01.3.03
Content marketing for
small businesses
Why you should undertake content marketing as a small business
Increase your conversion rate, build stronger relationships with customers, differentiate yourself from your competitors, build your authority, increase traffic to your website, grow your brand awareness and more…it’s all possible from content marketing!
It’s little wonder then that content marketing is a top priority for most seasoned marketers.
Are you looking to generate sales from new contacts or build the lifetime value of existing customers? Then content marketing for your small business is just what you need!
Looking for expert results and support with content marketing for your small or medium-sized business?
Content marketing agency services - just for SMEs
These are just some of the content services your small business may need that we can help with:
Blog writing
Based on thorough SEO research and an understanding of the questions your prospects are asking; the production of targeted, relevant and useful content.
Case studies
Are a great way of showing off your expertise, building trust and receiving great reviews.
Articles
Whether these be for local press, trade press or online digital publications, you will need highly engaging and interesting content produced. These not only provide valuable brand awareness but also backlinks to your website.
Vlogs and video
Not all the content you produce has to be the written word; video content (especially short-form videos) is being consumed at an ever-increasing rate.
Sharing the content across the rest of your platforms
You don’t only want this great content on your website and rely on people coming to you, you need to take the content to them! Whether that be distributed through email, social, articles, press or other mechanisms, make sure you get every penny’s worth of value out of your investment in creating content!
Set a business objective not a production goal!
Content marketing for small businesses is a highly cost-effective marketing tactic. Too often SME business owners set the target to be the production of x number of blogs per month, when your goal should be x number of leads or sales from it.
That is why we set real-world business objectives – whether it is to generate new leads, to nurture prospects, build lifetime value of existing customers or something else – and then identify the tactic that will deliver it. Check out our unique SME marketing model, The Common 10, for more on this.
I can do content marketing myself - can’t I?
Let us ask you these questions first of all:
- Are you a qualified, trained and experienced marketer?
- Do you have the time and inclination to dedicate to the regular research and production of high-quality content?
- Do you have the resources to create, distribute and track the performance of your marketing?
If you answer no to any of these questions, then no you shouldn’t be doing your own content marketing!
Many people believe if they can write well, that will be enough, but the truth is: it is not.
Content marketing for small businesses takes skill, expertise and resources to produce content that will engage and resonate with your target audience, ensure it gets found in the search results, and converts readers into leads and customers.
Work with a team, not a one-trick pony!
Content marketing overlaps with SEO, copywriting, video production, social media, email marketing skill sets and more. By working with the team at Growth by Design, you have access to all of that, so you get the greatest return for your business from the investment you make in content.
How we use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our content marketing
We are fully transparent about using AI tools in our content creation process, but our content is not written by it.
It is great for keyword research, re-writing specific phrases, idea generation, and more, but the information is not current (so you can’t use it for anything topical), uses lots of stock phrases that it believes sound grand (“delving into the dynamic landscape of…”), lacks your brand’s personality, lacks creativity and isn’t necessarily accurate among other issues.
Producing lots of generic AI content may fulfil the need for lots of regular content. Still, it doesn’t fulfil Google’s and your prospects’ need for authoritative, expert, useful, engaging, or relevant content! You won’t get any meaningful business results from it.
Content marketing for small businesses is not about quantity but regular and consistent quality.
Good for your prospects, clients and Google
One reward for investing in regular, quality, and authoritative content will be higher rankings in the search results. That means you get to speak to prospects before your competitors, have increased brand visibility and gain more traffic to your website – all giving you a better chance of generating that lead or sale!
Your brand will resonate better than your competitors with prospects, that means you are more likely to convert and retain customers.
How we’ll work with you on content marketing for your small business
Audience personas
Establish who your target audiences are and profile them in order to understand how best to engage them, and the key messages/questions they have.
Objective setting
Setting the business objectives and goals, so together we know what success looks like.
Keyword research
Undertake thorough keyword research of what your prospects are searching for, what questions they may have, and what they really want to know.
Content planning
Develop a content plan specific to you, your audience and objectives which will likely be a mixture of planned SEO-led content, as well as reactive topical and news-based content.
Upload and distribution
Whether that be uploading and optimising for SEO on your website or creating email campaigns and social posts to spread the word about your great new and useful content!
Monitor real business results
Monthly performance tracking of how content has performed and the business results it has returned.
Refresh
Using quarterly insights to refresh keyword research and re-develop the content plan for even better results!
Want to know more about how content marketing agency services can transform your business’ performance?
See content marketing for small businesses in action!
