8 things every small business should know about content marketing

Do you know that 70% of people prefer articles to advertisements for learning more about the brand and its products? Yes, the content was, is, and will be the king. If you still hesitate about content marketing implementation to your company, then this post is right for you.

Why should you implement content marketing for your small business? How can it help your company to grow and generate leads? What should you do to succeed? Check this article to learn 8 things about content marketing that will make you use it for your company in the nearest future.

Content marketing infographics

What is Content Marketing?

However, before we get right to the reasons, let’s define what content marketing actually is. It’s a long-term strategy that uses various forms of content for building trust and stronger relationships with the target audience, attracting their attention, retaining the customers, improving the users’ engagement, building a brand, telling about the service/product, etc. Herewith, it’s a strategy that is focused on the content creation, publication, and distribution for generating leads. If you’re a business owner, content marketing should be one of the things that you need to consider. And having an expert like Catherine Nikkel on your team to take care of your content marketing strategies will give a huge significance in growing your business.

It can be done via social media, blogs, videos, infographics, ebooks, podcasts, and on and on. Today about 105 types of content can be found. So, content is not about text only but various images, photos, videos, etc. So, you should mind using high-quality visuals to make the content more appealing. That’s why you should include some tools for creating and editing visuals to your content strategy as well. For example, it can be a Crello that is a great picture converter and creator for non-designers.

A few types of content to use for small business

8 Things about Content Marketing to Mind

Probably, the previous stats and facts about content marketing can be not enough to change your mind and start using it for your company. So, here we prepare 8 points on how your small business can benefit from content marketing. Let’s elaborate on them together!

#1. Build a Trust with Customers

It’s crucial to learn your audience and reveal its pains/problems/needs so that you can create really appealing content that will bring value, and be really helpful to your customers. Analyze your target audience (TA) to provide the best solution for them. By creating expert content and relevant information, you build trust with TA. Also, it’s vital to share the published content with the audience, using the right channels. 

Here are the following tips to help build customer’s trust through your content:

• Upload Video Content: As visual media, videos can easily capture your audience’s attention. An online marketing video maker can help you make your video content more professional and targeted.

• Create Infographics: Infographics are creative graphic content with text that can be uploaded on websites and social media platforms.

Upload Audio Content: One of the most popular types of audio content is podcast. Many smartphone users listen to podcasts while driving, walking, or waiting and caught in traffic. Increase your demographic reach by uploading audio content in your website.

#2. Build a Brand and its Awareness

The name is the game when it comes to starting out a new limited liability corporation (LLC). Coming up with a name that represents your business accurately, whilst being creative and to the point is crucial in the initial phases, especially when starting a business in Texas, a state that is filled with so much competition and ambition. Click here to learn how to do a name search in Texas to ensure the name you want is available so that you can reserve it and get started.

Valuable content is a way to build a brand and make it recognizable. Content marketing properly used can significantly enhance quality traffic to your company’s site. In such a way, more awareness and leads for your small business is generated through the published content where you demonstrate your expertise and skills again and again.

The following are some concrete examples on how to build brand awareness using your content:

• Website and Social Media Integration: Connect your website to your social media accounts for increased visibility. Post a summary of your content to your social media network with your website link included.
• Audit and Improve: Check your most in-demand content using analytics, and enhance it or create similar content.

Extend Content to Offline Channels: Extend your content to offline channels, such as printing your company quote or theme in customized merchandise. Some examples of customized merchandise include shirts, mugs, pens, lanyards, and caps.

#3. Boost Organic Search Visibility (SEO)

You’ve created a heap of useful and expert content, and now what? There is no sense in creating and publishing posts about your company and product/service in case nobody finds and sees it. So that you should keep in mind some SEO optimization of your content so that people can find it when typing queries. Adding certain keywords and providing relevant information to it, you boost the traffic and increase the visibility of your website.

#4. Build a Brand Authority

Creating high-quality content with expertise added, you can solidify your brand identity as a key resource with reliable and valuable information provided. Posting articles where you share your knowledge, information based on your experience, and so on, you showcase that your company is an expert in the field and you do what you do better than others. In such a way you build the authority of your brand and your customers will be sure that you provide the best solution to their particular problem and/or pain.

Another advantage of creating expert content is that other sites will link to your posts, showing that your website is a trusted and reliable resource. Such a backlinking is good for search ranking as well. In such a way more and more people from different resources will visit your site, growing the authority of your business and company.

#5. Give a Reason for Customers to Come Back to Your Site

Keeping a blog about your small business and publishing frequently and regularly, you give your users a reason to return to your site again and again. The more often people visit your site to find useful information, the more likely they will come to you when it’s time to purchase. It’s a way to retain your customers and improve their engagement. Also, it’s an economic way to market your small business.

So, what are the advantages of more customers coming back to your website:

• Increases Your Credibility: If more people are visiting your site, it means that you are providing reliable information to your audience. Your website visitors greatly trust and rely on your website.
• More Marketing Opportunities: You will gain more prospects if you have more visitors coming back to your website. Don’t waste your digital marketing efforts. Make sure you provide good reasons for your customers to stay engaged with your site. In this way, you can get their buy-in to avail of your products and services. 
• Increases Sales: With more web visitors, you can expect more sales too. Just make sure to strengthen your sales and marketing efforts to attain your target goals. Constant follow-up is important to establish nurturing customer relationship and increase sales.

#6. Get Greater Return on a Smaller Investment

Actually, hiring or outreaching to someone to write for your small business is much cheaper than other ways to advertise the company. What’s more, not all the campaigns turn out to be as successful as expected. Just imagine ad blocking can cause a loss of up to $78 billion globally in 2020. That makes inbound marketing a more cost-effective way to tell about your business and/or products/services. 

Currently, content marketing becomes a profitable investment for businesses of various sizes from small to large enterprises. According to the research results, 73% of companies hire (or plan to do that) specialists to manage their content strategy.

#7. Convert More Visitors into Leads with Lead Nurturing

Content can be a powerful lead magnet for your small business. So, you can leverage on creating and adding useful content on a regular basis and in the way to generate leads throughout the buyer’s journey. 

So, the right content created can fuel the acquisition of new visitors. Adding an attractive lead magnet in the right place can capture more leads. The buyer’s journey or lead nurturing consists of 3 (three) main stages:

1. Awareness – it’s where the main problem or pain of your customers is brought up for discussion;
2. Consideration – it’s a place to demonstrate your skills, expertise, and just showcase why exactly your company is the best (lead magnet);
3. Decision – is where the user should become your customer.

#8. Keep Your Site Fresh and Relevant

It’s not a secret that the constant and regular update of the site content adds odds to your small business over the competitors when it comes to the search ranking. So, when a user search for some information and types a query, the search engines score your website’s content considering the following aspects:

1. Date of publishing – how old the content is?
2. New posts and updates appeared – How often the content is published/updated?
3. How relevant and current the data is – How often the content changes, including the core context of the content?
4. Inbound links – How does the rate of new links grow to the content?
5. Traffic and engagement metrics – How often people visit the site and how long they stay there reading?

All that influences the visibility of the site in the search engines. However, mind that all the content published is to be relevant for your customers’ needs and bring true value to the customers. Otherwise, even if you add a new piece of content every week or more frequently, it will make no sense and won’t give you the desired boost.