & creating hundreds of pieces of content seamlessly.

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✅ Example in the real world: HomeViews

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All their content, specifically their blog, really captures what their audience wants to hear about. And the delivery is great.

HomeViews’ blog talks about a variety of topics & they aim to keep it simple with many of their posts being lists or really simple guides. They post consistently & regularly push their readers to other pieces of content on their website, making sure they’re keeping them onsite & engaged with different areas of content.

The content is always super engaging & highly valuable. And they do a great job of repurposing it across other channels like LinkedIn too. Squeezing as much as they can out of single pieces of content - we know how important this is.  

In conclusion, in the early days of your startup & beyond, content marketing needs to be the centre of mind & a really important part of your overall strategy. The difference can be huge.

Key takeaways:

👉 Make sure you actually have a strategy in place rather than winging it. Even if this strategy is chopped & changed regularly.

👉 Repurpose to your heart’s content.  

👉 Really listen to the questions your audience is asking.

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Throughout July, I’m going to be sharing more on why content marketing is such an important part of startup growth. So let me know if you have any questions I can answer. Come back next week, I’ll be talking about which channels you should be existing on & which ones to avoid 👀