To the start-ups out there: what´s the story of how your business came to be? Don´t go revealing that now though, instead, save it for your target audiences´ eyes and ears, who may well just buy into your firm´s backstory enough that they are on-board with your brand before you´ve even had a chance to sell to them.
It´s a somewhat idealistic situation to find yourself in, where customers take the time to discover your products without any intense exposure to them, but by implementing content marketing from the start it´s a very realistic one.
As the Entrepreneur website testifies, it´s just one of the ways start-ups can seek to benefit from going big on content from the off. Here are three ways it suggests new businesses can get ahead by creating clever content.
Identify the sources of pain
Detect the pain points of your target audience, within the parameters of your industry, and produce content that offers solutions. How-to guides that are genuinely helpful rarely fail to hit the mark; you only need to think of the amount of times you´ve sought Google´s help in a quandary to see why they act as valuable evergreen content.
Help a reporter out
Help a Reporter Out, or HARO, is a web service that helps “source-hungry journalists connect with publicity-hungry content marketers”. Whilst HARO may be a more useful tool for those start-ups invested in US markets, UK equivalents such as PressQuest do a similar job of putting specialist firms and journalists together. Who said there was no such thing as free publicity?
Tell your start-up story
As I touched on at the start, telling your story presents your target customers with a clear idea about the principles your firm stands for; long term objectives; and how your business can add value to their lives. Make sure your story is one worth telling – but it´s rare to come across a start-up that doesn´t have something interesting to tell.
What other ways can start-ups get an early advantage from content marketing? On what medium are start-ups best off publishing their story?