In the dynamic whirl of today’s business world, small enterprises encounter plenty of challenges when aiming to reach and engage their target audience. Luckily, all of them have one failproof solution: content marketing.
Content marketing has become a powerful tool for small businesses. Not only does it help small businesses survive, but it also establishes a strong online presence, connects with customers on a personal level, and drives sales if executed correctly.
In this article, we explain why small businesses need content marketing and what strategies they can implement to hit the right customer with the right message.
Do You Need Content Marketing For Small Businesses?
If you are a small local brand, most customers probably learn about you from traditional advertising channels – just because it’s incredibly hard for a small business to stand out in the ever-competitive digital landscape. However, quality content for small businesses can still help you steal the show, at least to the degree that you gain a significant influx of local customers.
Here’s some content marketing data for small companies:
Source: SemRush
Without a doubt, any small business needs content marketing. So, if you’re excited about jumping into the world of content for small businesses but still feeling slightly overwhelmed, below are 8 essential tips on creating a profitable content marketing strategy.
8 Tips On Content Marketing For Small Businesses
Chances are you already know that business content marketing involves sharing information online about a particular company or brand through blog posts, social media posts, podcasts, videos, infographics, etc. However, it’s one thing to know the theory, and another thing to know exactly how to enliven content marketing ideas for small businesses.
Read on to discover the winning content marketing algorithm for small businesses.
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Know What Your Audience Craves
Surely, you won’t post irrelevant information or general posts trying to engage more visitors. Business content marketing is all about understanding the audience you are appealing to. First and foremost, you must thoroughly research their interests, location, shopping habits, age, etc. The more information you know about potential customers, the easier it is to tailor your marketing strategy.
“How can I do that?” — a question pops up in your mind.
Use these strategies for business content marketing:
- Get to know your customers. Conduct surveys or questionnaires to understand the general impression of your business and get some improvement suggestions. If possible, tap into users’ demographics – age, location, income, etc. – and psychographics like their motivations, values, desires, etc.
- Monitor social media. Social media platforms are priceless for understanding your audience. When it comes to proper business content marketing, you should react to social activities like comments, shares, and direct messages. Likewise, you can use social listening tools to track verbal mentions of your brand.
- Engage with your audience. Actively communicate with your audience through comments, polls, and online discussions. Spend time responding to inquiries and customers’ feedback. Personal connection helps build relationships with potential buyers and provides insights into audience sentiment.
- Conduct content performance analysis. Tools like Google Analytics and user behavior heatmaps will allow you to automatically monitor user behavior, traffic sources, and conversion rates, helping you understand how your audience interacts with your business content.
- Analyze your competitors. Keep an eye on both the winners and the companies that are not doing well to learn from their strengths and weaknesses. Evaluate their social media presence, study their websites, and try to define why a particular marketing strategy succeeds or fails.
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Set Measurable Goals
It goes without saying that you need measurable goals to track your progress, evaluate the success of your marketing efforts, and make data-driven decisions. Match your business content marketing with higher-level business objectives. For example, if you want to increase sales, your content goal may be to generate a particular number of sales-qualified leads.
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Send Emails Regularly
Emails are one of the cheapest ways to promote small businesses online, allowing you to engage with your audience directly and deliver valuable content to their inboxes.
Here’s how to create an effective email newsletter in just 6 steps.
Content for small businesses sent via email newsletters may include valuable educational information, industry insights, exclusive offers, and relevant news. When done well, this type of small business content creation builds a direct line to your audience, contributing to long-lasting relationships (which means returning clients).
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Advance Your Blogging
A blog is obviously a valuable touchpoint for small business content creation. If your topics are relevant and the content is optimized for search engines and users’ needs, you won’t have to wait long for new visitors.
Make sure to create informative content for small businesses that will help your potential customers solve their problems. And if you struggle to come up with content marketing ideas for small businesses, just ask your audience what else they would like you to write about or what questions to answer.
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Build Your Social Media Presence
Identify the social media platforms where your target audience is most active by evaluating the demographics and psychographics of various social media platforms. To promote your brand successfully, choose platforms where you can draw more leads with business content marketing.
Last but not least, it’s crucial to work on your brand credibility and trust to maximize the effect of content marketing for local businesses. Business content marketing allows small businesses to show their expertise in a particular area with the help of human-generated content, and you should use it to the fullest.
