How to Create a Successful Content Marketing Strategy for Your Small Business?

Content marketing is a great way to attract and maintain an audience. The idea is to entice this audience into becoming returning customers so that your business has a steady stream of revenue and profits.

But why is content marketing more popular than other sorts of digital marketing? Well according to Search Engine Land, content marketing is more lucrative, easier to maintain, and has more potential for bringing in leads. According to another source, businesses with blogs generate 67% more leads than businesses that do not delve into content marketing.

Such stats should be enough to tell you how important and effective content marketing is. So, let’s check out how you can create a successful content marketing strategy for your small business.

How to Create a Strategy for Your Business

1. Think about what You Want from Content Marketing

As we mentioned earlier, there are a variety of benefits associated with content marketing. But it is not possible to receive all the benefits at the same time. Instead, you have to figure out which benefits you want first. Ask yourself these questions and their answers may provide you with a lot of insight into what your goals should be.

• Do I want to attract more visitors to my site?
• Do I want more lead conversions?
• Do I want more sales?

And other questions of this ilk. Depending on what your priority is, the type of content marketing you will do can differ. Content made for getting more traffic is usually very informative and educative. It does not expressly promote any products or services.

Content made for generating leads is also educative, but it subtly portrays the business as a solution provider to the readers. As a result, some people get enticed into registering on your platform and stuff.

Content for driving sales has expertly placed CTAs (Calls to Action) in it that encourage the reader to commit to a purchase. It is important to note that you cannot mesh all types of content together to get all the benefits. So, you have to prioritize certain goals over others.

2. Look into Your Audience 

One of the major benefits of content marketing is that it allows the business to gather a specific type of audience and market to them. But you cannot do that effectively if you do not know who your audience is. 

So, that’s why research heavily and find out what kind of people will benefit from your service, as well as which kind of people are already interested in your type of business. You need to find out what demographic they belong to, what their general geographical region is, and what their wants and needs are.

You can do this in the following ways:

• Do market research 
• Do some surveys online
• Use data gathered by analysts
• Check out your current customer base, and see why they choose to do business with you
• Monitor the competition and see what kind of customers they are attracting

These are just some things that you can do to find out who your audience is and what they need from you.

3. Check out the Keywords to use in your Content

No content is complete without keywords. You need to use the right keywords in your content regardless of your goals. Keywords control which kind of people your content will be shown to. From the earlier research into your audience, you should be well-versed in knowing what kind of people are attracted to your content.

Now, you need to find out what search phrases these people use to find your content. This is called keyword research. It can be done very easily by using keyword research tools. Some of the most popular tools of this sort are Ubersuggest and Ahrefs.

If you check your site with such tools, it will show you not only the keywords you are ranking for but also suggest suitable new ones.

Keyword Research Tool in Action

So, make use of such tools and find the right keywords to target. This will help you to attract the right audience and improve your contents reach as well.

4. Publish Highly Readable and Valuable Content 

Now, that you know what keywords to use and which people to target, you can start creating some content for your blog. The key point here is that your content should be accessible to almost everyone. 

No matter how specific your audience is, you still don’t know each individual’s skill or reading age. So you should try to write highly readable content. Meaning your phraseology and vocabulary should be simple enough that most people who do not read outside of necessity can understand your content.  This is possible to do during the editing process. 

You have to run your content through a readability checker and identify the hard-to-read parts. Then you need to run the problematic parts through a rewording tool and paraphrase them. 

A Paraphraser in Action

With paraphrasing, you aim to remove the uncommon and difficult vocabulary and replace it with easier words. This will help drive engagement with your content and ensure that the audience gets the value that is present in the content. Value is added by providing helpful information and providing a solution to the reader’s problem.

5. Create a Schedule for Content Updates

Being consistent is important for marketing using content. If you are not consistent with your content updates, then your audience will get bored and find alternatives to your business. That is damaging to a small business as they do not have the leeway to take such a loss. It is also important to note, according to Forbes, the consistent brands are worth 20% more than those that aren’t.

To avoid this kind of trouble and make your brand matter more, make a schedule that is sustainable for you. Then you need to follow this schedule and post new content regularly. You do not have to make a very tight schedule. A tight schedule will put undue pressure on your brand and it will hurt your writers. You can try a simple schedule like one blog post per week, or even one month. The key is to be consistent.

6. Monitor the Results & Make Adjustments as Needed

It does not end with creating content and publishing it. You have to monitor the results of your content strategy. To do that you have to determine some measurable KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that are relevant to your goals.

Some common KPIs that can be measured about content marketing are:

• Traffic to your website: You can measure traffic to see how many people are finding your content.
• Conversion rates: Measure how many people are converting from your content. 
• Metrics related to engagement: Measure how many people like, share, or comment on your content.

You can use other KPIs as you see fit. The point is that if the performance of your strategy is not up to par, then you should try and change your strategy. This may net you better results. Another point is to identify what is not working and either improve it or cut your losses early.

Conclusion

And that’s how you can create a successful content marketing strategy for your business. A lot of it just involves research of different kinds. You have to research your audience, the market, and even your competition. Then you need to use that information to find out what kind of content you need to create. Then you have to create readable and valuable content to boost engagement. Finally, you have to measure the KPIs and adjust your strategy accordingly. 

This should be enough to help you create a successful strategy but if you want to learn more, then you should head to our blog to find more articles like this.