Digital Marketing Strategy

Content Marketing for Startups: 4 Effective Strategies

Posted on by Zoë McKinney

Startups have a lot on their plate. Between securing funding, hiring a great team, and finalizing the tech, there’s not much energy for other things. So why should content marketing for startups be a priority?

Keep reading to learn about the benefits of content marketing and start building out your plan. 

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing utilizes informational resources, whether blogs, social media posts, webinars, or flyers, to attract and retain customers. 

Why is Content Marketing for Startups important?

Content marketing is an excellent way for startups to raise brand awareness, develop customer trust, and gain credibility in their industry. In the earlier startup stages, before loyal customers and word of mouth have become lead generation sources, potential customers need a way to learn about your company. 

Prioritizing content marketing also has internal company benefits. By preparing content that answers common questions and guides customers to a sale, team members will save time and energy on each lead. You can use this extra time for other essential business tasks or supporting even more customers. 

Choosing the Right Strategies: Content Marketing for Startups 

Content marketing strategies are not one-size-fits-all. When choosing strategies, it’s helpful to think of content as an extension of your brand and company. Is the content being released in line with your brand’s voice? Is it driving conversions or helping your company reach a specific goal? And, logistically speaking, does it fall within your company’s budget?

All content should attract and resonate with your buyer personas. If potential customers are moving through the buying process and converting to a sale (if that’s your goal), then your content marketing strategies are working.

Here are some questions to ask when planning your content marketing strategies: 

Source: semrush.com

4 Effective Strategies: Content Marketing for Startups

1. Keep it Evergreen

Trends come and go fast. Creating content marketing strategies that are true to your company and that can be reused and repurposed in the future is a great way to educate your audience and drive conversions. Sharing this educational, high-quality content will help establish your startup as a trusted source. For example, if someone searches for the basics of cloud storage and comes across your purely informational blog, they become aware of your business and will come back when they start considering options. 

2. Match the Buyer’s Journey

Ideally, we want all customers to convert to a sale, which means there needs to be content that supports them during all stages of the buyer’s journey. For example, If all your content is surface-level industry information, your customer might drop off at the consideration stage. Or if it’s highly specific about a particular product, you might not be getting people in the door. Here are some content ideas that coincide with the different stages of the buyer’s journey. 

  • Awareness: Focus on the basics of your industry, educating the audience, and naming the problems for which you have the solution. 
  • Consideration: Now that they know what they need to solve, provide their options and the differences. 
  • Decision: What sets you apart from competitors? The customer has a shortlist of potential companies at this point. Now, it’s time to sell. 

3. Optimize

You have great content; now, let’s get it in front of people. Your thought-out video detailing your company’s service doesn’t mean anything if the right people aren’t seeing it. Choosing valuable keywords and optimizing content accordingly will cause it to rank higher in search results and get more eyes. Our key optimization tips are:

  • Incorporating the keyword consistently throughout the piece 
  • Adding internal and external links
  • Dividing up text with H2 and H3 headings
  • Adding images to enhance your points

4. Test Things Out

Though there will always be a need for evergreen content, don’t be afraid to get creative. Try new media forms and platforms to see what works best for your startup. The marketing industry changes fast, and buyer habits are constantly evolving. Testing out new tactics and analyzing the results is crucial to keep up with competitors. Here are some more recent content marketing strategies that are on the rise: 

  • Short-form video
  • Audio: webinars, podcasts, etc. 
  • Influencer marketing
  • Niche, ultra-targeted content 

Building your Content Marketing Strategy with Lake One

Content marketing for startups is crucial to becoming a trusted brand in your industry. Tailoring your content marketing strategies to your business needs, goals, audience, and industry is essential. Lake One is here to help you do so. Don’t hesitate to reach out with any content or digital marketing questions. 

Lead Generation Tips for Technology Companies

Posted on by Meredith Garner

A well-developed strategy to generate leads for technology companies can make all the difference between its success and failure.

Technology companies are constantly searching for new and innovative ways to attract new clients to their websites and to engage them in all steps of their search until the desired conversion. 