Strive to become a go-to resource among locals. For instance, if you are running a kids’ educational center, your content for small businesses may include blog posts on kids’ early development, including games and activity ideas for parents.
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Focus on User-Generated Content (UGC)
Users generally perceive user-generated content for small businesses as more genuine and authentic. Human content reflects real experiences, opinions, and perspectives, and thus, it creates a sense of trust between the content creator and the audience.
It might be a good idea to invest in hiring committed small business content writers and marketers who will ensure engagement and interaction on your social media pages. In a nutshell, the more quality content for small businesses you create, the more efficient your content marketing strategy for a small business becomes.
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Develop a Business Content Marketing Calendar
A detailed content calendar containing topics, keywords, target audiences, and deadlines will streamline your content production, helping you track content campaigns and posting frequencies. You can even schedule posts to be published automatically.
Speaking of the marketing calendars, another one you might need is an email marketing calendar. Learn why you should have an email marketing calendar and get free templates.
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Track the Results of Your Content Marketing Strategy
Tracking your performance is an integral part of any business content marketing plan, local or global. Even the standard engagement metrics like views, clicks, and shares can tell you a lot about the success of your content marketing, but it’s even better if you use content marketing analytics software to track on-site user behavior and the entire customer journey.
Tracking your content marketing strategy is mostly about evaluating what business content for small businesses resonates with your audience and what underperforms, why, and how you can make it engaging. Tracking your content campaigns will enable data-driven decisions and ongoing improvement of your content marketing strategy.
How To Create High-Quality Content For Small Businesses
In this concluding section of our blog post, we’ll focus on two more content marketing ideas for small businesses: actionable and niche content.
Source: Tim Hortons
Actionable Content
What makes your content for small businesses actionable? Anything that forces your audience to act. If you don’t know what to start with, imagine yourself in your reader’s shoes. Ask yourself what excites you and what would make you closer to a purchase.
Actionable content may come in many forms, from blog posts to emails. For instance, your email newsletters may include a freebie like a free guide or, even better, a free trial of a paid feature. Furthermore, support your actionable information with quality visuals as it gets harder and harder to catch users’ attention.
Source: Spotify
Niche Content
Narrow-focused content can help you be unique in a landscape teeming with gazillions of blog posts and videos. The deeper you dig into the topic, the greater the chance you will catch the attention of advanced (and usually high-intent) users. On top of that, you’ll become a reputable source of knowledge in the niche.
Imagine you run an optical shop. You may create blog posts named “How often do you need an eye exam?” or the one named “Contact lenses vs glasses for remote workers.” Narrowing it down will make you a big fish in a small pond. Just give it a go.
Email Marketing Extravaganza at MailCon Show in New York
MailCon is back with a one-day email performance and deliverability conference on July 28th in New York City.
Every attendee will get:
- Productive email marketing sessions reinforced with panels and workshops addressing the most pressing topics for mailers
- Speaking and exhibition opportunities
- Connecting with renowned email marketing professionals and experts
And here’s why MailCon is the coolest email marketing event you can attend:
Here are some of the topics you’ll get covered on July 28th:
- Brand Safety & Better Subscriptions: What You Need to Know, by Ebenezer Anjorin, Lead Product Manager at Google Workspace
- Email Deliverability Starts Where Best Practices Fall Short, by Adrian W. from Email Angels
- The Importance of Securing Your Email Infrastructure and How to Do It, by Kevin A. McGrail, CEO of Peregrine Computer Consultants Corporation, and LB Blair, Head of Deliverability at Email Industries.
- Future-Proof Your Brand Like Beyoncé: Integrating Email & Social Media for Iconic Digital Presence, by Carlos Gil from GetResponse
- Insights from the expertise of renowned email deliverability consultants like Trey Bennett, Keith Kouzmanoff, Jakub Olexa, and more
- Expert panel on navigating the complexities of consumer privacy and compliance regulations, by Eric J. Troutman, Puja J. Amin, and Brittany Andres
- Marketing Crossfire session hosted by Channel Automation™ and featuring industry thought leaders
And so much more!
Get your tickets now before they sell out!
For those new, here’s everything you need to know about MailCon in just 90 seconds:
