Marketing Strategy Archives - Corporate Print & Branding

February 4, 2022

Content Marketing strategy for startups – The Ultimate Guide

Content marketing is an essential tool in marketing strategy in this age and it plays a huge part in how brands get traction and impressions for their business. As a result of the huge followings on various social media platforms. There is a need for brands to create engaging and relevant articles, videos, or social media content that will engage and promote brand awareness.

Every business needs content marketing, be it a startup or an already established business and this approach helps create top of mind awareness for the business when it is time for the consumer to buy what you sell.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the development and distribution of relevant content which can be in the form of blogs, social media posts, white papers, newsletters, emails, videos, radio jingles, and all sorts to current and potential customers alike. This content conveys expertise and relevant information intending to engage and gain clients’ attention and this makes it clear that a company values the people to whom it sells and attracts new clients with its content.

The consistent use of content marketing nurtures relationships with prospective and existing customers. A brand that consistently churns out content on their social media platforms will make the audience interested in the continuous success of such brands and they are more likely to choose you when it’s time to buy.

Content Marketing for startups

Startups need to adopt content marketing as a huge part of their marketing strategy. The advantage it entails can only do such a business a world of good. The awareness, impression, and publicity it gives the business is a huge boost to the bottom line of the startup company.

Content marketing is a go-to tactic that is proven to work and it also provides a competitive advantage over other competitors in the industry one operates. Several data show the several advantages of content marketing.

47% of buyers view 3 to 5 pieces of content online before engaging with a sales representative. Business with blogs and social media content tends to get 67% more leads than other companies.

Also, 72% of business to business(B2B), business to consumers(B2C) say content marketing helps increase engagement and the number of leads they generate. Companies that use content marketing see approximately 30% higher growth rates than businesses not using it. There are a myriad of advantages to content marketing and it is only advisable for startups to jump on the bandwagon.

How to create a content marketing strategy for start-ups

The fastest way for a business to get publicity, generate leads, and get engagement is through content marketing. Startups can use content marketing to attract leads, it speaks for your product or services when someone is making research on what to buy and can also help you close sales.

The 12-Month Content Marketing Strategy for Startups - Marketing Insider Group — Marketing Insider: A team crafting a content marketing strategy for Startup

For a startup to make use of content marketing effectively, there is a need to deliver the right content.

Here are how startups can create an adequate content marketing strategy to engage the audience and sell their product or service.

Identify your audience: To create content for a particular audience, you need to have a clear idea of their priorities, challenges, and preferences. This helps tailor the content to suit their needs. This makes it easier to appeal to and engage the audience.
Align your content with your business model: Understand where your business is now, where you want to be, and define realistic objectives.
Choose your keywords. Research your keywords and make sure you are reaching the right audience.
Get creative with your content ideas. Get content ideas from the customer-facing teams.
Help your audience achieve its goals. Content should be goal-driven, focus on value, and address audience pain points with advice and solutions.
Decide on your distribution channels. Go where your audience is. Make sure your focus is on the right channels at the right time.
Repurpose your content. Squeeze every drop of your creative juice and churn out valuable content at all times. Treat content as a product.
Find the right tools. Take advantage of the content planning, collaboration, and SEO research tools.

Stages of Content Marketing

Awareness Stage

At the first stage, your content should focus on the top concerns of your target audience, it all starts with identifying a need and then writing about their pain points, challenges and asking questions gives you the best chance of engaging with them. Content at the awareness stage should be educational and identify a gap in the market.

Best contents for this stage include articles, blog posts, e-books, videos, newsletters, etc.

An example of this is a restaurant that writes a blog post or social media post about how to plan a menu for a graduation party.

Carmine Mastropeierro: Stages of content marketinng

Consideration stage

In this stage, content should offer a hybrid of helpful information and marketing. This stage should educate the readers about what features or functions to look for and how such features or functions address their needs.

