Being the founder of an early stage startup certainly keeps you busy. At this critical and foundational stage of the business, you’re still finding your feet and scrambling around for customers. You’re also hoping beyond hope that you can bring in enough revenue to cover your costs and (maybe) turn a small amount of profit.
So, why the hell would you increase those costs by hiring an outsourced writer!?
The answer is a simple one: at this point in the business journey, learning to communicate with your customers is paramount. A professional writer knows how to produce content that:
- Communicates your business value
- Resonates with customers
- Creates your initial brand.
Let’s look at those three points in a little more detail.
1. Communicating your business value to customers
You’re the current cheerleader for your business idea. You may be developing a brand-new technology, filling a previously empty industry niche, or disrupting an existing sector with an innovative new approach. You KNOW this is an amazing new product or service, and can see clearly how this innovation is going to change the market, attract potential customers and allow you to scale.
But, at present, no-one outside the business knows this.
You’ve yet to find those first customers and brand advocates who will spread the word about the brilliance of your offering.
The temptation when writing your startup’s first content is to:
- Focus your marketing copy on the functions of your product/service
- Bang on about the sheer brilliance of this new product/service
- Spend time talking about the business, and not listening to the true needs of the customer
A good copywriter or content writer will help you turn this around.
We’ll work with you to:
- Understand the problem that your product/service aims to solve
- Help pull out the key value your product delivers to end customers
- Talk to your early adopter clients to understand how this product is making life easier.
2. Resonating with your customers
As with any business, your marketing collateral and online content need to resonate with ideal customers. There’s no point writinng in a dry, technical way about your software product, if it’s a fun, consumer app aimed at a younger consumer audience.
Equally, you won’t get much traction writing like a Californian tech business if you’re a financial service business that’s targeting older pensioners and retired professionals.
Writers help you delve deeper into the overal personality of the business, whether that’s your individual personality as the founder and CEO, or whether it’s the overall vibe of the whole team.
A good writer can be an amazing asset when it comes to understanding your customers:
- We’ll talk to your fellow founders and top team to gauge the overall vibe of the business and what makes you tick.
- We’ll dive deeply into your ideal customer profile to find out who your offering is aimed at and which demographics the content should be focused on.
- We’ll talk to early adopter customers to understand WHY they chose your product/service, what they like and (crucially) what they don’t like!
- We’ll tailor your marketing, blog posts and social content to this ideal customer audience, creating an ongoing feel and style for your content.
- We’ll help you write a website that truly engages with your ideal customers.
3. Creating your initial brand and tone of voice
Learning to communicate more effectively is critical. By producing content that resonates on an emotional and personal level with your proposed customers, you’re setting the foundations for what will become the initial brand of the whole business.
You might not have thought a great deal about your ‘brand’ yet. You’ll probably have a logo, but you won’t have taken the plunge directly into brand identity, tone of voice and getting to grips with the ‘voice of customer’ (VoC) side of your content.
Perhaps you’re thinking, ‘It’s a bit early in the day to think about our brand, no? That’s for big corporate businesses, isn’t it? We’re still trying to get to that minimum viable product (MVP) stage and get some customers on board’.
But the reality is that setting the cornerstones of your brand is absolutely fundamental to connecting with your ideal customers. Most buying decisions are based on emotional criteria that have nothing to do with a rational thought process. We buy a product or service because we like the vibe of the company, we like the people in the team, the product is the right colour, or we’ve heard good feedback from other existing users.
The more you can do to make your business content, website copy and social media presence tailored to a clear and recognisable brand, the easier it will be to win those customers over.
Partnering with a professional writer is about far more than just producing an 800-word blog post once a month. It’s about working with someone who can help you refine and nurture these brand ideas to make it easier to produce a brand that works.
We’ll create:
- A brand personality that reflects the business and your strategic vision
- A style, tone and content strategy that resonates with your chosen audience
- A consistent approach to your writing, so people know it’s ‘you’.
Talk to me about outsourcing your content needs
It’s possible you’re now thinking, ‘damn, we do actually need to work with a writer. I see the value of having a content person on the team now. But where do you find a writer?’
The good news is that you just found one!
I’ve been writing business content for 16 years now, and have been running CommsBreakdown, my freelance content business, for nine years, working with a growing roster of startups, small businesses and corporate clients that needed an extra pair of hands on board to focus on the content writing.
You can take a look at my portfolio here.
If you’re starting out in business and want an expert writer to partner with, drop me an email
You won’t regret investing in outsourced content support, and you’ll soon see the difference it makes to your marketing strategy, customer engagement and brand visibility.
Say hello and let’s start producing some top-class content!
CommsBreakdown 