Content Marketing for small business: What every business owner needs to know
No budget.
No marketing team.
You’re a one-man army.
Or, maybe a one-man team.
Operating a small business is no easy task. You don’t have the resources of a large business. What you do have is a lot of heart and content marketing is something that a small business can’t ignore, or avoid. Here are 3 reasons why that is so.
- Content marketing keeps your current audience engaged
- Content marketing attracts new customers
- Content marketing builds your brand
Set Clear Goals
Over the years, I’ve worked with several business owners. What’s the biggest aspect stopping their content marketing from being a success?
They don’t have a goal
Content marketing seems to be more of an action point rather than a way to achieve something. Content marketing, by itself, is vast and does not always deliver results immediately. A goal helps you focus your efforts on achieving it.
So, know what goal you want to achieve. It would be increasing your brand awareness, getting more followers, generating website traffic, or growing your sales.
Create Valuable Content
What is valuable content? The answer largely depends on your audience and the platform it’s being published on.
A mistake I quite often see brands make is being too focused on themselves.
Their communication talks about themselves, in terms of:
- Their products & services
- Events happening around them
All brand, nothing of value
The fact is that every time a reader scrolls through your content, they are asking a simple question:
What’s in it for me?
Give them something of value.
This could be:
- Useful information
- Helpful product
- Entertainment
As a small business owner or marketer, you can’t afford to make this mistake.
Content Distribution
Great! You worked on your first blog, emailer, or social media graphic. What next?
When you run a small operation, you don’t have the resources to create new content for every platform and channel. So, what do you do in such a case?
You have two options: Repurpose or Reuse
- Repurpose
What is your content communicating? You take the core of that communication and adapt it for various platforms. For example, you could turn it into a blog post, a social media post, an emailer, etc.- Pro: Make it contextual for each platform
- Con: This adaptation takes additional time and effort
- Reuse
Another option is to pick up the same content and repost it across multiple platforms.- Pro: Quick to execute
- Con: It may not perform well on some platforms (because no adaptation)
Here’s how Spacebar has reused the same content across multiple platforms.
YouTube
Email
Analyse and Measure the Success
You invest time, effort and money. And as a small business, you want to ensure that your content marketing efforts are delivering results. For that, you need to analyse and measure the success.
Every platform, like your website and social media, has tools available to analyse the data.
The bigger question is whether your marketing efforts are successful or not.
That’s where it’s important to revisit your goals. Looking at your goals and comparing it with the data gives you insight into its success.
For example, if your goal is to Increase Brand Awareness, then an increase in metrics like traffic, post impressions, and unique views, will tell you – YES, brand awareness has happened.
Bonus Point: Nurture Customer Relationships
As a small business, nurturing customer relationships is the best tool in your marketing kit. You can leverage email, WhatsApp, and SMS marketing to regularly send out personalised and customised content to your customers.
This is something that larger brands are not able to do, but you are.
When you have no budget, no marketing team, and are a one-man army handling the marketing of a small business, there is still a lot you can do. Use these tips, and with a bit of consistent effort, see what you are able to achieve. You’re gonna crush your content marketing (in a good way), like you would crush a soda can!