For a small business that doesn’t have the luxury of a large marketing department or a big budget for advertising and promotion, doing things as efficiently and as cost-effectively as possible is of the prime importance.
Assuming you already have your branding and marketing goals in place, the goal of content marketing is not just to make you stand out head and shoulders over the competition, but to also move your clients through the sales journey, ultimately leading to conversions and sales.
As you’ll see in the Infographic below by SerpWatch, this could all be achieved through carefully crafted content marketing strategy.
Is Content Marketing Different From Digital Marketing ?
Digital marketing is a set of advertising practices aimed at attracting as many customers to an online business as possible. It includes search engine optimization, social media management, online paid advertising, email marketing, video marketing, lead generation and lead nurturing, and more.
If you have a tight budget and can’t afford all this, you should focus on producing organic traffic to your online business. This means creating engaging content that will bring customers without necessarily paying for the ads. It is a cost-efficient advertising model, and customers prefer seeing a top-quality, informative content over sponsored ads.
That said, content marketing should not be purely promotional. For example, if you are writing a blog post, the last thing you want to do is to push sales or excessively advertise products. Instead, you want to create a piece which readers will enjoy consuming and find it useful. Among other things, this approach will increase brand awareness and bring you new customers without spending a dime.
This entails that content marketing is not the same as digital marketing but rather its integral part. If your budget allows you, it is recommended to go for both – combine content marketing as we just described with other marketing channels.
How Do I Create a Solid Content Marketing Campaign ?
We will be honest with you and say that there is no one-size-fits-all approach here. Only you know your target audience the best, and only you know what the best way to create an appealing campaign is.
However, we could give you the following piece of advice – when creating content, keep in mind that it should accomplish the following goals:
- Cut through the clutter and grab the attention of your audience
- Build your reputation, credibility, authority, and ultimately trust
- Provide value to your target audience – something relevant to their needs and desires
- Educate and inform your audience about you, your products, and your services
- Be interesting, informative, and engaging instead of entirely promotional.
Conclusion
As you can see, you don’t have to invest a fortune into marketing your business. You could go for a cheaper option to attract customers by providing them with fresh content, be it blog posts, video, infographic, or something else. It is not a secret that this way of advertising could bring more leads than paid advertising.
That said, be careful while creating your marketing campaign and don’t forget to consider including content marketing as well.
