What is content marketing
So, what precisely is the concept of content marketing? Content marketing revolves around generating and disseminating high-quality content to your target audience. In contrast to traditional advertising, content marketing does not aim to interrupt your audience and prompt them to make a purchase. Instead, its objective is to deliver valuable and pertinent content that your intended audience will find intriguing or beneficial.
In order to be successful in content marketing, it is important to provide the kind of content that your audience is interested in. The content you produce should be relevant to the products or services you offer. The ultimate goal when publishing content is to attract new customers, increase your audience, and motivate them to become customers.
When we discuss “content,” it can encompass a wide range of things. Usually, a content marketing strategy primarily concentrates on written blog content. Nonetheless, content marketing also encompasses other forms such as video, social media content, eBooks, online quizzes, podcasts, infographics, and more.
When it comes to successful content marketing for small businesses, the key is to create relevant and appealing content aimed at your target audience. The growth of your business is directly correlated to the popularity and helpfulness of your content.
Why do small businesses need content marketing
If you are a small business owner, you may be questioning whether the time and effort spent on developing a content marketing strategy will yield any benefits. However, if your goal is to attract online customers, it is essential to produce valuable content.
Content marketing can assist in discovering new customers on the internet and producing leads. By creating content that appeals to your target audience, they will actively seek out the content before being directed to your business. Accomplishing effective content marketing further emphasizes the worth of your product or service, leading to a boost in sales.
If you are a small business, your audience may be limited. However, by generating content that resonates with a wider audience, you can greatly expand your reach. By producing high-quality content, you can effectively captivate your audience, thus boosting both customer loyalty and sales. Content marketing done well provides prospects and customers with valuable information, establishing trust and enhancing relationships.
If done correctly, content marketing for small businesses can be a cost-effective method of reaching a wide target audience. Generating valuable content for your desired audience may require little to no expense, yet it has the potential to attract numerous customers and yield impressive returns on investment.
Small business content marketing strategies and tips
If you run a small business, content marketing can be an extremely effective method to attract new visitors to your website. Check out these 12 top strategies and tips for content marketing that can help you achieve exceptional marketing outcomes for your small business.
1. Understand your audience
Before creating content, it is important to have a well-defined audience in mind. A successful content marketing strategy does not aim to reach everyone indiscriminately.
When creating content, it is important to think step by step in order to ensure that it is specific and relevant to your target audience. Understanding your audience is crucial, as it helps determine the appropriate channels and formats to use when publishing your content.
To carry out this task, begin by evaluating your existing customers. What types of inquiries or uncertainties have they raised? How did they come across your business? What are their areas of interest? Compile a comprehensive inventory of characteristics that represent your intended audience, with a focus on specificity. This will aid in comprehending the kind of content that will be beneficial to them.
One possible rephrasing could be: By collecting data on demographics from your various social media platforms, you can also utilize Google Analytics as a useful tool to acquire insights into your customers’ online behavior. The greater knowledge you possess about your audience, the simpler it becomes to generate top-notch content tailored to their preferences.
2. Set measurable goals for your content
For your small business content marketing strategy to be effective, it is essential to establish a specific set of goals that you aim to accomplish. By setting measurable goals and KPIs, you can enhance your content marketing strategy and achieve greater results for your business. Goals play a vital role in assessing the effectiveness of your content marketing and identifying areas for improvement.
Goals that are commonly shared could encompass aspects such as:
- Measurable search engine rankings
- Gaining a certain number of email subscribers
- Increasing sales by a certain amount
- Increasing your website traffic by a certain amount
To ensure the growth of your business, it is crucial that your content marketing goals are measurable, trackable, and have a tangible impact.
3. Blogs posts and articles
The first step in your strategy should be to focus on written content. If your topics are related and your content is optimized for search engines, it will attract new visitors to your website. However, in order to effectively attract readers, blog posts and articles need to be useful, well-written, and follow the best practices for blogging for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Given the vastness of the Internet, the mere existence of your blog does not guarantee its distinction. To set it apart, your goal should be to create posts and articles that offer fresh information, provide assistance to potential customers, or entertain them. Ideally, the finest content accomplishes all three objectives simultaneously.
