Search Engine Optimized Content Marketing is a long term impact channel where we create content on the website to attract organic traffic. Typically, this content includes blogging, landing pages, site pages and more.

When done right, this channel would bring your potential customers – who are searching online for help in your domain – to you and thus it becomes an easy acquisition channel. There is a catch (obviously). Most high traffic keywords face heavy competition and a startup team has fewer resources. Only after a few months of investing into this channel, assuming smart work has been done, will the business see real and significant impact on their site organic traffic and ensuing leads.

This long impact cycle of SEO Content Marketing makes it a tricky bet for businesses looking for quick customer acquisition. And Early Stage Startups are usually looking for quick acquisition.

However, there is a still a reason to invest into Content Marketing such that it is useful right away and also over time develops into generating organic traffic.

Why Should Early Stage Startups Invest into SEO Content Marketing?

Because early stage startups need content to convert visitors into customers.

Here are some of the activities that can be undertaken to help convert current visitors into customers. And in the long term this content doubles up to generate organic traffic and thus becomes a revenue channel in its own right.

Content for Customer Service & Other Customer Journey Mapping

Create a few well thought out content pieces that help with customer service. It will really make your work easy when you can instantly refer to help pages or FAQ section for recurring queries from visitors. These can also be fed into a bot for automated visitor help.

Same applies to the other stages of the customer journey. For example, when the customer evaluate your offer with competitor offers. Such recurring themes like comparisons with obvious competitors can become blog posts or articles which are available for people to quickly evaluate the two options. Moreover, these would easily rank on Google because keywords with your brand name in them wouldn’t have much competition.

Optimizing this content for SEO will actually improve its appeal and relevance (when SEO is done right).

Specific Content for Brand Name Search & Other Keywords

Search keywords with your brand name in it, won’t have much competition (especially if you are a startup). These can be claimed with high converting content pages right away. It’s amazing how even established brands with a lot of traffic often don’t have dedicated pages to cater to these searchers.

For example, someone evaluating a cloud service would search a keyword like “Dropbox reviews”, you don’t want these searchers landing on your home page. They are in the advanced stage of the buying cycle and are close to their buying decision. You want them to land on a targeted content page on your site which addresses their query and nudges them further towards purchase.

This also applies for other keywords which for whatever reason have search volume but not much competition. For example,

• current event related searches : often there are new events in the market which leads to new keyword searches relevant to your business. If you act quickly you can capture this search share by putting out quality content earlier than bigger players.
• niche / long tail keywords : while most industry domains are competitive nowadays, it is possible that you might be  in a new space and so you can find keywords which are easy to rank for. If this happens then definitely you can invest in SEO content.

Landing Pages for Targeted Outreach

Create a bunch of landing pages for ad campaigns and other quick outreach activities. These would be SE Optimized as well and would promote a specific call to action – like email subscribe or purchase – which move the visitors to the next stage of customer funnel. These are very useful to explore partnerships, network with specific people and other targeted activities.

Can Early Stage Startups Afford this Investment?

This effort can be done by investing in a one-time, experienced resource for a period of 1 to 3 months. Or a senior consultant can work with your in-house content team. Connect with me to get a quote.

So, in the intial stage the startup can invest into SEO Content Marketing in a limited way. And after a few months, once they have the ability and the need to spend on a long term channel they can build up on this work that is already done!

This piece is taken from my cheatsheet where I evaluate 3 Customer Acquisition Channels for businesses. It includes special sections for early stage and bootstrapped startups.

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