Content marketing is a vital tool for reaching potential customers, especially for a small business who may be working with a smaller budget. Let’s see how small businesses can utilize this technique to maximize their ROI and stand out in a competitive market.
For a long time, marketing was synonymous with advertising. The focus of every marketing strategy was to make your presence visible; this can be done by ensuring that the consumers knew about your brand’s existence. Initially, this act was accomplished using print ads. And until the early 1900s, it was the primary mode of advertising. After that, radio broadcasted advertisements started getting popular, and later, TV ads. Yet, it wasn’t until the late 20th century and the advent of the internet that advertisements lost their popularity.
Suddenly, consumers found themselves overwhelmed by the number of ads that they were exposed to daily. And with ad blockers becoming smarter, businesses searched for a way to market the offerings that helped them stand out yet didn’t annoy their consumers.
Then came content marketing. While not a new concept, it has seen an increase in popularity in the past couple of decades.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing relies on the production and sharing of various media to promote a brand and its offerings. Using a strategic mix of multiple types of copywriting and audio-visual content, you can ensure that consumers know your existence without the annoying repeated ads. Unlike conventional marketing and advertising, which tends to force itself upon you, content marketing is based on choice. Moreover, its primary focus is to provide value to its viewers. That helps the consumer build a relationship of trust and understanding with your brand and establishes you as a credible resource.
A popular inbound marketing technique, content marketing relies on the consumer reaching out to the brand rather than reaching out to the consumers via ads. That can only be possible if the content you publish is engaging, relevant, and offers something valuable to the consumer.
How Does Content Marketing Help Small Businesses Stand Out?
Studies suggest that 70% of consumers prefer learning about a brand or its offerings through an engaging copy. It could be a blog post or an article rather than through an ad. That is because such an article offers more value than just an introduction to the brand. With their needs fulfilled, the consumer is more likely to respond positively to the content, and subsequently, your brand presence.
Let’s look at the benefits content marketing offers a small business and why investing in a robust content marketing strategy is their best chance of success.
1. Exposure to a Greater Audience Base
People tend to save or share content they like, including articles or videos. The only requirement is that it should be of a high enough quality to catch the consumer’s eye in the first place.
Once you release a piece of content and it becomes live, it attracts customers to your brand. Depending on your content’s relevancy and attractiveness, it’ll soon build a constant traffic stream to your site at no added cost. Moreover, as your content is shared from one user to another, it casts a wide net for prospective leads.
2. Develop Trust with Consumers
Nurturing promising leads is necessary for a business, especially an SMB who cannot afford to lose any client. It means to put the consumer’s needs before yours and provide a level of service that convinces a consumer to buy your product.
Brands with solid content that help consumers decide to buy our products need to spend a third of the average marketing costs. Additionally, they succeed in generating half as many new leads in addition to the main one. While this technique may be pretty helpful, practical applications suggest that lead nurturing requires patience and a long time to achieve the desired results.
3. Help Increase Search Visibility
The purpose of creating high-quality and engaging content is to let others read or view it. But if your article or other content has no audience, then what’s the use? Moreover, with no visibility, how can your brand stand out and succeed with the big competitors already established within the market.
The key to organically increasing your search visibility is to produce quality content that fulfills a consumer’s need on a regular schedule. This technique has helped many small businesses carve their way through established market giants without spending a large portion of their revenue on marketing and advertising. Also, using topic clusters can improve your website’s search engine ranking and possibly increase organic traffic and engage many website visitors.
4. Establish Your Blog as a Go-To Resource
Finally, it establishes you as a go-to authority for your niche. It means that whenever a consumer needs a query answered regarding your industry, their first choice would be you. Moreover, if a consumer returns for your resources repeatedly, there’s a high chance that they’ll choose you when they finally decide to buy.
The most crucial factor is providing a high enough value to the consumer that they have no choice but to return to you in the future. That is how you establish yourself as a necessary resource to your consumers.
In short, content marketing allows you to reach prospective consumers using topics that interest them. It will enable you to establish a relationship based on trust and fulfillment without having to spend a large portion of your revenue on advertising.
People are always looking for answers to their questions. Now you can be the one who provides those answers while establishing your brand presence in the consumers’ minds.