Using content marketing to stretch your dollars

As a small business owner, you know that marketing is crucial to your success. But with limited resources, it can be challenging to get the word out about your business. That's where content marketing comes in. By creating and sharing valuable content, you can attract and engage potential customers, build your brand, and ultimately drive sales to reach your revenue goals. In our previous blog posts, we emphasized the importance of drilling down your target audience and how to start optimizing your website for optimized search engine results. Here, we’re going one step further into content marketing and start connecting the dots on how to best maximize your marketing dollars.

Creating a content strategy is unique for every business and organization. A basic content strategy looks at the types of content you’ll create, the topics you’ll cover, and the channels you’ll use to distribute your content. You don’t need to create every type of content under the sun - focus on what works best for your audience and your business.

For example, if your target audience is active on social media, you might focus on creating short, visually appealing content like infographics or social media posts. If your audience prefers longer-form content, you might create blog posts, videos, or podcasts. Long-form content can be optimized for search engines and repurposed when broken down into smaller, bite-sized pieces.

Quality content is always better than quantity. Relevant content that answers your audience’s questions and provides value is ideal. And use keywords strategically, and try to avoid stuffing them in unnaturally in content and metadata.

Creating great content is just the first step - you also need to promote it. Share your content on your social media channels, email newsletters, and other relevant platforms. Reach out to other bloggers, influencers (even if you don’t think you know an influencer, you probably know someone with a solid following to partner with), or publications in your industry and ask if they'd be interested in sharing your content with their audience in a reciprocal way.

You can also consider using paid promotion tactics like Facebook Ads or Google Ads to reach a larger audience. These can be especially effective if you have a specific offer or promotion you're trying to drive traffic to. Keep in mind that consumers rarely make purchases like a vacation or group experience from these ads, they are exposure to your brand and product that accumulates into a real-life interaction.

Content strategy is a long game and needs to be evaluated on a regular basis to see what’s moving the needle, and what needs to change. It's important to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts so that you can optimize them over time. Use tools like Google Analytics to track website traffic, engagement, and conversions. Look for patterns and trends in your data - what types of content are resonating with your audience? What channels are driving the most traffic and conversions?

Use this data to make informed decisions about your content strategy. You may need to adjust the types of content you're creating, the channels you're using to promote it, or the topics you're covering.

Content marketing can be a powerful tool for small businesses looking to attract and engage potential customers. By defining your target audience, creating a content strategy, optimizing for search engines, promoting your content, and measuring your results, you can build a successful content marketing program that drives leads and boosts revenue. With the right guidance and patience, your content can start working for you instead of you investing too much your time and energy into creating content that doesn’t convert.