Likewise, this stage should contain solution-solving tips as this shows that after identifying a need, there is a ready-made solution to address such a challenge. An example of this is a catering company case study of successful events highlighting the benefits they offer such as a post on “How to accommodate food allergies in your event”

Closing stage

At this stage, you can focus your content on closing out a sale, as long as you continue to make your content entail why you are the best choice rather than just how great your products or services are.

Your content here should be about your expertise, knowledge, and the differentiating benefits that set you aside from other competitors. This content can include product video, buyer’s guide, user-generated content.

Elements of content marketing strategy

Startups can begin to shoot for gold if the above content marketing strategy is followed to the letter. Listed below are five essential elements inspired by the best content marketing strategies.

Have a clearly defined audience. An essential part of good content marketing should entail a clearly defined target audience. Targeting a group of people makes it easy to align your branding and marketing budget with the target audience.
Content marketing with SMART goals. Setting goals that are smart, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely helps generate leads and enhance user engagements.
Clear value proposition. This explains how your product solves customers’ problems or improves their situation, delivers specific benefits, and tells the ideal customers why they should buy from you and not your competition.
Branding. Establishing a strong brand identity will play a major part in achieving marketing goals. This includes establishing an identity online by taking visuals, taglines, logos, web designs, etc.
Metric for Success. Metrics are a marker for success and alert you to where your efforts are lacking. This lets you know what is working and what needs to change.

Printipy makes it easy

With Content marketing, there is so much to consider. Content marketing strategy is enough to make any startup founder head spin.

This is where Printipy comes in. Printipy is willing to bear your content marketing burden as we have the expertise in crafting marketing strategies that will suit your marketing objectives tailored to reach, engage and convert your target audience.

Content marketing is simplified with Printipy at the forefront for your startup.

by Printipy

Top 8 Marketing strategies for your business in 2022

In a world filled with competitors and brands that will go the extra mile to get customers to patronize them. There is a need for brands/companies to come up with ways to scale ahead in the unforgiving and fast-paced market.

Hence, there is a need for brands to go back to the drawing board and brainstorm on how to create a marketing strategy that will not only push them to the stratosphere but also help gain the traction the business needs.

Especially in an age where social media is king and all brands rely on the demographics and audience, it helps to make headway in their business. There is a need that should be filled with the help of a sound marketing strategy.

What is Marketing Strategy?

According to Investopedia, Marketing strategy refers to the business’s overall game plan for reaching prospective consumers and turning them into customers of their products or services. A marketing strategy contains the company’s value proposition, key brand messaging, data on target customers’ demographics, and other high-level elements.

10 Digital Marketing Tips and Tricks from Top Brands - Marketing Insider Group — Marketing Insider: Brainstorming session for digital marketing strategies

In layman’s terms, this succinctly means the plan created by the business to bring customers to patronize their products or services. This can involve a series of advertising through the use of social media promotions, PR campaigns, market research, price discounts to achieve this feat.

The ultimate aim of a marketing strategy is majorly to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage over rivals in the same industry by understanding the needs and wants of its customers.

Creating a Marketing Strategy

For a business to have a marketing strategy, the following has to be identified

* The business has to identify its business goals using the SMART method. This includes increasing awareness for the products and services. A simple criterion for setting goals is using the SMART method. This is setting goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timebound.

* Have clearly stated marketing goals. Define a specific set of marketing goals based on the business goals. This will guide and motivate the team to keep track of their success. Examples of marketing goals include increased market penetration (selling existing products to existing customers) or market developments (selling existing products to new target markets).

* Market research should be conducted. This is essential as it helps gather information about the size, growth, social trends, demographics, and need of the market.

* Profile your customers. The use of market research will help identify the needs of the customers you are targeting. This will help identify their buying pattern, this will show what they buy, where they buy, and how they buy.