Looking to attract new clients? This blog is for you.  Discover some of the industry’s best lead generation tips for technology companies.

Lead Generation Tips for Technology Companies: How does it work?

Lead generation happens when a potential client provides tech companies with their contact information, like name, phone number, email address, and phone number, among others, in exchange for a demo, a quote, etc.

According to HubSpot, lead generation attracts prospects to your business and increases their interest through nurturing, all with the end goal of converting them into customers. Some ways to generate leads are through job applications, blog posts, coupons, live events, and online content.

This process is essential for the company since it allows you to identify the client’s interest in your service and product. It can give you an insight into your conversion. It will provide you with data that tells you what that potential client likes, want, and doesn’t know.  

Also, it can help you refine your strategy and optimization solutions for your business. 

A good metric to know if your lead generation strategy is adequate is looking at your conversion rate. If it is good, it tells you that your promotion is attractive to your persona. 

4 Lead Generation Tips for Technology Companies 

Now that we have covered the importance of generating leads for your business let’s dive into a  few tips to help you achieve your goals.

1 – Provide quality information

Yes, you’ll want to provide quality information while respecting your potential client and their journey.

It’s impossible to communicate with a client if you do not know who you are talking to. That said, the first step you should take is to establish a client persona for your business. Without this information, you will be talking to either everyone or no one, which will be a waste of capital. 

With a defined persona, you can create quality content and share it through the channels your clients will most likely hang around, such as Facebook or YouTube. Also, take into consideration your client’s decision-making journey. Generally, there are four steps that you can take to generate a lead or a conversion for your technology company, including:

  • Learning and discovery
  • Problem recognition
  • Solution considerations
  • Buying decision

With that predefined data, you can create a robust strategy that helps you develop high-quality content focused on generating leads. 

2 – Bet on rich content

The best hook to generate leads is the creation of rich materials that align with your marketing strategy. This content works as billboards, so they need relevant content to stimulate the persona’s interest. Examples include eBooks, webinars, research, infographics, and blog posts.

Infographics, for example, the more suited they are to your audience, with eye-catching visuals and texts, the more likely people will be to engage with them. eBooks are excellent tools for creating authority. 

Trials and webinars are other materials that can contribute to lead generation for tech companies. A trial allows a client to try the product for free for a limited time, which can assist a client in making the final decision since they will know how the product works and can help them solve their problems.

Webinars are live or recorded online events, commonly used as a sales strategy, with a potentially low cost since all you need is a computer and a camera.

Blogs are still one of the most successful tools for generating leads. They allow the reader to learn more about an exciting topic and give you data that will assist you in creating future articles. 

3 – Utilize call-to-actions

We have seen multiple marketing campaigns where the tech company forgets to add a crucial element to their campaigns, a compelling call-to-action to drive potential customers to your landing page. Your persona will define your call-to-action or CTA. 

A mistake we usually see is driving a potential customer to the homepage of your website. For the CTA to drive good results, it should send the users to a specific landing page. For example, if you want to offer an e-book, a downloadable link must be present on that landing page. 

4 – Invest in Paid Media campaigns

Another strategy that can help boost lead generation for your technology company is to invest in paid media campaigns, such as Google Search, Google Display, Facebook/Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. After all, people need to be able to find you online. 

For your campaigns to be successful and to start seeing an increase in lead generation, you need to encompass all the tips listed above. Have a well-structured campaign with keywords, text ads, images, videos, and CTAs relevant to your persona that will identify with your business, services, and products and will most likely take the desired action to convert.

Custom Lead Generation Tips for Technology Companies with Lake One

There are a variety of strategies, advice, tips, or ideas on how to boost your lead generation marketing campaigns. 

Here at Lake One, we help you in your paid media and marketing efforts, such as finding your persona, brainstorming and creating rich content, and managing your paid media efforts. Contact us today! 

How Marketing Automation Implementation Helps Tech Companies Scale

Posted on by Mark Boyts

You can utilize marketing automation implementation to fill the gaps to help your company scale without adding additional employees. Your company can set up automation through various applications; however, it is primarily utilized in CRMs.

