The Basics of Small Business Content Marketing

The Basics of Small Business Content Marketing Learned by a Content Marketing Intern

If you run a small business, this article is for you.

If you are developing a marketing plan, read on.

If you’re headed for a career in marketing, or you want to hear the basics from a fresh perspective; these are the absolute basics of content marketing for small businesses.

Customer-First Marketing Strategy

The reason that your small business must focus on its digital marketing is…your customer! Your customer needs to first find your business, and your customer needs to be confident that your small business will be reliable and enjoyable to work with.

Your future customer visits your website and social media to learn what your business does, to verify your business is legit, and to analyze your business’s success. Educate your audience on your product or service and also on your company’s history, owner or team, and industry position.

Make it easy for your customer to connect with your business, from the first contact to encouraging engagement, to providing testimonials of products or services. All of these factors promote your business and contribute to your customer experience.

Pay to Play

In order for new customers to find your small business, you have to focus on not only adding online content but also promoting or advertising it.

With Google Ads, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram advertising, you can multiply the potential reach to your business’s target audience. The even better news is that content marketing is extremely affordable, easily adaptable to your budget, and typically produces high ROI (return on investment).

How often do you search for something beyond the first and second search engine results pages? Most users do not typically move beyond the second, maybe third, search engine result pages to locate a business for their need. Even a small budget for digital marketing can improve your SEO; search engine optimization is the effort to increase the ranking of your site in search engine results pages for specific queries.

Get in the digital marketing game by using Google Ads to promote your website in search engines, and social media advertising to maximize reach to your current followers and target audience.

Analyze the Data

Measuring the results of your content marketing will help you develop a better overall marketing strategy, and keep you focused on fulfilling the needs of your target audience.

By measuring your content marketing engagement, you can learn more about your website users, such as where your audience is located and how users are referred to your website. You can also learn the length of time that users have spent on your website, and further focus on converting a visitor into a customer.

By measuring and analyzing data from all sources of your content marketing strategy, you can identify the successes of your online content and act on opportunities for improvement. For example, we researched, analyzed, and created a Dwell Time Study for one of our clients, Korey Howell Photography. The insights we found from this study showed us where their audience was spending the most time on their website. We were then able to create content that highlighted the services users were most interested in.

Video Content Marketing

Every business should diversify its content, but more specifically, every brand should add some video content.

Research marketers have concluded that video content is a top performer in your content marketing strategy. Eye-catching content that is easy for users to view, creates an emotional connection, or has an interaction component, can do wonders for your brand.

Search engine algorithms are set to provide a variety of content in their search results, this includes video. Facebook is now prioritizing video content over other forms of content. Adding video content to YouTube and other platforms better optimize your content for your customers to find your business.

Sharing a short business video on social media, via newsletter, and on your website goes a long way in authenticating your brand as an inviting persona to partner with. It also provides the answers to those basic questions that your potential customer is looking for about your business.

Tip: Include a customer testimonial for high impact.

Collaboration of Ideas

Business marketing will never be about just one person’s ideas.

There are too many pieces of the puzzle: branding, content marketing, analytics, new technologies, website design, campaigning, sales, etc. Working with the team at Hot Dog Marketing, I learned how great it felt to have my ideas heard and really collaborate on all of the above to make top-notch work.

I know that this experience wasn’t just an in-house experience. The Hot Dog Marketing team fleshes out all of their clients’ ideas and collaborates together with their clients to expand upon those ideas or create new ones. If you want to be proud of your marketing, seek to work with those who will  listen to your ideas and make them even better.