Content marketing is one of the most effective ways for small businesses to connect with their customers and grow their brand. But if you're a small business owner with a myriad of responsibilities to juggle, you may be wondering how to get started with content marketing.
How do you create content that your customers love? What types of content should you be creating? And how can you make sure that your content is actually helping you reach your business goals?
In this guide, we'll walk you through the basics of content marketing, and show you how to create a content marketing strategy that will help your small business grow.
What is content marketing?
At its core, content marketing is about providing your audience with valuable, relevant content to attract and engage them. Instead of pitching your products or services, you're delivering information that makes your buyer more informed and helps them solve problems.
Benefits of content marketing for small businesses:
Builds brand awareness and loyalty: When you consistently deliver valuable information to your audience, you reinforce your brand as an authority and keep it top-of-mind.
Improves brand reputation: By establishing yourself as an expert in your industry, you build trust with your audience, making them more likely to do business with you.
Drives traffic and leads: High-quality and SEO-optimized content can help your website rank higher in search engine results, leading to more traffic and potential customers.
Facilitates customer education: Informative content helps customers understand their needs and the solutions available, making the purchase process easier and more straightforward.
Cost-effective lead generation: Content marketing can be more cost-effective than traditional advertising and often produces higher-quality leads.
Now that you understand the benefits and applications of content marketing, let's explore how to approach content marketing as a small business owner.
Identifying the need for content marketing
The first step in creating a successful content marketing strategy is to identify what your audience needs, what questions they're asking, and how you can provide value.
1. Define your target audience
As a small business, you likely have a fairly specific niche or customer base. Identify who your ideal customer is, including their demographics, interests, and pain points. Consider factors such as:
The age group, gender, and location of your target customers
Their income level and occupation
Their interests, hobbies, and values
The problems or challenges they may be facing that your products or services can solve
Example:
Let's say you run a small bakery. Your target audience might include people in your local area (within a 10-mile radius) who are interested in custom cakes for special occasions. This could be further specified to include individuals planning weddings, birthdays, or baby showers.
2. Understand their pain points and interests
You can gather this information through various means, such as:
Conducting surveys among your current customers
Engaging with them on social media to see what they're talking about
Monitoring online forums and communities relevant to your industry
Using analytics to see what people are searching for on your website (if you have one)
Researching industry trends and common challenges
Example:
Upon researching, you find that many prospective customers are worried about the cost of custom cakes for their events, but they don't want to sacrifice taste or quality. This is a significant pain point that your business can address.
3. Create buyer personas
Develop detailed profiles of your ideal customers based on the information you've gathered. These fictional characters embody the various segments of your target audience and will help you tailor your content to their specific needs and preferences.
Example:
You create a buyer persona called "Sarah." Sarah is a 30-year-old event planner who frequently organizes large, upscale parties. She values quality and is willing to pay a premium for exceptional products. However, she is conscious of her clients' budgets and always looks for a good deal.
4. Break down your content goals
Now that you understand your audience, it's time to set specific, measurable goals for your content marketing efforts. Your goals should align with what you want your business to achieve, and they should be broken down into smaller objectives such as:
Increasing brand awareness in your local community
Driving more traffic to your website
Getting more people to sign up for your email list
Generating leads for a particular product or service
Boosting engagement on your social media channels
Example:
Based on the insights gathered, your content goals could include the following:
Goal 1: Educate prospects about the complexities of different cake flavors and decorating techniques to position the business as an industry expert.
Goal 2: Share tips and tricks for hosting special events, like how to plan a themed party or ways to celebrate milestone birthdays, to engage with the audience and encourage social sharing.
Goal 3: Write a series of "Reasons to Celebrate" blog posts that highlight unusual national days and provide suggestions for celebrating them, with a soft push to purchase a custom cake or treats from your bakery.
Goal 4: Offer a free downloadable "Event Planning Checklist" to capture email addresses and build a dedicated list for future email marketing efforts.
