What 10 Years of Content Marketing Did for This Startup

True believers say content marketing has enormous long-term benefit. Skeptics say it’s just the latest marketing fad. As a startup or small business, do you go all in or go another route?

If you’re not sure whether content marketing is for you, here’s the story of a startup that’s now 10 years into its content marketing campaign, a company that got into content marketing before anyone knew what to call it, a company that’s done very little online marketing other than content marketing since its inception.

Dennis Salazar’s experience demonstrates the enormous value of content marketing—and also serves as a solid, practical model for content marketing execution.

Salazar Packaging today

Salazar Packaging, founded in 2007, is now a prominent designer and supplier of sustainable packaging materials and containers. With customers in all 50 states, it operates out of a 3,500-square-foot facility in the Chicago area, employing eight people.

Owner Dennis Salazar reports that his websites generates over 400 inquiries per month, with a conversion rate of 10%. Over the years, most of his company’s revenue has come from these online inquiries.

He goes on to say that his strong online presence in organic search (fueled by 10 years of content marketing) has also enabled him to efficiently test market new products. The ability to cut losses and concentrate on winners has enabled Salazar Packaging to add digital box printing, branded packaging, and e-commerce subscription boxes to his product portfolio, generating dynamic growth.

Salazar Packaging went green when the economy was turning red.

2007: We’ll talk so much, people will have to listen

Like many startups, Salazar Packaging began with an idea, passion, and rolled-up sleeves. Dennis and his wife, Lenora, thought they could turn their concern for the environment into a successful sustainable packaging company.

But whereas most startups start at the bottom, this one started below the bottom:

• The U.S. economy was terrible, plummeting downhill toward the horrific stock market crash of 2008.
• Sustainable packaging was not widely embraced or even understood.
• Market intelligence about sustainable packaging suggested end users were unwilling to pay the necessary premium for eco-friendly merchandise.
• Dennis and Lenora’s expertise was strongest in materials that were not particularly sustainable.

1. Background

Dennis and I had previously worked together in the packaging industry. In 2005, I started my own marketing business, focusing on SEO, social media, and business blogging—doing a lot of work, incidentally, with a startup company called Whoast, which became Straight North, the agency that eventually bought my business and for which I now work.

2. Strategy

Initially, Dennis engaged me to help him formulate a marketing plan. Most packaging companies relied on a sales force, and many were (and continue to be) marketing-averse. But Dennis didn’t have funds for a sales force, and thus needed another way to establish credibility and drum up business.

We decided to aggressively ramp up his company blog and try to get published on websites with a packaging and/or environmental focus. Here’s why:

• Dennis had a ton of great ideas, and an ability and willingness to write. And, the market was getting thirsty for reliable, informed insights about sustainable packaging.
• He had an editor (me) with industry knowledge to add polish and SEO to his articles.
• Keyword research suggested a huge opportunity to achieve high rankings for high-volume, high-converting green packaging terms.
• Off-site articles would produce enormously high authority backlinks, building his domain authority far beyond what other firms in the green packaging space had achieved.
• Circa 2007, the packaging industry was (and still is, to some extent) highly secretive. Dennis was willing to talk about his business, whereas many other companies would not. I figured this would give him a couple years head start before the competition caught on to business blogging.

3. Results

So, Dennis put everything he had into content marketing. He wrote and wrote and wrote great stuff. Before long he found himself with bylines (and backlinks) on major online publications, and his own blog was attracting impressive traffic. You couldn’t do a Google search on anything related to green packaging without running into Salazar Packaging. Dennis was getting inquiries from companies all over the United States, including ones from Fortune 100 companies. Speaking engagements, interviews, and a lot of mainstream media attention came his way as a result of his deep online (and print) footprint.

Despite an extremely poor economy, revenue steadily grew, product lines expanded, office and warehouse space was acquired, an e-commerce website was launched, and employees were added—chiefly as a result of online inquiries.

Creativity: Eco Ed™ became a recurring character in Packaging World and other sites.

Why content marketing worked

For a startup with the right foundation, content marketing is still an incredibly cost-effective and results-effective method of brand building and lead generation.

This is what made it work for Salazar Packaging. If your business has some or all of these characteristics, go for it!

• An owner with passion. Dennis wasn’t in it just for the money; he believed in sustainable packaging. This is important because he wouldn’t have gotten published otherwise.
• Owner involvement. Dennis personally pitched his articles to environmental blogs. Hugely important! The rubber meets the road where the intangible asset of passion meets the tangible asset of article placement. It takes a lot of passion to convince a major publication it needs to feature an unknown writer from an unknown company.
• SEO. Content marketing without SEO is a cap gun. With SEO, it’s a howitzer.
• Niche marketing. Concentrating on a narrow market segment (and keywords) yields the best results for startups with limited funds and limited time for writing and marketing.
• Persistence. One or two years of content marketing may work to some extent, but your online presence will disappear quickly if you don’t keep it up—truer now more than ever with the massive amount of content being produced.
• Focus. It’s tempting for a startup to spread itself too thin. In Dennis’ case, temptation came from the novelty of social media and the popularity of print media, both of which he wisely avoided.

You may think content marketing has matured and become too competitive. Many challenges exist, but look back at the challenges facing the Salazars at the outset.

Yes, content marketing is obviously a vastly more crowded playground today, but it will be even more crowded in 2027—because it works. If you want your startup or small business to be a roaring success 10 years hence, start playing now.

 

Full disclosure: Salazar Packaging is not currently a client, and provided no compensation for this article. Image Credits: Eco Ed™ © 2017, Brad Shorr & Dennis Salazar; photo of Dennis and Lenora Salazar and green packaging © 2017, Salazar Packaging, Inc.

The post What 10 Years of Content Marketing Did for This Startup appeared first on AllBusiness.com

The post What 10 Years of Content Marketing Did for This Startup appeared first on AllBusiness.com. Click for more information about Brad Shorr.

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