The Ultimate Content Marketing Cheatsheet for Startups
The guide to positioning your startup, engaging target audience, promoting your brand value and ultimately acquiring customers - through content marketing.
Having a clear content marketing strategy will help deliver your brand value to your potential customers. It will also help build your brand awareness, engage with your target audience and generate leads to acquire potential customers. Content marketing is one of the best ways to build trust and authority, helping startups deliver their brand value and understand what customers are looking for through feedback and reviews.
The content marketing funnel ⏳
There are many interpretations of this. Through my research, most of the funnels would end with conversion as converting leads to customers is usually the end game. However, I think what comes after is also as important as well - retaining customers. How you keep your existing customers engaged after acquiring them will lead to long term success and allow your startup to be sustainable. Hence, I added that in.
Awareness - TOFU (top of funnel) 💡
Intent: Attract potential customers, drive traffic to website
The goal in this step is to generate leads. There are many types of content strategies startups can consider, from blog posts and landing pages, to podcasts and website homepage. Startups can create content around topics that would be relevant to their target audience, and how that content will deliver the solution that the audience is looking for.
There are many channels to deliver content, including:
Social media content: Posting informative and high quality content can help you reach potential customers. However, you’ll need to be consistent with it
Infographics and videos: Here you are showing what exactly you’re offering and how your product/ service works. This helps visitors get to understand your brand message better
Podcasts: This is where you build your brand awareness, trust, and position you as the industry expert. You can reach new and wider audience through podcasting
One of the highlights of content marketing is you don’t need to spend a lot on advertising. You can start with even $0. You could also consider online ads, but it is not a must. As said, experiment with different platforms to distribute your content and see which one has the best results.
To track results, it is important to consider the key performance indicators (KPIs). At this stage, you might want to consider looking at page views, impressions, how long visitors are staying on your website and at which part, traffic, subscribers/ followers count etc. From this, you can work out what customers are looking for and optimise your content strategy to maximise the best results.
Engagement - MOFU (middle of funnel) 🤝
Intent: Keep your leads engaged with how you position your brand as the best solution
At this stage, there is some interest shown, but you need to nurture your leads to guide them to the next stage. This is where your content should keep your potential customers engaged. Highlight the benefits they will get and how your startup provides the solution they’re looking for. This is the best step to continue building trust and instil buyer confidence.
Some strategies to consider include:
Case studies: This shows what is possible beyond your offer, from previous customer success stories or achievements. This will help your leads evaluate your brand whilst building trust
Webinars: This helps your prospects understand you better as the expert in the industry. It can also give you a great chance to pitch your product/ service at the end which can act as a good conversion tool
Ebooks/ Whitepapers: This could be the next step to your blog post - how you can solve your customers’ problems by providing them with more detail. You could consider asking for emails in exchange for downloadable content, this will then help you nurture your leads in email marketing next
Emails: You can do a lot with it. From discounts/ offers, to more downloadable content such as how-to guides. Usually these are mini offers people would like before making a purchase or committing to a service
To keep your leads engaged, you can consider channels such as email marketing. Sending personalised recommendations after they’ve signed up to your newsletter or some downloadable content after collecting their emails will help them retain longer on your website. You could also consider ebooks, webinars or live chats which will keep them interested and answer any potential questions they have before moving further.
The KPIs to track here include the number of downloads, average session duration, likes, reactions, comments, feedback and email open and click-through rate (CTR).
Of course, there are many more KPIs to track. Here are just a few of the many examples. Having an overview of these metrics can help you understand the intent and interest of your customers, and allow you to optimise your content strategy.
Conversion - BOFU (bottom of funnel) 🪴
(technically this is usually the end of funnel but in this case I think retaining customers (loyalty) after would be important to include as well)
Intent: Show the benefits of your product, and how you are better compared to competitors
This is the place where you want your prospects to be. At this stage, they are aware of your solution and how it can solve their problems. To guide them to the purchasing step, you’ll need to highlight the potential and benefits of your product.
Don’t forget to include competitor analysis! Show how your product is better and why your potential customers should buy from you.
Here are some strategies to make the last step as easy as possible:
Competitive analysis: Show how you’re better than them - in terms of features, pricing, benefits
Free trials: This gives them an idea of what your product is like, and how it works in action
Demos: A good way to get a taste of how the product/ service works, and answering any questions your prospects might have
Testimonials/ Customer case studies: Asking real customers how your product benefits them will help you build trust and instil the thought that ‘they can also be one of the happy customers too’
Some KPIs to track here might include: revenue, demo requests, free trial sign ups, conversion rate and cost per conversion. The cart abandonment rate could also give an idea of why a certain product isn’t performing as expected and why prospects are hesitating to buy at the last step. This could be due to numerous factors, including product not being urgent for use, or simply technical issues which increased the friction at the last step.
Loyalty - after BOFU 🌟
Intent: Provide ongoing value and maintain connection with your existing customers
The customer journey doesn’t stop after the conversion stage. If existing customers like your product/ service, they could recommend it to their network - this is free marketing!
Here are some ways to keep them engaged and interested:
Reward programs: For loyal customers, you could reward them with discounted offers, freebies and exclusive content
Help centre articles: This will help customers find how-to guides and tutorials in making the most out of your products/ service
Customer support: This will help address their concerns and build trust and customer satisfaction, making them more likely to recommend your product which drives the positive loop
Mistakes to avoid ❌
Ignoring KPI
Ignoring visuals
Forgetting CTAs
Ignoring feedback
Not patient enough
Low quality content
Not distributing content
Lack of clear content strategy
Content not relevant to target audience
Examples ✏️*
The pioneer of healthtech, biotech communications through content and PR founded by Dr James Somauroo and Jessica Smith
Quality content, events and podcast (+ pigeon pod 🐦 ) driving high awareness and engagement
Client success stories driving retention and strong community building
P.S. In 2024, they’re offering 2 free months of content support for 4 companies in each of these categories: 🚺 Women's health | 🤗 Mental health | 🍄 Psychedelics | 🧬 Rare diseases
👉 Register here
Value-driven with quality visuals and extensive resource collection by Max Fleitmann
Content such as startup playbooks and founder stories that are highly relevant to help founders
Lots of downloadable content which drives upsell and cross-sell of paid products
*I do admit I am slightly biased here 👀
More examples:
Anthony Pierri and Robert Kaminski: The GOATs 🐐 in creating content for startup product marketing and messaging @Fletch PMM
Pierre Herubel: The GOAT 🐐 in content and marketing strategy
Enzo Avigo: Quality content and cheatsheets in PMF and product @June.so
Lucas Perret, Guillaume Moubeche and Kevin Moenne Loccoz growing the lemlist empire with banging content, email marketing and quality cheatsheets
Conclusion ✍️
Here is the summary, I hope you find this useful!
Download the pdf version here 👇
Want to check out the past collections? You can access the archive here 👉 https://faithlee.substack.com/archive
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