Each of these goals directly supports a key aspect of your marketing strategy. By setting these smaller, more focused goals, your overall content marketing strategy becomes easier to manage, and the impact of your content will be easier to measure.
Choosing the right content for your audience
With your goals in place, the next step is to determine what types of content will resonate best with your audience. This involves considering your audience's preferences and behaviors to decide whether blog posts, videos, social media content, or other formats will be most effective.
1. Assess preferred content channels
Where does your audience typically go for information or entertainment, and how do they prefer to consume content? You can answer this question by looking at data from several sources:
Social media insights: Most social platforms offer analytics dashboards that can tell you which types of posts get the most engagement, as well as when your audience is most active.
Google Analytics: If you have a website, you can use Google Analytics to look at which pages are most popular, which channels are driving traffic to your site, and which types of content are most effective at converting visitors into customers.
Industry research: Look for studies or reports about content consumption in your industry. General data about consumer behaviors can also be helpful.
By analyzing this data, you can determine:
Whether your audience prefers long-form written content, like in-depth guides and articles
If they engage more with shorter pieces, such as listicles or opinion posts
Whether they enjoy video content, and if so, what kind of videos they like (e.g., tutorials, behind-the-scenes, product demos)
If they are interested in downloadable resources like e-books, templates, or whitepapers
If they engage with interactive content such as quizzes, polls, or calculators
Example:
After conducting your research, you find that your audience primarily engages with your business through Facebook and Instagram. Video content seems to be the most popular, especially short, "how-to" style videos that showcase your bakery's unique offerings in creating beautiful and delicious cakes for different occasions.
2. Consider content affinity
Your research may have revealed general content preferences, but you can also look at specific interests and topics that resonate with your audience. For example, do they engage more when you post about a certain subject, product, or industry trend?
Example:
Looking at your own data, you notice that posts about "DIY cake decorating tips" consistently receive high engagement in the form of likes, comments, and shares. This shows that your audience is interested in this particular topic.
3. Determine your key content initiatives
Based on your research, you should identify a few key content types or topics that you'll focus on to support your business goals. By keeping your content strategy focused, you'll be more likely to see results, as you'll be consistently providing value in key areas.
If brand awareness is a major goal, consider creating thought leadership articles or infographics around industry trends that you know your audience cares about.
If you're most concerned about turning your website into a customer or a revenue driver, focus on keyword-optimized resource pages or how-to blog posts around subjects that you know your audience is searching for.
If you're looking to build up your email list for a new product launch, consider creating in-depth guides or checklists that you can "gate" behind an email opt-in form.
Example:
With the understanding that their audience enjoys seeing the creative process and is interested in getting hands-on with their content, the bakery could run a series of "Decorate with Us" livestreams on Facebook or Instagram, which would help increase social media presence and engagement with their business.
4. Plan your content mix
While focusing on a few key content initiatives is important, you should still plan for a diverse mix of content to keep your audience engaged. Think about how you can repurpose content in different formats and establish a regular cadence for posting. A varied content mix might include:
A weekly blog post that dives into a trending industry topic
Bi-weekly video tutorials about a subject that resonates with your audience
Monthly "roundup" posts that summarize the latest industry news
You might also dedicate one or two blog categories to more personal posts or "company culture" content, while keeping the rest of your posts strictly informational.
By maintaining this mix and consistency, you'll keep your audience engaged and make it easier to reach your content marketing goals.
How to execute content marketing as a small business
Once you have a plan in place, it's time to start creating and promoting your content. As a small business owner, there are several additional tactics you can employ to increase the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.
Create high-quality content
Regardless of your budget or team size, your priority should always be to create content that resonates with your audience.
1. Focus on quality over quantity
It's better to have a single, well-researched blog post than several less-informative pieces. Make sure all your content is:
Relevant and valuable to your audience
Educational or entertaining: It should either teach your audience something new or keep them engaged with interesting information.
Well-researched: Base your content on facts and verifiable data to establish trust with your audience.
Well-written and free of errors: Take the time to edit and proofread your content, or consider using affordable editing tools like Grammarly.
