Content marketing is all about creating the right type of content to get the word out about your business, educate buyers on your products and services, and to help delight and please your customers post-purchase.
Every business needs content marketing today. Plus, one could argue that content marketing has been around since marketing began. In the old days, it was newspapers, magazines, and TV spots. Today it’s still that, but it’s also all types of online content.
Content marketing can be defined as a long-term plan that makes use of content in different formats to build or establish a stronger rapport with your target audience, grab their interest or attention, improve brand recall, improve engagement and of course delight the customer.
Content marketing is a positive investment for businesses of all sizes, but it especially gives small companies an equalization opportunity. Because even if you cannot afford a TV ad, you can afford to do content marketing. There is a reason that 73 percent of companies and brands now employ content strategists and writers.
Reasons Small Businesses Need Content Marketing
1. More Cost-effective
Content marketing offers a higher return on investment compared to other marketing tactics, particularly for businesses on a budget. All businesses, big and small want to perform more with less. Getting the most value possible from each dollar spent is particularly vital for small business marketers. Content marketing increase lead collection by as much as three times as outbound strategies and costs 62% less. In fact, it is even more cost-efficient than search marketing. Content creation is one of the most significant ways to boost your search ranking, thus increasing organic traffic to your website.
2. Allows You to Make Your Own News
With content marketing, small businesses can share their own news through their niche publications, partners, social media channels, and blogs. Moreover, an enlightened content marketing tactic can even gather national headlines if you manage to go viral. If you want to maintain your messaging, and control the view of your brand, content marketing is the key. You can send that messaging right into the hands of your target audience with the specific distribution channel that they want to consume your content.
3. Your Business is Exposed to New Prospects and Larger Audience
In nearly all the shared content among internet users, the news is the first on the list, but it is quite far from being the only thing shared. Your audience will take note of the high-quality content you craft, and more than likely share the content. With content marketing, your small business will not only be exposed to a broader audience but also being exposed to new prospects.
4. Means of Promotion without Selling Yourself Too Hard
Since customers want to hear from you, they often follow you on social media and subscribe to your updates. These people want unique information, promotions, offers, and lots more from you. Otherwise, they would not have signed up. Your customers will trust you more when you share a lot of relevant content such as case studies, behind the scenes information, and the story of your success.
Content marketing allows you to give significant value above and beyond your products or services providing your customers additional reasons to pay attention to you. Content marketing is one of the best ways to promote your business without selling yourself too hard by merely giving your audience information they want and need.
5. Content Marketing Ensures Your Site is Fresh
When search engines such as Google deliver content to their searchers (their audience) they score it based on some factors including the following:
- The day the content was first created
- How frequently the content is updated
- Modifications to the major framework of that content
- How frequently the content changes
- The rate of latest link development (inbound links) to the content
- Traffic and engagement metrics
When you are generating a continuous stream of fresh content with new links pointing to older content and updates, and you are creating content for your small business frequently, plus sharing content from others that are relevant to your audience it keeps them on your site and at the top of mind.
Without creating relevant, useful, and timely content, marketing success is not possible. Therefore, content marketing should be part of your overall marketing process. The greatest aspect of content marketing is of the fact that it does not cost much. It generates leads and traffic regularly and sticks around for another day.
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