10 Best Content Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

When crafting their marketing strategy, most small businesses avoid content marketing. They consider it a strategy for big companies that have large marketing budgets.

But this is not necessarily true. Any business, whether big or small, can get immense value from using content marketing to market its offerings and grow its sales revenue. If you run a small business, there are numerous benefits your business can get by just embracing content marketing. The first and most important one is attracting prospects and converting them into customers. Research shows that 78% of prospects now prefer to know brands through articles - not just by looking at their ads. Further, 70% of consumers believe brands that provide custom content want to build lasting relationships with them. These are significantly high numbers for your business to ignore.

The Marketing Budget Challenge

Unlike big corporations, small businesses operate with limited marketing budgets. A lot of them see this as a challenge when it comes to crafting and implementing a content marketing strategy. But, even with limited marketing budgets, small businesses can apply various tactics to implement content marketing activities without necessarily blowing their spending. Let's delve deeper and explore the best tips small businesses can use to attract leads, increase revenue, and boost customer loyalty through content marketing.

Here are 10 Best Content Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Publish Interesting Blogs

Blogs are an important part of a content marketing strategy. They help small businesses attract b2b sales leads by providing answers that prospects seek at the research stage. To realize the results you want, create interesting, educative content for your target audience. Go a step further and optimize your blog posts for SEO using keywords. This enables your site and blogs to rank highly on search engines. Other important tips to boost site rankings include:
• Putting your target audience first - know what your prospects are searching for and create content that responds to those needs
• Using appropriate tone of voice - adopt a friendly, conversational tone in your blogs to make them interesting
• Building trust among readers - show your readers that you are conversant with the industry by publishing blogs that provide new knowledge and insights
Consider hiring a freelancer to write blogs for your business. Start with a few blogs per day then increase the number gradually. The key to succeeding with blogs is publishing them consistently. The introduction of OpenAI and ChatGPT alternatives can help marketers generate content faster and better. This hooks your audience and keeps them looking forward to receiving fresh content from you.

Leverage Video Content Marketing

Small businesses can boost their marketing efforts by just using videos content. Content marketing is not just about creating and distributing written content. Video content is a huge part of content marketing. So, why do videos appeal to people? Human beings are visual creatures. Visual content is highly effective because the majority of the information (90%) that the human brain transmits is visual. This means naturally, people have an emotional connection with visual information. Nothing captures the power of video content today than YouTube statistics. 2018 statistics show that 1.9 billion users logged onto the site to watch videos each month. The results of video content marketing speak for themselves. When it comes to lead conversion, statistics show that branded videos convince up to 81% of consumers to make a purchase. B2B marketers understand the power of using videos to market their offerings. 97% of them say that the use of videos increases user understanding of products or services. A further 76% say videos have played an important role in boosting their sales. Big companies invest in huge video campaigns. But this need not be the case for small businesses. If you have limited budgets, consider partnering with talented local video freelancers or agencies to roll your video campaign out.

Use Email Marketing

“In 2017 global email users numbered 3.7 billion. By 2022, that number is expected to spike to 4.3 billion.”

Email marketing is the other effective tip that small businesses can use to distribute content to existing customers and prospects. Emails are not just effective business communication tools. A study by McKinsey shows that when it comes to acquiring new customers, email is 40 times more effective than Twitter and Facebook. But this is not all, 91% of adults in the US appreciate when companies they buy from send them promotional emails. Statistics also show that consumers spend 30% of their work time on emails. While working from home, they spend 50% of their time checking emails. This makes emails highly effective for small businesses to:
• Reach the targeted audience
• Strengthen customer relationships
• Grow their customer base
• Build a unique brand
• Increase sales revenue
• Drive web traffic
The best way for small businesses to maximize this content marketing strategy is to get an email marketing software. Such a software enables them to ensure their emails get to people who are willing to open and read them.

Maximize Social Media

As a small business, you can use social media to keep your audience updated and engaged. But with so many social media platforms, which one should you focus on? The best way to figure this out is to identify the platform where your target audience is most active. Also, consider the nature of your business. If you target B2B customers with your offerings, Twitter and LinkedIn are your best options. Instagram and Facebook are great for B2C companies. As a small business, your budgets might not allow you to manage multiple social media platforms. Whichever channel you choose, focus not just on growing your presence, but also on giving your audience positive experiences. The best way to do this is by sharing educational content, responding to queries from your followers or offering promotions. This post shows actions you can take to encourage purchase action from your social media followers.

