The Best Content Strategy Goals for Each Startup Stage
When we're building a startup, our content strategy should adapt as our business grows. Content is the bridge between us and our audience, and the nature of that bridge changes depending on our startup's stage. So I want to talk for a minute about how a content strategy can be tailored for startups at three different stages: the idea stage, the pre-revenue stage, and the post-revenue stage. Each stage presents unique challenges, and our content goals should align with those challenges to help us get closer to validation, product/market fit, and profitability.
Idea-Stage Companies: Laying the Foundation
At the idea stage, we're probably still figuring out the problem we're solving, the market fit, and how to effectively communicate our value proposition. Content at this stage is all about exploration, validation, and storytelling. Here are three key goals:
Validate Our Idea: We can use content to validate our assumptions about our audience and their needs. Blog posts, surveys, and social media content can help spark conversations and collect feedback that shows whether or not there's interest in our solution. Even studying a the existing content available around the pain points we're trying to solve can unlock key insights!
Build a Personal Brand and Audience: Early on, people buy into founders as much as they buy into the idea. Sharing our journey, our insights, and even our failures can build a sense of community. People become invested in our journey and, by extension, our startup. Plus, the trend of building a personal brand is really picking up steam. Take a look at any successful post on LinkedIn... who is it from? Nine times out of ten, it's from the founder, not the company.
Establish Credibility: Thought leadership content can help us establish ourselves as knowledgeable in the industry. Writing articles or recording videos sharing insights about the problem we're solving (and our personal experience at overcoming it!) can build credibility. This credibility will be key as we move forward and seek partnerships or funding.
Pre-Revenue Stage: Gaining Traction
Once we're past the idea stage, we've validated the need and started to build something, but now we need to generate traction before earning revenue. This is often the make-or-break period, where we're building momentum to show potential investors or preparing for launch. Content goals here are:
Grow a Waiting List or Email List: We want to use content to build anticipation. Driving potential customers to a landing page with a sign-up option using blog posts, teasers, and social media updates, can help generate an early audience who are excited about what we're building.
Build Trust and Demonstrate Value: We're still not selling anything, but we're getting closer. Using case studies, in-depth guides, or alpha or beta-phase testimonials can help people understand the value of what we're creating. Content that shows how we solve real problems for real people builds trust.
Engage Our Early Community: For a pre-revenue startup, community is everything. Creating content that actively engages people, whether through social media polls, Q&A sessions, or behind-the-scenes content, will help us keep our community invested. Engaged users will become our first advocates when we launch.
Generate Pre-Sales: If we've been consistently adding value and building trust with our audience, we can start thinking about generating pre-sales. This might be through offering early-bird pricing, exclusive bonuses, or limited-time offers to those who have been following along. Pre-sales can help us gauge demand and build momentum, while also bringing in some early revenue.
Post-Revenue Stage: Driving Growth
We've reached the post-revenue stage—congrats! Now, the focus is on growing our customer base and finding repeatability in our sales motion. Revenue is the ultimate goal, but there are a few other things that can contribute to driving revenue at this stage. So, naturally, our content goals at this stage need to shift more toward measurable impact:
Drive Revenue Growth: The CTA’s in our content need to more explicitly invite our audience to purchase our product. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, keep sales content to roughly 20% of your content mix. Product-focused content like case studies, demos, product tutorials, and well-placed calls to action all serve to encourage buying decisions.
Increase Number of Leads: We need to ensure we're consistently filling our pipeline with the right people. Blog posts, webinars, gated content, and middle-of-funnel social content can all help bring in new leads who might be interested in our solution.
Decrease Churn: We want to use content to keep our customers engaged and satisfied. I found that the comments section was one of the best places to identify customer dissatisfaction. Why? Because our users knew that we were active on social media! This gave us an incredible opportunity to show our whole audience that we cared and that we dealt with issues, answered questions, and addressed new feature requests quickly.
Decrease CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): By using targeted content, we can optimize our marketing spend and reduce customer acquisition costs. Creating highly relevant content for specific segments, staying consistent, and making use of organic channels helps drive more efficient growth that compounds over time rather than having to continually pay each month for expensive pay-per-click campaigns.
Build a Thriving Community: A thriving community can become one of our biggest assets and even a key competitive advantage. Engaging content that invites customers to share their experiences, provide feedback, and connect with each other can create loyal advocates and further boost our growth.
The Ultimate Goal: Revenue
Regardless of the stage, every content strategy ultimately needs to drive revenue in the long run. For idea-stage startups, this means laying the groundwork to gain an audience. For pre-revenue startups, it means building traction that will convert into customers when we launch. And for post-revenue startups, it’s about maximizing growth, optimizing conversions, and deepening customer loyalty.
As brutally cold as it may sound, the ultimate measure of success is whether our content strategy contributes to our company's financial health. After all, resources are extremely limited in the context of startups so anything that isn’t helping the company become more viable has to be cut. But I guarantee you this: revenue growth will take care of itself as long as we always create value for our audience.
No matter where our startup is on its journey, the content strategy should be adapted to meet our evolving needs, but always with an eye on the end goal: building a thriving startup.