Want to implement automation to help your company scale? Discover more below.

Marketing Automation Implementation: Brief Overview of The Process

Marketing automation is a tool that helps automate marketing tasks to help businesses save time and money.

That said, the marketing automation implementation process helps businesses automate their marketing processes, such as email campaigns, social media updates, and website content updates. This way, they can use the saved time and money for other aspects of their business.

Why Marketing Automation Implementation is Critical for Efficient Business Management

The marketing automation implementation process involves automating various marketing activities from lead generation, lead nurturing, scoring, and routing. It enables marketers to execute their marketing strategy more efficiently and automates marketing tasks and campaigns to get more done in less time.

Startups, tech companies, and small businesses use marketing automation tools to save time and resources while focusing on their core business activities. For large enterprises, marketing automation is the key to efficient business management and helps focus on customer acquisition and retention.

Additionally, companies of all sizes use marketing automation software. It gives companies leverage to place various marketing goals, like those wanting to grow their businesses or build a customer loyalty program. You can use marketing automation for multiple purposes, including lead generation, lead nurturing, content management, and campaign management.

Source: HubSpot

The Benefits of Marketing Automation That You Probably Don’t Know About Yet

Marketing automation implementation encompasses programming for specific marketing tasks, such as sending emails, analyzing data, and triggering social media posts.

You can implement marketing automation either manually or automatically. If you implement it automatically, an artificial intelligence system analyzes data and triggers specific actions based on the results. 

Another benefit involves assistance with content marketing. Your business can quickly and effectively boost content production by automatically generating blog posts or other content pieces.

Implementing marketing automation software has many benefits, from increased productivity to automating repetitive tasks. Your business will experience:

  • Reduced time spent on manual work 
  • Increased customer engagement through personalized content and automated campaigns
  • Enhanced sales pipeline through lead generation
  • Decreased cost per acquisition due to higher conversion rates from automated campaigns
  • Better ROI due to lower price per acquisition rate for automated campaigns.

Marketing Automation Implementation with Lake One

Automation comes in all shapes and sizes, but its goal across all platforms is to make your company more efficient. More efficiencies across your business allow your employees more time to accomplish other tasks, making your business more productive.

Contact Lake One today to level up your automation game.

How to Develop a Digital Marketing Roadmap for a B2B Company

Posted on by Zoë McKinney

Marketing is a lot to juggle, from paid advertising and SEO to social media and content development. Without clear planning and communication, it’s easy to fall behind. If your team struggles to deploy a marketing strategy and can’t seem to stay organized, you might benefit from creating a digital marketing roadmap.

Keep reading to learn how to build a digital marketing roadmap and how it will help your company. 

What is a Digital Marketing Roadmap?

A digital marketing roadmap is a visual aid that allows for tracking and planning the implementation of your company’s digital strategy. You can organize in whatever time frame works for your company, whether days, weeks, or quarters. You can map out work allocation, prerequisite tasks, and other helpful information per the task.

A sample roadmap may look like this:

Source: M16 Marketing

Why a Digital Marketing Roadmap is Important for your B2B Company

We all know there is a lot to manage. Taking the time to create your digital marketing roadmap will ensure that your team is working efficiently and effectively to crush your goals. 

Here are a few examples of how a roadmap can add value to your B2B company:

  • Improved internal workflow: Internal processes and overall team efficiency will increase with defined goals, tasks, and deadlines.
  • Increased conversions: Identifying buyer personas and targeting potential customers through all stages of the buyer’s journey will lead to more conversions.
  • Surpassed goals: Creating informed KPIs, tracking goal progress, and adjusting as necessary will increase the likelihood of meeting (and hopefully exceeding) goals.

How to Develop Your Digital Marketing Roadmap

  1. Determine Goals/KPIs

What is your business trying to accomplish through these marketing efforts? Are you trying to acquire five new partners or increase the amount of demos given by 20%? Creating clear objectives you can quantify within a certain timeframe will guarantee you stay on track and meet your company’s goals. 