Curate Content

Did you know that the content that majority of marketers (76%) share via social media is curated? Even big brands don't always create new content - they simply curate. Data from Curata shows that leading B2B marketers create 65% of content and curate the remaining 25%. This is the thing - implementing a content marketing strategy does not mean publishing your own content every time. As a matter of fact, the most effective way to demonstrate industry expertise is to direct your visitors to valuable information from other sources. Content curation enables you to effectively do this. To curate content, you need to sift through existing content that relates to your offerings. Once you do this, inform your audience what they need to pay attention to. Curating content enables small businesses to keep tabs on industry trends and saves them the time and money that they would otherwise spend on creating new content. There are several ways to improve your content strategy, but the most important thing is to thoroughly analyze your topic and tailor your material to deliver genuine value to your audience.

Host Expert Interviews

Another strategy that small businesses can use to create content that draws their audience to their platforms is hosting expert interviews. Who are the leaders or influential people in your industry? Identify them and host interviews with them. Publishing such interviews will bring valuable content to your audience. It will offer in depth knowledge on industry trends and insights that will keep them coming back to your site. There are several ways you can distribute interview content including:
• Uploading it on your site
• Transcribing and publishing it as a Q&A article
• Making it part of your YouTube channel content or
• Sharing it on social media.
Whichever way you choose to distribute your interviews, hosting industry experts is a great way to build customer trust and get more leads for your small business.

Collapse Complex Content into Infographics

Ever read an article or a blog that had plenty of complex information? What was the experience like? You probably found it hard to understand it. Infographics provide a great way to collapse such content to make it easier to consume and remember. They are highly visual - which makes them appealing and easy to share. Compared to articles, infographics have a 30 times higher chance of being read. Small businesses that operate on shoe-string marketing budgets need not to worry about designing infographics. There are numerous customizable templates online for those that need to create some on a low budget. To drive web traffic and enhance brand awareness, add relevant keywords and make infographic titles searchable. Also, brand the infographic by using your colors and placing your business name, logo and website on it. Below is a great infographic sample.

Capitalize Case Studies and Testimonials

Like interviews, case studies and testimonials provide a unique opportunity for small businesses to create unique content that resonates with their audience. But this is not all. 92% of people who shop online want to hear from other customers before they can make a purchase decision. Case studies and testimonials are powerful tools for providing this voice to prospects. These content types showcase the impact your service or product offerings have on your customers - which makes them useful for:
• Building social proof for your business
• Establishing credibility in the eyes of prospects
• Showcasing your service and product offerings
• Differentiating your business from competitors
• Positioning your brand authoritatively
By pointing the spotlight back to your customers, they tell stories that your audience connects with easily. They make your product shine without making it sound like you are bragging about it. Fractl is a classic example of a business that uses case studies to build customer trust. In one of its case studies, the company explains how it helped one of its clients - Sapio - to grow its weekly App installation by 3,072%. You can read the case study here.

Create Downloadable Content

If the objective of your content marketing activities is to generate quality leads, you need to invest in downloadable content. This could take the form of ebooks, eguides, reports or white papers. Downloadable content is particularly useful if your business is targeting B2B buyers. Often, these are customers that are serious about your offerings and are in need of exhaustive, detailed resources that are presented in a single, clean package. Long-form content such as this requires time and resource investment. As a small business, you can leverage on your internal staff or freelancers to generate this kind of content. Remember to include a landing page to promote your downloadable content.

Track Content Marketing Campaigns

What do you plan to achieve with your content marketing campaign? Do you want to increase your engagement with customers? Get more leads, boost your brand awareness or increase sales? Whatever your goal is, you need to track it regularly. This helps you know whether your marketing efforts are yielding results or not. The reality is, not every piece of content you create and distribute will result in sales. However, by focusing on content localization, tailoring your message to specific regions and cultures, you can significantly increase its relevance and effectiveness, ultimately driving higher engagement and conversion rates. In tracking your content marketing campaigns, use metrics that provide the information you need to determine the progress you are making with your marketing goal.

Final Thoughts

Small businesses, just like large companies, should use content marketing to get more leads, increase customer engagement, grow their customer base baase and even increase sales revenue. Many small businesses do not have huge marketing budgets that large companies have. This does not mean they should just give up on content marketing. Rather, they can engage talented local freelancers to support their content creation efforts or leverage on their internal teams to roll out their content marketing activities.

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