Content marketing is a weapon in a small business owner’s arsenal that can be used to take on various topics and mould them into profit for your business. Content can be of all sorts; videos, blog posts, pictures, articles, etc. And because of this diversity, it leads many starting and small business owners fall into marketing pitfalls and bad practices.
And to that end, we present you the 5 Best Content Marketing Practices in 2021:
1. Know your audience
Make a habit of researching the type of customers you’d like. With an increasing amount of brands trying to capture everyone’s attention, an in-depth research is vital to finding your ideal customer base before your competitors do. After you’ve found them, start producing content that is not only authentic but adds value and is engaging enough to keep them coming back.
Also, it is extremely important to keep in mind that you should be able to do this regularly. Otherwise, they’ll go elsewhere. Another important thing to do is to make sure that your content is delivered to your audience when they are available to consume it. Simply put, if your content goes up at a time when no one’s around, that means no one sees it. Once again, proper research will give you information on customer availability.
2. Build trust through content
Relationship building is at the heart of any marketing strategy. Since the pandemic, many people have changed their behaviors and priorities. As business owners, creating trust in the brand, by evolving our marketing practices to remind our customers that we care, is crucial.
For example, a good marketing practice would be, to educate our customers about public health and safety. This could be done by making videos, writing articles, creating posters, and even a branded awareness event online. Keep in mind, that any information or content being put out must be high quality, credible and reliable. To sum it all up, we make content for our customers, and it’d be best to remember that their trust in us is what gives us more business.
3. Create richer experiences
Static content and informative articles infused with pictures create an impact. That being said, according to a report published by Demand Gen in 2020, there is a growing demand for more richer and interactive experiences among B2B buyers. It is also stated in the report that a whopping 65% of B2B buyers engaged with content that was in video format, trailed by 60% for white papers and 56% for blog posts.
Where does that leave our average person? Video content was already peaking in popularity thanks to apps like Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. As soon as the pandemic set in and people started socially distancing, video consumption rose at a staggering rate. More people started subscribing to video on demand services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and BBC iPlayer. A survey was done in 2018 on the reasons for using these services in the UK. Among the top reasons cited by participants was, being able to original content that couldn’t be found anywhere.
Bottom line, content marketing practices need to incorporate and deliver more unique videos, to engage customers. To further motivate you as a small business owner, here’s a research conducted by Google that states: “Video content, in general, has a positive and uplifting effect on the mind.” Therefore, it also helps to build even more brand trust and in today’s world an effective marketing medium.
4. Researching your competitors
Remember we spoke about researching your customers, now we’re telling you to research your competitors too. Don’t worry; it is standard practice while marketing your business, to research the competitors in your niche. This is so you can understand what makes them successful. There are certain marketing practices that top businesses utilize, to stay relevant, effective, and on top of the search engine page results (SERPs).
Let’s say you’re an online car salesman and you want to get more traffic to your website. You can start by typing into Google, “best car brands” and you’ll see a whole bunch of search results including a “featured snippet.” This is usually a section, right on top of all the search results, but that’s a topic for another today. If you start reading the search results that follow, you’ll notice something interesting.
The search results will mostly be a mixture of guides and lists, put out by other businesses, including the ones you’re possibly competing with. Now, going around collecting data on your competition is rather tedious, but there are many marketing tools available online that makes organizing this data simpler. Some are free and for others, you have to pay a premium. Again, as a business owner you should not leave any marketing strategy, tool or technique unchecked. As that might help you get an edge over the competition. This is even more vital if you’ve just started a business or are a small business owner.
Maybe, in the future we’ll do an article teaching how these online marketing tools can be used to research and get an edge over others. If you want more resources and guides on marketing from us, just click here.
5. Work balance
This is easier said than done. But you must learn to balance your work life with your friends, family, mental health and fitness. Start establishing and enforcing boundaries on work schedules and even going into airplane mode for a while. Otherwise, there will be a time when you’ll bump head on into burnout.
Learn to work smart. Use a content management system such as WordPress to make posting and management simple. Use the plethora of free research and marketing tools available online to aid you and plan accordingly. Make sure you stick to deadlines as best as possible, but learn to take some time off too.
Next steps
As an owner, you’ve got to make sure you’re prepped with the correct tools and you put the best practices and strategies into action. That way you’re slowly but surely paving the way to success and scale into profitability. Also, strive to create amazing communities online, through your content and consequently create trust in your brand. Use popular social media platforms and their marketing facilities to create more awareness about your brand. And to finish this off, drink plenty of water, eat healthy, spend time with your loved ones. Stay fit while you profit! That rhymes!
Hopefully these tips help your business grow, but here at Brandari we always say, it’s best to get professional support if you are able to. Learn more about our services.
