Written by When it comes to getting customers, the majority of small businesses rely on local advertising, word of mouth and paid advertising. For most small businesses, making content doesn’t seem like a direct way to generate revenue for their business so it’s not top of mind. However, content marketing is arguably the most powerful way to generate leads and sales for small businesses.
In contrast to paid advertising, content marketing compounds over time as the size of your audience and brand grows. This allows content marketers to get more views over time while producing similar amounts of content.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the use of various forms of content like writing, videos, podcasts, infographics, etc. to attract, engage, and retain a target audience. It primarily started as a medium to connect with a target audience but many marketers have discovered that it generates significant leads for their businesses over time. Content marketing focuses on providing informative and engaging material that addresses the specific needs, interests, and pain points of the target audience.
For small businesses, content marketing can be a game-changer. It allows them to establish themselves as industry experts and thought leaders, fostering trust and credibility with their audience. By consistently delivering high-quality content that resonates with their target customers, small businesses can effectively build brand awareness, nurture customer relationships, and ultimately drive customer engagement and loyalty.
Examples of Content Marketing:
Mirasee:
Mirasee is an online course platform that allows anyone to launch and monetize a course on anything they have expertise in. Mirasee primarily focuses on SEO to capture their audience and they receive over 7,000 organic visitors per month on Google. They publish high quality blogs answering the key questions their customers have and this allows them to get significant traffic each month.
Castos:
Castos is a podcast hosting platform that allows anyone to create, market and monetize their own podcasts. Podcasts are some of the best content marketing channels because they allow individuals and businesses to garner a loyal audience. With podcasts, you can go in-depth on any topic and conversion rates are often much higher in comparison to other content platforms.
Best Strategies for Businesses Who Are New to Content Marketing
Start with a free and quick feedback content platform: Content marketing comes in many forms and some types of content take much longer to get an ROI on. For example, starting a new blog and ranking for SEO keywords will likely take months if not over a year to see a large return. This is similar to other content mediums like podcasts. In contrast, a TikTok account or other social media platform can provide quicker feedback and engagement from your target audience. You want to be able to get a return on your effort quickly so you can iterate fast. It’s very difficult and disheartening to choose a long-form content medium and find out you made no progress a year from now.
Choose a content type that you can stick to: Content comes in numerous forms for small businesses. You can record long-form videos with scripts, shorts, long blog posts, tweets and everything in between. The content type that will work best for you is the one that you can stick
There’s no point in uploading a 50 minute YouTube once a year if you have no audience.
You need to set goals around things you can control and make it as easy as possible for you to stick to your content calendar. The more consistent your content publishing schedule is, the higher chance of success for your content strategy. For more detailed strategies and solutions tailored to your business needs, check out Bertoni Solutions.
Choose less competitive platforms to be a niche leader: There are many personal trainers on Instagram and many recruiters on LinkedIn. If you’re entering a saturated market, you either have to be better than the incumbents or have a better strategy. Most new businesses starting content marketing are neither. It might be better to be a small fish in a smaller pool by being the best business on a more niche platform like Pinterest, Quora or Reddit. Since there’s less competition, it’s much easier to stand out and build a brand and you can leverage that on other platforms as well.
Tracking Your Content Marketing Efforts:
When you’ve chosen your content strategy, it’s time to actually start producing content. Although content marketing is very creative-heavy, the best content marketers track every input. For example, businesses selling products such as disposable vape pens can monitor metrics like engagement rate and reach to measure the effectiveness of their content.
The better you can track what you do, the more you can pivot and get a higher ROI on your content. The metrics you track can vary greatly depending on your strategy, platform, etc. Here are some general metrics you can track regardless of your content marketing approach:
To learn more about maximizing your productivity as a small business owner, check out this article.
Engagement Rate:
This measures how well your content is resonating with your audience. Track metrics like likes, comments, shares, and click-through rates to gauge engagement levels across different content formats and platforms.
Reach and Impressions:
Reach and impressions are the backbone of content analysis. Monitor the number of people your content is reaching, including unique visitors, social media impressions, and email open rates. This helps you understand the visibility and potential impact of your content.
Lead Generation and Conversions:
If your content marketing efforts are geared towards lead generation or driving conversions, track metrics like form submissions, sign-ups, and sales directly attributed to your content.
Traffic Sources:
Analyze where your website traffic and content consumption is coming from, such as organic search, social media, referrals, or direct traffic. This can help you optimize your content distribution and promotion strategies.
Content Consumption Metrics:
Depending on the content format, track metrics like video views, time on page, scroll depth, and content downloads to understand how your audience is consuming and interacting with your content.
Audience Growth:
Monitor the growth of your audience across different channels, including social media followers, email subscribers, and returning visitors. This can indicate the effectiveness of your content in attracting and retaining an engaged Audience.
Qualitative Feedback:
In addition to quantitative metrics, gather qualitative feedback through surveys, comments, or social media interactions to gain insights into your audience’s preferences, pain points, and perceptions of your content.
Tracking these metrics are a great first step in quantitatively measuring the work you put in your content and the return you get out of it. Most small businesses don’t need to complicate it and just need to start publishing content. You can make your first goal to be publishing five pieces of content in a month and iterate from there. The sooner you put the teachings into practice, the more context you will get and you will understand how to improve your content from there.
For small businesses looking to expand their revenue streams, exploring affiliate programs can be a valuable addition to their content marketing efforts.
To learn how to get started with content marketing like blogging, check out this article.