Every small business juggles a finite budget, making investing in marketing a tough ask. Advertising or running SEO campaigns may be out of your budget. However, no matter your budget you can see similar benefits by focusing on content marketing.
Content marketing is a mix of written, photo or video content that is valuable to your target market across digital platforms. If done right it allows free traffic from search engines, such as Google, or social sites. With the aim, of course, to find new customers.
Why all businesses can do content marketing:
1. It can be done on any budget
You don’t have to spend a lot of money to create content. Instead invest your passion and knowledge into it. Though the smaller the financial budget, the more of your own time you will need to give to it.
2. You can give more to your audience
Instead of looking like a big business with a steel wall between your customers, you can use your content marketing to be open and share with your audience. Share your knowledge, give your audience tips and you will be seen as an authority in your industry.
3. It’s almost risk-free
If you aren’t investing a huge budget into your content marketing, then it’s relatively risk free. Your competitors may not be putting in as much effort as you, so that already puts you ahead in terms of brand awareness.
4. It can be re-purposed
Another reason content marketing should be a priority, is that everything you create can be repeatedly used. For example, one video can be used across your social media platforms, it can be transcribed as written content on a blog, and even emailed out to a client that hasn’t completed a purchase.
5. Easy to share and simple to collaborate
Content you produce can be shared across social media. It only takes one follower to share a piece of content with their audience to be seen in front of new eyes.
Or, do you have other businesses you partner with? Share content between your two businesses to expand your audiences even more.
Now that content marketing is your priority, the next step is to decide what type of content will work best for your business. Consider these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What problem does my business solve?
How can I help people?
How do people find my business?
A great way to start is with a blog on your website. Create blog posts or videos from the questions your audience regularly ask. They won’t be the only ones who want to know the answer! What a way to show people that you listen are engaged and care about their needs.
Once you get started creating your content, you can use metrics to see what topics and styles of content are the most popular – but that’s for another article!
Now we’ve gone through that, first thing to remember is to enjoy creating your content and enjoy connecting with your customers!
