An astonishing 99% of small businesses generate positive results with content marketing, according to the State of Content Marketing 2023 Global Report. Can yours be one of them?
It’s a small business marketing question that many ponder on the road to finding new growth opportunities for their businesses. To help you decide whether content marketing is right for your small business, we’ve put together a list of ways to tell when you’re ready to use content marketing to strengthen your overall marketing strategy.
If you’re only publishing a new piece of great content once in a while or whenever you have a chance, well – chances are, that content isn’t going to help:
For content marketing to attract customers and prospects organically, you need a solid strategy for producing relevant content pieces and publishing them consistently.
You don’t want your content to be like anyone else’s, and you don’t have to follow the same track as your competitors. Answering these questions will help you find a unique focus for your business’s content marketing:
First, your customers and prospects must go about finding the content on your website, social media platforms, and other online outlets. It’s a process called content discovery. When you understand how they find and engage with your content, you can use what you know to improve your small business content marketing strategy to encourage more engagement.
A month or two after you’ve published content, it’s a good idea to audit your content discovery process. This helps make sure your content is achieving what you expect. If it’s not, you need to find out why. Here are a few things to look for:
You need to write for your target audience, but you also need to write for search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines take note of when and how often you update your website with new content. They also rank the quality of your content, take into consideration the length, and how the content is tailored to your keywords. Marketers want to have a good balance between writing engaging content and writing for SEO requirements.
Your content may not be addressing the needs of your target audience adequately. One of the remedies for this is working up buyer personas for each of your target audiences. Once you get to know each buyer persona, you can identify their unique pain points. Your content will be most relevant to them when you help them face their challenges better, solve their problems, and discover new opportunities.
Email marketing success is well-documented. Almost 90% of marketers use email as the primary channel for generating leads, almost 30% of marketers rate email marketing as the most effective marketing channel, and more than 85% of B2B marketers use email channels for distributing content. Email marketing is also effective in nurturing leads, staying connected to your target audience, and building lasting relationships with your customers.
The key to great social media marketing is tailoring your messages for each platform. Because each platform has a different audience, the language, tone, and delivery of your content needs to be different as well. Once you do, social media becomes an effective avenue to:
When you need help leveraging content to strengthen your small business marketing strategy, connect with 11outof11. Request a complimentary call with an 11outof11 expert. Contact us to learn more.