When you hear the words “content marketing,” you probably immediately think of written content such as blogs, articles, videos, and pictures posted on social media.
While these content types are crucial to any content strategy, they are not what makes it successful.
Success in small business content marketing comes from building a strategy, understanding who you are trying to reach, and then marketing to them in the way they want to receive it.
Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. Nobody has ever succeeded in content marketing without a clear strategy and taking the time to let their online reach grow. It takes patience and persistence, but the rewards can be surprisingly good.
The good news is that you can influence your prospect and customer behavior very effectively if you follow a strategy. A clear content marketing plan will help you sell more products and services, and it will help you better forecast your business’s growth.
The real purpose of content marketing is to build a stronger relationship with your audience, capture their attention, improve engagement, and improve your brand authority.
Content Marketing Vs. Advertising
Digital marketing today offers different approaches to attracting attention. While online advertising is designed to attract interest, you ultimately aim to get something from the audience.
Content marketing is the reverse. It’s all about providing valuable information, insights, and entertainment and giving something to your audience to build trust.
A small business owner may not realize that 70% of customers would rather learn about a company through a helpful article than through an advertisement. Content marketing consistently generates three times the number of leads as most advertising. This is why inbound marketing with useful content has grown in popularity during the past ten years.
Many prospective customers are out there online actively looking on a search engine for the content you can create. The reason for this is that people love information. News websites are the most shared content among internet users, which shows how timely relevant content trumps online ads.
After you create a piece of content for your business, it can potentially attract new website traffic month over month at no extra cost. Whereas any leads from paid advertising dry up completely as soon as the campaign stops running.
Every share of your content puts your brand and content in front of a new audience who can also become customers. This is rarely the case with traditional marketing and advertising, as people won’t typically share advertisements with friends unless the offer is very compelling.
Outsourcing Your Content Creation
The good news is that content marketing has grown to be such a profitable investment for companies that 73% of brands now choose to hire outside to help manage their content strategy.
Whether it is professional content writers, photographers, videographers, or social media managers, there are many options available to help to create great content.
The benefit of hiring or outsourcing your content marketing efforts is that professional content marketers can help you manage resources, connect with your audience, and target content to move those prospects through your funnel effectively. They can usually create high-quality content at a faster pace than you can do it in-house.
Even if you outsource your content marketing or hire someone to produce content for you, it’s still a lot cheaper than other forms of advertising.
The encouraging factor is that content marketing typically costs about 62% less than traditional and outbound marketing tactics.
How To Get Started with Content Marketing
Think of everything of all the knowledge and experience it takes to run your business. Even though you provide a product or service, it’s likely there is also a lot of specialist knowledge that surrounds your creating, selling, and delivering them.
This vast amount of insider knowledge is precisely what you should be sharing with your audience. And that’s where you should begin developing your content marketing strategy.
Begin by making a list of every frequently asked question that your customers have. Think through all the problems you help them solve, and things they need to know before making a buying decision.
All these questions and problems can form the basis of helpful articles, videos, infographics, social media posts and stories, and a lot more. These will become part of your content marketing plan for your business.
Know Your Specific Audience
Content marketing success relies on having a clearly defined audience. Remember that you aren’t trying to reach everyone and anyone in the world.
With any content marketing campaign, you’re crafting a specific message which is valuable to a particular target market. These are the people who are most likely to purchase your product or service because it solves a specific problem or fulfills a need for them.
If you already have done social media marketing and have a website, you can start by researching your existing content. This will give you a sense of where you’ve already developed a viable online presence and help you create a buyer persona. Then you can decide on which channels are likely to get you the most exposure and engagement.
Choose Your Content Platforms
It’s a mistake (and a lot of work) to build a huge presence on every single marketing platform. Instead, it’s better to figure out where your ideal customers hang out and build a following there.
Platforms like Twitter and Facebook will have a more general appeal, whereas sites like LinkedIn and Instagram are going to be more specialized. Also, think about other options like Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat, and Medium. Each of these sites acts as a content marketing tool that can help you grow.
Each content creation platform offers both paid and free content options. Always start with the free option and only use sponsored content options sparingly. Paying for social media attention can be a quick way to burn through money with very little return.
Once you know which platforms you want to grow on, spend some time getting them set up and planning how you will share your content on each. Doing this first sets you up for success over randomly posting your content on all platforms.
Focus on Lead Nurturing
Good content is the key to improving customer trust. As your prospects begin to trust you, they’ll be more willing to return for more information.
To build a content marketing strategy, you can not view your content as a bunch of one-off pieces. It needs to tie together into a strategic marketing approach.
As a person moves through the customer journey, you must keep offering them more value with content to keep them engaged with your business. The best way to do this is to match the content you’d like to develop with the buying stages. Effective content will continue to educate and encourage the prospect that you can solve their problem.
To map out your potential customer journey, you must understand who your audience needs and pain points, and the types of questions they’d ask themselves before they even seek a solution like yours.
Build Your Brand Authority
If you think of who the brand authorities are in your industry, you can likely name at least a few people or brands.
Typically the brands and individuals who are authorities are the ones you see most often sharing quality content.
Your customers are grateful for the service and solutions you provide, and proving value through your content means you position yourself as a critical resource they need to pay attention to.
The more your existing customers return to you for your advice, resources, and solutions, the more likely they are to choose you when it’s time to make a purchase. They will also share your valuable content and talk about your services online, which increases brand awareness.
By becoming an authority and reliable resource, you gain their trust. And trust is the most important factor in most buying decisions, especially online.
Stick To A Schedule
Once you’ve got your topics, target audience, and preferred channels, you need to develop a schedule. A schedule helps you avoid some common pitfalls with your marketing efforts.
Rather than flooding your target market with insights, it’s better to take your time. Many business owners think that if one content piece is effective, ten must be ten times as effective.
However, this is not the case.
Content marketing is better when it is done at a drip-feed pace. Too much fresh content soon overwhelms people and makes them want to leave. Conversely, too little will make them forget who you are. Posting too frequently can be just as damaging as not posting enough, or posting inconsistently.
What is an ideal schedule? Consider a weekly post (same day, same time) to get into the habit for blog articles. Social media posts can range between once daily and a few times each week.
There’s a lot of research available about how often to update your company’s Facebook or Instagram. You can use this as a guide for your content calendar and your optimum times for creating content.
Most all, remember that consistency is key in content marketing. Consistency helps remind readers to come back, look forward to new content, and indicates that you’re a reliable source of information.
How To Grow Your Small Business with Content Marketing
You might think that you need a team of writers, videographers, social media managers to make it successful. But the truth is you can do most of your content marketing yourself in-house, and hire out when you need it.
If you are short on budget, simple articles and videos posted consistently on social media are an excellent place for starting to create content. As you grow your following, you can try more sophisticated methods and continue to evolve your content strategy.
As you create informative content that helps your prospects, your brand reputation will benefit. In fact, the best marketing tactic in the world is to simply be useful to your prospective customers.