* Profile your competitors. To create a sound marketing strategy. It is essential that brands also create a profile on their competitors by identifying their products and marketing tactics. This will surely give brands a nudge ahead of their competitors

* Develop strategies to support marketing goals. This can be achieved by listing your target markets and devising ways to attract and retain them. Goals can be either to devise strategies to increase social media presence by posting frequently on all social media platforms or increasing brand popularity or awareness amongst young people.

* Use the 4 Ps of Marketing. A thorough marketing strategy covers the four P’s” of marketing. “Product, price, place, and promotion”. The 4 P’s are essentially useful when planning a new venture or evaluating an existing offer or promoting a new sale within a target audience. This means a brand marketing strategy can only do the job if the product on offer is of good quality, the price is competitive and fair, the place (location) is easily accessible to the target audience, and offers good promotion that increases their publicity.

Following all the listed can help brands adopt a good marketing strategy that will meet their customer’s needs.

Executing Marketing strategy by startups

Creating a good marketing strategy isn’t a means to an end. The brand has to set up a marketing execution plan that turns the marketing strategy into action. Without a marketing execution plan, the brand will end up wasting time creating a marketing strategy that hasn’t been properly adopted and in turn fall short on their goals, customers, and revenues.

How then can one execute a good marketing strategy?

Marketing execution is the process of turning a marketing strategy into action. This turns strategy into real-life action by delivering the right content to the right people also, at the right time.

Marketing strategy execution can be achieved with the help of the following steps:

Define which team members that need to work on a certain project
Start Marketing projects with a creative brief.
Set timelines for tasks to be done.
Put projects on your marketing calendar
Map out tasks into a checklist
Plan checklist into management software or day-to-day workflow
Ship project and hit deadlines

Top Marketing Strategies for businesses in 2022

To help brands improve on their customer base, gain more traction and also generate more revenues in 2022. Here are 8 marketing strategies for brands to adopt this year.

Invest in Online business

Online events such as webinars, seminars, or product launches are always a great way to spread the word about your brand, drive traffic, increase engagements for your existing clients and also potential new ones. Online events may not generate massive revenue immediately but will undoubtedly help the business grow in the long term.

Own Your Audience

It is essential in business to own your audience even though in reality, social media networks own your audience it is necessary to start ensuring that you create a follower base for your business as this will ensure your message gets to them as this ensures metrics and algorithm works in your favor and your message gets to the right audience.

Invest Time and Money in Building a Strong Brand Image

Image is everything as this shows how the market will relate to you. To have a strong brand image, you need to choose the right words and the right way of communicating. Organically growing the brand image will inadvertently raise brand awareness.

Content may be King, but Simplicity is Golden

There are several contents on the internet but not all of them do the job it was set out to do and that is because they lack simplicity and clarity. Consumers have become more interested in high-quality and unique content. Therefore, content should be more educational and to the point as they are excellent tools for strong SEO and thought leadership.

Embrace Personalization

Each brand should have a unique way to communicate with their customers to engage them in their message. Brands should create more channels for customers to consume marketing content through the use of videos, online articles, podcasts, etc.

Adopt Market Automation

In 2022, Brands should create more data-driven marketing campaigns. Adding marketing automation to your digital marketing strategy will make it more efficient and effective as it will make marketers automate their workflows and spend less time on repetitive tasks.

Become a Storyteller

Every brand needs to be able to tell its story, deliver engaging messages in a way that tells stories about its products and services. Customers don’t want to hear about how fantastic your product or service is but what they want to know is how your product solved a specific problem. In 2022, all brands should be storytellers.

Think Outside the Box

The brand needs to know that nothing is set in stone. What works today, may not work tomorrow. Brands should keep on exploring, listen to reviews, go back to the drawing board and always look for new trends, and how to keep moving the business forward.

Bottom Line

2022 will bring so many fundamental changes to the way we market and it won’t be ideal to be left behind. This is why we at Printipy have decided to saddle your marketing strategy problem and provide you with a top-notch marketing strategy that will improve engagements, generate leads, and in turn increase revenue in 2022.