For small businesses, it can be difficult to develop and implement a digital marketing strategy.
- You will need to spend less money and have fewer resources in order to be able to implement the strategies you want.
- Insufficient data and analytics to refer from marketing plans past
- A smaller and potentially less experienced team
These problems are not the end of the story. Small businesses can benefit from content marketing. It is affordable, practical, and can be done in-house. Even if you don’t have a complex content strategy, one is still necessary. Companies that have content marketing strategies are more likely to be successful than those who don’t.
These tips will help you jumpstart your own content marketing strategy.
1. Identify your audience.
Never just assume your online audience. Market research is essential before you start to develop any content marketing strategy. What are their social media habits? What are their current plans to search for new information? These questions will help you to narrow down your target audience. It is important to meet your audience where they are, and to give them the content they want.
2. Your audience is an expert.
Avoid sales pitches in content marketing strategies. Be honest. Still, subtlety can help you increase brand awareness, build credibility, and attract new customers. Publishing content that is useful, engaging, and valuable to your customers is a better way to go. Consider the questions they might be asking and how you can best answer them. What is your message? You’ll establish yourself as a leader in your industry and remove any doubts they may have about you.
3. Look at the content marketing strategies of your competitors.
The best case scenario is for your competitors to do nothing online. This will give you an advantage in the market. Pay attention to the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors if they are active. Find out what you can do to fill in the gaps and outperform your competitors.
4. Be aware of both content marketing and industry trends.
Know your industry’s content trends (e.g. Knowing the trends in your industry (e.g., what are their competitors doing and how they’re doing it) is as important as understanding trends beyond your niche. Most likely, industry trends will be what is most popular for a small group of people. However, general trends in content are more widely studied. visual, video and purpose-driven content are just a few of the most popular content marketing trends for 2017. You’ll be more likely to produce quality content that is shared and will integrate these trends with industry trends.
5. Regularly publish content.
It is important to publish new content on a regular basis in order to establish credibility. If you are the only one writing about your expertise you can position yourself as a leader in the industry. Even if your company isn’t the only one, it still makes you look more powerful than digitally-stagnant companies. SEO is also affected by your steady content. Google doesn’t like quiet websites. Google notices blogs you maintain, especially if they are related to your brand and provide value for your readers. Remember: The more activity you have, the better.
6. Make an editorial calendar.
For data collection, organization, and brainstorming, editorial calendars are useful. Tracking your topics, frequency of posts, due dates, keywords and so forth is essential. A calendar can be a great time-saver when you are creating content on a weekly basis and as a guide to future content strategies. Your small business does not have to go under because of a tight budget. It’s a smart idea to contact a digital marketing agency if you have the money. A content marketing team can conduct keyword research and competitor analysis, implement on-page optimization, perform content audits, and offer a host of other useful services. A marketing team will benefit greatly from all the hard work that you put into your content marketing efforts.