Do you know, that 70% of people prefer articles to ads to learn more about the brand and its products? Yes, the content was, is and will be king. If you are still hesitant to implement content marketing in your business, this post is for you.
Why should you implement content marketing for your small business? How can it help your business grow and generate leads? What should you do to be successful? This article highlights 8 things about content marketing that you can start using it for your business in the near future.
What is content marketing?
Before we get to the reasons, however, let’s define what content marketing actually is. It’s a long-term strategy that uses different types of content to build trust and build closer relationships with the target audience, grab their attention, retain customers, improve user engagement, build a brand, through the service / report the product, etc. This is a strategy that focuses on creating, posting, and distributing content to generate leads.
This can be done through social media, blogs, videos, infographics, e-books, podcasts, etc. There are around 105 types of content to be found today. So content is not just about text, it is about different images, photos, videos, etc. So you should use high quality visuals to make the content more engaging. It is for this reason that you should also include some graphic creation and editing tools in your content strategy. For example, it can be a crello that is great Image converter and creators for non-designers.
8 things to consider about content marketing
Chances are, the previous statistics and facts about content marketing can’t be enough to change your mind and use it for your business. Here we are preparing 8 points on how your small business can benefit from content marketing. Let’s go into it together!
# 1. Build a trust with customers
It is important that you get to know your audience and reveal their pain / issues / needs so that you can create really engaging content that will add value and really help your customers. Analyze your target audience (TA) to find the best solution for them. By creating expert content and relevant information, you build trust in TA. It’s also important to share the published content with audiences through the right channels.
The following tips can help you build trust with your customers through your content:
- Upload video content: As a visual media, videos can easily grab your audience’s attention. A Online Marketing Video Maker can help you make your video content more professional and targeted.
- Create infographics: Infographics are creative graphic content with text that can be uploaded to websites and social media platforms.
- Upload audio content: One of the most popular types of audio content is podcast. Many smartphone users listen to podcasts while driving, walking, or waiting and are caught in traffic. Increase your demographic reach by uploading audio content to your website.
# 2. Build a brand and awareness
Valuable content is one way of building a brand and making it recognizable. Properly used content marketing can vastly improve quality traffic to your company’s website. In this way, the published content, where you demonstrate your expertise and skills over and over again, will generate more exposure and leads for your small business.
Here are some specific examples of building brand awareness using your content:
- Website and social media integration: Connect your website to your social media accounts for increased visibility. Post a summary of your content on your social media network, including your website link.
- Check and improve: Use analytics to review and improve your most requested content or create similar content.
- Expand content to offline channels: Expand your content to offline channels, e.g. B. Printing your company offer or theme in custom goods. Some examples of custom merchandise are shirts, mugs, pens, lanyards, and hats.
# 3. Increase the visibility of organic search (SEO)
You have created a bunch of useful and knowledgeable content, now what? There is no point in creating and posting posts about your company and your product / service if nobody can find and see them. So that you should consider doing some SEO tweaking of your content so that people can find it as they enter queries. By adding certain keywords and providing relevant information, you will increase the traffic and visibility of your website.
# 4. Build a brand authority
When you create quality content with additional expertise, you can cement your brand identity as a key resource with reliable and valuable information. When you publish articles where you share your knowledge, information based on your experience, etc., you show that your company is an expert in the field and that you are doing what you are better at than others. This way, you will build your brand’s authority and your customers will be sure that you are providing the best solution to their particular problem and / or pain.
Another benefit of creating expert content is that other websites will link to your posts. This shows that your website is a trustworthy and reliable resource. Such backlinking is also good for search ranking. In this way, more and more people with different resources visit your website and thus increase the authority of your company and your company.
# 5. Provide a reason for customers to return to your website
By blogging about your small business and posting it regularly and regularly, you are giving your users a reason to keep coming back to your website. The more often people visit your website to find useful information, the more likely they are to come to you when it is time to buy. That way you can retain your customers and improve their engagement. It is also a economical way to market your small business.
What are the benefits of having more customers return to your website:
- Increases your credibility: As more people visit your website, it means you are providing reliable information to your audience. Your website visitors trust and rely on your website very much.
- More marketing opportunities: You will attract more prospects when more visitors return to your website. Don’t waste your digital marketing efforts. Make sure you give your customers good reasons to be interested in your website. This is how you can get the buy-in to use your products and services.
- Increases sales: With more web visitors, you can expect more sales. Just make sure to step up your sales and marketing efforts to achieve your goals. Constant follow-up is important to build a nurturing customer relationship and increase sales.
# 6. Achieve a higher return on a smaller investment
In fact, hiring or contacting someone to write for your small business is much cheaper than other ways to promote the business. In addition, not all campaigns are as successful as expected. Imagine if ad blockers can cause a loss of up to $ 78 billion worldwide This makes inbound marketing a cheaper way to report on your company and / or your products / services.
Currently, content marketing is becoming a profitable investment for businesses of all sizes, from small to large businesses. According to the research results, 73% of the companies Hire (or plan to do) specialists to manage your content strategy.
# 7. Convert more visitors into leads with lead nurturing
Content can be a powerful magnet for your small business. This allows you to create and add useful content on a regular basis and generate leads all the way through the shopper.
So the right content can encourage new visitor acquisition. By adding an attractive lead magnet in the right place, more leads can be captured. The buyer’s journey or lead nurturing consists of 3 (three) main phases:
- Awareness – this is where the main problem or pain of your customers is put up for discussion.
- Consideration – this is where you can put your skills and expertise to the test and simply show why your company is the best (lead magnet).
- Decision – Here the user should become your customer.
# 8. Keep your website current and relevant
It’s no secret that constantly and regularly updating the website content will give your small business a chance against the competition in terms of search ranking. When a user searches for information and enters a query, the search engines rate the content of your website based on the following:
- Release date – how old is the content?
- New posts and updates appeared – How often is the content published / updated?
- How relevant and current the data is – How often does the content change, including the core context of the content?
- Inbound Links – How is the rate of new links to content growing?
- Traffic and Engagement Metrics – How often do people visit the website and how long do they stay and read?
All of this affects the visibility of the website in search engines. However, keep in mind that all published content should be relevant to your customers’ needs and provide real added value to customers. Otherwise, even if you add new content every week or more, it won’t make any sense and won’t give you the boost you want.