The Role of Content Marketing in 2025

Speaker 0: what role does content marketing play in building brand awareness for start ups?

Speaker 1: you want me to jump in?

Speaker 0: yeah. that'd be great.

Speaker 1: okay. yeah. i think one of the biggest challenges startups have is no one knows about you, of course, but, people are always looking for credibility. they wanna see, like, what's out there. they wanna find something. and so, content marketing plays a big role in brand awareness because it helps you build some kind of authority. i think, you know, two thirds of people at least i think it's almost three quarters of people that started that of people prefer to learn about a company through articles rather than ads. right? like, they want to see content out there, whether it's you curating content, submitting content, being featured. it's not just about press, but, there's that. and the second thing is, you know, it's straight up seo. if people are searching for the things that you offer, content is gonna help you be found. it's definitely an uphill battle, obviously, when you're starting from scratch, but you can't get found if you don't have content out there. and i think, lastly, you know, everyone talks about storytelling. you need content to to help share these stories, whether it's videos, podcasts, blog posts, etcetera. so, creating that content that resonates with people emotionally if you can, that drives that engagement.

Speaker 2: like, i'm an ex journalist. content has been my world for forever. i think content is a really hard game these days. i think it's it's even gotten harder in the last two years with chatgpt because the bar for content has been raised. and as rand fishkin says from sparktoro, if your content isn't as good as chat gpt, then it's not worth publishing. so it's not a matter of creating content on a regular basis for seo. it's creating content that offers amazing insight that's evergreen content, that leverages con it registers data that they can't get anywhere else. so it's a very hard game to play. and the other thing for startups, to be honest with you, is most of them can't afford to have to create good content, high quality content. they don't have the money. right? so that's hard. i mean, you know, you look at companies like that have done content well, like like, clio and a canadian example. they had money. they leaned hard into content, and it worked for them. but for a lot of companies, it's a really hard uphill battle, and it's and it was a staple for many years, and i don't think it is anymore.

Speaker 0: anyway i'm

Speaker 3: gonna jump in. yeah. i was just gonna say the best example of content marketing for that that's done so intentionally geared towards their audience has been for me, like, the one that i've experienced online is, hubspot. you know, every time you type in, like, you know, handling objections or if you, right now, type in i think it's objection handling. the first thing that'll pop up, at least on the first page, will be hubspot article handling objections. and then right when you click on that article, on the article itself, as you're reading through it, it's giving you additional downloads, and, hence, the email marketing portion pops in there because they instantly have that avenue to now ask you, hey. in addition to this free article that, you know, you're finding helpful as you're reading through this, would you like to now download this other sixty six objection handling tips? like, it's the most, i think, the best example of content marketing that i've seen online. and i believe that when it comes to content marketing, you can do content marketing and just, you know, not just the typical, you know, text based written format now. you can do it through your podcast, through your stream streaming, through your visual content. so, yeah, there's so many different ways to, you know, do content marketing, but i understand why most people associate content marketing with the search, like, the main search engines. right? but, yeah, i'm from the social media world, so, you know, we also get found on social. if you just click on, you know, pics, you'll see some pinterest. if you click on videos, you'll see the youtube. so we're out here. but, yeah, so i would say hubspot has the best example. if anybody wants to take a page, from one of the best content marketing, companies, it's hubspot.

Speaker 4: so just from a content marketing perspective as far as the topics that you wanna talk about, in my experience, it's always best to, you know, be in that situation where you're providing answers to questions and value. because if you're not doing that, then people aren't necessarily gonna find you. because, typically, when people are looking for answers to questions, they go to these peep to the internet, and that's just that's how we do it these days. there's a reason why google is a verb now. right? so people will look to go to google to find answers to questions. they'll go to their friends. they'll go to their social media. they'll they'll put it out there and say, i need help with this particular thing. who out there can help me with it? and if somebody recommends your business, then you wanna be able to show them that you can actually handle that particular, challenge that they have. so being able to offer that type of value in your content is actually gonna be very helpful to you. it's not just about telling stories. you actually wanna be able to help solve problems because at the end of the day, that's the reason why most people are looking at you in the first place.

Speaker 0: yeah. and, you know, i was mentioning earlier before we had that i got two, discovery calls with clients today. they reached out to me out of the blue. i one, i know just found me on google. the other found me on youtube. and so, you know, one looks like they're definitely being client, not a hundred percent sure of the other, and it's just because i'm putting out content. so it works.

Speaker 4: mhmm. but it's not just putting out content. it's actually problem solving content, which is the best kind of content to put out there. i mean, yes, all that other stuff is great, but at the end of the day, if your product solves problems for people, that's what they want to know. that's what they're going to find. that's what they're going to look for.

Speaker 0: and as far as people doing content well, we've had our, panelists in the room saying semrush is a great example of, people doing great content. zapier also does a great job doing content. shopify is a great canadian comp at doing, and, mark loves the fact that hubspot was amazing as a quality content. i use them for my growth hacking because they have landing pages for everything. but, you know, the market has caught up with hubspot. good point, mark.