If your small business is like others, you’ve already started planning your content marekting strategy for 2021 and beyond. You’ve probably composed color-coded spreadsheets with great goals for your company. Or maybe you’re searching for a content marketing strategy agency to help guide your growth. In any case, you’ve also managed to determine that next year is going to be the best year that your company has ever had.
But, if you’re telling the truth, you have no idea how you’re going to meet these goals. Yes, you’ve taken the time to draw out what you want to do, but have you asked yourself how you’re going to do it?
You’re not the only one who hasn’t thought these details out. However, you should make sure to catch up with your goals and have a specific content strategy marketing plan in place before next year comes around. There’s still plenty of time to figure this out.
There are many ways that you can strengthen your content marketing efforts, from analytics to customer feedback. If you’re having trouble taking control of your content strategy, as a content marketing agency based in Sydney, we have a few tips that will help you out. Just keep reading.
Refocusing Your Content Marketing Strategy
Marketing doesn’t work the same as it used to. In fact, it’s more difficult to keep a potential client’s attention these days. Now, you have to reach your target audience, engage that target audience, and keep that target audience’s attention.
Having a well aligned content strategy is the key to doing this well.
These days, more than ever, a business’ current clients and potential clients don’t care about your products and services. Instead, they want to build a relationship and have their problems solved.
Therefore, you should be able to pinpoint what those problems are. From there, you can work on building a strong relationship to solve those problems and explain to your audience why your answer and service offering is the best choice for them.
However you present this, make it clear that you understand their pain points and address the problem triggers. Keep in mind that your messaging shouldn’t be about you. Rather, it needs to focus on your audience and their trigger points.
Knowing your audience well is the key to having a successful content strategy. If you know how to speak to them in a way that resonates with them, you’ll be able to get the most out of your marketing efforts.
You should also be aligning your messaging with your business goals. Reaching these goals is what matters at the end of the day.
Make sure that you’ve outlined specific business-oriented goals for your marketing tactics to reach for. How many sales do you want to make? How many new leads are you looking to create? And how are you going to do that. You might need to consider engaging a content strategy agency to assist, as delivering content consistently is vital and can be very time consuming.
Think about how you can redirect your content marketing towards these goals.
As a small business marketing consultant, Content Box can help you navigate through this process.
Using Your Business Website as a Content Hub
Your business’ website serves as the centre of your digital world and acts as your content marketing hub. It’s surprising that most people don’t take full advantage of everything that a website can do to help their business grow.
Your website can help you:
- Be discovered by potential customers
- Build trust with your business / local community
- Educate your audience
- Inform your readers
- Nurture your leads
- Convert those leads
- Attract ideal clients
In order to take advantage of what a website can do, you have to take full advantage of everything that you can include or post on your website. There are a few important rules to follow if you want to make the most of your business’ content hub.
Make a Promise
Most small businesses in Sydney showcase some sort of promise on the homepage of their website. This promise is usually a statement that helps your customers understand what their problems are and that you are dedicated to finding the best solutions that will bring benefits to their business.
Remember to stay focused on solving your customer’s problems rather than promoting or talking about your own business.
A simple formula to follow is:
Problem + solution + benefit = Your Promise!
Set a Call to Action
A call to action is normally used throughout websites to encourage visitors, readers, and potential customers to look at a business’ products and services. These calls to action can be quite varied throughout a website and are matched closely with the buyer journey.
A call to action can be as simple as asking for a phone call, to requesting more information, scheduling a consultation, downloading a free document, or participating in a piece of research or a survey. As long as it’s a relevant and useful resource, it can be used as a call to action.
Play a Video
These days, videos are necessary for every business – large and small. It wasn’t always the case, but the escalating social media push has transferred video from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have.”
Videos are more engaging than other forms of entertainment. You can tell much more with a business video than you can tell with static photos and captions.
Through videos, potential customers can get a real sense of who you are and what your business stands for. You can use the video platform as a great way to engage and tell your story.
Show Trust Elements
Trust elements are different pieces of your business that can help you build trust with potential customers and clients. There are many ways that you can build trust.
- You can choose to use a logo to represent your brand. A well-known logo could help people associate your business with positive qualities.
- You could share testimonials of past clients and customers as well. These are great for your potential new customers to look over before they get into business with you.
- Make trust elements easy for your visitors to find. Showcase them on your homepage or make a new page dedicated to why potential customers should choose you.
Content and Content Upgrades
- The number one discipline with content is to keep it original. Make sure that you’re posting fresh and unique content that can engage and educate your audience.
- You should be posting to your blog frequently. Your visitors should notice a new blog post on your site at least every week. This keeps your website current and shows your customers that you’re staying relevant and your product is remaining useful.
- You should also offer content upgrades. These allow your visitors and readers to download premium content in exchange for an email address. You can track the downloads for this content, and determine what your audience is and is not interested in.
You can also use the information that they give you to nurture them through to a sale of your product or service. Remember to send informative, helpful emails and show them why they should choose your product.
Core Services
Most businesses have full pages on their websites devoted to every service that they have.
I recommend that you add a short description for each service you offer on the homepage of your website. By capturing their attention with a short paragraph and even an image, you can show up front what services you perform. Visitors are more likely to see these services if they’re right there on the homepage, so don’t make them sift through all of the pages on your website.
You should also make sure to link to each service that you offer. This makes it easier for your customers to get around your website and increases your SEO.
Creating Lead Generation and Content Plan
You can’t do anything until you have a content marketing plan. Don’t try to wing it.
As a small business marketing consultant, our content marketing agency identifies the right kind of content for a business to be generating each month and plans content that aligns with their audience expectations and their business’ goals. We ensure that each piece of content is related to clients’ wants and needs and we also coordinate a keyword to optimise each piece. Importantly, we also develop the right kind of visuals that will really help “stop the scroll” and engage a prospective customer.
Overall, your content needs to provide important information for the audience and help them solve some kind of problem. Use content upgrades to convert readers into leads and guide them through your buyer journey.
Personalise your content and add personal stories and emotional anecdotes to create a relationship with your readers. The more connected they feel to your small business, the more they’re likely to become customers.
As you’re creating content, you should understand that you don’t have to make things complicated or original. You can share content that you’ve already created on your social media.
You can also repurpose content to keep it updated. Focus on creating quality content that is really an investment in your business.
Outsourcing Your Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing strategies fall through way too often. People run out of time and don’t make specific goals. The truth is that they don’t have enough time or sometimes they might lack the skill.
This is why we recommend that you outsource your content to a small business marketing consultant, content marketing consultant or content agency.
Outsourcing content doesn’t mean that you’re giving up or handing over your company. You’re simply owning your process and strategy but allowing someone else to brainstorm (which can take the longest amount of time). This also allows you to focus on what you do best: Running your business!
It’s never too late to fix a broken strategy. Just follow our tips, track your progress, and don’t wait until 2021 to get started!
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