Launching a marketing campaign that works is the goal of every small business owner who wants to grow and establish a robust customer base. Without an effective marketing strategy, reaching potential customers and creating a long-term business becomes a challenge.

However, small businesses may find it hard to make their marketing efforts succeed due to an inadequate marketing budget and lack of access to a bigger, skilled staff. Also, they may not have the required expertise and know-how to execute their marketing strategies.

The good news is, small businesses’ challenges can be overcome with better plans and strategies. While there are several marketing techniques a business can adopt, content marketing for small businesses is among the top methods that are cost-effective and can produce high results in generating new customers.

According to a report by HubSpot, 70% of companies say they invest in content marketing strategy, and 60% of companies believe that content marketing is essential for their overall business strategy.

What Is Content Marketing?

There is more to content marketing than just social media, blogs, and articles. Content marketing is a long-term strategy that involves the use of various content formats to build a stronger relationship with your audience and capture their attention.

Content marketing is more like a form of indirect advertising. Instead of convincing your audience to buy your products or services, you provide information that serves as a solution to problems that your product addresses regardless of whether they buy from you or not.

How Can Your Small Business Benefit from Content Marketing?

There are several content marketing benefits. Whether you are marketing to businesses or consumers, content marketing does the following:

• Improves visibility of your brand
• Builds lasting relationships with your audience
• Increases brand awareness and recognition
• Helps influence conversions
• Builds trust and loyalty with your customers and prospects
• Helps you to build authority and credibility
• Places your business as an expert in your industry
• Generates traffic to your site
• Helps your customers make purchase decision quickly
• Improves communication through social shares and comments

5 Effective Content Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

According to Hubspot, content marketers who focus on effective blogging are 13X more likely to see positive ROI than those who don’t. Starting simple by beginning the process of blogging for your business is one of the best content marketing strategies you can adopt.

Here are the top five content marketing and blogging tips to take your marketing to the next level:

Establish Your Mission or Goals

Content marketing for small businesses is not only about content creation, but it is also crucial to understand what you’re creating. Create a list of specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals.

Do you want to grow your readership, boost your website traffic with content, or you just want to keep on posting more consistently? Whatever you want to achieve, make sure that the goals are actionable and easy to accomplish.

Find Out What Your Audience Wants

Brainstorm what your audience is looking for. Create a list of the most common questions you get as a business. From this list, address your clients’ complaints, consumer issues, trends in your industry, or uses for your services or product.

Focus on a segment with your best customers to help you tailor your marketing efforts and create a proper buyer persona.

Find a Professional Content Writer

Whether you have a team of in-house writers or use a content service, you need quality writers who understand content marketing. At this point, remember your goal is simple blogging. Don’t overthink or overwrite.

Work together with your writers until the content hits the mark. If you’re unsure if you need to outsource professional content writers, check our blog on why you should hire a freelance writer.

Establish a Schedule

Having a content schedule makes it easier for you to generate content regularly. Get in the habit of scheduling your blog. For instance, you may consider a weekly post (same day, same time).

If you’re doing social media posts, once daily or a few times a week is ideal. Being consistent indicates that you’re a reliable source of information, and it helps your readers come back.

Track the Results

Pageviews, likes, and shares are some of the first metrics indicating how people respond. After some time of delivering your content, you’ll also see conversion rates, qualified leads, and changes in revenue.

You can use free analytics such as google analytics to measure your post engagement.

We Can Create Top-notch Content for Your Small Business

Content marketing is a key strategy for small businesses’ success. Understanding the tips for an effective content marketing strategy for small businesses will help your marketing efforts to pay off. Your content should not only attract customers but should also help you retain them.

Need help with content creation? Contact Writers Horizon today to learn how we can help.

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