Inbound Content Marketing and Digital Marketing: A Quick Guide for Startups

Last updated on November 28th, 2023 at 01:56 pm

Statistics show that 78% of people spend more time online researching a product than at a store. This implies that a marketer can reach a larger audience through online marketing.

Almost everyone has their phones and a viable internet connection handy in this age.

As of October 2021, social media hosts over 450 billion users. As such, digital marketing offers an easy and accessible way of reaching a wider audience.

Inbound and digital marketing is the future of marketing. Let’s go on a short journey together through inbound marketing and digital marketing.

Inbound Content Marketing

Inbound marketing and content marketing are parallel statements. But are there innate differences between the pair?

Well, inbound marketing refers to customer attraction through content creation. It offers users an easy means to communicate and solve their problems. You will need specific tools such as SEO, social media, and promotions for such purposes.

In opposition, content marketing is the core of inbound marketing. The aim is to attract new clients while maintaining a healthy relationship with old ones. Marketers must continue creating unique content that aligns with their client’s interests.

In general, content marketing helps leads get answers to their questions. Inbound marketing encompasses your strategies, content creation, promotion, and sales.

A successful inbound content marketing strategy should be creative. Nobody likes to spend hours reading boring content. So, your content should be attractive to the reader and prospective customers.

Your content market strategy should also be relevant. By relevant, we mean one that applies to the needs of the customer. Your inbound market strategy must have a purpose and be helpful in problem-solving.

Here are quick and easy steps to deliver great content at all times.

Define Your Audience

You should identify your target audience and their needs. Then, you must create a uniform ecosystem that guides customers to the right content.

Know the Right Medium

Next is to determine the right medium to show value in your content.

Some content creators lean more to videos while others go for checklists. Whatever medium you use, make sure it is effective. Whatever your preferred medium, make sure that it pulls in the crowd.

Editing and Proofreading

What people see out there indicates your business. Your potential customers will judge the book by its cover, so you must make sure there is no slack. Get a professional to edit and proofread your content before it gets to the public’s eye.

Distribution

Next is to determine where to distribute your content. It could be via social media, email, website, etc. The goal is to reach as many people as possible.

Have a Set Goal

Write out your business goal ahead and create a schedule to help achieve it. Consistency is an important ingredient to a successful business. Aside from that, your schedule should align with your budget and resources.

Be Precise

Good content is devoid of jargon and is compelling. Be brief, concise, and relatable. Doing so offers you a greater chance of keeping viewers.

Guide for Startups

Startup businesses must stick to content that places them above their peers. Thus, their content should be creative, compelling, and for larger audiences.

Starting a new business is taxing, especially when you don’t have customers. So, let’s go through some easy steps to establish content marketing for a startup business.

Search for Trending Topics

Research what other people have worked on. You can use online tools to find topics that benefit your brand when trying to create content. Searching for popular topics helps you develop more detailed content. You can also convert content into something more attractive, like a video.

Be Visual

Try creating content that is captivating and less boring. Eye-catching infographics are sure to get you a wider audience. That is because our brains process images many times faster than text.

So, for start-ups, create memes and graphics and post them on social media. Most time, people are not interested in following links and reading articles. A detailed picture will hold their attention. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Be Consistent

Consistency is important in content marketing. Your readers need to know you are reliable. Producing a post every day may not be workable. Instead, you should make a schedule based on what you can deliver. You can post content once or twice weekly based on your content calendar.

Engage Influencers

Influencers are people who are reputable in a field or industry. People listen to their opinions and run with their ideas and beliefs. For startups, influencers can be beneficial in creating an audience. One way to get an influencer to notice you is by mentioning them in your post.

Another way is through round-up posts. Choose an interesting topic. Ask experts for their opinion and make its content. This will help you deliver purposeful content to your customers. When these experts post your content, it will also help you generate traffic to your website.

Social Media Promotion

Social media marketing targets a broader audience. That is because more people spend their time on social media than going through blog posts. Content on social media can go viral within minutes, especially if it’s catchy.

Timing

Your followers are not always online. So, before you post a video or share a link, make sure it’s at the time of the day when your followers can notice it. You can use online tools to know when your audience is online and post. Common examples include Google Analytics, Twitter audience insights, consumer barometer, etc.

Update Your Content Marketing Strategy

Trends are ever-evolving. For you to be successful, you must keep up with change. Likewise, your content marketing strategy should keep up as the tide changes.

Like any business strategy, your content marketing strategy should not be stagnant. Get feedback from your audience. If they are not interested in your content, then create something better. Keep in mind that your content should always please your customers.

Digital Content Strategy

A digital content strategy is any online business plan to reach new people. The purpose is to reach a wider target audience. It involves creating and sharing content to build bigger leads.

Today, most people go online to find solutions to their problems. In line with that, creators must try to take full advantage and send their content to the right people. This can occur in various forms such as online webinars, blog posts, etc.

Why Is Digital Content Strategy Important?

Having a digital strategy is key as it creates a path to your marketing goals. It helps business owners set up benchmarks and tactics that drive marketing. So, they develop clear priorities and work towards achieving them. In practice, they can draw in customers and keep them.

Still, you must perfect several components of the entrepreneurial process for this to happen, which brings us to the next phase.

Components of a Digital Content Strategy

Several components go into a successful digital content strategy. These include:

• Determine your goals: You should define your goals before creating digital content. These goals include increasing potential customers and expanding and evolving your business.

That way, you can track and monitor marketing campaigns, streamline marketing strategy, and enact policy changes. It also helps point out areas where your business can improve.

• Know your audience: To create good content, you need some control over influencing parties. Out of the many factors, knowing your audience takes the cake. Surveys and interviews are tools to know the needs of your audience.

Survey platforms allow for direct interactions with customers. In opposition, interviews give you a deeper insight into your client’s mind. Interviews offer more detailed information than online surveys. Both interviews and online surveys are important.

• SEO and keywords: Keywords represent your business’s core in digital marketing. Using the right keywords lets people notice you early on during their search.

Thus, you must determine keywords and incorporate them into your content to boost your SEO. An excellent way is to spread your keywords all over your content.

• Content Packaging: There are two types of content. For you to be successful, you must consider both.

The first is flow content, which is precise and open. Examples include tutorials, webinars, and blog posts. Content creators use this to attract frequent traffic.

The second is premium content. Premium content is more qualitative, offering more insight than flow content. Content creators use this to generate leads and features as downloadable materials. Examples include research papers, e-books, and videos.

• Develop your calendar: Creating content gets pretty taxing. To be successful, create your content calendar to help you plan out your content schedule. Having a calendar also helps you stay consistent and accountable.

• Promotions: The next step after content creation is content promotion. Content promotion can be passive such as SEO. Content can also be active as email messaging, guest blogging, and social media.

Conclusion

We cannot overemphasize the importance of inbound content and digital marketing. A bad marketing strategy might be the reason for your stagnancy.

Still, you have nothing to worry about if you don’t have any. That is because our guide stands as a comprehensive tool for business owners. So whether you are a new business owner or a seasoned veteran, this guide post is for you.

Also, marketing strategists can use this post to up their game. This is a closed-loop system that stands to benefit all affected parties. So, make sure that you follow through and watch your business grow.