Example:
For a well-researched blog post, you could write a detailed guide to choosing the perfect wedding cake, complete with descriptions of different flavors, advice on portion sizes, and a breakdown of current wedding cake trends. This not only showcases your bakery's offerings but also provides genuine value to engaged couples seeking their ideal wedding cake.
2. Use a content calendar to plan your content
A content calendar will help you stay organized and make sure you're consistently publishing new content. Start by outlining your content goals, cadence, and key messaging themes for each month. Then plan what content pieces (blog posts, videos, social media posts, etc.) you'll create, as well as their publication dates.
Example:
If one of your business goals is to increase social media engagement, you might decide to run a "Fan Feature Friday" campaign where you post user-generated content and tag the creators. To align this campaign with your other business goals, you decide that each "Fan Feature" post will focus on a different flavor that pairs perfectly with one of your bakery's signature items.
The content calendar allows you to outline the specific content, schedule its release, and track how it ties back to your goals.
Pro tip: Consider using free or budget-friendly project management tools like Trello, Asana, or Airtable to manage your content calendar.
3. Repurpose and recycle content
Repurposing content is an efficient way to stretch the value of your original ideas. For example, you can turn a series of blog posts into an e-book, create infographics from research data, or compile videos into a "best of" compilation.
Example:
Assuming that short-form video content has performed well for your bakery in the past, you could reuse some of your longer, more comprehensive blog content by turning it into a series of short "how-to" videos, each tackling a specific tip or recipe inspired by the original post.
4. Embrace user-generated content (UGC)
Ask your audience to contribute their own content in the form of reviews, testimonials, photos, or stories. UGC is valuable because it allows you to:
Build community: When you share a customer's post, it shows that you value their support and can encourage others to do the same.
Incorporate social proof: Content from real customers serves as evidence that your products or services are worth it.
Free up some of your own time and resources for content creation: Using content that's already been created is a form of "re-purposing" and can help you stay consistent without having to create everything from scratch.
Example:
If you've run a contest asking customers to share their favorite memory of your bakery (and they've tagged your business in their posts), you can compile some of the best entries into a dedicated "Fan Memories" blog post. This not only provides valuable social proof but also incorporates the community's voice into your content marketing strategy.
Distribute your content effectively
Content distribution is just as important as content creation. You want to ensure that your content reaches your intended audience in the places they frequent.
1. Prioritize top channels based on your audience data
Start by focusing on one or two primary distribution channels based on your audience research. Your channels may include your website, specific social media platforms, email newsletters, or industry-specific forums and communities.
Example:
Given that you've identified Facebook as a primary content distribution channel, you should schedule regular posts to share valuable content with your local audience on this platform. You could also encourage engagement by asking questions or running polls related to the content you're sharing.
2. Tailor your content to each channel
Content should be adapted to the format and audience of each channel you use. For example:
For search engine visibility, focus on optimizing your website content with relevant keywords and information. You can create in-depth blog posts that answer common questions or concerns within your industry.
To leverage the power of email, consider repurposing your most engaging blog content as digestible email campaigns. You can add personal touches, exclusive offers, or additional resources to encourage click-throughs to your website.
Instagram is perfect for visual storytelling. You can create a series of insightful, high-quality images in your posts, stories, and highlights to showcase new trends, techniques, products, or industry developments.
Facebook allows you to mix up your content types, including written posts, images, videos, live streams, and polls. Diversifying your content can help maintain audience engagement and reach.
Example:
For Instagram, you can use your audience's preference for video content to your advantage and post a series of short, engaging "how-to" videos showcasing some of your bakery's most impressive creations.
3. Automate where you can
Using automation tools can help you schedule posts and maintain a consistent content presence without taking up too much of your time. Look for affordable or free automation options that integrate with your chosen content distribution channels.
Example:
If you've decided that a blog is an important content distribution channel for your business, you can explore blogging platforms like Blogkit & WordPress to take advantage of numerous automation plugins that can help you.
