Content marketing is becoming an increasingly essential aspect of growing a small business online. The idea behind content marketing is straightforward: by creating valuable and engaging content that speaks directly to the pain points, challenges, and purchase motivations of your target buyers, you position your business to build stronger relationships with prospects and increase brand engagement.
How SMEs Benefit From Content Marketing
The appeal of content marketing for smaller businesses is also quite clear-cut. None of the content used in digital marketing campaigns is Hollywood-level. The bricks and mortar of content marketing are blog articles, well-written webpages, downloadable e-books and guides, infographics, videos, and social media updates.
These are all things that you can produce in-house if you have the time, knowledge, and resources, or outsource to a specialist agency if you don’t – you don’t need an enormous budget or production studio to succeed at content marketing.
In fact, by creating compelling content and publishing it in the right way, through the right channels, any small business has the potential to reach more customers and scale their sales revenues with minimal investment – making content marketing essential for all SMEs looking to make a strong impact in the digital world.
Immediate And Long-Term Benefits Of Investing In Content Marketing Include:
- Increased Website Traffic – Digital content is one of the most effective ways to drive more visitors to your website and generate leads for your business.
- Established Reputation For Thought Leadership – Publishing high-quality content shows that you have something of high knowledge to say and shows that your business is an expert in its field. Using your blog to address popular keyword-related searches will position you as an authority and thought leader in your industry, helping build trust and credibility with potential customers.
- Improved Customer Engagement – Written content such as blog articles, and visual content such as videos, actively invite customer engagement, especially when published through social media channels. These assets can help engage your audience with interesting topics, guiding the conversation in your sector and providing a personal connection point on which to base a sales dialogue. By publishing informative and valuable content, you make the sales process more about your customer and less about your business, giving you a greater chance of success.
- Increased Brand Awareness And Recognition – Many SMEs struggle with name recognition in a crowded marketplace compared to their bigger competitors. Content marketing levels the playing field and enables smaller businesses to create a name for themselves online, with greater brand awareness and service/product recognition. Writing content that is shareable on social media and easily digestible will give your business greater visibility among your target market.
- Drive Conversions – Content assets can be used to encourage customers through the stages of the sales funnel – from awareness through consideration to decision – by providing time-critical information that addresses their needs and concerns.
- Boost Google Search Position - Publishing regular, high-quality content is, quite simply, the best way of improving your organic search engine rankings for your target keywords, giving your website greater domain authority and relevance to Google’s search algorithms.
- Increase Customer Loyalty - Content marketing isn’t just for new business sales. Providing helpful content on a regular basis for your current customers can help cultivate stronger and longer-lasting customer relationships, yielding increased loyalty, better customer retention, and increased lifetime value.
How Content Marketing Is Essential To The Success Of All Your Digital Marketing Strategies
Content marketing isn’t so much a stand-alone marketing or sales strategy that you can choose to engage in or not, as it is a meta-strategy. By this, we mean that digital content underpins all the Omni channel online marketing strategies that bring success to small businesses.
- Email Marketing – Written and visual content is used in email nurturing campaigns to drive click-throughs to your website and sales conversions, as well as improve your customer experience.
- Blogging – Well-written blogs increase your brand authority, build relationships with customers, guide prospects through each stage of their buyer journey, and generate greater prominence and visibility for organic searches on Google.
- SEO – Written content is essential for search engine optimisation, giving your business greater relevance for important keyword searches and ensuring that your website is immediately accessible to potential customers when researching your products and services.
- Social Media – Another digital strategy underwritten by content marketing. By publishing high-quality organic and sponsored content on key social media platforms, you can drive leads to your website, increase your searchability, and help cement customer loyalty and long-term value.
- Conversion Rate Optimisation – Content plays a key role in converting casual website visitors into leads, after which they can be nurtured through your email marketing campaigns. Carefully written pillar pages, landing pages, and service pages provide visitors with the information they need to make informed decisions, while incentive content – such as guides and e-books addressing your customers’ main pain points – can encourage visitors to provide their email addresses or contact details and stay in touch with your business.
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising – The success of PPC, including Google Ad campaigns, hinges on well-written landing pages to encourage quick throughs and conversions. Successful landing pages will, over time, lower your cost per click and increase your ROI from PPC.
By implementing content marketing techniques across your digital sales and marketing strategy, you can achieve a real-world uptick in web traffic, conversions, and sales revenues. To find out more about content marketing and how to unlock the full potential of your business online, please call one of our specialists today on 01332 343281.
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