We are today presenting the business benefits of content marketing. Inbound marketing is a strategy that combines content marketing, social media and searches to reach out to a clearly defined audience who are looking for a solution to a need or challenge.
Content marketing is often the base for a thriving inbound strategy and has many perks for the business that carries it out well. In this piece, we will look at both the benefits and challenges that face small businesses in content marketing.
Benefits
It boosts the visibility of a brand
According to an statistics-based article by Content Marketing Institute, content marketing leaders experience 7.8 times more site traffic than non-leaders. When you have quality content that is then promoted across the vital social media channels, it gets your brand before the eyes of potential customers who may be in search of a solution to their problem.
Builds lasting relations with the audience
If you produce actionable content consistently to your audience, they look to your business when they need problems solved or things they cannot do for themselves.
Boosts brand awareness and recognition
Small businesses are often faced with the drawback of getting their brand before their target audience. This can be solved by producing content that is continually found when a potential customer is looking for a solution. This will in turn influence your brand reputation.
Helps establish authority and credibility
If you run a service-based business, you’ll quickly learn that your existence is based on your expertise and how well you can present it before their audience.
You can display your expertise through content that gives insight into what your dominance as a business is, what you provide, and what you can give to your clients.
Builds loyalty and trust, with both prospects and current customers
When you offer content that gives advice, educates and offers useful solutions freely and short of a sales pitch, it builds trust with your customers and prospects too. Relations that are based on trust are more likely to go beyond just free advice and into a rewarding relationship for your business.
Positions your enterprise as an expert in your field
Once you have displayed your expertise, people will pretty much go to your content first when they are in need of answers.
Brings traffic to your site to boost lead generation
One of the greatest perks of content marketing is coming up with inbound leads. When you add more quality content to your site, it helps come up with a larger digital footprint. This presents more chances for your business to be found through the search results.
When you come up with well-optimized content that solves a problem or answers a question, you are bound to gain a higher ranking on the search engine results page. This helps to boost organic traffic, bringing in more chances for visitors to turn to leads.
Creates a communication channel via social shares and comments
As the content you produce gets promoted and shared, you open up channels where you begin connecting with people who have come across your content and left a comment on your post. This enables you to answer any other questions that they may have. You in turn establish yourself as a trusted source of insightful information.
When these people run into problems, you become their go-to business to help mitigate these problems.
Helps the customer make the purchase decision quickly
When customers want to buy something, they start off by searching on the internet. If your content nudges them in the right direction to the solution they need, they, in turn, become followers.
When they are ready to buy, they will most likely turn to your business.
Gives value with no strings attached
Giver’s gain is when you help people grow their business without hidden motives. Content marketing does this at a higher level. You offer help to people freely without hoping for anything in return.
This way, your business becomes approachable, and people feel more comfortable when they decide to make the decision to work with you.
Content Marketing Challenges
Establishing your content marketing goals. Why do you want to get into content marketing? Among the above benefits, which would you want to leverage? This will help guide the kind of content you’ll produce.
Focusing on a small target audience and understanding their challenges deeply
Many small enterprises have a hard time picking their ideal target audience. So as to excel in content marketing, you have to be laser-focused so as to come up with the right content at the right time to aid in the buying decision.
Having little time and resources to make the content for your target
Creating good content requires time. If it is ultra-important to you, you’ll set aside time in your schedule or delegate it to someone else. Then you’ll be left with the task of reviewing the content before publication.
Coming up with a content plan
Coming up with an editorial calendar is key to success. Outline the content with details such as the publish dates, media type as well as promotion targets so as to keep on track.
Producing content with focus and clarity
If you come up with posts that revolve around a narrow topic, you end up writing posts that are more focused and easy to consume. Even though others may go for long-form content, shorter posts also serve their purpose of giving you more visibility.
Once you come up with a few short posts for a start, you can then narrow them down to some cornerstone content.
Not knowing what content to make and the format
This draws on your goals and understanding of what your prospective client needs. The content you produce and its format has to align with the prospective client.
Not knowing the platform to post your content
You can come up with the best content, but it stays hidden because you were unable to promote it. The big question is, where do you promote it?
Identifying the best platform where your target audience will view the content will establish where to post.
Gauging the effectiveness of the content you churn out
Gauging any marketing activity is no easy task. However, there are ways to go about it.
You can use Google Analytics to
1. Determine whether your website is getting more visitors
2. See what posts and pages on your site are drawing traffic
3. Know which social platforms are bringing in visitors
4. Look for people that are linking to your content
Measuring ROI
All marketing efforts are geared towards increasing revenue. As such, measuring the return on investment of your content marketing campaign is important.
The best way to determine this is to ask clients who reach out to your business about how they discovered you.
Conclusion
Establishing yourself as an expert as a small business through content is an investment worth making. People are looking to see if you can help them. Even though it may seem like your posts are not working, they are swaying buying decisions. As such, don’t wait anymore to kickstart your effective marketing strategy.
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