Content marketing for startups is a unique challenge. Unlike established businesses with a wealth of customer data and market insights, startups often operate in a landscape where every step feels like uncharted territory. In this installment, we focus on a crucial first step: identifying and understanding your target audience by borrowing authority from industry giants.
Startups typically lack extensive data — a fundamental resource for understanding and targeting an audience. Traditional methods like purchasing lists or conducting surveys present challenges: acquiring reliable lists is difficult, surveys can lead to skewed results, and fielding surveys to acquired lists risks being flagged as spam. So how should a startup navigate these waters?
A more effective approach is external analysis — examining and learning from the market and competitors. It offers several benefits:
We undertook this analysis for a startup competing with Optimizely, analyzing both companies' websites across 9 content categories.
Analysis of the Startup Competitor: Heavy focus on showcasing technical aspects and future implications of AI. Content is geared toward educating about AI and its integration — indicative of a company aiming to establish thought leadership and build brand credibility, rather than direct selling.
Analysis of Optimizely: Strong focus on optimization practices, change management, and practical applications. Content is more directly connected to the selling process — showing how customers use Optimizely, emphasizing conversion rate optimization, and encouraging platform adoption.
Our Take: Optimizely is more focused on direct marketing and selling. Their content is about application and practice — crucial for converting prospects and helping existing customers maximize their investment.
Comparing the startup's implied audience vs. Optimizely's revealed no overlap, suggesting several strategic implications:
Different Market Segments: The startup is targeting a completely different segment — a deliberate strategy to avoid direct competition by offering distinct value propositions.
Unique Positioning: By focusing on audiences Optimizely isn't actively targeting, the startup creates a niche for itself without challenging an established customer base.
Avoiding Competition: Head-to-head competition with an established player is resource-intensive and risky, especially for startups with limited resources.
Potential for Partnerships: With no audience overlap, there may even be potential for strategic partnerships where both companies could refer clients to each other.
Armed with these insights, you can begin crafting a content marketing strategy that resonates with your identified audience. The goal of content marketing is not just to reach an audience but to engage and convert them into loyal customers. Your content should address their needs, answer their questions, and position your startup as the solution to their challenges.