Content marketing is one of those things that sounds good to a lot of startup teams. By giving people valuable content, you encourage them to come back to your website time and time again. It keeps the leads pouring in, without seeming pushy.
So you pump out blog posts, videos, newsletters, guest articles, ebooks...and zip. Three or four months down the line and you see it’s doing nothing for your traffic, nothing for your sales, and nothing for your profit margin. In fact, it all seems like a big waste of time. So, what’s up?
Startups make a number of common mistakes that reduce the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts. Luckily, just a few small tweaks could get things back on track.
Here, we get to the bottom of the problem and look at the five things startups often get wrong about content marketing. Then we take a look at what you should do to start really benefiting from your content.
1. Having Vague Objectives
It’s all too easy to write a blog just for the sake of it, or to send out regular newsletters because you have a mailing list. The truth is, without a well-constructed objective that sets out your criteria for success, you are in danger of working aimlessly and wasting your time.
So how do you make sure your startup content marketing goals are effective?
SMART objectives are key tools for content marketers. While there are a few versions of the acronym, the one I prefer stands for:
- Specific: What exactly will you achieve?
- Measurable: How much will you do?
- Attainable: Can you do it?
- Relevant: Does it align with your wider business goals?
- Timely: When will it be complete?
SMART objectives ensure that your work has an aim that ties into your wider startup strategy. They also help you understand how effective your output is. Here’s an example:
We will assign our creative team (attainable) ten 1,200-word, funnel-aligned articles on the topic of hair and nail care (specific) by the end of next month (timely), with the aim of linking to our Facebook re-targeting campaign (relevant) and increasing the mailing list by 10% (measurable).
If you’re not sure you can produce a true SMART objective, simply answer the questions above in order and you can’t go wrong. You can also use these objectives to help set relevant key performance indicators (KPIs). This will make sure that you and your team are on the right track.
2. Misunderstanding the Buyer’s Journey
You have probably seen the funnel-shaped buyer’s journey before. It starts with awareness, moves to consideration and ends with conversion. But what does this really mean? Many startup marketers take it to mean awareness of the product, consideration of the product, and finally, buying the product. But, where content marketing is concerned, this approach is too product-focused. In reality, the buyer’s journey is all about the customer and their needs. It looks something like this:
Awareness
A person becomes aware of a problem, so they start looking for solutions: “I want to move to the US, what are the entry requirements?”
Consideration
They become aware of a range of problems and solutions, so they start to compare them: “How do I prove my English language ability to my future employer?”
Interest
Finally, they look in detail at which solution is right for them: “Which English language exam is right for me?”
Your aim is to provide value to your customer, so they see you as a trusted resource, and later as a viable option. If you want your content to be effective, it’s therefore essential to know at which stage in the buyer’s journey it is meant for. This will determine the types of questions your content is answering and the value you deliver to your audience.
It’s important not to be salesy or pushy during the awareness or consideration stages, since the customer is not yet ready to buy. They just want solid, useful information so they can decide on the best option.
Of course, you should still give them an option to sign up to your mailing list and re-target them with relevant ads, if that’s part of your strategy.
3. Writing about What You Think Is Important
We’re often surprised by our customers, their needs and what they want to know. Guessing or assuming things about clients can be a big mistake. It can lead us to waste lots of valuable time that could be spent creating truly useful content.
So how can we find out about our customers?
We can survey and interview our current clients to get their feedback, and we can also use a number of helpful tools to tap into the internet hivemind:
Keyword Research
SEO research might sound like it’s for search engines, but it’s really about getting to know your audience. Ubersuggest and Google Keyword Planner are helpful free tools that give us an idea of what our targets are searching for.
To use these tools, simply input a topic word and the tools will show you the search volume this keyword gets, and suggest other related words. This will help you see whether the topic you’ve chosen is something people are interested in and help you optimize your articles and content for the search engine results pages.
Search Queries
Once you have confirmed your topic is worth writing about, put your search term in the Google search bar (in incognito or private mode). Then type in, one at a time, the letters of the alphabet. You’ll see a range of common search terms, which are perfect to spark ideas for future content, and even better for SEO:
You can also find lots of great content ideas in the “people also ask” box on Google:
Google Trends
Google Trends is another simple yet effective tool to see search trends online. It can be used to decide whether a topic is growing or decreasing in popularity and whether it is worth writing about. It can also show you:
- Where in the world a search term is popular
- Related search terms
- A comparison of two or more terms
- Popularity over time and seasonal popularity
Answerthepublic
Answer the public is an amazing freemium tool that shows you all the questions people are asking about a certain topic online. It allows you to download the PNG (image) files and spreadsheets of all their questions to help you formulate new content ideas.
4. Trying to Please Everybody
As Seth Godin said, “Everyone is not your customer.” The same goes for your content: if you’re writing for everybody, you’re writing for nobody.
Buyer personas—also known as customer avatars—help you focus your content on a specific type of person. They help you to write with an audience and allow you to answer their questions and doubts. In other words, you can help them solve the problems they’re facing on the buyer’s journey.
These profiles should be based on the different types of people who buy from you. Include a range of information:
- A (made-up) name
- Age
- Location
- Related interests
- Problems/challenges
- Goals (personal and professional)
- Favorite social media channels
- Any other information relevant to your objectives
You can base these profiles on your current customers, on frequently asked questions, on survey and focus group results, as well as more general research you do online. Use the tools in point three to help you discover more about them.
5. Not Having an Action Plan
Last, but not least, one of the biggest mistakes a startup can make is not having a content marketing action plan in place. Without one, you’re in danger of posting inconsistently, missing your targets and focusing too heavily on one stage of the buyer’s journey over another.
A solid plan will outline what needs to be done, who needs to do it and when it needs to be completed. This will help keep your marketing efforts on track and moving along.
With this in mind, you’ll be able to put your own content strategy in place, and make a real impact on your market. Good luck and start getting creative!
George Chilton is creative director of content marketing agency Hubbub Labs. You can follow him on Twitter at: @designerlessons and Hubbub Labs at: @hubbublabs.