Consider using content marketing as a strategy to expand your audience and improve brand recognition if you run a small business.
The production and distribution of online content that increases website traffic is known as content marketing. Blogs, infographics, and whitepapers are examples of content kinds that are intended to generate interest in your offerings or products.
Why Should Your Small Business Do Content Marketing?
You may also pinpoint the problems that your customers are facing and explain how your products may help them by using content marketing. Sales may result directly from this.
Any evergreen material you produce is another long-term advantage of content marketing. This is used to describe resources that don’t go out of style, such as infographics explaining how to do a task that doesn’t alter or blog entries detailing the background of your sector.
Small Business Content Marketing: 7 Steps for Success
1. Start a Blog
In fact, you can increase website traffic by thirty percent if your website has between twenty-one and fifty-four blogs.
Apart from increasing visitors, blogs can assist:
- raise the ranks of your search engine optimization (SEO)
- give your customers more value
- raise awareness
- produce leads and raise the possibility of conversion
Resources for Starting a Blog
Select the Top Blogging Platform
3 Easy Steps to Launch a WordPress Blog
Five Easy Steps to Launch a Blog for Your Small Business Right Now
Neil Patel’s Handbook for Regular Blogging
2. Build a Social Media Presence on the Social Channels Your Audience Uses
How can you pick the social media platforms that are best for your brand out of all the available options?
Determine who your target audience is before you start publishing anywhere. On social media, you are speaking to a particular group of customers with particular interests rather than to everyone. Once you know who you are speaking to, you need to figure out how to get in front of them.
- Combine all of the current consumer data to determine the internet activities of your target demographic.
- Look at the social media accounts of your rivals to determine which ones have the most active users.
- Determine the internet behavior of consumers by utilizing tools such as Google Analytics.
You may start identifying the platforms where your target audience is active and start distributing content to them on those specific platforms by following these three steps.
Resources for Building a Facebook Presence for Your Small Business
- There are numerous approaches you may take to find out where your audience is engaged.
- Combine all of the current consumer data to determine the internet activities of your target demographic.
- Look at the social media accounts of your rivals to determine which ones have the most active users.
- Determine the internet behavior of consumers by utilizing tools such as Google Analytics.
You may start identifying the platforms where your target audience is active and start distributing content to them on those specific platforms by following these three steps.
3. Start an Email Newsletter
Expect an average return on investment (ROI) of $42 for every dollar spent on email marketing, thanks to historically strong ROI. A great tool for small businesses to use is email marketing. Email newsletters can benefit small businesses in addition to their pure return on investment.
- cultivate a positive relationship with your audience
- advertise discounts, promotions, and coupons
- raise the value of the customer
Resources for Creating a Basic Sales Funnel/Content Journey
- How to Produce Effective Content with Content Mapping
- How to Draw a Customer Journey Map (Even in the Event That You Are Not Sure Exactly Who Your Customers Are)
- How to Produce Content for Each Phase of the Purchase Process
- How to Produce Content for the Different Buyer Journey Stages
5. Build a Content Calendar
Create monthly schedules that contain social media postings, blog entries, emails, and any other material you would like to produce that month rather than rushing to produce content on the spur of the moment.
This tactic not only helps you stay organized, but it also enables readers to become accustomed to a regular publishing schedule and to develop a lasting sense of familiarity and confidence with your business.
Resources for Building a Content Calendar
- How to Create a Marketing Schedule That Will Make Your Campaigns Easier
- How to Create a Content Schedule using a Free Template
- A Content Calendar: What Is It? And How to Construct One
- The Detailed Guide to Selecting a Content Schedule
6. Create a Variety of Content Types
Examine your current content as well as that of your rivals in-depth. Check out what is and is not appealing to audiences. It’s time to try to duplicate that success with your next content once you’ve demonstrated efficacy.
Then you can unleash your creativity. Don’t let what is already in place constrain you. Make an infographic out of your most recent blog post. Transform your infographic into a whitepaper. Convert your plain paper into a set of social tiles centered around quotes.
There are countless options for creating content.
Resources for Building a Diverse Content Library
- How to Diversify Your Traffic with Different Content Formats
- Forty Various Content Types You Can Produce For Your Blog
- The Top 7 Content Types for Links and Engagement
- Formulating a Multifaceted Content Marketing Approach
7. Mine Customer Reviews and Testimonials
Bring the evaluations to life using social media postings and testimonials from your website and blog to make them work as hard as you do.
You may add much more personality to that review by finding the greatest quotations and putting a face on the brand, resulting in a customer-generated advertisement that really sells itself.
Resources for Building Effective Customer Testimonials
- 14 Sample Testimonial Pages You Should Try
- Templates for Sharing Your Client Testimonials
- Instantly Produce Eye-Catching LinkedIn Testimonial Images with Canva (Free)
How to Create a Small Business Marketing Strategy
Adjust the buyer personas you have.
You can gain a deeper insight of your audiences and their individual pain areas by creating buyer personas. You can determine which content your customers need and when by finding out who is buying your products.
Determine which consumer material is worthwhile.
Customers are not interested in material for its own sake. They are looking for stuff that can address their issues. Once your buyer personas have been established, investigate which content assets will best meet the specific requirements of your buyers.
Establish corporate objectives.
Establishing corporate objectives that complement your marketing plan may initially seem intimidating. Make your benchmarks realistic and attainable by applying the SMART goal-setting method.
Bolster your routes of distribution
Your goals are prepared for measurement, and your content is ready to go. Now is the ideal moment to begin distributing your work. Although it would be ideal if every piece of content was successful across all platforms, this is regrettably untrue. To guarantee success and reach, decide which content is suitable for each channel.
Identify a rhythm
Creating a single piece of content and then resting on your laurels is insufficient. You need to create a rhythm that allows your audience to consistently receive high-quality information.
Small Business Content Marketing Frequently Asked Questions
Why do small businesses need content marketing?
What are some examles of content marketing?
What is the best content marketing strategy for a small business?
Small Business Content Marketing Conclusion
You’re well on your way to creating a successful content marketing strategy that will expand your audience and boost overall sales after you’ve defined your customer personas.