Content Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Content marketing has been around for quite some time, and it is still one of the many digital marketing strategies used by professionals. In a survey conducted, 82% of marketers said they used content marketing as one of their tactics to build brand awareness, increase sales, and improve engagement.

As more marketers invest in content marketing, small business owners should dive into it too. There are several content marketing strategies small businesses can integrate into their campaign. The old ways of promoting a business are not much applicable now. In our society, content marketing goes digital and it’s more than the blog content that we know.

Content Marketing Definition

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that involves planning, creating, and distributing quality content to the target audience. When creating content for your small business, keep in mind that it should be valuable, relevant, and consistent if you want to convert your audience into sales.

Some content marketing strategies can be direct, where a business tries to sell their product. However, most people don’t like this kind of content. Another way is the indirect content marketing form, where the business provides valuable information to their viewers. This information solves problems that the business’s product can provide.

There are various types of content marketing small businesses can use from social media to video creation. In addition, businesses should need to stay updated on the new trends and techniques that change all the time. If you know what’s new and tap into it, you can please your target audience and increase your business sales.

Why do Small Businesses Need Content Marketing?

Providing solutions to the pain points of your target audience can help build trust and loyalty. People who find a business that gives them answers to their questions are likely to succeed.

Timely and useful content is the most effective strategy rather than hard-selling of products to your target audience. That is why it is crucial to learn strategies that can improve your content in the long run.

Businesses that have been using content marketing in the right way have experienced immense changes. They have mastered how to utilize content marketing in their campaigns.

• Develop trust with consumers
• Higher ROI
• Builds brand identity
•  Helps in organic searches
• Attracts ideal buyers
• Good for increasing website visibility
• Use in multiple channels

If you are seeking to experience the same, then you have to start building content strategies for your small business.

Content Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Specify Your Goal

Having a goal or mission helps the marketing team to create strategies and content that is in line with it. Make your goals specific, attainable, and relevant to your business.

Know Your Target Audience

Don’t waste your time producing content that is irrelevant to your audience. You need to get to know who and what your target audience wants. By conducting in-depth research, you will understand their interests, buying habits, and searching behavior.

There are tools available that you can use to collect data and study them. You can use Google Analytics to see how the traffic on your website behaves, what they click, and what keywords brought them to your business.

Another way to get to know your audience is through conducting a survey. You can ask them to answer a questionnaire on your website or use social media to post questions.

Getting to look from your competitor’s audience can even give you an idea of what content they use. However, do not disregard those accounts whose content marketing strategies aren’t working. Instead, learn to study what they are doing and why they aren’t effective, so you can avoid them or might improve them for your business.

Write a Blog Post

Blogging is one of those old content marketing strategies that are still effective. However, blogs were different in the early 2000s than they are today. There are factors that need to be considered for your blog post to work.

However, even if there is a major shift in the way blogging is conducted, it is still an effective content marketing strategy for businesses. Each month, around 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages. These numbers show that blogging can still reach your target audience.

When creating a blog post, you need to know what content is relevant to your consumers. Make sure to research the content you need to create.

Furthermore, when writing a blog, you have to consider the keyword, SEO, and length.

Keyword research is one part of other SEO strategies. There are tools you can use to help you search for keywords that are relevant to your topic and work for your business. However, don’t forget to optimize your content for SEO too. You can read more about SEO and local SEO optimization in our blog.

For the frequency of writing blog posts, according to experts, daily posting can have a 57% better result. So, if you can create as much content as you can, that would be great, but it must be informative, relevant, and high-quality.

Meanwhile, the length of a blog’s content is often debatable. In some studies, 75% of people prefer to read posts that are under 1000 words, but content that is usually long-formed has more views, social shares, and better ranking on search engines.

Build an Email List

Combining email marketing with content marketing can make a big difference to your business. Building an email list for your marketing strategy can help in retaining people who visited your website. You can use it to send high-quality content newsletters, upcoming events, new products, and any content related to your business.

When creating an email, you have to consider what to include in it, which content marketing then comes in.

Using content marketing brings an audience to your website, while email marketing retains those people who visited your website.

Use Social Media to Share Content

Sharing a link to your content isn’t effective at all. People will not click on links because they are wary of clickbait content and even malicious links. But, there are other ways you can encourage your audiences to read or engage in your content.

You can take pictures from your blog post and share them on social media; make sure that it is within the image size required by the social media channel. You can add eye-catching captions and hashtags.

Furthermore, you can create infographics and podcasts out of your content too.

However, before you can share on a social media channel, you have to know what platform can help you reach your target audience. You can do this by gathering insights on your audience and using it to see where they spend most of their time online. Using Google Analytics can also work to determine customer behavior.

Determining the platform that best works for your audience can cut back on time and money spent on unnecessary channels.

Know When to Deliver Content

Now that you have established who your audiences are, where you can find them, and they get interested in your content, you begin to think that flooding them with more posts will be effective. But, this is not the best thing to do.

You need to create a content calendar for when you are to post on your blog and social media channels. Your content calendar must also include what time in the day and how many you should post.

Make sure you don’t flood your customers’ emails, social media channels, and other platforms with your content. Posting too frequently can have damaging consequences.

You can make it a habit to post at a specific time and day. This habit will make your readers come back to your content frequently, as they expect you to post during those times. Even better, creating timely content gives you more space to think of better topics and do more research.

Promote Your Content via Paid Advertisements

Sharing your content in various channels can drive organic traffic to your website. However, this might take time before you grow your audience, unless you were able to go viral.

You can opt for Google ads or social media ads to assist you in promoting your content. You can customize the audience you want your content to reach by changing some of the parameters of the platform.

Combining paid and organic approaches can help you promote your website’s traffic and leads.

Diversify Your Content

Content marketing isn’t only about blogs, images, and infographics; there are plenty of options you can try to entice your audience.

Videos are the most effective content marketing strategy in the market. People like watching videos, and even most said that they prefer watching a video demonstrating a product to reading them. If it’s possible to create a video for your small business, don’t hesitate to do so.

You can find affordable video editing tools online. These tools are made for beginners, so you do not have to worry about editing your videos at all.

If you need video editing software that won’t break your bank, try our Movavi Video Suite or Pinnacle Studio 24 Ultimate. You get 20% off on your purchase.

Ask Customers to Leave Reviews

Reviews, comments, and testimonials can serve as content for your small business. People who need your service or want to buy your product will first read what others are saying. That is why encourage your customers to leave a comment or share an image or video of them using your product.

With permission, you can use these reviews as user-generated content on your social media channels to show visitors about your customers’ experiences.

Track Results

You can track your content activity in real-time with some tools available online. You can see how many people like, share, comment, or click on a link. These insights are crucial when you need to see if your campaigns are working. You can see if your content is converting, and if it does you can create more campaigns similar to it. However, if your content doesn’t achieve your goal, you can always make some changes to it.

Conclusion

Small businesses need to compete with large corporations to make sales, build brand awareness, and find more customers. It is difficult to compete but using strategies like content marketing can boost the presence of small businesses to their target audience.

Start by defining your goals and knowing your target audience, then from there, create valuable and relevant marketing content.

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