  1. Buyer Persona

Attracting the right type of customer is crucial to a successful marketing strategy. Buyer personas possess all of the characteristics your company looks for in potential customers. Although fictional, these personas are rooted in research and consumer data. Lake One provides buyer persona services where we help you conduct a deep dive into your ideal target audience and how to create buyer personas that will best inform your digital marketing strategies.

  1. Budget

Determining maximum marketing spend will help you determine how much paid media you can do within a specific timeframe. 

  1. Content & Services

What content and services are you marketing to help move potential customers through the funnel? For B2B businesses, this may be a consultation with a sales representative or downloading a resource. 

  1. Marketing Strategy

Now it’s time to decide how your team will market your content and services. Determine how paid advertising, SEO, social media, and other marketing tools will contribute to the marketing mix. 

  1. Timeline

This is where the visual comes in. The duration and timing of all marketing tasks will help the team stay organized, track goal progression, and identify any holes or complications.

  1. Conversion Opportunity 

The goal is to convert opportunities to leads and leads to customers. Schedule content that guides potential customers through the buyer’s journey and drives conversion. 

  1. Analyze & Adjust

Continually use analytics to assess the effectiveness of your marketing efforts as well as the overall strategy. For example, If potential customers are dropping off after their initial form submission or demo, they might not be receiving enough educational resources to lead them to purchase. 

Building Your Digital Marketing Roadmap with Lake One

Sounds like a lot? It can be, but it is well worth it. The digital marketing roadmap is a tool to help your team roll out your marketing strategy productively, convert potential leads into happy customers, and ultimately grow your B2B company.

If you’re ready to start building your roadmap, Lake One is here to help. Reach out to our experts to start creating your custom roadmap and blow your competitors out of the water. 

5 Ways Manufacturers Can Leverage Short Form Video Content

Posted on by Meredith Garner

A 2022 HubSpot survey found that short form video content has the highest return on investment compared to any other marketing strategy. 

That sounds like a good marketing tactic for any industry, especially manufacturers. 

And let’s be honest – Many manufacturers haven’t had to market to the public unless you’re talking about specific industries like fashion and lifestyle brands, who, for years, have built corporate marketing strategies that drive sales.

Manufacturers who create goods and services rely heavily on their sales team. Their approach has to be specific with tradeshows, industry advertising, or while cultivating customer relationships. Today’s landscape is competitive, and it’s time for manufacturers to adapt their marketing.

Here are five ways manufacturers can leverage short-form video content.

Continue reading “5 Ways Manufacturers Can Leverage Short Form Video Content” →

The Best Paid Media Dashboards for Measuring Success

Posted on by Meredith Garner

Paid media dashboards are a critical tool to utilize in your marketing efforts if you aren’t already. Dashboards help you make quicker decisions, increase sales, reduce costs per acquisition (CPA), improve conversions, create engagement, and increase brand value. But not all dashboards are created equal. In fact, the wrong visualization or KPIs can do more harm than good when trying to communicate to others or identify trends.

Continue reading below to discover the most effective paid media dashboards for your campaigns. 

Continue reading “The Best Paid Media Dashboards for Measuring Success” →

5 Paid Media KPIs to Track in Your Next B2B Campaign

Posted on by Andrew Schulz

There are hundreds of data points to consider when managing a business. Each team has its own list, and evaluating success can have different meanings depending on their goals. Paid media KPIs (key performance indicators) measure the effectiveness of how your paid or advertising campaign is performing, and there are ways to get the most out of using KPIs to improve your results.

Sound challenging? You bet.

Undoubtedly, there should be little disagreement on the importance of the following 5 to track in your next B2B campaign when it comes to paid media KPIs. Let’s take a look.

