Maybe you already understand the basics of content marketing. But it’s definitely a safe bet that there is room for improvement, so here are five tips that will help you improve your content’s effectiveness at reaching and engaging your target audience.
5 Effective Content Marketing Tips for Small Businesses
1. Know your audience
What are their pain points? Why do they need your product or service? What can your content do for them to make their lives easier, more enjoyable, and more productive?
Make sure that you understand your potential customers’ objections to what you offer and be prepared to address them with both content and sales copy. This can be done by creating a buyer persona.
Have a way to measure how effective each piece is at addressing those issues and meeting those goals. Then, if someone doesn’t subscribe because a particular piece didn’t address their needs well enough, find out why so next time around, you can fix it.
2. Focus on educating rather than selling
Being a content marketer, it’s important to differentiate yourself from your competitors. It’s not enough to create content for the sake of it, whether you do the writing yourself, use a freelance writer, or even use a Twitter bot. You need to focus on educating people, so they see you as a thought leader in your industry or category.
So how do you do this? You can start by creating a blog and posting articles that provide value for your readers. Then, use social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to promote the blog posts throughout the week and engage with others who comment on them.
Also, try using creative graphics like infographics (that break down complex topics into simple visuals) or videos (which are becoming more popular than ever). These types of media will help convey your message quickly, so people understand what you’re saying without reading through lots of text first.
3. Create original, relevant content
Why is this a must? Well, let’s just say that the most popular websites on the internet are those with original, high-quality content. You see, when people search for something, they want to find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible.
If you want to be found in searches, you need to provide information that makes people stay on your page long enough so that they convert into leads or customers. And yes: this means writing compelling blog posts about topics relevant to their interests and needs.
Make sure the content you create is original and not copied from other sources. Try to think out of the box so that you can come up with something distinct yet exciting.
Use a word counter
A free word counter can help you create compelling and unique text of the right length. You might be wondering how is that possible, right?
An online word counter is much more than just letting you know about the number of words in your sales copy. It enables you to correct grammatical mistakes, know the frequency of words, change your text’s styling, and do much more than that.
It is a must for each web page to have a unique meta title and description of the right length. Using a word counter helps you make sure that your meta titles and descriptions are not beyond prescribed character limits.
4. Focus on whole solutions, not just features
The most effective content is focused on solutions, not features. For example: instead of touting your product’s ability to make life easier for customers, explain how it can help them solve a problem they’re facing.
Features are good for telling people about your product or service; solutions are better for showing how you can help people solve problems.
Here’s an example: let’s say you run an online marketing agency and need to write some blog posts about the benefits of hiring digital marketing services.
You could talk about how much time and money companies save by using your service over doing it themselves – but this type of post would be more likely to spark curiosity than drive action and perhaps even make readers question why they should bother hiring anyone at all.
5. Be the resource for content marketers in your industry
This can be a big one. Content marketers have to constantly stay on top of their game, and if you’re the go-to person for content marketing in your industry, you’ll have an advantage over other marketers.
What makes you an expert? If there’s anything that makes you stand out from other content marketers, it should be highlighted here. You may want to include your experience in the industry or what sets you apart from others.
What have you done to help other content marketers? Show off how knowledgeable and helpful you are by mentioning some of how you’ve helped others with their own content marketing efforts – and don’t forget about any future plans for sharing that same expertise.
By doing so, you will have an impressive impact on your readers. They will value your write-ups and pay attention to every single post. Eventually, this will help improve the effectiveness of your content.
Additional tips
Use content as a part of your sales cycle
A content marketing campaign should be a part of your overall sales cycle. In fact, it should be the foundation for that cycle. You’ll want to follow the right guidelines to make sure you’re using content effectively to drive conversions and generate leads.
- Use a buyer’s journey map to identify where in the process customers are at and what they need or want at each stage. A good rule of thumb is that your next piece of content should address this need or desire.
- Look at what questions potential customers have asked recently (on forums, social media sites like Facebook or LinkedIn) and use those as inspiration for topics for future posts.
- Review analytics from past campaigns to see which pieces performed best so you can focus on creating more similar ones in future campaigns.
Provide a platform to gather feedback from prospects and customers
Create a place where you can gather feedback from prospects and customers. This is an important step in building trust with them online and offline. Get feedback on what you are doing right and what you can do better.
Don’t be defensive if you get negative feedback on your content; use it to improve by acknowledging mistakes or providing alternative solutions that address their concerns. Be honest and transparent in your interactions with customers (especially those on social media). This should help you in making corrections and improving your content’s efficiency.