If you’re struggling to find ideas for writing, consider asking your existing customers what they are interested in learning. For instance, if you offer a product that requires intricate directions, create a comprehensive guide accompanied by photographs.
If you are a clothing retailer, discuss the latest fashion trends and provide suggestions for integrating new items into your customers’ wardrobes. Similarly, if you run a family restaurant with an intriguing backstory, elaborate on it extensively. Generating suitable topics might pose challenges, but every business possesses something valuable to provide to their clientele.
4. Photos and videos
Given that humans are highly visual beings, their attention is captured more effectively by images rather than text, and their brains are able to process visuals at a faster rate. Due to this, it is essential for your content marketing plan to incorporate photographs, videos, and other forms of visual content.
The most straightforward approach to accomplish this is by incorporating photographs into the blog posts of your company. Naturally, these photographs should always be pertinent to the topic at hand, and it is almost always preferable to use genuine photos instead of stock photos.
If you have recently made changes to your office space or organized an event at your business, these are excellent chances to capture photos. Additionally, photos depicting your product being used or your employees working can also pique the interest of potential customers on a regular basis.
Videos, like photos, are an effective method for capturing the interest of site visitors and increasing their time spent on your pages. Formerly, producing videos necessitated costly equipment, but now it’s as simple as pressing the record button on your smartphone. Later, you can edit the video using Windows Movie Maker or iMovie, both available for free.
5. Interactive content
To effectively engage potential customers, it is advisable to prompt them to take action. It is crucial for content to consistently include a call to action; however, certain content is effective as it necessitates an active response. To enhance customer engagement and generate additional leads for your business, consider developing a set of interactive tools on your website to prolong visitors’ stay on the site.
Small businesses often depend on a contact form on their landing page. Although these forms have their benefits, they do not hold people’s attention for an extended period. Conversely, a tax calculator featured on a financial website or a project estimate generator presented on a contractor’s website encourages visitors to contemplate their desires and necessities, consider the necessary steps to fulfill them, and understand how your business can assist in accomplishing their objectives.
6. Repurpose your content into different formats
We have previously discussed the numerous content marketing channels and platforms that are accessible. To maximize the visibility of the content, a successful content marketing strategy incorporates a diversity of platforms. Repurposing your content is an effective method to achieve this goal.
By repurposing one great piece of content, its value can be extended into various forms, which is particularly beneficial for small businesses as it allows them to reach a wider audience without incurring high costs.
Firstly, imagine you have written a blog article that you wish to repurpose. This very article can be transformed into a YouTube video, converted into a podcast, and potentially transformed into an infographic as well. Additionally, supplementary blog articles or relevant information can be incorporated into this post, ultimately allowing it to be released as an eBook.
By breaking up the article into short, condensed video clips, you can create five different types of content. This will allow you to distribute these clips across various marketing channels in order to attract more customers to your small business.
7. Podcasts and videos
The effectiveness of content marketing is highest when new content is regularly produced, yet it should also be conveniently accessible to users at their preferred time and location.
With the increasing popularity of mobile devices, it has become essential to create content that is easily accessible to users wherever they may be. Podcasts and videos are well-suited for this purpose.
Subscribing to a podcast allows loyal followers to access these audio files and receive new files immediately upon their availability.
You can make these files available on on-demand sites like iTunes for anyone to download. Additionally, videos can be posted on various platforms such as social accounts and YouTube. Both channels are effective for attracting new leads, sharing your insights, and staying relevant to your customers.
8. Gated content
As you engage in the process of writing and generating content for your website, you will soon come to understand that the creation time for certain types of content varies. It is likely that you can easily compose some of your blog posts based on personal experience, completing them within an hour or so. However, there will be others that demand more time for research and exploration.
Rather than abandoning or dismissing these more complex topics as unworthy of your attention, pause and evaluate whether the additional effort translates to added value for your potential customers. If it does, this content could be ideal for gatekeeping, which involves demanding visitors to provide their email address before they can access it.
Not all content may be interesting enough for visitors to willingly provide their email addresses. However, particularly captivating or helpful guides or downloads have the potential to achieve this. Moreover, taking into account that it allows you to include them in your email newsletter list, it is definitely worth the effort.