Continue reading “5 Paid Media KPIs to Track in Your Next B2B Campaign” →

9 Sales and Marketing Alignment Best Practices

Posted on by Rachael

When you’re not meeting your revenue goals, the finger-pointing starts between your sales and marketing teams. Sales blames marketing for not generating enough leads. Marketing blames sales for not converting the leads into customers. Sales and marketing alignment is missing. This can go back and forth, creating hostility between two groups who need to be working together. Sales and marketing have the same goal – to increase customers and revenue. To achieve this, you need to curb the finger-pointing and get the two teams to align and work together.

Use these best practices to align your sales and marketing teams.

Increase communication

First, get out of silos and learn about the other team’s goals. The easiest way to do this is to schedule regular meetings with both teams. During these meetings, sales can educate marketing on their process and review quotas and metrics. Marketing can then share what initiatives they are working on, what campaigns are running, and what metrics they are tracking.

Create a Content Process

Marketing should include sales in their content brainstorming process. Together, the teams can generate content ideas helpful for sales to gain new leads. From there, sales can promote content in conversations with prospects, and on their personal social media channels. Video is a great way to promote new content with prospects. The use of video is growing as a marketing tool. It is an effective, personal way to communicate that builds trust and increases sales.

Related Reading: How and Why to Incorporate Sales Videos into Your Selling Process

Image Source: HubSpot

Promote the Sales Team

When marketing focuses on promoting thought leadership and expertise at the company, they should not overlook the sales team. Make sure to include sales in new content. These are the individuals that prospects interact with the most, so marketing can promote them through guest blogs and social media posts.

Understand Your Roles & Goals

It’s critical for sales and marketing to truly understand what each team member’s role is, and how it helps the company achieve its goals. Sales might not understand why someone writes a blog, and how that content helps generate leads. Marketing might not know how sales breaks down each person’s responsibilities – whether they sell to specific regions, or they each sell a specific product. It’s important to break down any misconceptions, create clarity around what each person does, and how it helps sales and marketing alignment.

Related Reading: 6 KPIs for Sales & Marketing Alignment

Identify Your Target Audience

To hit company goals, it’s essential for sales and marketing to understand which potential customers they are targeting. Marketing needs to know who to target with their content, keywords, and ads. Sales needs to know who they are selling to. Get everyone on the same page by creating buyer personas and a buyer’s journey map showing how they make purchasing decisions. The buyer personas should include the buyers’ demographics, size of the organization they work at, type of organization, role, priorities, and challenges. In the journey map, make sure to document what activities the buyer engages in, his or her objectives, what information he or she consumes (or needs), and what types of communication he or she uses to get the information.

Image Source: Unsplash

Share Feedback

It’s important for sales and marketing to share feedback they get from clients and prospects with each other. When the marketing team gathers data from surveys or feedback forms, they must share the results with the sales team. It’s also important for sales to share what they’re learning on calls with prospects, such as what questions they have about the product or company, what misconceptions they have, what they like about the product, and more. This will help marketing figure out what gaps need to be filled with their content, on their website, and in their campaigns to better promote the company and attract qualified leads.

Share Access to Documents

Does your marketing team have a plethora of blogs, white papers, and even one-sheets and brochures that they keep within their marketing files? This content is meant to fuel the sales team, so they must have access to it. Create a shared space (whether it’s on Teams, Slack, or another platform) where the two teams can share content. This will help your sales team feel more enabled, and it will help demonstrate what marketing is doing to help them.

Socialize

To get the sales and marketing teams to work together better, they need to get to know each other. Organizing social activities with both teams can help improve the relationships between team members. This helps cultivate a collaborative environment where everyone feels included.

Understand Each Other

Finally, one of the most important ways to achieve sales and marketing alignment is to create an understanding that both teams are trying to help the company – and each other – achieve their business goals. While both teams have different tasks, their end-goal and intentions are the same.

About Sales & Marketing Alignment Services at Lake One

At Lake One, technology is at the core of all our sales and marketing thinking.

  • We work with our partners to make sure their basecamp is “right sized” for their organization.
  • That the goals and strategy are leading the technology choices and not the other way around.
  • But most of all – that the technology is embraced and providing value to the organization.

For additional tips on how to align your sales and marketing teams, contact Lake One to talk to our experts.