When it comes to digital marketing for businesses, as the saying goes: content is king.
Content marketing, that is. That’s why a whopping 70% of marketers are currently investing in content strategies, and 72% cite having a good content strategy as a major key to their success.
For small businesses, content marketing is arguably even more vital. That’s because smaller companies often don’t have the marketing resources that larger firms do, and content marketing delivers some of the highest overall ROI for every marketing dollar spent. It’s also a long-term strategy that can continue to pay dividends for a long time after it’s put into effect.
To illustrate the point, here’s everything you need to know about content marketing, and why it’s an absolute must-have for small businesses.
Want to make sure that your business is marketing your brand effectively? Then one way to do so is to stay ahead of the crowd.
A content marketing for small business strategy will help you to keep up with the cutting edge technology that’s available to promote your brand. This will help you to stay relevant and increase your sales.
Are you intrigued?
Read on to discover seven reasons to use content marketing for your small business.
Content Marketing for Small Business: Why It’s Important
Content marketing is a strategy centered on creating, publishing and distributing content to your target audience. This is done in order to attract new traffic and potential customers to your business.
It’s more than just social media or blogs, with a variety of formats, content marketing can create stronger relationships between you and your target audience. In fact, the right type of content marketing will pique their interest, strengthen engagement and boost brand recall.
Content marketing carries huge benefits that can help your small business thrive, remain relevant and capture new clients. Let’s take an in-depth look at how it can do this.
1. Earn Visitor’s Trust
Creating and sharing more content with your target audience establishes you as an expert in your field. Based on this fact people will seek you out to help them with their problems.
If you don’t have a blog its time to create one. You can post a few blogs revolving around certain keywords, twice weekly to attract visitors.
For example, if you’re a small natural hair products startup you can post content on length retention and essential oils that are great for maintaining moisture. Visitors will try these out and once they work for them, they’ll keep coming back for more and even start ordering your products.
2. Promote Brand Awareness
As a small business, it’s likely that a lot of people don’t know about your brand but that’s where content marketing changes things.
When used properly content marketing can greatly increase your website traffic and make it consistent. It can also provide inbound links to your site.
3. Build Business Leads
Building leads is key to your content marketing. You need to attract potential clients on a regular basis who’ll develop an interest in what you’re offering and buy it. Content marketing is the ideal way to reach them.
Content marketing is great because it uses your insightful and useful content to bring new visitors to your site. Often times, these visitors may not even be looking specifically for what you are selling but they want information on something related to your product.
They may read your content, check out your product and buy.
4. Capture Your Ideal Buyer
Sometimes, leads can be disappointing, they don’t always translate into customers. You need to work on attracting your ideal buyer. Content marketing allows only those genuinely interested in what you’re offering to view it.
People interested in your field will search and be led to your website or blog. Then only those whose interest is heightened will head to your landing page. From those who make it to your landing page, only those who are genuinely intrigued will complete a form with their personal details in order to get more information.
5. Get Visitors to Share Your Content on Social Media
As an expert in your field, you know more than the average person. Sometimes even other businesses will want to share your content.
This is especially true if it solves a common issue in an unusual way or disseminates crucial information. Aim then to share useful content that people will not only read but be eager to share. The more exposure you get, the better. Your post might even end up trending.
6. Summon People to Revisit Your Site
By providing people with useful and informative content you’re now forming a budding relationship with them. You now start to become a trusted expert and resource for your audience. They develop trust in you and as such return to your website.
This creates a lot of engagement which is important for content marketing, so aiming to form a community that is centered around your content is important.
7. Boost Brand Authority
When your content sets you apart from the rest you’re providing answers to your audience’s questions and concerns. They now start to trust that they can rely on you to give them the best solutions to their problems.
Continue posting credible, informative and useful content as this strengthens and reiterates your role as an industry expert. With your role as an expert established, people will be more interested in purchasing your products compared to your competitors. The ultimate result is that your brand authority will be boosted.
8. Making Content Marketing Work for You
It’s more frequent to hear of larger brands producing great content than small businesses. You might even see people citing them as examples of content marketing done right.
However, don’t be intimidated, you can see a positive return on investment (ROI) by using content marketing. You don’t need to invest as much money as big businesses.
In fact, many customers prefer to learn about your business in an article compared to an advertisement, so do what you can with what you have and you will see results. Content marketing does more than just put your name out there, it helps you to remain relevant and ahead of the game.
The GameChanger
Content marketing for small business can definitely be described as a game-changer. Its varied formats provide a greater reach for brand promotion.
With it you have the opportunity to welcome traffic to your website, boost brand awareness and establish brand authority. In addition, you generate leads, taps into your ideal buyer’s market and even get visitors to share your content thus causing more traction for your business.
Content marketing puts you ahead of the pack permanently. If you would like more information on content marketing, please visit the search engine marketing section of the website.
What is the purpose of content marketing for small businesses?
The goal of all small business marketing efforts is to build a customer base and engage with them to create brand loyalty and drive sales. One of the most effective and inexpensive ways to do that in today’s multi-channel environment is through content marketing.
That’s because unlike paid advertising, content marketing provides the audience with something of value – which goes a long way toward building trust with any customer or prospect.
It’s a far more effective marketing strategy than you might imagine. In fact, survey data has indicated that 70% of people would rather learn about a business via an article. And that’s just one type of content marketing. Small businesses can avail themselves of countless forms of content creation to fuel their content marketing strategy, spread across a variety of channels. Along the way, they’ll help establish themselves as an expert voice in their field, raise their public profile, and gain exposure for their products and services. It’s a strategy that checks every imaginable box.
