Boost Startup Growth with This Proven Content Marketing Strategy

Imagine sitting back and enjoying the day while new leads flow into your website. Sounds great, right?

It’s possible with a winning content marketing strategy!

Today I will show you the exact steps to create an effective content marketing plan that brings in new customers. Automatically. With a proven framework that some of the most successful startups use.

→ How to create a content marketing strategy that drives growth.
→ Insights and pro-tips for maximum success.

Let's dive in.

When you want to get new customers, you can choose from 19 different marketing channels. For example, direct sales, social media marketing or offline ads.

In my career, I've tried almost every channel, but my all-time favorite - the one that successful startups rely on - is content marketing. Content marketing means creating valuable assets for your audience, such as ebooks, blog articles or videos.

The goal is to provide value, build trust and ultimately drive people to your main offer. But content marketing isn't just about creating random content and hoping for the best. You need a clear, effective strategy.

Let me show you how to create an effective content marketing strategy in 7 steps.

The first step is to identify your Personas - the people who would eventually buy what you sell. Your goal is to understand who your customers are and create content that's specifically valuable to them.
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The best way to define your audience is to answer these three questions:

• What keeps my customers up at night?
• What motivates them to solve their problems?
• What is their desired future state?

These are three powerful questions that will help you truly understand your customers. It's the only way to create content that resonates with them.

Before we start any marketing strategy, it is important to know what we want to achieve and how we will measure success.

Do we want our content marketing plan to increase awareness, do we want to get new customers immediately, do we need to build trust?

To stay on track, we use SMART goals.
SMART stands for:

• Specific (clearly define what you want to achieve)
• Measurable (make sure you can track success)
• Achievable (set realistic goals)
• Relevant (make sure it is relevant to your business success)
• Time-Bound (set a deadline)

This is how your goals should be. An example of a poorly written goal would be 'We want to reach more people'. I mean, everyone has a different idea of what it means to reach more people.

However, if you write it like this, 'Write 3 blog articles to attract 100 additional visitors per month to our website by the end of the quarter', it will be clear what you want to achieve.

This is probably the most overlooked step in building a successful content marketing strategy. You need to choose the right kind of content. And that's why it's so important to first understand who your customers are.

For example, if your audience prefers video content but you're only creating blog articles, you won't reach them effectively.

Here are two tips to help you choose the right type and format of content.

If you're already using content marketing, review your existing content and see what resonates with your customers. Analyze the performance of different content types to understand what works with your target audience.

If you're just starting out, look at the latest industry trends and what your competitors are doing. This will help you identify what types of content might be relevant to your audience.

For example, one industry trend we see is super-short videos (like TikTok or YouTube Stories). If you only create long videos, you may find that your drop-off rates increase, or that people don't even click on your videos because they're just too long.

Even if these trends don't immediately make sense for your business or marketing strategy, it's good to know about them because you can use them later.

Great content is only one piece of the puzzle. The other is the right channel. So think about which channel your audience prefers.

• Are they primarily on social media?
• Do they use Google to find answers to their questions?
• Is YouTube their go-to place?

In short, choose the right channels for your content, because if you choose the wrong channels, you won't reach your audience - even if your content is excellent.

Here is my pro tip for you:
I recommend a multi-channel approach. You can do this by repurposing your content for different channels. For example, you can write a blog post on your website to get organic traffic from Google. Based on the text, create a YouTube video. From the long YouTube video, create short videos for Instagram or TikTok - you get the idea.

Reuse your content, you don't have to create everything from scratch.

When you start content marketing, I always recommend that you set a budget for it. But setting a reasonable budget for content marketing can be tricky because it can be difficult to measure costs.

If you're using ads, it's easy because you know exactly what the ad costs, but if you're creating blog posts or YouTube videos, it can be harder to calculate the cost.

Here's what I recommend:
Write down all the steps it takes you or an employee to create a piece of content. For example, if you're creating a YouTube video, list the steps like this:
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1. Create the script
2. Record the video
3. Create the assets
4. Edit the video
5. Write the description
6. Publish

Then measure the time it takes for each step and multiply that by the hourly rate of your average employee.

This will give you a good idea of what it costs to make a piece of content. This way, you can create a budget and quickly see how much output you can get for your investment.

Many companies start content marketing but stop within the first 3 months. Why is this? Because it's a lot of work and unless you're paying for traffic, it takes time to grow.

If you're not aware of this, you won't stay in the game. Having a professional content calendar is the game changer. A content calendar keeps you on track.

The key to content marketing is consistency: You post something valuable the first week, the next week, the next week, and so on. That's why a calendar is so powerful.

But there is another benefit to a content calendar - you can easily track and manage all your content in one place, plan your content in advance and optimize your content distribution.

There is a lot of content calendar software out there - but if you want to keep your costs down, a simple Excel spreadsheet will do the trick.

You have identified your audience. You have set your SMART goals, you know what content is right for your Personas, and you are using a content calendar. Now it's time for the final step - creating and publishing the content.

Here are 3 pro tips for maximum success:

One of the most important skills to learn is how to write compelling headlines - this will not only help you get traffic on YouTube, but also when writing content for your website.

The reason why copywriting is so important is because if you don't get it right, people just won't click. Good copywriting is a must.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In simple terms, it means identifying the keywords your target audience uses when they search on Google or YouTube, and using those keywords in your content.

Always make sure you know what keywords your target audience is using, and then use those keywords in the content you publish. That's how people will find your content.

Each platform is unique - in terms of its user base and content consumption patterns. Compare these platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Twitch, TikTok, YouTube. They are completely different, although they obviously have some similarities.

Depending on the channel you want to use, you need to find the best practices - and then tailor your content to the specific preferences of each platform.

This is how content marketing works. You create valuable content for your audience to find you, and then you lead them naturally to your main offer. If you follow these steps, you will be well on your way to building an online community that not only trusts you, but is eager to buy what you have to offer once you lead them to it.

Content marketing is just one of 19 marketing channels, but - there are more marketing channels that would work perfectly for your business to get new customers.

If you want to learn how to find the best marketing channels for your business, check out my Marketing Channel Bundle.

Stop wasting money on mass marketing and start finding new customers for your business!