Most marketing experts advise you to invest in a variety of content formats. They tell you to expand business reach by capitalizing on multiple content marketing platforms.
But here is the catch.
The ultimate goal of small business content marketing isn’t to create brand awareness alone; it is to reach out to the right prospects at the right time. Unfortunately, with a paltry budget and insufficient content marketing resources, you can’t afford to have a full-fledged, omnichannel content marketing plan. Instead, you’d rather have a lean strategy that helps focus on one-two content formats and platforms—those that matter most to your business. A simple process that helps achieve conversion goals while getting optimum returns from your marketing dollars. Hard to believe?
Here are some valuable tips to stay lean and get the best possible results from your content marketing efforts:
1. Focus on One Content Format
For content marketing to work for your small business, you need to make sure you’re following a consistent publishing schedule.
That’s why it’s critical to emphasize a single content format. Here’s how you can boil down to a content format helps you build an audience for your business:
- Understand the amount of resources and budget you have for producing content frequently. Then, strikeout content types beyond your means.
- Work on building an audience persona figure out a content type your target audience would prefer to consume.
- Pick a content type that’s most popular in your niche.
Whether you decide to choose blog content or videos, or a podcast, put all your energies into building up a respectable content property.
2. Promote on 1-2 Key Platforms
Once you’ve started publishing the content regularly, you need to get your target audience to consume it. And for that, you need to promote it on various social media platforms. But how to choose between a large number of content distribution platforms.
- Find a social media platform where your target audience is most active.
- For instance, Facebook is a terrific platform to reach out to a B2C audience, and LinkedIn works well only for B2B businesses.
- An email newsletter is an excellent option for B2B businesses to stay connected to an opt-in list. You can simply send mass emails from Gmail to promote content and offers to a list of prospective customers.
- If you’re running a fashion business, you must have an impressive presence on Instagram.
This way, you can choose 1-2 platforms that will help you reach out to the most relevant prospects and start collecting leads.
3. Make Your Content Stand Out
As a small business, you’re taking on much bigger competitors with much higher content publishing frequencies. So how to get your audience to notice your content and your business?
- Work on creating a distinct content marketing voice. For example, would it be quirky and light-hearted or formal and authoritative?
- You need to infuse a unique personality into your branded content and make it consistent with your brand voice.
- Make a list of factors that distinguish your content from your competitors.
One of the critical goals of content marketing is to make your audience hear your voice and get hooked to it. It’s what keeps them coming back to you for more.
4. Hire an Expert Writer
Here’s another reason why most small businesses grapple with producing quality content: they hire mediocre and inexperienced writers.
- You need to appoint a writer who can understand your niche and your business.
- Look for a ghostwriter who can dedicate herself to creating unique content for your business—someone who comes with basic SEO and content marketing skills.
- Don’t fall for content mills and cheap SEO content providers who might have little understanding of how to create high-quality, audience-centric content.
An expert content creator can help you get your content marketing off the ground and achieve the desired outcome without breaking the bank.
5. Use Free Content Marketing Tools
Getting visibility for your small business means you need to create lots and lots of top of the funnel content. Stuff that helps you educate your audience and let them know your business exists. And to get positive business outcomes, you need to maintain content quality and brand voice.
- Thankfully, you can use many free content marketing tools to create, curate, and promote content.
- Such tools come in handy when it comes to analyzing content performance and observing and fixing shortfalls.
It’s best if you can keep tabs on the latest free content marketing resources. It’s the ideal strategy for small businesses to save time and money in creating and promoting some great content.
Final Thoughts
Now you know that content marketing isn’t all that far-fetched. Using a few intelligent strategies, you can make content marketing work for your small business without stretching your marketing budget. Make sure you focus your efforts to deliver quality content to the right audience, and you’ll realize you’ve saved yourself from many frivolous content marketing activities.
Abhishek Talreja is a passionate wordsmith and an experienced content marketing expert. He is the founder of Prolific Content Marketing. He works with International businesses as a marketing consultant and freelance writer. His articles have appeared in some of the top marketing publications. @Abhishekt15
Content marketing stock photo by Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock
