7 Reasons Why Every Small Business should Prioritize Content Marketing

Wouldn’t it be great if you could boost your ROI while lowering expenses? That’s probably the wish of every small business owner out there.

When you follow the ideal marketing methods, you can surely make this happen.

And one of the most effective marketing methods is content marketing.

Do you know 70% of marketers rely on content marketing as a key marketing strategy?

When so many marketers have found it to be helpful, you should invest in it as well.  

However, if you are still worrying about whether it is suitable for your business, then read on.

Does Content Marketing Work For Small Businesses?

I have heard this question from most of my small business clients. I always try to convince them that investing in content marketing is the right way to go.

And the best thing is you don’t need to have lots of money for that.

70% of customers would instead love to learn about your business from an article rather than an advertisement.

So, you should try to have more blogs and articles about your company on your website.

You can hire content writers or outsource the work. In this way, you can always have a great incoming of compelling articles while directing your efforts towards managing your company.

However, if you are still unsure whether content marketing is for you, these seven reasons might convince you.

1. High Return on Minimum Investment

When you hire a content writer or outsource content production, you invest a lot less. In fact, content marketing costs 62% less compared to outbound and traditional marketing.

Along with the lower cost, you are also going to get more leads. And these leads are going to help promote your content further for free.

So, if you have high-quality content on your website, you don’t have to invest in any ads. But you may have to make an effort to promote the web content.

2. More Promotion Without Sounding Salesy

Over the years, people have grown a distaste for salesy content. That is why people avoid ads altogether. According to Statista, 27% of the US population uses ad-blocking methods to avoid ads.

So, you should instead focus on content that will help you promote without sounding salesy. The best way to do so is by publishing informative blogs and articles about your products and services.

When you give them informative content, they will start following you everywhere and even subscribe to newsletters. It gives them the freedom to learn about you whenever they want.

The moment you stop sounding salesy, people will start coming to you. Content marketing is an effective way to do that.

Here is a case:

Monetate (now KIBO), a small technology company focused mainly on content marketing.

Their goal was simple: avoid speaking about the company.

Instead, they started publishing articles and blogs that would benefit the audience. As a result, their traffic increased by 255%, and they also received 46% of referral traffic.

Source: Monetate

So, you can also copy this tactic and apply it to your company.

3. Position Your Brand as an Expert

Content marketing can help you turn into a leader in your niche. When you accomplish this feat, your audience will keep coming back to your website to find solutions to their problems.

However, this process takes some time.

You have to publish content solving the burning questions of your customers consistently. These contents should be backed by proper research and data.

It will help you gain credibility.

You may go for case studies, articles, blog posts, infographics, and more.

When your customers and prospects start finding their answers on all your channels, they will begin interacting with your website more.

For example, HubSpot has turned into a niche expert with its variety of content. They solve problems related to marketing and the digital world.

That has helped them gain a fantastic amount of organic traffic each month.

Source: Ubersuggest

4. Gain More Backlinks

Your content will also help you with link building which will help in ranking. When your website has the solutions to prevalent industry problems, web admins will link to the resources on your website.

You need to have numerous case studies, research articles, infographics, and more for this to happen.

Source: Prestwick House

Once you have everything in place, you will automatically start getting high-quality backlinks from top websites in your niche.

It will help bring free referral traffic from other websites.

You may also use content syndication tactics to scale up your referral traffic incoming.

Moreover, the traffic you receive from link building will be of high quality. As the websites linking to you will be from your industry, there are high chances of landing valuable leads and customers.

5. Generate and Nurture Leads

Your content pieces are a great lead magnet. When you have compelling articles and blogs on your website, it will help you gain inbound leads.

You can have content for every stage of the sales funnel. In this way, you will not only attract prospects but also nurture them through content marketing.

However, for this, you need to have a superb content strategy customized for your leads.

There are mainly three stages in the customer journey: awareness, consideration, and decision.

Source: Britannia Press

With your content, you have the chance to give them something for each of these stages.

For example, during the awareness stage, your prospects will use Google search for a problem they are facing. If your blog post about solving this problem appears in the search, they might click on it and start reading it.

Once they are satisfied, they will want to move into the consideration stage. For that, you need to have case studies and testimonials showing how good you are at your work.

After thorough research, they will be at their decision stage. For this, you need to have attractive buttons like “book now”, “buy now,” “free demo,” “contact us,” and more.

6. Keeps Your Website Fresh

Google considers over 200 factors to rank your website. One of the fundamental factors they notice is how “fresh” your website is.

By “fresh,” I mean how often you publish on your website.

When you have a content writing team publishing content every day, your website will remain in the sight of Google. It prefers websites that keep updating their content and try to add more value to their audience.

Overall, this helps in growing your web traffic and getting a higher rank on Google.

But you can’t simply publish anything you want.

Your content should be relevant to your business and niche. You have to satisfy the needs of your potential prospects.

This is exactly what GrooveHQ.com did when they were almost dying.

It is a help desk software company. They were putting out content consistently but did not see the expected result.

Their main problem was they were not writing what their audience wanted. So, they started asking customers about what they wanted to know.

Source: GrooveHQ.com

Once they made a list, they started solving all the questions in their blog. Soon they had 250,000 subscribers for their blog.

7. Build More Social Media Followers

Social media is vital for small businesses. You can always grow your social media with the help of paid promotions. However, when you invest in trendy content, you will make a much better ROI.

You may have many followers on social media, but the key is to have an engaging audience.

If your followers aren’t interacting with your social media posts, then your posts are failing. To tackle this problem, you should ramp up your content to make it more engaging and entertaining for your audience.

To make the most of the social channels, you must use all the features like Facebook and Instagram live, stories, reels, etc.

Your content creation team will help you in creating attractive social media posts that will give you leads.

Your goal should be to go viral with your social media content. It will help in getting more promotions for free as your audience will start sharing the content.

Ready to Invest in Content Marketing?

Content marketing will help you bring more traffic to your website. And when you have good traffic, there are more chances of conversion.

Having informative and engaging content will also help bring recurring website traffic. With time, you will also build trust with your audience.

And the best part of all this is, it’s cost-friendly!

So, try to invest in content marketing and comment below about your journey.

About Appointy

We at Appointy, help business owners grow and run their businesses with our online scheduling software. This blog was a part of our ‘Manage your Business’ category, where we provide expert tips, and resources, or simply talk about the challenges that small and medium businesses face every day. 

If you have any thoughts on this blog or would like to chat about your business struggles and achievements, let us know in the comments below. 

We love a good talk!