Content marketing for small businesses
With 72% of marketers having a content strategy in place and 57% or organisations employing two or more people dedicated to content marketing, it’s clear that “content marketing” has shifted from a buzzword to an integral part of the marketing lexicon.
I haven’t crunched the numbers, but I’m sure the number of jobs available with “content” in the title has increased dramatically over the last two years. But whilst large marketing departments have the budget to hire content creators and inbound marketers, how can small businesses do content marketing well when there’s just a handful of people (at best) managing everything from PR to social media and all manner of marketing activities in between?
Last month I was able to address some of these questions from a small business perspective in the Guardian’s content marketing Q&A. There were a few topics that kept coming up and I wanted to look a little closer at them today.
How to create interesting content
Small business marketers understand that the content they create has to have value, but there’s clearly a concern about how to routinely produce content that stands out from the crowd. Creating interesting content isn’t easy when you’re on your own and don’t have anybody to brainstorm with, but if you look for content gaps in your industry that’s usually a good starting point for ideas.
How to build brand awareness
Viral content helps build brand awareness in a short time span but it’s not something that can be relied upon. Producing personalised content for each stage of the sales funnel carries more value when small businesses are looking to build long-term relationships.
How to compete with million dollar budgets
A small business will never have the same budget as a large organisation, but unlike other mediums like advertising, content marketing is one way small businesses really can compete with large organisations. That said, why would you compare the two? Small businesses usually have a very different market they want to conquer than that of a global brand so success must be measured with different metrics.
Video is the future of content marketing
If I had a pound for every time someone said ‘video is the future of content marketing’ I’d have a decent pension pot. Yes, video marketing is huge. Yes, it accounts for 50% of all mobile traffic. But if your video marketing doesn’t have value for your audience it’s not worth creating at all, even if it is the so called future. Create video, but create it because it add values - not because you feel you have to do it.
Creating a strategy
The biggest mistake small businesses make is not having a content marketing strategy in place. It can be as simple as thinking about your wider marketing and business goals and plotting how content marketing can help you achieve what you want.
Content ratios
My biggest pet peeve (other than poor video marketing of course) is those content marketing ratios always floating about. Spend 80% of your time creating x and 20% of your time creating y and boom! you’re guaranteed success. Some are make believe, some add value in context but none are as important as remembering who your audience is and creating content for them.
I'd love to hear your thoughts - how can small businesses make the most of content marketing?
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Carla Bradman is the marketing manager at Paramount and writes a blog about small business marketing.
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9 年Thanks for the insight Carla, great to see it from a small business perspective as it can be achieved with less (if any) budget than traditional advertising! A big question can be what actually is content? Is everything content? Something to consider when planning strategy, what are the best channels to use. Of course, this varies significantly based on audience and capabilities of the business.