How Content Marketing Can Help Small Businesses

Written by Vineet Sethi

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Small businesses have to get creative to compete with larger companies. Content marketing is one strategy that can help you stand out from the competition. 

It involves creating and sharing relevant, engaging, and value-adding content with potential customers across platforms to increase brand awareness and drive new leads. 

Many compelling reasons to implement a content marketing strategy as part of your small business growth plan. 

Why should small businesses invest in content marketing?

1. To Build Brand Awareness

A vital goal of any content marketing strategy is to get your brand name ahead of as many people as possible. This can help you reach new customers and build loyalty with existing customers by getting your brand name in front of their eyes more frequently. Creating relevant content that resonates with your audience enhances familiarity. Customers are more likely to choose your brand if they are familiar with it. Content marketing strategies increase your brand awareness by targeting specifically and directly to your ideal customer. 

2. To Establish Credibility and Trust

Building trust and credibility among your customers is crucial for your business’s success. In order to build trust and credibility, you will need to create content that is educational, helpful, and value-adding to your audience. By creating content that solves (or at least attempts to solve) your customers’ problems, you demonstrate that you care about their needs and wants. By creating helpful content regularly, people will start to associate your brand with solutions to their problems. This leads potential customers to trust your brand, become paying customers, and eventually brand advocates.

3. To Help Define Your Brand’s Unique Value Proposition

Before you start creating content, you should think about your brand’s unique value proposition. 

• What makes your brand different from the others in your industry? 
• What do you have that other companies don’t? 
• Why would a customer choose to buy from you instead of your competition? 

By helping your customers understand what sets you apart from the competition, you can position your brand as a must-have product or service. As you create content, look for ways to tie it back to your unique value proposition. This will help you define your brand story while at the same time educating your audience about the products or services that you offer.

4. To Showcase Your Products Or Services

Before educating your customers, it is essential to let them know what you have to offer. This includes information about new products or services that you may have added to your brand’s lineup or highlighting the benefits of the products or services you have been selling. Content marketing can showcase your products and services, and help you stand out amongst competition. Let’s take a look at a few examples:

• Product Descriptions – The most essential part of your website content is the product descriptions. These help clearly define your product and serve as the online salesperson. Product descriptions are are vital for showcasing your products on online marketplaces. Detailed and accurate product descriptions are essential if you sell any kind of product or service, but all the more if the product is not an easy sell (e.g., you sell software or consulting services). 

• Product Demo Script – If you sell products that are easy to display, you will need a good script for demo videos to highlight benefits. This could include showing customers how to use a product or walking them through various features.

• Blog Posts – Ads on TV and print media have the power to attract people to your product or service. But these can be very expensive and short-lived. Also, your target audience may or may not be able to view promotions when they are aired. On the other hand, blog posts are the least expensive mode of communicating your product’s advantages. The customer can consume at their own convenient time.

• Social Media Posts – Social Media is omnipresent now. Potential customers refer to social media more often to make purchase decisions. This means that your social media content must stand out in the crowd to connect and engage your target audience. 

• There are various other content channels that small businesses can make use of at very affordable prices compared to conventional advertising methods. These include Infographics – Whitepapers – Newsletters – Emailers etc.

5. Help You Become An Industry Expert

As you create content, look for ways to convey subject matter expertise. You can do this by taking an in-depth look at a specific aspect of your business, product, service, or industry. This makes you stand out from the crowd and positions you as an expert in your industry, enhancing the customers’ confidence in your products and services.

As you create content and use it to educate your audience, you will quickly discover whether you have chosen a topic that interests your audience. If your content is not getting views or shares, it may mean that your target audience is not interested in your chosen subjects. This does not necessarily mean that you have chosen the wrong issue. It could be that you need to try a different angle or find another way to present the information. 

6. Help you Discover What Your Audience Cares About

You will discover what your audience wants to learn about as you create content. For example, let’s say you decide to develop a series of blog posts about social media marketing. You may find that your audience wants to learn more about Instagram marketing strategies. You may also find that they have questions about Instagram strategies and want those answered. This can help you create content that is relevant to your audience. It also gives you insight into what your audience cares about, which can help you make even more impactful content.

7. Enable You To Be Found Via Search Engines (SEO)

Content marketing has also become a popular strategy for small businesses to get themselves found via search engines. This can help boost brand awareness, drive new leads to your website, and even turn them into paying customers. It can be not easy to rank on the first page of Google for various reasons, including the fact that Google’s algorithm favors sites with high-quality content. Creating content that ranks well for specific keywords and terms gives Google something to index. Your content can be found by potential customers searching for similar products or services.

8. To Strengthen Customer Engagement

The content you create can also help you strengthen customer engagement. This is important because it can lead to more sales. Studies show that customers engaged with a brand are more likely to buy from that brand. You can engage your customers by being helpful and providing them with the information they need to make better decisions. Customer engagement aims to create a lasting connection between the brand and the customer that goes well beyond a transaction. It is a planned, consistent strategy by a business that offers value in every interaction with its customers, resulting in greater loyalty. Read BTP’s blog “How to keep customers coming back to your brand website EVEN WITHOUT purchase intent” for more on this subject.

Bottom line: Content Marketing Is A Win-Win Strategy For Small Businesses

Small businesses can use content marketing to make a name for themselves and attract more customers. By creating relevant and valuable content, you can make sure your brand is seen. You can also help educate your audience so they can make better decisions. With the right content marketing strategy, you can reach an audience that may not otherwise have heard about your brand.

(Photo Credits: Pixabay)

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