The Most Effective Startup Strategy in 2020

A newborn startup will absolutely struggle during its life-time as nowadays there is way more competition for any online business than it was before.

For example, a B2C online e-commerce store is something you will find everywhere online. Big brands, small companies, family businesses, single entrepreneurs, housewives – anyone will set a business online and try to promote it.

IT startups and any kind of entrepreneurship offering services represent a vast field of startups.

Importance of marketing for startups

So, how do they survive with such a high number, competition, and variety? Of course, the major thing is to have a proper investment for your startup and to plan your strategy according to the funds you have.

Sometimes startups miscalculate the demand, trends, marketing efforts need, and funds. It is not enough just to offer a cool thing. #1 in this case would be how you market it.

Many great startups could not survive because of poor marketing. Especially, it happens with developer startups when they go too much into the product and don’t boost their marketing.

Marketing should be planned way ahead of the product’s final development. (In this case, it is not only about IT startups)

What is the best marketing strategy for a startup?

It is not fair to pick just one strategy. The best option is a mixture of a few powerful channels with their own strategy.

Content marketing strategy for a young startup

Content is still a leader in website promotion. Though it is not a new thing. Almost every far-looking website generates content on a 2-3 days’ basis. As you know, regular content updates will boost your indexation. Driving traffic via content on various topics will extend your focus and bring new flows of engaged users.

Now, it is all about really valuable, highly relevant content that will actually help people to achieve their goals in finding what they need.

The further it goes, the more intelligent Google algorithms become. It is not just about populating void content as it used to be with buying links a couple of decades ago.

Now, the trick is to build content that will overpass your competitors by bringing more value and solving people’s problems faster.

It is about solving problems. The content is the solution for anyone browsing on Google. Proper content may drive convertible traffic to a new-born startup.

The downside of the content strategy is that it usually takes time to bring fruits. It may take from a few weeks to a few months until your content becomes popular on Google and drives traffic. Some content might never show up even being indexed and ranked somewhere on Google.

The best thing about this content strategy is to get your content plan ready together with the whole content marketing strategy. Once done, start creating and publishing content at a fast-growing speed.

As soon as seeds are planted, that’s when the content becomes growing. The content machine is non-stop and persistent. Building fresh content is indispensable marketing activity though some startups ignore it.

How will the content strategy work?

• New content will attract people to your website. Most of them will be driven by the topic you expose in your article (obviously somehow related to your goods or services).
• The first step is to offer a valuable solution for newcomers, to be a helpful expert, and to capture the contact of your visitor.
• The next and most important step is to nurture your leads by implementing a strategy of reminding them about your product or service (via email marketing, remarketing Ads, and other marketing efforts).

Why content strategy and lead nurturing is so important for startups?

First of all, it is one of the most affordable sources of gaining new clients compared to paid advertising.

Along with social media, you can reach out to your leads any time and plan your efforts accordingly.

TOP-5 content marketing objectives for a startup

Build brand awareness

It is all about building strong KPIs with your startup team. Once KPIs are set you can definitely focus and work on your main goals. Brand awareness is probably the most important goal for any company.

Customer education

It is quite important to educate your potential customers about the value of your product, the credibility of your company, and again to boost brand awareness.

Customer engagement

It goes along with customer education. It is the driving force of your customer acquisition. Engagement gives your brand a unique personality and leadership. That is how you build your trust among potential consumers.

Brand loyalty

The content should be valuable for your audience as well as entertaining to keep them on your website and to let them make it viral. Altogether it provides a powerful impact on brand loyalty.

Recruitment

If your startup intends to grow, one good objective is to encourage talent seeking and recruitment. Your employees can also promote the startup via content sharing.

SEO as a part of the content marketing strategy for a startup

Search engine optimization has become an indispensable part of any content marketing efforts. Nothing goes well without SEO optimization. For a young startup, SEO can be affordable and easy. Now, there are way more online tools and techniques explained that your team may find online to optimize content accordingly.

SEO is not a separate channel or a specific strategy. It is just the inner part of anything you do with content. Once you create a new article, web page, social media post – check it for SEO.

Social media as a part of the content marketing strategy for a startup

Another important step in building your content relationships is social sharing and building catchy profiles. All employees can participate in working out the social media appearance of your startup. It is a cheap and scalable channel for startup promotion.

Email marketing strategy for a startup

A great number of email marketing platforms allows scaling and implementing email marketing strategy at a low cost. It still remains one of the most cost-efficient and conversion-oriented ways of startup promotion. Also, email marketing may be considered a part of the content marketing strategy.

Forums, groups, casual referrals

This channel can be quite tricky to run and operate. Getting referrals is not so easy as it was before. Partnership programs are quite expensive and don’t always drag enough conversions for the price paid.

Forums, groups, and portals are strictly managed by their moderators which makes them hardly accessible for a marketing strategy. In a small startup, it can be implemented either by team members themselves or by the engaged audience.

Summing up

All the channels mentioned above can be considered pure content marketing. Content creation in any format and its promotion in any way constitutes a content strategy. So, the most affordable, scalable, and popular strategy for startups is related to content population and virality.