Digital Marketing 101: Understanding Content Marketing
Learn Content Marketing Basics for your Small Business
Bill Gates once said, “If your business is not on the internet, your business will be out of business.” However, according to data from Blue Corona:
1 in 5 small businesses do not yet employ digital marketing techniques
Less than two-thirds of small businesses have a website
Only 20% invest in content marketing
Only 61% invest in social media marketing
Don’t be another statistic! A comprehensive digital marketing strategy is essential to growing any business. While it may be intimidating to get started, as a small business owner you can’t afford to skip these essential marketing techniques. Consider this:
Search engines are the top source of brand discovery for consumers
39% of consumers are likely to purchase directly from social media
45% of audiences will visit a small business with a strong online presence
While hiring an experienced digital marketer to execute a robust digital marketing strategy offers the best return on investment, 71% of small business owners handle their digital marketing efforts themselves. Whether you’re educating yourself on the basics before hiring an expert or going it alone, understanding crucial Digital Marketing terminology, channels and strategies will help set up your small business for success. Today, we are going to focus on one of the most affordable digital marketing strategies: content marketing.
Content Marketing by the Numbers
What is Content Marketing?
Let’s take a look at this definition from the Content Marketing Institute:
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Understanding key words and phrases in this definition helps to define the steps needed to create a basic content marketing plan.
Strategic: Mapping out a thoughtful strategy, backed by research and data, will increase its chances of being successful.
Valuable: The content you provide must be considered valuable to the audience you are presenting it to.
Relevant: Likewise, the content you offer should be relevant to the product or service that you offer.
Consistent: Developing a consistent brand voice and tone builds trust with your audience while also establishing your brand identity.
Clearly defined audience: In order to effectively market your product or service to potential customers, you need to have a good understanding of who that audience is.
Drive profitable customer action: Ultimately, effective marketing drives action. Whether that action is signing up for an email newsletter, making a purchase, or simply following your brand on social media, successful content has a clear goal in mind.
What are the Benefits of Content Marketing?
A good content marketing strategy is a powerful tool in any small business owner’s marketing toolbox. Content marketing channels provide an opportunity to speak directly to and connect with your target audience in a manner that builds trust more easily than you can using paid advertising methods. There are countless benefits of a robust content marketing strategy, but let’s focus on a few:
Builds brand awareness: With each piece of content you put out into the world, the more eyeballs you’ll reach. This means organically growing a larger audience with exposure to your brand.
Lends credibility: Especially when focusing on educational content, you can naturally position your brand as a subject matter expert on the topics you cover in your content. When providing a service or product in a specialty category, gaining this type of respect from your audience is worth its weight in gold!
Generates strong leads: Creating content supported by strong calls-to-action, whether that’s signing up for a newsletter using a web form at the bottom of a blog post or visiting a page on your website through a social media post link, produces quality leads of potential customers already interested in the category your product or service falls under.
Promotes conversion: The more content a potential customer consumes from your brand, the further down the sales funnel they’ll travel. When executed correctly, a strong content marketing strategy will ultimately convert the new pool of potential customers that you’ve captured into actual paying customers.
Improves search engine visibility: Incorporating SEO rich content into your website will help move your website to the top of the search engine results page (SERP), marking it easier for potential customers to find your website.
Benefits of Content Marketing
How to Get Started with Content Marketing?
While the easiest way to get started with creating and executing a content marketing strategy for your small business is to bring in outside help, through the form of a digital marketing agency or freelance digital marketer, that’s certainly not the only way. Content marketing is one of the most affordable marketing methods, and small business owners can get started by simply devoting some time to the following:
Stay active on social media: Maintaining a strong social media presence is crucial for any successful small business these days, and often can be a brand’s primary marketing method. You’ll want to research which platforms your target market is most likely to use and focus on publishing regular social media content that resonates with that market and drives traffic to your website.
Create a company blog: Many small business owners underestimate the power of blogging. This form of content marketing is an excellent way to create SEO rich content that increases your website’s search engine visibility while also providing valuable content that resonates with your target audience, leading them further down the sales funnel.
Execute regular email campaigns: Once you’ve grown your audience through collecting contact information through email sign-up forms or from past purchasers, you’ll want to continue nurturing those leads with email content that encourages conversion. You can create emails for different funnel stages and actions, such as sending a cart abandonment follow-up email when someone leaves your website before completing a purchase.
Get Started with Content Marketing
Now that you have a clear understanding of what content marketing is, you’re ready to get started! Thinking back on the “clearly defined audience” element of content marketing, your first step will be to perform Market Research. Follow this blog for more Digital Marketing tips for small businesses!