Content, Marketing

Why Your Business Needs Content Marketing

Content marketing is an absolute must for your business in the 21st century. Marketing and advertising are changing drastically, and in an evolutionary process of natural selection, it’s either sink, or swim.

Content marketing is a key part of executing an effective marketing strategy and can be instrumental in driving the continued growth and success of your business. Creating and sharing relevant, impactful content that provides value to your audience is the ultimate objective in a content marketing campaign. Great content marketing will pay for itself many times over by engaging your audience, growing your audience, and earning their attention and trust. When this is achieved, your business will be top-of-mind, naturally leading your audience to making purchases from your business.

Effective content marketing for small business owners can be the difference between stagnation and snowballing growth. In order to accomplish this, your online content marketing strategy needs to identify content that your audience will find beneficial to their lives.

Below, we’ve listed five reasons why your business needs content marketing, and how content marketing will help to transform your brand’s strategy and aid growth at relatively little cost to you.

1). An Affordable Way to Expand Your Audience

When your content marketing campaign is in full-throttle, its relevance and value will attract prospective clients and expand your audience. You can fight and pay for readers, followers and site visitors, or you can craft a content marketing strategy that captures the attention of a broader audience and sends visitors flocking to your site. Content marketing is so great because instead of paying for a non-existent or irrelevant audience, you’ll get connected with a receptive audience eager to engage with you.

2). Build Strong, Lasting Relationships with Your Audience

Businesses with the ability to consistently add value to the lives of their prospects and clients will establish strong, meaningful, lasting relationships with their audiences. It’s not enough to just to expand your audience and have 100,000 followers—you have to build a relationship and connect with your audience on a personal level. Demonstrating your value and commitment to the B2C relationship through a content marketing campaign your audience will engage with on a regular basis will help you maintain close ties and an ongoing relationship with your customers.

3). Establish Credibility and a Positive Reputation in Your Market

The ubiquity of Internet has given the average consumer the knowledge and power to better understand products and resist traditional sales pitches. Establishing credibility and a positive reputation in your respective industry will go a long way. Sarah Smith, PhD, a content marketing specialist and former marketing professor at Missouri State University, notes that studies show the majority of consumers prefer to learn about both companies and products through articles, not advertisements.[1]

4). Improve Content & Search Engine Rankings

A happy consequence of a killer content marketing plan is that you’ll have more high-quality content floating around, which search engine algorithms will respond to by improving your website’s ranking. As its name suggests, content is the key component of content marketing, and a successful content marketing strategy will fill your website with relevant, timely, useful content—all while bumping you up in search engine rankings.

5). Convert Your Audience into Paying Customers

Utilizing content marketing as a means of converting your audience into paying customers is a highly effective, sustainable strategy. Content marketing will help automate your broader sales and marketing plan, and yield compounding results through referrals and repeat business. By continually presenting your audience with content that is both practical and helpful, your business will grow its audience, earn a reputation for trust and excellence, educate prospective customers, and position itself to close more new, repeat, and referral sales.


[1] https://www.campaignium.com/blog/why-is-content-marketing-important-for-your-business/

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Business, Marketing

How to Market a Small Business On a Budget

Everyone knows about the importance of marketing your business in today’s economy. Small businesses will often spend a significant chunk of their revenue on marketing in an effort to woo customers. But what if you can’t afford to spend that much on marketing, or you just don’t want to? Fortunately, there are a variety of different ways to keep spending at a bare minimum and still run an awesome marketing campaign.    

Below, check out a list of marketing strategies for small business owners that you can include today for free or at low cost to you.

1). Content Marketing

If you’re on a tight budget, content marketing is without a doubt one of the best ways to market your small business. By delivering relevant, high-quality content to your audience through a variety of mediums, you’ll be able to educate your audience and earn its trust. People prefer to learn about products and companies through articles and videos, rather than being sold through direct advertising. Trust us—your audience will thank you in the form of sales and continued engagement.

2). Start an Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is a proven method for engaging with your customers and capturing their attention. An email marketing campaign allows you to put information in front of your customers with a simple click. Email marketing is a quick way to communicate conveniently with thousands of customers. Check out MailChimp, an email marketing provider offering a completely free subscription plan that allows you to send as many as 12,000 emails per month.

3). Build Your Online Presence

The Internet has led to a much more educated consumer. Most consumers will research a company and product before making any kind of purchase. Establishing an online presence doesn’t necessarily require spending thousands of dollars.

Try creating or redesigning your website with low-cost options from companies like Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, and WordPress. You can also promote your business for free by being active on other companies’ websites, commenting on articles, forums and threads, and interacting with consumers and businesses to help spread the word about your brand.

4). Start a Blog

A blog is a great way to share valuable content with your audience, whether it’s about your industry, your offerings, or just an interesting topic you think readers will want to hear about. 70 percent of people prefer to learn about a company through articles, not advertisements; 90 percent of consumers think custom content is useful.[1] A blog is an opportunity to connect with your customers, so take advantage of this online space and create a blog that’s jam-packed with useful, creative content your customers will love to engage with.

5). Utilize Social Media Marketing Tools

Social media gives you instant access to billions of people worldwide—and the best part is that it’s free. While it’s easy to spend thousands of dollars on sponsored ads, you don’t have to empty your wallet to market effectively on social media platforms.

Many popular social media management tools offer a free version. Check out Buffer, Hootsuite, and SocialOomph, and see how these services can help you save time and optimize your social media accounts.

Final Thoughts

Effective marketing strategies for small business brands rely almost entirely on metrics and data. If you notice that your audience is responding to a specific social media post, run with it. Utilize A-B testing in all of your early marketing efforts to determine which strategies are yielding results and which ones are falling short. Come up with a plan and start small, adjusting and reallocating funds to the highest-performing strategies as you go. If something is working, don’t be afraid to spend a little more in that area; if it’s not, don’t bother continuing to throw money at it.


[1] https://www.demandmetric.com/content/content-marketing-infographic

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